Questbird

I like Elric!/Magic World for Sword and Sorcery. OpenQuest is another rules-light d100 variant which would probably do what you want with Conan. It also has the advantage of being currently in print and supported. There was even a Conan-with-the-serials-filed-off adventure setting called The Savage North for it.

The fonts are quite small in BR:UGE, especially in the tables. But there is a lot of information to pack in.

Disclaimer: I do need to use glasses these days 🤓

3 hours ago, ColoradoCthulhu said:

I ran "Tatterdemalion" by Richard Watts as a one-shot years ago on Halloween night, as the scenario features a masked ball. Freaked my players out entirely, especially the trip to Carcosa!

 

 

 

 

I played that at Arcanacon years decades ago. My character (an artist) pulled off the King in Yellow's mask and went completely insane.

On 11/9/2023 at 11:58 AM, g33k said:

Over on FB, Chaosium dropped the link to the cargo-ship carrying these volumes:
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:733448/mmsi:566950000/imo:9597496/vessel:APL_BOSTON

It's bound for Sydney, due to arrive late-evening the 9th.

No idea what the port situation is, unloading, customs, etc.

 

I can confirm from my recent purchase that the Australian warehouse has stock now 😍

On 11/6/2023 at 4:18 AM, g33k said:

I'm pretty sure Chaosium has remarked that some sort of shipping/import/customs/etc slowdowns are delaying product arrival at the AUS warehouse, but it's expected... "soon."

 

Well then I'd like to purchase the hardback..."soon" too.

On 4/8/2023 at 6:08 AM, Nick Brooke said:

Yes. Chaosium has warehouses in the US, UK, Europe (Poland) and Australia, so once the books arrive and go on sale you’ll be able to order a copy shipped from Poland to Hungary at reasonable rates. And the Chaosium store will be selling physical books long before they’re in any FLGSs (distributors have to get them from our warehouses, just like customers who order direct from Chaosium).

 

I would like to order this from Australia but there don't seem to be any copies in the Australian warehouse right now.

I always thought Drive and Ride were general: if you can ride one beast, you can ride 'em all, at least as far as BRP and game balance is concerned. Similarly with Drive. The cost is some realism but the benefit is less fiddliness and wasted skill points: "Oh you've got Drive Toyota Corolla, you can't possibly know how to drive this Honda!"

On 6/17/2023 at 1:50 AM, Atgxtg said:

I'll dig it up. It can be very dead;y, as the setting models the cinematic Samurai genre, so it's even more lethal than standard RQ/BRP. It might not be bad for Jedi as ligthsaber combat had Kendo roots. 

 

I'd be very interested to hear about these Ki rules too. Land of Ninja isn't exactly easy to find these days.

10 hours ago, smiorgan said:

Actually, in my previous post I was confusing Diadochi with "Warlords of Alexandria" by Zozer.

 

You can download it here:

I think you could use Allegiance to the Dark Side a bit like Chaos allegiance points in Magic World or Elric! The points can be used to actually power impressive psionic feats, maybe much more so or more quickly than an equivalent 'Light Side' power. But using these points also gives you more of them by giving you allegiance checks to the Dark Side. It's addictive (like being a Sorcerer allied to Chaos in Elric!) "Quicker, easier, more seductive". And once you get above a certain threshold of Dark Side points it becomes harder to avoid using them, or maybe you attract the company or attention of other Dark Side practicioners or forces. So in that way it works a bit like allegiance, where using the points is voluntary, and a bit like Sanity/corruption, where you gain points whether you like it or not. My point is that you make these things very tempting to use by giving them real game effects, but with long-term negative side effects or even (as with Sanity in Call of Cthulhu) the prospect of losing control of the character altogether.

Magic World is very suitable for a Swords and Sorcery type game

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

One way to avoid division would be to alter the dice size. Rolling 1d200 instead of 1d100 would halve the success chance. I actually did up something like this for a similar game to eliminate the tables. Critical and special numbers were fixed according to skill, and then modifiers just shifted the size of the dice. Something easier would roll 1D80, 1D60, 1D40 or even 1D20, while something harder would roll 1D120 or 1D200. Since the crit and special numbers don't change but the dice do,  the odds change, but you don't have to do any math.

 

Fire and Sword (rules available on this site) took this approach. It uses d20 roll-under instead of d100, but for easy skills you would roll 1d10 and for hard skill checks you'd use a d30.

On 5/8/2023 at 4:22 PM, Mugen said:

Is Wealth supposed to be rolled with a d100 ? If so, I would not use a 1-100 scale to describe one's ability to buy things.

I see myself as a member of the upper middle class, with a good income. But if I go to the McLaren shop in my street, I know I won't be able to buy any of the cars they sell there, because they're as expensive as my flat. However, there are people who can do it, because they have much more money than I do.

On the other hand, if I go to a supermarket, I will be able to buy a lot of things without taking care of their cost, whereas someone from a lower social class will have to carefully chose the products he buys.

 

In the modern world there are different markets for different wealth levels. An antique store in Manhattan will charge different amounts for the same items as one in a small regional town. Movie stars don't shop at the same grocery stores as down-and-outers, and the prices at those stores vary accordingly. That's why these skills often combine wealth and social status to access goods and services. If my character is 'middle class' there will be certain expectations of what things I might own or be able to acquire easily. If I want my character to have access to things associated with a higher social status, like a fancy McLaren, I would make a Wealth/Status check. If I failed or fumbled it maybe I could still get one, but with a huge and unserviceable debt burden, such that I need the payout for this adventure to work out...

