sdavies2720

Thanks for the ideas. My world is Glorantha-inspired but definitely not Glorantha (different geography, different mythology, but a lot of borrowed concepts). I'll look for Shamans and Faery. The descriptive scenarios are nice, and helpful. I am looking for something more interesting than, "I rolled a 10, success, his POW drops by 2..." until someone wins. I'd like to evaluate something more involved (parries, tactics, etc) for these encounters. But, these posts were very helpful. So, I sense we need a Shamans supplement for BRP. Steve

Or let the player/GM choose which to use. Most times people will want the extra crit chance, but others avoiding the fumble will be more important.

For the first time, I now have a player with a shaman in my campaign. While I'm pretty up to speed on the mechanics of RQ3 Shamans, I'm looking for background information: Descriptions of the spirit world, more interesting spirit summoning tables and ideas, spirit combat tactics, etc. Basically anything of interest spirit- and shaman- wise. Having no need, I haven't focused much on this part of the world. Does anyone have anything to share? Thanks!

I ran a Boot Hill one-off adventure last fall, and bought the books on ebay for it. Boot Hill is spotty on ebay--sometimes there is a lot of material, other times there's very little and it's expensive. If you get stuck, and are in the U.S., I'd be happy to lend you my copy (provided you make an oath to Cthulhu that you'll send it back when you're done!)

Minus some good will:ohwell: But your point is well taken. As clear market leader, WotC's business drivers are a little different than for everyone else. I also suspect that once the PDF furor dies down, there will be little damage to WotC's core customer base.

Not for me--I never take it into account when thinking about rules. In fact, whenever there is a PvP situation, usually everything stops and there is a minute when the GM says, "here's how this is going to work." We've found that stopping and confirming the rules and situation resolves most of the PvP situations right away when the players have to agree on a single interpretation of the situation. And if we don't confirm the rules, the PvP situation almost always ends in, "That's not fair." So, for us, those situations get treated specially. Steve

Interesting. Is a success level 2 essentially a "Special" and Success level 3 a Crit? So what's Success Level 4? How will advancement work? If I have a success with Athletics, Grace 65% (Acrobatics 25%), do I get an advancement roll for Acrobatics that then also adds to Athletics, Grace? Or separate rolls for both, or something else? Steve

Do we need to have a consistent approach every time this (opposed rolls that are both equal successes) comes up? I usually interpret the results based on what is most dramatic. If a Sneaker is successful in Sneak, and the Guard is successful in Spot (or Scan), I: * If time is of the essence and this will increase tension, I 'push' the result for a round. The Sneaker has to wait while the Guard is staring right at him. Roll the next round. Someone eventually fails, or time is running out so they try something else. * If it's unimportant to the plot, I arm wave it (usually in favor of the players) * If it's important that we resolve it in one roll, I either adjudicate that the high skill wins or the one who was most under his skill wins. Maybe I'll change that to the canon (higher roll wins). Steve

Oh, ok.

I'm not familiar with that one. Can you provide a link, or some more guidance where I can find it? Steve

I should have put a next to it.:ohwell:

Technically, I didn't say "...one and only..." I've never seen this community have "one and only" of anything. Steve

Zip it (or .RAR or whatever) first?

I assume it's the "Late Doctor Nathaniel Jones".

I think that the tome SHOULD include those old standards, even though they have been used elsewhere. To my mind, the goal of the tome is to have everything magical in one place, so it should include some of the more prosaic spells. As long as there is enough other material (and maybe organizing everything that's come before is enough value), I wouldn't worry about covering familiar ground. As for confusion, there are so many versions of almost everything in RPG that either players can deal with it, or they choose one reference source and stick to that. The tome could be THE source for those people. Steve

Would think that someone with an Excel Black Belt could take the individual spreadsheets and pull the data into a database, so character sheets could be reprinted when needed (every session someone seems to have forgotten their sheet) Steve

LOL. We did something like this at a previous client. In meetings, everyone got signs that said "SOLD." We could hold them up when someone was pushing a point that we agreed with already. If you were talking & saw all those red signs around, it was hard to miss. Of course, there was a black market in alternate signs. I will say, the "SOLD" signs really sped up meetings. Steve

Use whatever wordprocessing or layout program you're comfortable with. I use Word, because it's familiar. The tolerances on a character sheet are rarely so tight that you need a high end tool.

Naw. He can the everything.

If you haven't read anything about native Australian myths of the Dreamtime, do read them. The basic concept (and I'm sure I've mangled it) is during the Dreamtime, the spirits walked the lands, creating paths of power. They then ultimately 'settled' into the land -- fell asleep, or still live--in distinctive places of power. So each location literally IS the spirit. That sounds like your rune power spots. And the path they took is the set of rituals or the heroquest that the aspirant must follow. Steve

Great, this sounds really useful. In general, I use (steal) the general purpose rules (e.g. one-shot talisman creation) and morph them for my campaign. Much of the rest I read for ideas, but little else gets used directly.

I'd not read it, or at least not at first. I don't look at it as self-obsessed as long as it's relatively short and factual (leave out the adjectives). An alternative for some of the stuff is to create a webpage or blog that gives your backgrounds, talks about the process of writing the book, discusses design decisions, philosophy, and other 'background' information. That takes the background out of the book, so it's streamlined for play, but makes some of the richer information available to those who care. The reader can be directed to it with a quick sentence or two and URL. Steve

Slightly off topic, but are you including Gypsies? I know it's a little off your core subject, but they never seem to belong anywhere (comes with the package, I'd guess) and never seem to be weighty enough to merit their own treatment. I'd think that Gypsy Magic would sit somewhere between hedge magic and various coercion magics that witches always are good for.

I have the same preference -- scatter the fluff. And please, please, please do not put a long first fluff chapter in that "sets the tone" before you tell us what the book is and why we should care/buy it. I've put down more RPG books because I couldn't find the one paragraph description that said, "This book is an add-on to BRP 1.0 that presents multiple magic systems that are most appropriate for fantasy and alternate reality games. Included are alternate magic game rules, examples of five different magic systems, one or two npcs for each, and a short introductory adventure that shows the unique points of each magic system." Or something that tells me what I'm getting, whether it's appropriate for me, and how to use it. That could be on the back cover, but often it's buried (if it's there at all) within a long block of text part-way into the book.

That would be a great basis for a land ala The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven. The GM could quantify how much magic is left. But if you don't want that feel, the runes could continue to manifest. As long as the Ur-Runes exist, they will continue to manifest materially on this plane. So there is an unending supply of the more prosaic physical runes. I really like some of the concepts there. I love the idea of people's spirits retaining their Rune affinities after death, and therefore becoming powerful ancestor spirits. Steve