Algesan

14 hours ago, seneschal said:

It’s fun reminiscing about a favorite show but for our purposes here I guess the question is, is there enough going on in the world of Collinsport apart from the Barnabas saga to support an enjoyable RPG?  What would PCs be doing while the Collinses and their retainers went about their various shenanigans?  Is the Dark Shadows universe big and varied enough to let players do their own thing?

Okay, my Dark Shadows fu is fairly weak, but IIRC there were other critters around during the show as well.  It's not so important, but it is sometimes fun to get the feel, especially if your players have some knowledge.  So, you have the old house on the hill owned by the old family that the local town is named after with lots of old creepy locations nearby, which gives it a decent start as a location.  As for supporting a campaign, it has at least enough to support an arc.  It is only a bit over 200 miles from Boston & Salem, so multiple locations in "Lovecraft country" are within easy range.  If you mix in various other tropes from Lovecraft, it wouldn't be a bad area at all for a campaign with more "local" investigators charged with cleaning up the area around Bangor.  

Locatoins

23 hours ago, seneschal said:

Dark Shadows took the Peter Parker route.  Sure, Barnabas Collins is a formidable undead being but he has to suffer all the usual indignities of being a soap opera character.  The girl he has the hots for and his jealous ex both show up in nubile reincarnated form at the same time. He wants to become human again but his doctor’s experimental cure ages him suddenly just when things were heating up in the romance department.  Meanwhile, the doctor has developed her own crush on him.  He has to maintain a secret identity as his own great-grandson while rivals and vampire hunters try to expose him.  Dracula never had to put up with such nonsense!  You almost feel sorry for him, or you would if he weren’t a malign predator.

Heh, my wife and I managed to get a bunch of the early tapes when we were overseas and the base library had more of the Dark Shadows series.  So, there we are, having fun watching the supernatural soap opera doing a couple of episodes a night when it did the origins arc.  We both went into absolute hysterics over the course of it.

My wife, who loves her soaps, enjoyed the plot twist.  In regular soaps where mere possession of the appropriate genitalia and expression of interest provides immediate impetus to jumping in the sack regardless of any demands of honor, loyalty, fidelity or love to be considered, virtually all the plot driving comes from the interplay of who bonked and who was bonked and when the various bonkings occurred (or you could consider "bonking" to equal to rutting like dogs in heat).  The root cause for all of the tragedy of Dark Shadows comes from Barnabas deciding to not jump into bed with the maid, when then escalated to the maid wanting him to spurn his fiancee to marry the maid and it devolved from there to a tragedy because a soap character failed to jump in bed with a willing partner.  For full disclosure, yes, Barnabas did bonk the maid long before when he was visiting Martinique, but he refused to do so again based on his current engagement to Josette.  From there, it devolves into Barnabas becoming a vampire.

9 hours ago, soltakss said:

The Deryni always seemed perfect for RQ-style games to me, almost Fantasy Earth with clerical RQ-style magic, but it has been a long, long time since I read them.

Could be, I actually had to hit a wiki to look back to the original RQ.  Cannot tell you now why (heh, its been four decades!), but RQ just didn't seem to do anything for any of the local gamers.  Although Stormbringer and Hawkmoon did catch on fairly well so you could usually find someone running a campaign back then.

I agree that it does look like RQ would do the trick given the overview I read.

11 hours ago, Mugen said:

That's true for a simple skill use exemple.

But if you consider skill opposition mechanisms, for instance, the odds are often very different.

-In roll-over systems, you usually roll a die on both sides, add a skill to it and compare results.
-In roll-under systems, rolling under your skill is usually mandatory to win. In many rules, if both protagonists roll over their skill, nothing happens.

As a result, odds of success in roll over systems depends on the difference between protagonists skill : +35 vs +15 is the sama as +85 vs +65.

In most roll-under, the chance of a draw is higher at low skill levels than high skill levels. If you match 35% vs 15%, there is 55.25% chance that both protagnosists fail their roll. With 85% vs 65%, the chance is only 5.25%

For the sake of discussion, would you consider ???-Master to be viable for conversion easily.  I haven't looked at the ICE books lately, but IIRC, they shouldn't be that much trouble to convert over. 

