sdavies2720

Someone last night mentioned a video (friend's father, as part of police training) of a crack user being hit with a taser and basically ignoring it. So having someone be unaffected is certainly in the taser mythology if not also in fact.

Stopping blood flow to the brain is probably the quickest way. For this, I'd think there would be a skill roll of some kind, or a skill/5% versus POW resistance roll to see if it's successful. I'd probably still have it take a couple of rounds to allow the victim a chance to escape. Steve

I got the worldbook and first two campaign books a week ago. I should go into our Friday rotation next month to start running C&C. First impressions (I'm trying to find time to do a proper review): High quality material. Character generation is consistent with MRQII, but nicely detailed and tailored to the period. Clearly the focus is on ideological conflict (and the fisticuffs that ensue). The rules introduce Righteousness Points that can be used to win arguments, augment skills (that are being used to further the cause), and convert people. But Righteousness can cause a character to stand up against an opposing opponent, or take action when it may not be the most opportune time. These moments are sprinkled throughout the scenarios, and drive home the point that this is a time of wide division, deeply held conviction, and broad conflict. That, with a long section of factions and the requirement that everyone take a side (although there are some more or less neutral positions), means that I think my players will greatly enjoy this. I can't wait to run. Steve

"Streaky dice" means that in a typical gaming session, I roll poorly for most of the 4-hour session. For example, last night I was rolling up a new character for a game--4D6, take the best three, generate 7 sets of numbers, take the best 6--and the GM said the character had to be at least average (sum of 6 rolls had to be at least 63). It took me three tries to get a character that met the 63 average. BUT, for about 15 minutes during most game sessions, I roll really really well. For example last night there was a battle in which I didn't roll below a 17 (d20 system) for about 12 rolls in quick succession. Last time I GMed, after several hours of poor rolling (opponents with a 75% skill failing 9 times out of 10), in 5 successive %ile rolls, I rolled 01 twice and under 05 two other times. That's what I mean by "streaky dice." The syndrome has become so recognized in my gaming group that my characters tend to hang back, but when I make a good roll the cry suddenly goes up, "It's Steve's moment. Make room, send him in." Of course, the luck runs out when I've waded into the midst of the bad guys and gotten their attention, but so it goes. But as a GM, all that makes the encounters really uneven and hard to plan. Steve

One of my challenges as a GM is my dice rolling is 'streaky' -- I'll go for most of the night with poor rolls, then have 15 minutes of blindingly great rolls. In RQ that combination is deadly, and almost impossible to plan for. What I've done is give players 'adventure points' for good roleplaying. There are a couple of things that they can do with them, so they want to keep them. But they mostly get used to absorb damage, one game point per point of damage. I think of the adventure points as divine armor against my 15 minutes of great luck. Steve

All else being equal, full color is always more appealing. In general, when I see black-and-white or greyscale, I think "Amateur product" and when I see full color, I think "professional product." This is a generalization, but even really great greyscale art and layout usually makes me think "wow, I wonder where that amateur group got such a great illustrator/layout artist." All this mostly applies to the cover. Once inside, I've gotten pretty used to black-and-white or two-color printing. Steve

In my homegrown rules I used a system something like that. I did a 10:1 ratio, with the base increasing whenever a specialty crossed a 10% line (10%, 20%, 30%). That was to remove one bit of memory and bookkeeping. I found the system worked and the players liked it. But it was a lot of work when processing checks. What helped a lot was a custom character sheet that had the categories and Base % + Advancement % = Bonus %. Then each specialty had the same: Base % + Category bonus % = Skill %. That way when a category bonus increased, it was easy to make the change down the line of specialties. Also, I let players roll advancement against the base skill rather than skill + category bonus, so it was good to have that separation. Steve

That's cool. It makes me wish I hadn't bought the MRQ version...Actually, now that I think about it, I'm just as happy to support the companies that are putting out quality material. And I'm running MRQ, so it is nice to have a fully compatible version. Bless you for taking the time! I suspect that developing rules for similar-but-different systems must be devilishly tricky. At least you need meticulous proofreading/editing to obliterate all the old rule references. That is something that Mongoose apparently forgot with some of their early MRQII supplements. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the rules! Steve

I was thinking more of preventing escape (for a period) rather than necessarily imprisoning: I envision a spirit who wanted to escape from the Shaman being prevented from leaving the battleground, but still fully capable of attacking and taking other action. So I think of 'Restrain' as closing all the exit doors, but not binding the spirit. The spirit is still potent. Steve

I've been thinking about this for a while, but abstractly. Thanks for beginning the conversation. How far are you thinking about moving Spirit Combat to mirror Physical Combat? E.g. is there such thing as Spirit Armor? Is there an opposed Parry to each Spirit Attack? One CM idea: Restrain spirit from getting away (unless it focuses on breaking the restraint, during which time it cannot attack). Steve

Yes, I'm pretty sure that those are dream Cthulhus. Much smaller and less powerful.

