TRose

As far as Roman switching from thrusting spears to the pilum/sword. The first major enemy the Romans ran into where the Sammites Against who the thrusting spear was fairly useless. The Sammites army was almost wholly composed of javelin armed warrior from the hill country of central Italy and they would not stick around for a spear push . They would just throw their javelins and run away so the Romans had to switch to a throwing weapon if they wanted to have any chance against them. Later against the Gauls and Iberians they had the same trouble. Although the Gauls are best noted for fierce frontal charges, they would also skirmish in the Forrest of Gaul throwing spears and disappearing into the trees at times. And in hill country and in Forrest a throwing weapon is much more useful then a long thrusting spear since the enemy will run if you try to close and there often no room to wield a 12 foot spear. Against the Eastern powers, well most of the former Greek and Macedonian kingdoms where quickly on their way down and Rome just had to give them a nudge for them to fall. Rome never really ran into a first class power armed with pikes so How the Legion would have done against the Macedonians when they where in their prime is just a guess. Only first class power Rome ran into on its way to the top was Carthage, and Carthage depended on mercenaries hired from every where and using almost every weapon under the sun, which if under a first class General was fine but under a lesser general they would not know how to use the different troops to their best advantage.

Is the protection value for ancient armor going to be on a scale of 1(light leather/cloth) to 6(Plate) Like in RQ1 or 1 (light leather) to 8(plate) like in RqIII? For me I like the range from 1 to 8 as I feel it give my players more options ( My monsters already have what ever armor I want to give them)

2 more points here. As far as development of axes and swords. The ancient Chinese used what is sometimes called a " dagger ax" in which the ax head was more like dagger blade then what we think of as a ax blade. And I have always considered the Falcatta and Kopis the same weapon for game purposes as the Kukri. I really prefer the term falcatta over Kukri but if I use that term nobody knows what I'm talking about except Badcat

BTW if anyone wants to see what a Kopis looked like here a link. Its at right bottom of page http://www.larp.com/hoplite/weapons.html

As far as the Kukri being related to the Sword. many people believe the Kukri came from the Greek/ Macedonian shortsword called the Kopus which was introduced to India by Alexander the Great. The roman used a similiar sword befor adopting the Gladius Hispanius . Also look up the ancient Celtic Falcatta which is also very similiar the Kukri

Well I have 2 teenage daughters that insist that dinosaurs ruled the earth when I was born. And at times they insist that I am an ogre so maybe Ogres have long lifespans. So no offense

As far a the development of weapons go. The ax started out as a tool and had a big advantage for part time warriors in that you could use it to cut wood when you where not cutting off people head. Might add one of the first pole arms to see large scale use was the English Bill , which was first used to prune tree limbs before the English used to to prune limbs from French Knights. The Flail also start out as an agriculture tool. And BTW Wooden tip spears where still used in Scotland and Norway by those who could not afford better even in the middle ages. I remember how at the start of William Wallace rebellion how some English Knights scoffed at the Naked Scots, many armed with only sharpen wooden stakes.

I'm starting a campaign out of Knights fort on the edge of Prax in my own version of Glorantha .The game starts 2 years after the Battle of Moonbroth and conquest of Pavis.The Pharaoh worried about the Lunar empire launching a flank attack on the Holy country from Prax has order The All Seeing Eye( His intelligence agency) to make sure Lunar forces in Prax and Pavis have a interesting tour of duty there. Players include Prax and Sartar exiles, Heortling Deist, God forgot Sorcerers and even Trolls from the Shadow Plateau who may not really like each other but hate or fear the Lunar empire more.

Any chance some of the links could be made " sticky" such as the ones to Glorantha and COC links?

one of the problems with the BRP combat system is lack of reach for weapons. A man with a dagger and another with a pike can fight just fine even though in reality The man with the dagger would have to get around the point of the pike first and if he manage that then the man with the pike would have a hard time sticking him with the pointy end if the dagger man got with in range. Might add one thing that has in the past determine what weapon I or my players use is what we could start with. I had one character that used a sling as his main ranged weapon because by the time I could afford a longbow I had gotten pretty good with it. I mean if I had 65% with sling changing to a longbow which starts at 5% did not make sense to me. Same would apply to a character that started with an ax or mace, switching weapons and losing 20% skill is not worth it at times.