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

At the risk up adding halogen bulbs to the target I've long ago painted on my back, I got a similar thought about the Horseclans series. So many of my friends loved the Horseclans books, but all I came away from them with was that Milo Morai was a  p%#^&. 

Actually, you have me on that one.  My friends all bragged on Horseclans, but I never got around to starting it.  I will say that I've read some shorts and a novella out of the series that was fairly cool and I loved the first few Castaways in Time, but I didn't finish it.  Not that I disliked it, but I could see it was heading down "a book too far" street and I was dealing with other things at the time they were being published.

On 7/20/2018 at 7:32 AM, rust said:

My favourite settings from the 1970s fantasy literature would be Pern (Anne McCaffrey) and Gwynedd (Deryni series, Katherine Kurtz). A long time ago I ran a Pern campaign with the RQ rules, it worked surprisingly well.

Several of us tried to do a Deryni campaign a few decades ago.  Never could quite get it to work out well.  It might be interesting to revisit, but maybe in a couple of years, I'd have to reread the series.  The politics would be doable and the gifts should be also.  BRB or Hero should be able to carry it.

Heh, nobody bothered with Pern.  "Hey what's up this week?"

"Oh, it is another darn threadfall session!"

On 7/20/2018 at 7:32 AM, rust said:

My favourite settings from the 1970s fantasy literature would be Pern (Anne McCaffrey) and Gwynedd (Deryni series, Katherine Kurtz). A long time ago I ran a Pern campaign with the RQ rules, it worked surprisingly well.

Several of us tried to do a Deryni campaign a few decades ago.  Never could quite get it to work out well.  It might be interesting to revisit, but maybe in a couple of years, I'd have to reread the series.  The politics would be doable and the gifts should be also.  BRB or Hero should be able to carry it.

Heh, nobody bothered with Pern.  "Hey what's up this week?"

"Oh, it is another darn threadfall session!"

On 7/20/2018 at 5:38 AM, seneschal said:

If Moorcock's works were a 1970s thing, we also have Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series and Terry Brooks' Shanarra series from the same era.  Not necessarily a fan of either but the latter did get made into a recent TV show.

i dunno, I tied reading The Wounded Land.  So depressing it would make Elric seem cheerful.  How did Covenant remain popular for nine novels?

+11!  I think it was about the third book when I realized: "This is so darned stupid!"  Hmmm, I wonder if that kind of book set the tune for the angsty special snowflake types, maybe that is why?  Of course, I have no idea since as I said, I abandoned the entire thing in the third book.

On 7/16/2018 at 11:17 PM, Atgxtg said:

I've read that a lot of people got burned by Palladium over thier latest (and last) Robotech Kickstarter. So yeah, there is risk involved.

Oh, it was more than burned, it was a con the entire way for Kevin S to steal as much of the money as he could to float his books.  I'm shocked as much got released as it did and then...to "make it up to us" he offered to give us leftovers....IF we paid for the shipping that we had already paid for.  The man is scum.

A cybernetic system would be great, but IMO most of those fit better in a cyberpunk style campaign sourcebook.  Why?  Because there is so darn much to go into a SF book.  Heh, I remember when I got the first decent cyberpunk from ICE & Hero, where the first thing you had to do if you went past a cyber eye, ear or other relatively passive organ was to buy a skeletal framework that had to be expanded for the more cyborging a character did.  No more $6M Man grabbing a helicopter and pulling it down to the ground on arm strength alone (besides the other stuff, a helicopter would have snatched the arm right out of his body because his bone & flesh would have failed). 

Would also need some kind of Cybernetic Rejection Syndrome, which was a great way to stop players from simply sticking on more and more metal until they were pretty invulnerable.  Yes, more expensive gear would let you avoid some of the negative effects, but at some point the player became a psychotic NPC for the rest of the group to get away from or put down.

But mainly, a decent ship to ship combat system, maybe an abstract fleet system, several methods of FTL (or staying STL), some aliens, etc.

Even a Solar Romance type (non-FTL, only in the Solar System, sometimes with old school "steampunk" items with races on most of the planets & moons) would work for me.

2 hours ago, g33k said:

No, it's 2-vs-1.  Omega and EITHER Able or Bozo (vs me).  But Omega is just that-much-more-dangerous that I don't parry/dodge/etc vs Bozo or even the more-able Able.

