Evilschemer

I dunno. On Mars, to have a range of 200 miles with a firing angle of 45-degrees, a ballistic projectile would need a muzzle velocity of of about 1100 m/s. By comparison, the muzzle velocity of some .30-06 rifle is 3015 fps or 918.97 m/s. Hell, firing a .30-06 rifle at a 45 degree angle on Mars will send a 10-gram (or any size, really, given enough energy) projectile 194011.82 meters. That's 194 kilometers. Bullets go a lot farther in 0.38g. You won't HIT anything, but if you fire it in the air at 45 degrees, it will come down 120+ miles away somewhere.

Yes. Although the big lizardy monsters are generically and collectively referred to at Teraxes.

Here's a link to the intro chapter. http://www.mecha.com/~conkle/cydoria/intro.pdf

Yeah, it apparently went down for a few hours today. It's back up now.

Here are some of the illustrations I have drawn for the book.

The index for Swords of Cydoria is finished! Now to re-do all the "See Page XX", and maybe a character sheet, and I'll be done.

Round 3 layout is complete. I realized too late that my margins were set to 0.5 inches, not the 0.6 inches suggested in the submission guidelines, so I had to re-lay it all out again. I'm also trying to trim some fat. It's up to 210 pages. I took out "Appendix One: Inspirational Material" and some other bits here and there, such as the apothecary profession, which had become redundant. I might trim the equipment section down quite a bit, and maybe the Gods of Cydoria chapter, which is all flavor and serves no real purpose. I'm also working on the index, going through and tagging key-words page by page. That part is pretty tedious, but necessary. After that, I fill in all the "See Page XX" entries.

What's the zeitgeist here? Should a BRP sourcebook/setting provide abstract values for equipment ala the BRP book? Or should a sourcebook use hard-and-fast currency costs like gold pieces or dollars? In working on my Swords of Cydoria setting, I used abstract values, though I have modified the system so that wealth is tracked separately from Status and equipment values represent a skill difficulty to making a purchase. But if the overall opinion is that costs are better represented in units of currency, I will oblige.

Round 2 layout complete. My wife made me re-do it at 10-pt font. 9-pt was just too small. At 10-pt it comes to 198 pages.

Update: I completed round 1 of layout last night. I have a few additional illustrations to do, a table of contents, an index, round-2 re-layout and touch-up, and some final editing, and I’ll be done. As of round-1 layout, it’s 176 pages. It will be completed and submitted to Chaosium by the end of November.

Also, different skills represent different tactics but could result in consequences. Persuasion is the long road, requiring logic and reasoning, but in the end your opponent agrees with you with no hard feelings. Also, it becomes harder for someone else to un-do your persuasion. Intimidate, however, is the short path, doing the most "damage", but in the end your opponent will hate or fear you. Plus, it's easy for someone to un-do the coersion. Fast Talk can be a short path, using confusion and misdirection to baffle your opponent into acquiescence, or the long path, using more subtle lies to "persuade" your opponent using fabricated facts or false logic. An opponent swayed by Fast Talk can be easily undone by someone else with Persuasion.

I like it. It's the germ of a good idea. The only thing I think it's missing is social "armor" in the form of stubborn-ness or clueless-ness or some other means of ignoring or missing or reducing the impact of the point. The other day, I got into a debate about gun control with a friend of mine (I am pro, he is against). After the debate, we both conceded that the other made some very good points and I think we both explained our positions eloquently using examples and analogies. But ultimately, I was never going to change his mind and he was never going to change my mind. Neither one of us were doing enough social "damage" to get past the other's armor. We were plinking away at each other's defenses. A little was getting through and both of us ended the discussion a little more enlightened about each other's views, but either one of us would need much bigger "guns" to really affect the other. I suppose using the above rules, we would both be countering each other's rolls. Successful attacks and successful defenses resulting in no damage. I think we were both achieves successes in our "attacks" because we both recognized that the other made good points, but we were successfully "parrying" the attacks with the strengths of our convictions.