MRQII is a huge improvement over MRQI. I have both, never played MRQI because I kept finding stuff that just didn't work. I've converted to MRQII because it worked well, and I keep finding bits that make me like it more. I have a couple of the MRQII Elric books, but not the MRQI versions that I can compare one-for-one. So yes, I recommend moving to MRQII. I would be selective about which additional books to buy -- there have been a couple of poorly edited books, and I feel they vary a lot in quality. Steve

[OT Mini-rant] Can we change the format of the reply section of this site? ALWAYS, when I finish a "quickreply" or "Quote reply" I hit the "Reply to Thread" button (Which is colored, big, and obvious as opposed to the "submit reply" button which is small, grey, and crowded against the input box and other buttons). Needless to say, hitting that "Reply to Thread" button brings up another input box, which doesn't have any of the text I've just entered. This time, I did it not once, not twice, but three times before posting (pre-coffee). [/OT Mini-rant] Steve

I just call for an "Armorer Skill" roll (for instance). Only if they ask where/what the skill is do I tell them, "Craft[Armorer]". Making all those skills specifications of the Craft skill has the advantage of bunching them all up on the character sheet. That makes it much easier when we can't remember whether we called the bookkeeping skill, "Scribe", "Accountant", "CPA", or something else. Steve

I read (probably mis-read) Trif's original post as wanting to separate Craft (knowing how to make things of a certain type) from Livelihood (how to make a living in a profession). So, for instance, I know a lot of people with high Craft[Artist] and a very low Livelihood[Artist]. But if you're trying to just get to a few skills, I'd merge those together into one set of knowledge. Wasn't this called Profession or something like that in an earlier version? I agree any one term looks ugly in some implementations. Maybe "Craft or Livelihood"?

How about "Livelihood[occupation]"? Modern games could use "Career". Or "Profession", "Living", "Vocation", "Job", or even "Occupation" all work better for me than "Craft".

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you make one skill per magical school and allow neutral spells to default to a school? I dislike hard rules like 'only one school' -- This would allow characters to pick up additional schools but at the penalty of advancing more slowly, especially if you only allowed one school to get an experience check at a time (or made them research-only advancement).

Thanks for that link!

Yes, once every two months. Flow is a little tough -- for a long time I was doing session write-ups, but then got too busy even for that. The first 15 minutes (for all the games) is usually a recap in any case. And we all remind each other of facts that may have been forgotten. It's a little laid back, but by Friday night everyone is a little tired anyway from the week (and usually wanting to beat something down) so it works ok. It's been a great way to release the week's frustration. Campaign started in the mid-eighties, exact date lost in history. It's been run with greater frequency at times, and I had a few periods when it shut down completely for a while (children, grad school, that kind of thing). But it's going strongly now. Steve

I have a long-standing campaign that I converted from heavily houseruled AH RQ3 to MRQII early this year. Fantasy, set several hundred years after a war that ended thousands of years of wizard-king control. In the ensuing chaos, most of the books were burned, magic became institutionalized (and therefore strongly and centrally controlled). Slowly the campaign area is slipping from early Iron age back to Bronze as techniques and technologies are abandoned and forgotten. The vast majority of the population is illiterate, superstitious, and narrowminded. The characters have realized that the wizard-kings, despite oppressing everyone and engaging in constant warfare among themselves, also maintained a series of barriers and strongholds against encroaching chaos. It would have been good if someone realized this before killing off all the wizards. So, set against a deteriorating society, and growing signs that chaos is working hard to break the barriers between chaos and human lands, the heroes are working really hard to ignore everything they can and have a good time. But along the way, they have acquired an undead ally, an enemy high priest of the king of the dead (he's currently dead, but probably about ready to return), alliances and enemies among the various noble, the favor of the king, and most recently a castle (which was unfortunately destroyed when they captured it, but hey, how hard can it be to rebuild a castle that is hard up against the lands of a noble family that hates your guts?). They know that a severe test is coming, and they are grudgingly getting ready. I have 3 steady players (there pretty much every time I run), 3 regulars (there more often than not), and about 6 others who show up occasionally. We have a rotation of GMs running other campaigns , so with my schedule I run one session on alternate months. Long-standing characters are Runelord level, more recently created characters are a little less powerful. The party is heavily fighter-focused, having built an aversion to the controlling powers (and therefore losing easy access to magic) early in the campaign. Steve

...wrong thread... Steve

For reference, see the comic Order of the Stick http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html, where the characters are aware of (and regularly discuss) rule changes, leveling, etc. The first episode has them converting to D&D3.5

Free, but you don't get too much of it.

Oh, I missed the memo...are we to hijack this thread too? Steve

First-off, good discussion & disclaimer: My post came from an 'aha' moment, not from any kind of play experience. It was just the first time I could see a way that traits (which I like in theory, but could never see how to use) could work for me. Re: 1/10th bonus -- I'm using MRQII and this is the 'standard' bonus for a helper skill. I think there might also be a limit that there can only be one helper skill at a time, so that would mitigate the 10-minute accounting drill. Re: Counter-check instead of just increasing the counter-trait -- yes, this is probably simpler and more in keeping with the rules. Re: Having the player roll if they want to act against a trait -- what I like about having this option, is someone who is, say, 25% Brave, could still run away and 75% of the time they would get away with it without getting a GM check. Someone who is 75% brave would only get away with not being brave 25% of the time. Having this as an option (for the player) makes the Trait percentage mean something other than just how big a bonus they get, and gives an immediate way to resolve the argument about whether the character is brave enough to stay or not. Re: Should Trait and Counter-trait add to 100: I like a couple of things about this: First, the counter-trait doesn't (or shouldn't) have any points in it unless the character did something consistent with that trait. At creation, a player could put 35% into Brave, and Cowardly would be at 0%. The only way to get points in Cowardly would have been for the character to act cowardly, or the player put points in (reflecting a conflicted background?). So, the limit only comes into play after a history is developed, and then we have a balance point where we have to see which way the character will go. I didn't address how you advance once the trait & counter-trait sum to 100. My thought is you have to 'clear space' first and reduce the counter-trait before you can increase the trait. Re: Which Traits should a character have? -- I'd leave this up to the player. If you take points in a trait (or ask for a check during game-play for specific action), you get the attendant bonus, but you are subject to the limits/tracking as well. So characters would be 0%/0% for most Traits -- those just don't apply in any meaningful way for their character. I need to go back and reread the allegiance section -- Ultimately I'd want a system that works for allegiance as well. The in-game need feels the same to me between the two areas, and fewer mechanics are better. Steve