Agreed that we don't want to get deep into those weeds (or nuts&bolts).  We don't want to dissect the "fuzzy" bits and raise them to the level of choices and decisions and Actions.

Nevertheless, there is a genuine level of simulation that "seems like" it could be included to cover things like this...

The OP is looking for solutions in this space.

 

Heh, old game.  En Garde!   IIRC, it was devised as a dueling system and then they added RPG elements around it.  You can find it here on Amazon or the original around on the net.

Seriously detail oriented diceless system.  Not to be confused with Osprey's En Garde! tabletop skirmish game (although I've thought about running an En Garde! campaign using En Garde! tabletop to simulate the military campaigns.....)

20 hours ago, g33k said:

I'd like to re-cast Mikus' OP..  As I see it, he's really asking a defense-oriented question, not an attacking one, so let's flip it.

I'm a highly-skilled fighter or martial artist.  Lots of Dodge, Parry, etc.

I am fighting a dangerous opponent, Omega, when one of two other foes (Able or Bozo) run up to ALSO engage me,  O is enough more-dangerous than A or B that I take NO declared actions to oppose either:  no parry/dodge/etc.  Nevertheless, A is notably more skilled than B is.

Realistically -- if the simulation of combat were realistic enough -- I would still be able to disadvantage Bozo's attacks more than I could Able's attacks, even with no "declared actions".  I could circle away, I could throw a feint to try to make them spend an action of Parry/Dodge; I could shift my stance so I seemed more-threatening; I could recognize an "about to attack" shift, and fall back; etc.  Skilled A would be less disadvantaged by this stuff; unskilled B would be "off his game".  Returning to the OP perspective -- A should have a better chance to hit me than B should, even though I'm not declaring a Parry or a Dodge.

All the combat systems under discussion (iirc) throw in some handwaves about how a combat-round presumes and subsumes a certain amount of moving-about, shifting stances, feints, probing moves, etc etc etc...  Stuff is happening between the telling blows & dramatic dodges.  That stuff -- even if it's "stuff" that includes no declared Actions -- is more effectual for more-skilled fighters (like me), and it's "stuff" that should keep Bozo from being as much of a threat as Able is, even if I never spend a declaration on either one of them.

Okay, if the question is more in line with what you posit, then the normal "fuzzy" bits of the simulation would apply.  In this situation, you either get a "flanking" bonus to your to hit or not, but low skill is still low skill and given how dodge/parry works (you only decide after a succesful attack roll) the target may still decide to dodge/parry.  Even if everyone's skill is low and the target has used up dodge/parry (less than 30% chance after last one) several basic tactics are taught in multiple varieties of combat training that would still potentially avoid a low skill attacker getting any bonus..something as simple as maneuvering to keep all opponents to the front would work.

This gets into nuts & bolts too far IMO.  Next thing we get is "If I do A, I got it"; "No dude, they will just do B and you don't got it"; "Well, I'd just do C and I still got it"; etc. ....and the most likely thing is that by the time you said "If I do A,..." whatever A was has already been tried and succeeded or failed already.  So, roll the dice and in this specific situation (3 vs. 1), one guy might have a bonus to skill from a "flank" attack.

It is a simulation.  D20 figures in one minute of combat, with multiple blows OR posturing in different guards OR some combinations of feints, blows, and fancy footwork that a character gets ONE chance to actually hit.

BRP, okay, you are a novice with a 30% chance to hit.  If the fool you are trying to hit sits still you have an automatic chance to hit him.

Given the general assumption that your target doesn't want to be hit by you, then your 30% is your skill at actually hitting a target who is evading in some manner.  Your target's dodge/parry represents your target's ability to pull off an evasion despite you landing a good hit otherwise.  So, roll your dice and miss, the target sidestepped or brushed your blow away, etc.  Heck, you may simply be out of measure for one of several reasons.  It is all generic and just a way to simulate combat (and other actions). 

For some things, I tell my players to throw the dice just so they get the chance to skill up, but yes, their Doctor skill of 51% is more than good enough to diagnose a common cold and really doesn't need to be checked.

17 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Ooh, I'm excited, Modiphius has done a good job with their current licenses.

I agree, I playtested a couple of their games and I liked what they did with them. 

