Questbird

My characters' first exposure to the Zola Fel region was through the 'Troubled Waters' campaign in the River of Cradles supplement for RQ3, which was an excellent, if linear introduction to the people of Prax (which region I plucked from Glorantha and pasted into southern Nehwon, but that's by-the-by). There's even a introduction to Duke Raus along the way. After that campaign, and another set in the Dreamlands, and even an expedition to the Dyskund Caverns which set out from Raus' fort I tried to start the Borderlands campaign with them. However, whether because they were more experienced, or wealthier or had already had negative encounters with Lunars or whatever, Duke Raus (or perhaps more likely, his head honcho) rubbed them up the wrong way this time. We played the first adventure and patrolled as far as Horn Gate, then they parted ways with Duke Raus. I couldn't see the point in compelling them, so our adventures moved on (there were mysteries to explore in Horn Gate itself). Maybe Borderlands is better played as a first scenario, as you intended. Either the Borderlands or Troubled Waters campaigns are good introductions to the region and each provide new players with potential allies and enemies. Borderlands focuses on relationships between the nomads and Lunars, where Troubled Waters is more about the river folk themselves. Troubled Waters does expose the players sympathetically to some of the weirder non-humans such as newtlings, talking animals and agimori -- all of which are distrusted by Raus and his men. I will probably recycle the individual Borderlands scenarios for later use, or maybe run the campaign again with different characters in the future.

Don't forget there is already River of Heaven, a fully realised science fiction variant of OpenQuest. Your Space/Starships rules could live there. D101 games have a high quality standard too.

If you are going to include Chronicles of Future Earth in the list, which to me reads more as a fantasy than science-fiction, then you should definitely include Swords of Cydoria.

There are. I am one, though I don't do stuff for iphones. Other people have done various encounter generators and so forth.

Or another player could be a Nadsokorian beggar with -1D4 CHA and -1D4 CON. Yet, it was a fun game, and I actually enjoyed the randomness. Character mortality was also pretty high in the early Stormbringer. But maybe in your next 'life' you might roll a Melnibonean or a Pan Tangian...

I have the same issue in my Swords of Cydoria pulp swords-and-blasters science fantasy campaign. You can make Heroic characters who boldly stride into a hail of bullets. In my case, I am using a hitpointless combat system which allows for mowing down mooks but also provides a bit of ambiguity when it comes to player death.

Blood Tide also has black powder weapons, and quite a variety of them, though I think it uses standard BRP rules. There's a rule from Swords of Cydoria which says that all primitive armours are half strength vs. firearms, which I find works pretty well.

No problem

I think the original Magic World allowed you spend POW to keep spells going; the caster would get the POW back when the spell terminated. As you say that's not quite fair for healing spells. However those spells are actually enhancing the target's own healing abilities for the duration of the spell, so terminating the spell won't actually stop the person from healing or reverse the healing that has taken place up to that point, just stop the magical acceleration of the process. I quite like the POW-for-permanency idea (though of course none of it lasts after the wizard's death). A wizard with many active spells may have not much POW for new ones.

For all the people who have poo-pooed epub format vs. PDF and say it's not viable for publishing etc, I've just bought the epub of Blood Tide and I'm happy to report it's easy to read, properly indexed and fast to load on my old (non-kindle) Sony e-reader. Good job Chaosium and thanks for supporting epub! I shall look forward to delving further into Blood Tide on my e-reader. ... I'm really enjoying Blood Tide. I particularly like the Voodou magic system, the Stunts and the descriptions of shipboard positions and organisation and varieties of black powder weaponry (and I'm only part way through!) Although, while I'm enjoying the epub version, there are a few instances where tables have just been rendered as pictures (of the sidebar in the pdf, for example) instead of as, well, tables.

Tonight's the night where I find out if my players get eaten or not. I'll be playing my Swords of Cydoria game using the above system, probably allowing the aimed shot idea as well. Fortunately huge creatures are not so common. Of course the above assumes that everyone hits, so it probably won't be easy.. Wish them luck! And thanks Atgxtg and Zit for helping me out with these ideas.