On 5/11/2023 at 2:55 PM, Nick Brooke said:

Value what you make: if you put it up as “Pay What You Want” you’ll find that most people don’t want to pay anything (the only exceptions I’ve seen are explicitly charitable products), and they’re also less likely to value (and read / review / rate) what they picked up for nowt.

 

Absolutely! People don't value what they can get for free. Even if it's a one pager that you really think should be free, put it up for 1 or 2 or 5 dollars.

4 hours ago, tooley1chris said:

Anyone wanna tell me how to monetize a product? 😀

 

I don't know, but if the licensing stuff is in order, put it on DriveThruRPG with a hopeful price tag and see how you go!

An abstract wealth system would work in an environment where most people -- or more importantly, most PCs have some wealth and the focus of the adventure is not the accumulation of treasure or individual items. For example, a complex modern society where goods are plentiful, like Call of Cthulhu. In that game the investigators have jobs and income and an abstract wealth system can be used to determine if they can acquire finance or capital items for their investigations without nickel and diming every purchase. It could also work in cultures where some classes or castes are supported by the State, like priests or scribes of ancient Ur or Babylon. An abstract wealth system also works in cultures with some financial complexity, where you don't  have to carry around all of your coins in a bag*: investments, assets, interest, banks; details which may or may not interest adventurers.

If you have a wealth/status 'skill' from 1-100 it gives an indication of relative societal rank, which can also have effects on interpersonal skill checks against someone from the same culture. This 'skill' can be more fluid than others, and it can go down as well as up. In that way it's a bit more like Allegiance points than a skill.

* I reckon campaigns where you carry all your coins around all the time nearly always ignore their encumbrance

A quick and easy buff for shields is to allow them 1 free Parry without the 30% penalty.

It's easy to remember and makes them a bit more desirable.

On 4/15/2023 at 9:47 AM, Chaot said:

I know this is a very old thread, but here's what I have going right now.

Acrobatics
Athletics
Art

Craft

Evaluate
Fast Talk
Folk Lore
Handle Animal
Insight
Natural World
Persuade
Physik
Scribe
Search
Skulduggery
Stealth

Then I add in specific skills.

 

What's the difference between Skulduggery and Stealth?

On 4/13/2023 at 12:41 AM, rsanford said:

1. I understand that the sanity mechanics in the new book are different than what is in the Call of Cthulhu book. Can anyone share how the new sanity rules work at a high-level

 

Your maximum sanity is POWx5. Your Temporary insanity level is permanently half that number. If you ever lose that much sanity in a short period you go temporarily insane for a period which could be minutes or weeks. If your sanity goes to 0 you are out of the game as a player (like in Call of Cthulhu). If you want to play a campaign where the threat of insanity is much greater you can tweak your Temporary insanity level to be POWx1 (normally it's POWx2.5).

On 1/26/2023 at 8:41 AM, Mark Mohrfield said:

Just out of idle curiosity (I’m not running any games right now) are there any BRP supplements that use the Magic system from page 89 of the Big Gold Bookmas as  opposed to the Sorcery system from page from page 122?

 

I didn't even realise there were two 'magic' systems listed in the Big Gold Book. Sorcery is the one most familiar to me from Elric!/Magic World. The magic system seems to be similar, but involving 'levels' of spells where the magician puts more power into certain spells. And no I haven't heard of supplements that use that system.

Sorry I missed this one. 😢

On 3/24/2023 at 8:55 AM, smiorgan said:

I don't remember. But you got me in the mood of re-reading Corum.

 

If you prefer something more visual, or a different experience of the story, there's an excellent graphic novel series of The Chronicles of Corum by Mike Baron, Titan Comics (2018). I've only read the first volume -- and it was very good, but the other 2 are out now too.

2 hours ago, smiorgan said:

Tonight I picked up Magic World again.

Reading the sorcery section:

Am I correct that the summon demon spell description provides 2 incompatible rules to determine the free INT cost of bound demons?

 

 

 

I don't think they are incompatible. The Summon Demon spell takes 1 free INT. Then each demon type you learn to summon takes 1 free INT per D8 of POW of the Demon type. So if Tha'aarg B'Nana learns to summon a Grishblash demon (perfect for raiding Olive Groves) with 2D8 POW

Tha'aarg would use 1 free INT for the Summon Demon

and 2 free INT for the Grishblash demon type

for a total of 3 free INT.

It means that a sorcerer can only have pacts with a few Demons, and that specialist conjurers wouldn't have much other Sorcery at their command* (but with all those summoned types, they might not need it..)

* unless they can increase their INT of course

On 3/11/2023 at 4:08 PM, Striker said:

4. If the priest does use the Sorcery spells do I come up with how they are relearned/refreshed?  The Religion book and Advanced Sorcery have some methods (I'll have questions on both of those in the future).

 

 

 

 

I know you said you just want to play vanilla Magic World for now, and that is totally fine -- welcome to the game! I use a variant for priests where they pay the 1st Magic Point from their own store and the rest of the cost comes from Allegiance points for their god. So in order to keep casting spells they will need to build up more Allegiance (eg. praying, doing holy deeds, following the creed etc). It allows them to cast quite powerful spells without tiring as long as they are in good standing with their religion.

If you look around today's world, maybe some sci-fi authors ought to start writing us some escapist utopias..