What is interesting to me is that GF9 is apparently trying to develop a tabletop wargame for Dune, which would probably be a lot of fun or a botch job.  I'd say they need to stick to pre-Paul (or pre-spice awakened Paul) for the timeline, otherwise you get weirding way trained Fremen splattering everyone OR wimped out Fremen.  For example, a platoon of IG will slaughter a squad of SM in 40k tabletop, but a squad of SM will slaughter a platoon of IG in lore and the RPG.  The reason for the tabletop problem is for "balance" and if SM were actually that tough, then GW couldn't sell as many minis for SM because lore accurate Marines would cost vastly more than they do.

On 8/8/2018 at 10:54 AM, Atgxtg said:

(snip)

Not quite. There is the sword Orcist. Tolkien already had his Elvish languages, inclduing the word "orc". He just decided yo go with something more well known "goblin" as the  Hobbit was a Children's book. Goblin is also a bit more of a "G-rated" monster, having been toned down over the years. 

He already had orcs worked up in his notes , that became  the Silmarillion. He even notes that Man-Orc and Elf are really all the same species (that's why they can interbreed). You basically have Man, man in a "state of grace" and man that has been corrupted).  Much like how Trolls in LOTR are corrupted (Gi)Ents). But Orc and goblin in Tolkien are interchangeable, at least initially.  The same is probably true with his Half-Orcs and his HobGoblins. It gets more cofusing with the interbreeding and the ability of Maiar (supermnatural spirits) to take a physical form.

But most of the humanoid monsters in LOTR are really just a mix of man, (gi)ent,  embodied spirit (maiar) , and divine grace or corruption.  

Actually, given Tolkien's education, I'm fairly sure that "orc" comes from the Latin source because it made it into Old English as orcþyrs, orcneas and Old English is just one of the sources Tolkien mentioned.  In fact one word origin source comments that it was revived by Tolkien's writings after being discarded.  Interesting point on the use of "goblin" in The Hobbit, from the timeframe of when it was published and when I first read it in 1967-68ish.  I had some idea of what a goblin was, but would have been totally clueless about what an orc was.

As for Tolkien's notes....yes, we can read some of the alternates that he wrote, discarded, revised, reused, etc., but they are a mess and apparently not totally explored.  Remember that Christopher gave us an edited version that usually chose among multiple written versions by J.R.R.  I'm actually not sure that anyone has actually finished going through all of his linguistic, let alone the literar,y notes.

I was skipping the Christian nature of Tolkien's work for this discussion, but yes, to be complete it has to be acknowledged. as does the fact that it is more Roman Catholic that Protestant in its point of view.

Heh, most dice are "good enough" for RPGs.  The worst problem for dice rolling come from tabletop wargames where you roll buckets of dice and there are just too many ways to skew the results by dice modification when you are throwing handfuls of dice at a time.  Assuming you don't have someone manipulating the dice by sleight of hand tricks.

Then, of course, you have the hot rollers.  No mods, no tricks, even make them roll in ways to beat the tricksters....and they still roll hot dice when they need it...."there is no spoon"...

On 8/6/2018 at 5:22 PM, Atgxtg said:

Yes, plus early RPGs borrowed heavily from them. So, ultimately, they have a lot in common with generic Fantasy and generic Sci-Fi because they were sources that such games went to. Especially Tolkien. Prior to RQ, virtually every FRPG was Middle Earth with some tweaks, subtractions, and additions.  That's why so many Fantasy RPGs have orcs and haflings. 

Part of what makes it amusing is that elves, dwarves, halflings, fairies, pixies, brownies, goblins, leprechauns, etc. are quite possible different names for the same thing instead of the modern distinct "races" that are currently used.  The different names are simply those used in different small areas, but probably related to the same source.

Orcs are interesting and I think morphed through Tolkien's works.  The word origin points more towards Ogres and comes from Orcus, a Roman diety of the underworld.  This also makes more sense when you consider that Tolkien always linked his Ogres to giants in the sparse references and also that in the Hobbit, the party was captured by Goblins and the only mention there of Orcs was "the great Orcs" and gives the impression that they are bigger and nastier Goblins.   IMO, he originally was just using a fancy name for ogres and then as time went on (and the idea of Orcs = corrupted Elves) he discarded the Goblins for the Orcs and ignored the entire issue.