For a start, I run a low magic campaign, so the limited effects doesn't bother me particularly. As for the high cost spells, it's the same problem faced by sorcerers everywhere. You want to cast a spell that you don't have the POW for. Here are some solutions which have been used in various BRP games: 1. Ritual magic -- the spell takes a long time but perhaps allows you to keep feeding it magic points as yours recover, or maybe assistant magicians can lend POW to a spell in a ritual 2. Some sort of POW battery, like Brazier of Power, or an artifact 3. Chaos Allegiance points can be used to provide extra magic points on a 1:1 basis. Or in fact any ratio, depending on how strong Chaos is in your world. Divine magic is explicitly powered by Allegiance points already. 4. Situational magic points. Perhaps a certain glade at a certain phase of a certain moon might be awash with 'free' magical energy 5. Human or animal sacrifice might release some magic points for darker Sword and Sorcery games 6. Ditto a pact with some Demon or entity which provides more POW or magic points to draw on, in exchange for unmentionable services Most of these methods require some preparation, so casting those high level spells will not be something a wizard can just dash off. That suits me fine. It means sorcerers have to be a bit strategic about deploying magic. Alternatively If you want more magic in your campaign, do away with the magic points entirely. To cast a spell you roll your skill - (spell level x5%). There's no magic point cost but a special or critical failure increases your Fatigue by one level. You can have as many spells active at one time as your POW.

I've been gradually accumulating second-hand Shadow World modules over the past few years, due to curiosity about the setting, the possibility of plundering ideas and the fact that I couldn't afford them back when we were all more newly-released. I never played Rolemaster though I have a few of the rules books (notably Arms Law and Spell Law) and I dabbled with Space Law. There a lot of ideas in Shadow World -- too many for consistency in my opinion. I don't get any view of the whole world from reading the different modules. But then, the whole idea of Shadow World was that it was too vast for anyone to explore all of it, I guess so that GMs could carve out little bits for their own campaigns and then use 'Navigators' to take players off to new and completely different regions when they grew bored. The ones I have are: Emer Sky Giants of the Brass Stair Quellbourne : Land of the Silver Mist Nomads of the Nine Nations (superceded in my mind by Wind on the Steppes) Norek : Intrigue in a City-State of Jaiman The World of Vog Mur Most didn't leave much of an impression on me. My favourites are the smaller-scale ones, like the World of Vog Mur (three isolated islands) or Norek, although cities can sometimes be difficult to transplant into other settings. I don't ever plan to set a campaign in Shadow World as published. Shadow World's mishmash of locations and cultures doesn't look like it would work at large scale.

I am playing The Enemy Within at the moment, using the original WFRP rules. I'm finding it quite a lot of fun and haven't yet reached the point where career advancement becomes painful. One fun thing about the system is the random career generation. You broadly specify Academic, Rogue, Warrior or Ranger and then you dice for your actual career, which also gives you skills and starting equipment, making character creation moderately fast. So not quite as random and crazy as the old Stormbringer (which was also pretty fun!) but still an element of chance beyond ability scores. I enjoy being presented with a random character and working out how to play it. I think when we 'build' characters with a point system or some such our characters maybe aren't so different from one another -- your own psychology will seep into all of them. A bit of randomness and fate can help with that.

Well, your Shield Fighting skill could add to your weapon skill vs. a shielded opponent. House agents might well learn Shield Fighting 50%, Rapier 50% and count themselves invulnerable -- until they fought unshielded. Or, fighting a shielded opponent with a melee weapon could be a Difficult task unless you have Shield Fighting skill, and then you can only use weapon skill up to your Shield Fighting (a bit like fighting from horseback can't be better than your Ride skill). eg. Mars Roganto has 65% dagger and 40% Shield Fighting. He could make dagger attacks up to 40% while fighting a Shielded opponent. Otherwise his chance would be 33% (halved). However, due to the prevalence of shields among noble houses, I think that for those types certain 'honorable' weaponskills and shield fighting might well be taught together as a 'fighting style' (as Duncan Idaho did for Paul). In game terms this would mean that during character buying the two skills together would be cheaper than buying them separately. For example if you spend 50 skill points on Rapier and 50 skill points on Shield Fighting it might only cost you 75 points.

Though, I have had a few character fatalities when their player is absent and it always leaves me with a bit of a bad feeling (and no doubt the player too). So I usually try to have absent players = absent characters if possible.