Last night, we tried out the revised rule I came up with: "Roll for the regular attack, roll again for Martial Arts. If either hit, then you do damage. If both hit, you do double damage." Straightforward enough. The players didn't like it. They thought it was too much dice rolling. The feedback I got was that they'd prefer the original rule for Martial Arts for Brawling and Melee, and just use somethig new for Grapple. I suggested the following for Grapple: If the die roll is a success for both Grapple and Martial Arts, the success goes up a level. Success becomes Special. Special becomes Critical. Etc. We'll see how that goes next week. Of course, grapple probably won't fit into the game much, anyway.

Update: 99.99% done. 384 pages of manuscript written (11-pt Calibri font, no layout yet). All I have left to write is some designer's notes, maybe fill in some fiddly bits and some NPC stats, and some minor re-writes of some earlier sections. Then it's off to layout and illustration!

Actually, I decided to let the player make two skill rolls: one at the base skill percentage and the other at the martial arts percentage, and take either result.

This. This rule I like. A lot.

We were making characters last night and this question came up about Martial Arts: What benefit does Martial Arts provide to Grapple? I mean, Martial Arts doubles damage for Brawl and Melee Weapons, but Grapple only does 1D3 + db damage if you put someone in a hold and decide to do damage. Martial Arts doesn't seem to have any other effect on any other Grapple maneuvers. Any ideas?

I also found stats for the Boucher in Ye Booke of Monstres II. Here's what I went with. I wanted something about as big as Master Roshi from TMNT (these monsters are essentially an entire race of Master Roshis, thus their name's in-joke). Roshu Intelligent Rats of Norukar The city of Norukar is built atop a massive artificial foundation constructed during the age of the Sdara Vatra. The foundation is riddled with passages, chambers, and catacombs. This subterranean realm is known as the Under-City. The deeper sections of the Under-City is inhabited by semi-aquatic rodents called roshu. Though they are generally still rat-shaped, they possess dexterous hands and, though technologically primitive, are very clever. They are scavengers who send raiding parties to steal food from the surface. They have been known to kidnap children and weak adults to take back to their secret warrens. Depending on the will and whim of the roshu tribe, these unfortunate captives may be raised as members of the tribes, treated as slaves, eaten as food, or sacrificed to their dark god Rash. Characteristic Roll Average STR 2D6 7 CON 2D6 7 SIZ 2D6 7 INT 2D6+6 13 POW 3D6 10-11 DEX 3D6 10-11 APP 1D6+2 5-6 Move: 10 Hit Points: 7 Damage Bonus: -1D4 Armor: None Attacks: Bite 40%, 1D3 + db Claw 25%, 1D3 + db Skills: Dodge 40%, Hide 40%, Fine Manipulation 40%, Listen 65%, Sense 95%, Sleight of Hand 50%, Stealth 40%, Swim 100% Diseased Bite: The bite of a Roshu harbors communicable diseases. Treat as the Disease Carrier minor mutation (BRP page 105) with a POT of 2D6 (rolled with each contact).

The illustrations are gorgeous! It looks like a book of very nice illustrations with descriptions and non-system-specific "game" stats.

I need some stats for a "Rodent of Unusual Size". Can anyone help me out?

Keep in mind, the stats for the herder represents what Mongoose thinks should be the stats for the AVERAGE herder, not a specific herder.

Primarily, I was curious. I was looking at other equivalent NPC stats to give my NPCs appropriate stats, and I was noticing a tendency for published NPC stats to be higher than PCs, on average. So I decided to see if the data backed up my hypothesis, which it seems to have done. I didn't want my NPCs, for example, to all have average 15-17. I wanted representative NPCs who were supposed to be roughly equivalent to PCs to actually be roughly equivalent to PCs. Named NPCs can vary wildly, of course, but representative NPCs should represent some sort of average.

Runequest GM's Handbook Herder STR 10 CON 14 SIZ 11 INT 12 POW 16 DEX 15 CHA 17 AVG 13.6

My hypothesis is that designers tend to think "what's important to this NPC?" and assign high stats to what's important. Conversely, what ISN'T important tend to be left at the average of 10-11. So an NPC fighter might have a STR, CON, SIZ, and DEX of 14-17, while his INT, POW, APP remain at 10-11. Or the NPC Wizard might have a INT, POW, DEX at 14-17 while his STR, CON, and SIZ are 10-11. This is unconscious on the part of the designers, but it will bias NPCs towards higher stats while normal PCs will have more stats less than 10.