On 8/2/2018 at 11:25 AM, g33k said:

IIRC, the "hunter-seeker" was inside a bedroom, and no Shield was present.  We don't know if a Shield would have been relevant or not.

IIRC, a shield would have slowed it down, but in the small room, even trying to activate the shield would have drawn the attention of the operator and allowed for a strike.

On 8/1/2018 at 2:30 AM, TrippyHippy said:

You said: 

You also said: 

All of which are entirely contentious, and make incorrect uses of the word 'generic'.

Just because a generic game like D&D references Tolkien does not make the original source generic in a reciprocal fashion. And no, if you were playing D&D, the tropes are different to that of Middle Earth - in terms of magic use, for example. You can use a generic system to run anything you like - agreed! - but that was not the point you were saying. Indeed, you continue to confuse an authors' set of influences when writing an original work as meaning same thing as 'generic'. It doesn't. George RR Martin's Game of Thrones series draws inspiration and influence from Tolkien's work, but neither of them are 'generic'. Moreover, you are using the term in a somewhat derogatory fashion without giving credit due to original qualities of these works.

Indeed, your interpretation of Dune seems very broad stroke too - generic science fiction does not consider the effects of spice, or the Bene Gesserat, or the Mentat, or the specific applications of technology, or the ecological themes, or the worms, and so on. Dune remains a pretty unique experience in science fiction literature, which is not going to be authentically captured in a roleplaying game environment without significant research and careful consideration. 

You may not like licensed settings, and prefer to do things yourself, but the very point of this thread is that other people actually like straight adaptations for non-generic settings they like - in this case, Dune. 

 

You are merely quibbling here and being purposefully obtuse by misinterpreting my sentences or clarifications.  It isn't simple ignorance anymore after I've clarified several times to get past that issue with you, but you chose to disregard that and press on with this silliness.

Okay, if you really, really, really, really just have to have LOTR & Dune be "unique", "singular" and super-duper-alley-ooper-special above all other things, then go right ahead.  You win.

On 7/31/2018 at 11:03 PM, Raleel said:

wasn't there one ranged weapon that went through the shield in the movie?

A slow moving one

17 minutes ago, Raleel said:

this would be a good solution for mythras, but I think you still have to stay you can't bypass it with ranged weapons. 

Sorry, I left that one out because I figured it was understood about fast kinetics.  Specialty ranged weapons might affect it with poisons and "stunner pellets", but they are relatively slow, so would be very short ranged.  Interestingly enough, even the Fremen tend not to use any sort of firearms (except suicide lasgunners perhaps, it is even part of the culture according to the books).

On energy weapons, Dune only has lasers apparently, so the rest would be out of bounds.

EDIT: Oh and I was talking about mainly adapting generic BRP to Dune, I'm not sure how that would vary your comment.

1 minute ago, TrippyHippy said:

Your being pretty clear about not understanding what 'generic' means. Moreover, if you attempted to run either Tolkien's or Herbert's settings as generic fantasy or generic science fiction, respectively, then you would categorically be doing it wrong. If Cubicle 7 released a generic fantasy book with the moniker 'Adventures in Middle Earth' they would possibly face a trade desciption act. Middle Earth is not a generic setting.

Both Tolkien and Herbert had their influences, although you are downplaying the very significant creative work they did, but their creations are singular and unique. They are not open ended for adaptation or mix and matching from other sources, in the same way D&D or the like is. 

 

No, you have totally missed the point and are barking up the wrong tree here.

Simply, I never said that either work was generic.  I CAN set up and run a LOTR setting from any generic fantasy game system though.  I CAN set up and run a Dune setting from any generic SF game system.  Understand now?

No, their creations are unique, but not very "singular" and this is not the place to breakdown and discuss literary works at that level.  Given the level of "mixing and matching from other sources" that I can point out (and already have a few as examples) that both authors' works include, why can they not be dissected for the actual unique parts and then use those to adapt to another platform that is more generic? 