I just remember that fighting with shields is very different from without. When Paul Atreides fought Feyd Rautha at the end of Dune, I recall that Lady Jessica was concerned that his reactions might be off because there were shields in use. I would have shield fighting as a separate skill, though possibly learnable two-for-one along with weapons by nobles or house officers, ie. a fighting style. You can't fight a shielded opponent using weapon skills higher than your shield fighting skill. Also there should be some penalty (maybe 5 DEX ranks) for fighting against unshielded opponents who are used to fighting unshielded (eg. Fremen).

Shields render armour redundant, so no one would wear it. Only Arakkis and some other places would limit shield use. Shield fighting should be a skill separate from normal weapon skill ("The slow blade penetrates the shield"). Therefore weapons could be the normal variety (energised ones might be nullified by the shield). Prescience could be a skill for Guild Navigators or maybe Dune prophets. Cthulhu Rising by Jon Ossoway has a good precognition psychic powers section, but there might be others.

Maybe I'll try N=10. When I designed the system I did use 10 as a kind of touchstone. 10 is average hitpoints/Resilience. 10 is also the damage of a sword (1d8+2). So a sword hit vs an unarmoured normal man has a 50% chance of taking him down, which seemed a reasonable starting point for me. Scenario 1d: "Swarm of Bees" Cumulative damage, doubling variant #2 Each double of cumulative damage does +10 damage using Terax Resilience 38 as target Cumulative damage, bonus adjusted damage, resistance chance vs normal / special / critical Impaling weapons x2 damage on special or above Critical: no armour, difficult Resilience check 1. plasma pistol 9 9+0 99% / 99% / 60% 2. plasma rifle 30 21+10 85% / 0% / 0% 3. ball. pistol 34 4+10, 99% / 99% / 60% 4. ball. pistol 38 4+20 99% / 99% / 35% 5. plasma pistol 47 9+20 95% / 50% / 10% 6. plasma pistol 56 9+20 95% / 50% / 10% 7. plasma pistol 65 9+20 95% / 50% / 10% 8. ball. rifle 72 7+30 55% / 20% / 0% 9. ball. rifle 79 7+30 55% / 20% / 0% It makes it slightly easier for the normal successes and significantly improves the specials and critical chances, especially if you shoot later in the round. Well hopefully this idea will allow this combat system to scale gracefully for large creatures. In theory it should work for an actual swarm of bees vs. a human as well as a group of humans vs a dragon or other huge creature. The cumulative damage with doubling does mean you have to track hit points (damage, at least) -- kinda anathema for a supposedly hitpointless system; but it's a rare situation I guess, and it's only one way. For that reason I didn't mind the simpler 'aimed shot' idea that Atgxtg suggested. However I can see that if you halve a creature's Resistance and its still +10 on your damage it is not going to help you at all.

Criticals and specials do make some difference to the +10 difference thing but yeah, this is why large creatures need tweaking (Ray Turney didn't care about large creatures in Fire and Sword). Here's how it flies. Scenario 1c: "Swarm of Bees" Cumulative damage, doubling variant Each double of cumulative damage does +8 damage Here I'm assuming that the first hit (in this case a plasma pistol) provides the base 'doubling' number for a party with mixed weapons. Could be a problem if the cyberdroid with the plasma rifle goes first, but whatever. use Terax Resilience 38 as target Turns out plasma weapons are impaling (BGB,p.256), who'd a known? Impaling weapons x2 damage on special no armour, difficult check Weapon, Cumulative damage, bonus adjusted damage, resistance chance vs normal / special / critical 1. plasma pistol 9 9+0 99% / 99% / 60% 2. plasma rifle 30 21+8 95% / 0% / 0% 3. ball. pistol 34 4+8, 99% / 99% / 65% 4. ball. pistol 38 4+16 99% / 99% / 45% 5. plasma pistol 47 9+16 99% / 70% / 20% 6. plasma pistol 56 9+16 99% / 70% / 20% 7. plasma pistol 65 9+16 99% / 70% / 20% 8. ball. rifle 72 7+24 85% / 50% / 10% 9. ball. rifle 79 7+24 85% / 50% / 10% This shows that a large number of assailants can take down a huge creature eventually, which is how the rest of BRP works. I still quite liked the aimed shot idea too, which gives slightly better chances of success at a skill penalty Revised success chances for 'aimed shot' method Difficult shot halves Resilience This time accounting for plasma weapons being impaling Chance of resistance for normal/special/critical vs. Resilience 19 Plasma pistol, damage 9(12): 99% / 55% / 13% Plasma rifle, damage (impaling) 21(24): 40% / 0% / 0% Ballistic pistol (impaling, x2 damage for special), damage 4(7): 99% / 90% / 38% Ballistic rifle (impaling also), damage 7(10): 99% / 60% / 23% Either or both of these methods could be used. I'd probably say an opponent has to be, say, 3x your SIZ to put them into practice.