The advatage a spear has is its cheap, easy to train people to use on the battlefield, Has Reach, and you can use a shield with it. Other pole arms tend to cost more and are harder to use right. But they often can hit harder and do more damage.

Thing to remember if you start adding bullet types out there there a ton of different types out there. Starting with explosive bullets(The Soviet snipers used them as " markers" in their rifles during WWII) To my favorite Glaser rounds. Don't think I would want to do the work but would be glad to see some one else do it.

I vote for Peach pie with Icecream But I also vote for Hero/fate points.BRP can be too dangerous for newbies who dont know better.

One of the problems with the D100 system has always been it its just as easy to skill up Nuclear physic as say, lawn care. The big advantage a crossbow has over the Bow was ease of use. I Remember reading someplace that to train a good crossbow man it took 6 month , to train a good longbow man you started with his grandfather. I have always felt skills should be listed as easy , normal and hard for increase rolls, perhaps use a D4 to increase hard skills, D6 for normal, and D8 for easy. As far as throwing weapons go, they should be faster to use when surprised. I can throw the spear in my hand and then toss the ax in my belt before you string your bow and shoot off an arrow. And for hand to hand weapons go there are many things that unfortunately are hard to take into account. For example the Cutlass was preferred on ships because it was crowded on a ship and some one with a long sword might end up cutting the rigging or hitting a friend. I understand that why Pike men used short swords as a back up weapon there was no room to swing a bigger weapon. Other weapons where chosen because of economics, a Sling is and should be dirt cheap. The Highlanders of Scotland preferred the ax for most of the clansmen because they simply could not afford to purchase swords . Your average adventurer does not worry about if he should buy a broadsword or do I stick with an ax and buy everyone in the hearth a new cloak.

I feel a character should be able to be resurrected as long as most the body is there . I would not allow a Rez only if the body was so badly damage that it could not be pieced back together such as fire, dissolved in acid or eaten by a monster. For death at zero hit points I start making players make a con roll with a -5% for every point below zero till help of some arrive.

Who dat that say bad things about Trolls. ME UZ, Me smash face with me maul.

Here my opinion about gun damage. The values seem fine but I think that guns should " Impale" and do double damage on any special hit. This is to reflect that a normal shot just hits muscle but a special shot would then hit an artery, vital organ ect.

I think Sandy's rules on Saints and Kralorean Mystics look interesting( They on Philip HIbbs RQ page) and am thinking of allowing my players to buy them using Hero points . To Purchase a Saint it would cost you twice the Hero points as the power listed, so a Saint that would cost 3 power points could now be purchased with 6 hero points. For Mysticism I'm still up in the air about How many Hero points it should cost to buy one mystic points. Would like to hear back from some of those familiar with Sandy's rules and what you think.

I am in total agreement that the GM should fudge at times. Otherwise what do you do when say 5 out of your 6 players are having a good night using their skills and everything and then the 6 player does something really stupid that if you played it out would result in the party getting wiped. I think we all seen fools that throw rocks at a T-Rex, insult a Troll Priestess in her fortress, Try to attack a whole Lunar regiment , etc, and one should not punish the rest of the party for the action of one person.

How character improvement going to be handled? Is it going to be like in old BRP where you then have players climbing trees and swimming in the lake for improvement roles or similar to MRQ where there a set number of improvement roles per game?

Hi there my name is Tony Rose and now I am 49. I been started playing war games in the early 70's( Panerblitz ect) and then a friend bought a brand new game called Dungeon and Dragons andf been role playing since. WhiteBEar/ Red moon was one of my favorite games of all time( I also own Nomad Gods and was disappointed that Masters of Luck and Death never came out as a board game like it was promised) so when I heard there was going to be a role playing game based in Glorantha I had to get it and was hooked on Runequest/d100 since. I have GM'ed both Runequest and Superworld and played in COC and ringworld. I am looking forward to the new basic role playing system and want to see how it works here.