I personally do not need any kind of officially licensed and paid for specific game system to run a campaign in either universe.  In fact, I was running a ME campaign before ICE ever even had a hint out about MERP.  My players thought it was lots of fun.  Earlier than that I ran a basic paraphrase of The Hobbit for one of my first OD&D campaigns and, again, my players thought it was fun.  So yes, at least in my case if not yours, I can handle both using a relevant generic game system.  In fact, I'm currently running one using the Dust 1947 universe and that one has even less support (which actually can be useful in some ways) in background.

BTW, for those who dislike Lynch's 1984 version, remember that Frank Herbert liked it as an interpretation of his novel.  IIRC, it is in the introduction to the short story collection "Eye" and that one short bit of commentary by an author who worked closely with the director and producer about translating from a prose medium to an AV one.  For example, most of the fighting scenes and the weirding modules...both are obvious ways to steer away from making a film Dune into the martial arts extravaganza that Mortal Kombat wanted to be, since that was not what the book was about. 

The "extended version" (four hours) puts in a lot of scenes that Herbert mentioned in his article, but I always wonder about his comment about there being six hours of film, half of it left on the cutting room floor.

21 minutes ago, Questbird said:

I like simpler systems. How about these principles:

1. Shield Fighting skill is added to weapon skill when attacking a shielded opponent
2. An activated shield blocks all fast-moving ranged weapons
3. An activated shield makes parrying or dodging melee attacks Easy for the defender
4. Medium and Long melee weapons are Difficult to use against a shield

Or give the shield an armor rating so that it pretty much blocks all damage from melee weapons, which means a critical or special hit is needed to affect those inside.  Yes, nice and nasty there.  Potentially allow a trainable only version of MA: Shield fighting to exist.  Possibly add a Shield Fighting version of each weapon skill, which would mean someone trained to fight with shields may have a lower to hit chance in an unshielded fight (or simply start characters off as primarily shield or non-shield types and apply penalties that wear off after a while playing). 

I don't agree with Easy for parry/dodge, but perhaps a bonus to it, say +10/15/20 to base weapon skill for initial parry bonus?

Don't agree with the medium/long weapon issue for several reasons, but the dodge/parry bonus (either numerical or by being Difficult) should counteract that.  Given the last paragraph below, I'd say that only impaling type melee weapons are suitable ("a thrust of two inches in a vital area is generally fatal"), although "killing with the point lacks artistry", so maybe for formal duels disallow any MA (since virtually all historical knife/sword MA use the point heavily).

Coherent weapons cause ~1kt blast (max).

Interestingly enough, shields do act as inertial sinks for the wearer, so no huge kinetic effects would apply.  However, since this involves radiating the energy out it could be possible for some kinds of large kinetic weapons to cause radioactive issues (although normal use vs most weapons are merely a temporary minor non-hazardous raising of the local background radiation).  Note that this radiation goes outward and not inward (unless firing some kind of high kinetic energy device from inside a shield...= cooked user).

On 7/30/2018 at 3:07 PM, TrippyHippy said:

I think that is a fantastic misinterpretation of the very point being made. By the very definition of the word 'generic', neither Tolkien's work or Herbert's work are generic. D&D has referenced elements of Tolkien, along with elements from dozens of other writers and is open to develop in any way a gaming group sees fit. Both Lord of the Rings and Dune, however, are based on one canonical source. They are not generic, from any sense of the word and no, Tolkien was not writing a mere 'copy' of the Oddysey. This entire argument from you is so off base, it beggars belief quite frankly. 

Sorry, I must have been unclear.

Other than the specific bits that make them special and different for the purpose of the author's story, the major elements of both LOTR and Dune fit into the generic genres I've noted.  Of course Tolkien did not write a copy of Homer's Odyssey, but one of the genres you can place both LOTR & the Odyssey are in that of the epic and they are both quests (or journeys), which is what I was intending to state.

Both Tolkien and Frank Herbert borrowed heavily from multiple sources for their various books, this is true for all literature...heck, for everything.  There is nothing new under the sun. 

On 7/24/2018 at 9:40 PM, tobarstep said:

Interesting bit of trivia: the short-lived Dune RPG was worked on by Youtube celebrity Matt Colville. He has a link to some rough, unpublished material from the d20 version they were working on in an old blog post of his: http://squaremans.com/the-dune-rpg/

Thank you very much for that link.  Quick scan looks like excellent layouts for a nice long run adventure.