Note: by 'success' here I mean success for the elephant in resisting the damage. If two stats are equal on the resistance table, the chance of success = 50%. So when resisting 18 damage with 31 Resilience the formula goes like this: 31 -18 = 13 There is 5% success chance difference per attribute difference on the Resistance table 13 x 5% = 65% add that to the 50% base chance of success if the two were equal 65% + 50% = 115% This formula works the same way if the resisted attribute is higher, just with negative numbers. So for example damage 33 vs Resilience 31 (31 - 33) x 5% + 50% -10% + 50% = 40%.

I don't do anything to protect the plot. Dice decide. Villains and PCs can fall at any time. Sometimes that means an adventure kind of evaporates because the players find some clever workaround. However in another sense, you can provide 'plot armour' by providing multiple links between the plot elements, so that if the players miss one they can find another clue elsewhere (this works for all genres, not just detective ones). Sometimes I trip myself up by asking for skill rolls to find some clue or link, but then nobody makes it and the clue goes unfound, unless I hand it over anyway. I guess that's a kind of plot armour which I do occasionally (but I always hate it when I get into that situation.)

Elephant STR 45, CON 27, SIZ 53, POW 13, Armor 8 in RQ3, Resilience 31, Hit Points 40 Elephant Gun, damage 22 (impaling I guess? x2 damage for special) Armour halved vs. guns So damage is 22 - 4 = 18 success 18 vs 31 Resilience, 115% chance of success -- 99% special success : damage 44 - 4 = 40 40 vs 31 Resilience, -15% chance of success -- 0% there is your instant kill with elephant gun critical success same result as special That's without using the 'aimed shot' rule you suggested earlier. So a special success will take the elephant out in one round. As for the large creatures vs. each other. Well the system wasn't designed for that but it actually doesn't work out too bad. RQ3 Dragon STR 70, CON 35, SIZ 70, POW 20, with bite doing 3D6+8D6 (66), claw 1d6+8d6 (54), Armour 24, Resilience 42, Hit Points 53 Remember the damage used in this system is the maximum rather than the rolled damage. Dragon vs. Dragon success: Bite damage 66 - 24 = 42 42 vs 42 Resilience: 50% for a bite to kill Claw 54 - 24 = 20 20 vs 42 Resilience: 160% -- 99% to survive claw attack special success: Here I'm assuming that the bite would be crushing (?) (Impaling doesn't seem quite right) and that claws would be bleeding. Bite damage 72 - 24 = 48 48 vs 42 Resilience: 20% chance of survival Claw 20 vs 42 Resilience: 160% -- 99% to survive but must make a check at this level each round following critical success: Bite damage 66 vs Resilience 42: 0% instant kill Claw 54 vs 42 Resilience: -10% : another instant kill So Dragon vs Dragon is still an even match, though the claws are not so useful vs. the 24 armour.

This is a good idea. In BRP, skill level is Difficult (halved) for an aimed shot But Resilience for large creatures is halved if successful. In the case of this Terax, the Resilience would become 19. Below are the chances of survival per hit for the Terax based on this method The first % is for a normal success; the second number is for a special (1/10 here since the roll is halved to begin with); the third number is for a critical result (1/20) Note that a critical ignores armour and makes the resilience check Difficult Plasma pistol, damage 9(12): 99% / 99% / 43% Plasma rifle, damage 21(24): 40% / 40% / 13% Ballistic pistol (impaling, x2 damage for special), damage 4(7): 99% / 90% / 38% Ballistic rifle (impaling also), damage 7(10): 99% / 60% / 23% These numbers look better, making taking down one of these creatures a difficult but not impossible task, certainly not one to be approached by those with low skills.

So, I've been using a hitpointless combat system in my Swords of Cydoria campaign. It works well for battles with many mooks. However always inherent with this system is how to deal with huge creatures, whose size and strength makes them extremely resilient to damage. Now my characters have unleashed a Terax, a monstrous mutant reptilian thing in an ancient ruined city. Their weapons -- even plasma rifles and grenades -- are largely ineffective against it using this system (summary of the system in the thread below). My question is: how best to deal with large critters using this system? A few I've heard or thought of are: 1. The 'Swarm of bees' approach. All the damage inflicted on the creature by all its opponents in the whole round is added up and the monster makes a Resistance Roll against the sum. There could be a roll for each individual attack, but against the cumulative total of damage that round 2. Enforce the Resilience stat: use average of POW CON and SIZ instead of the lazy way of just CON and SIZ for monsters, on the assumption that most huge creatures won't necessarily have an enormous POW and therefore will be slightly easier to defeat 3. Just use the normal combat rules when dealing with large critters, which seems a bit of a cop-out or a failure of the hitpointless system, which otherwise seems quite promising so far. 4. Just laugh as your players are killed by unstoppable monsters (this is not really an option). I'd be interested to hear any of your ideas. Modelling these approaches Rather than answer my own post, I'll just add to it First, I'll introduce our nasty beastie: Large Reptilillian Terax Monitor Lizard of Great Size CON 37 SIZ 74 POW 2 Hit Points 56 Resilience 38 Armour (vs. guns) 3pt hide (normally 6) This has been disturbed from an ancient slumber and lets say it has been trapped in rubble, exposing itself to a perfect 'shooting gallery' for our intrepid heroes(?): Heroes, damage adjusted for armour 1. Norukarian Smuggler, Plasma Pistol (licensed), damage 9 2. Cyberdroid, Plasma Rifle (authorised), damage 21 3. Demetrian commander, Ballistic Pistol, damage 4 4. Guernan officer, Ballistic Pistol, damage 4 5. Norukarian noble, Plasma Pistol, damage 9 6. Bodyguard 1, Plasma Pistol, damage 9 7. Bodyguard 2, Plasma Pistol, damage 9 8. Targan soldier 1, Ballistic Rifle, damage 7 9. Targan soldier 2, Ballistic Rifle, damage 7 I'm assuming everyone hits the Terax this round. Scenario #0: Hitpointless System as written, using Hit Points (56) as target Chance of Terax survival 1. 99% 2. 99% 3. 99% 4. 99% 5. 99% 6. 99% 7. 99% 8. 99% 9. 99% Scenario #2: System as written, using Resilience (38) as target 1. 99% 2. 99% 3. 99% 4. 99% 5. 99% 6. 99% 7. 99% 8. 99% 9. 99% Scenario 1a: "Swarm of Bees" Cumulative damage, use Resilience 38 as target 1. 9 99% 2. 30 90% 3. 34 70% 4. 38 50% 5. 47 05% 6. 56 (01%) 7. 65 (01%) 8. 72 (01%) 9. 79 (01%) Scenario 1b: "Swarm of Bees" Use hit points 56 as target Shows cumulative damage and chance of Terax survival 1. 9 99% 2. 30 99% 3. 34 99% 4. 38 99% 5. 47 95% 6. 56 50% 7. 65 05% 8. 72 01% 9. 79 01% Scenario X: Normal hitpoints combat, Kill by attrition Actually this isn't normal at all, since maximum weapon damage is used in the hitpointless system So this would probably take twice as long. Showing cumulative damage 1. 9 2. 30 3. 34 4. 38 5. 47 6. 56 - Dead 7. - 8. - 9. - Analysis "Swarm of Bees" vs. hitpoints (scenario 1b) gives a similar result to normal hit point combat (scenario X). These results assume no critical hits, which make the resistance rolls Difficult. Swarm of Bees vs. Resilience seems a bit of a pushover. These creatures shouldn't be either easy or impossible to beat.