Questbird

Ray Turney decided that the advantage of d20 over d100 came down to just the number of dice to roll. I mentioned Fire and Sword (an offshoot of RQ1 and RQ2) as a d20 adaptation of BRP earlier in this thread.

From his Fire and Sword designer's commentary (which is gold BTW, whether or not you play Fire and Sword.)

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The first controversial issue is the choice of dice to roll. There are three major categories of system: D20; D100; and D6. The strength of D20 based systems is that a player or GM only has to roll one die to resolve a skill test. At first sight, this is a very minor advantage. But a large fight may involve 300 attacks and parries. It is easier to read 300 dice than to read 600 and remember that the dark die is the higher when interpreting them each time. This advantage is even greater when compared to a D6 game. D100 Systems have the advantage of greater granularity.This has a lot of appeal for some people, because their intuition tells them that there are many more than 20 different levels of skill in doing almost anything. Finally, D6 systems have the advantage of producing a normal distribution {when you roll 3D6 on a skill test you’re most likely to get 10, 11, or 12}. This is very important in a system like D&D, where parrying is just a modifier to skill, less so in a system like Pendragon, where a skill versus skill mechanic is used.

I decided that I wanted skill tests to be resolved by a single die roll, which left me with D20 as the best option.

 

 

 

Fire and Sword uses d10 for easy tasks, d20 for normal tasks and d30 for extremely hard tasks. Roll under, of course.

25 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

which beg the question... what people are missing exactly when they look at D&D?

 

I think what people miss about D&D is the blood-rush of 'levelling up'.

D&D characters are like superheroes in combat. They each have their special powers. When you level up you get even more powers.

25 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

 

even though I am a D&D basher.. there are a few things that I dislike with BRP (particularly in contrast with how D&D handle those same thing) and slowly find my own ways to deal with them...

I have a problem with elemental magic in BRP... I think it's not fun and either too expensive or too deadly or too useless but never just right, and I have a problem making swordmasters duels (i.e. both with like 120% skill) interesting... Though I have some untested fix in progress... 🙂

 

If you have a duel between masters you have a stalemate situation. Each has physical skills which match the other. But if you think about famous swashbuckling scenes (eg. The Princess Bride, Star Wars or Erol Flynn movies) there's a lot of dialogue as well as the flashing blades. There's also opportunistic use of terrain, maneuvers obstacles and hidden weapons to distract. Each combatant is trying to find a psychological weakness for his opponent, a chink in their armour even if it's not physical. The same is true in chess competitions between grandmasters. For masters the one to make a mistake first is the loser. In BRP this will come out mechanically but somewhat boringly if you just roll dice back and forth. It might be more interesting if you incorporate some kind of parallel psychological duel which affects the combat rolls from round to round. How well the duellists know each other would be a factor here, as well as their Passions (if you use those).

@Nikoli has used a variant of this Spell Law system too. I think unlike me he did more work on conversions for the Rolemaster damaging spells, and he also discusses using the critical tables in some detail. Of course we in this thread so far were all party to that one too 🙂

29 minutes ago, Simlasa said:

I love Magic World, but yeah, there are always going to be rules that want to be tweaked to evoke a particular setting. Not that there aren't already a good variety of magic systems for the different flavors of BRP... some variations of BRP even have each spell as a separate skill.
Is this Rolemaster adaptation something you created or is it available online somewhere? Rolemaster was an influence on DCC, which is the aesthetic I'm after at the moment. I've never played that system but it seems to have inspired a number of other RPGs to some degree.

 

I never played Rolemaster, but I picked up some of the books later including Spell Law which is a huge tome of lists of spells. I made (and use) a simple system which would work with any lists of levelled spells. Rolemaster has Sorcery, Chanelling (like Divine Magic in RQ or clerical magic in D&D) and Mentalism. The main difference as far as I could see was where the magic energy comes from. Sorcery uses a kind of general magical power, like Maelstrom or RQ. Divine Magic comes from the gods direct; and Mentalism comes from the caster's own power. When players want to make a sorcerer character I get them to think about what sort of magical tradition they've come from and pick a few lists to be their collection of magical skills. Their skill in each list determines which spells they can cast because of the levels. As their skill level improves they get access to the more powerful spells in the list -- though not necessarily to the power required to cast them.

Spell Law does have a whole lot of magical criticals in it (Rolemaster is famous for detailed criticals per weapon in Arms Law) but I haven't used them.

1 hour ago, rsanford said:

I would love to see how you converted Maelstrom magic. I did the same thing but finally came to the conclusion that Maelstrom Magic just isn’t that useful. I would be pleased to be wrong!

 

 

Looks like we've discussed this before! 😆

The Maelstrom system encourages tactical thinking from the wizard to make events more probable and therefore easier to affect with magic. For example getting a gust of wind to blow someone down is more probable (and dangerous) on a mountainside than in a cellar. In fact the system works best for those mages who can think on their feet and take advantage of their environment. It is freeform magic after all. What the system does not do is duplicate D&D (or even BRP) magic with its fireballs and resurrections and pizazz. If you want fiery effects you need to have a fire source handy (fireballs become probable if you are near an active volcano). The system is subtle because no one else really knows if magic happened or just some freak of probability. Maelstrom also allows for the concept of a specialist in a particular domain of magic, which makes the probability of casting spells affecting that domain one notch easier, and the choice of domain is also freeform. Eg. I had one Maelstrom sorcerer who specialised in shadow magic, so he was often using magic to sneak and conceal using shadows.

The Maelstrom system requires both the GM and sorcerer player to be able to think quickly about the likelihood of events. It makes for interesting, improvising play.

22 hours ago, Simlasa said:

So what might be the major unforseen (by me) downsides to doing that... making spell casting characters roll, rather than just having it work every time? Just the added complication, or does it somehow throw in some unbalancing element I'm not seeing (since any PC can learn magic if they want).

Any other thoughts on how to push Magic World magic towards being wilder and less predictable?

 

The way magic works is quite dependent on your campaign and style -- which is why no one is happy with magic systems as they are written.

For my campaign the assumptions are: it is mostly magic-weak, people don't trust sorcery or sorcerers, magic is not entirely reliable, there are many magical traditions, magic requires some preparation and magical power is situational -- extra power can come from certain times, places, objects or beings

I use the equivalent of your Magic roll in the various systems I use, but I haven't used critical successes or failures.

Systems I use:

• A BRP adaptation of Rolemaster's Spell Law which contains many lists of spells -- each list translates to a separate magical skill
• For freeform magic (another tradition) I use a system derived from Maelstrom which is all about adjusting the probabilities of events occurring

They both use skill rolls so could easily incorporate random critical effects, but I haven't.

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The water-born and -faring Trilarians thrive in open seas and skies. Their tentacles and many eyes make them strangers in a humanoid seeming universe, but their strangeness sets them apart in more ways than one. The Trilarians take to the skies as naturally as they do to the seas, unafraid of unknown depths and heights. They are gifted pilots, diplomats, and educators in a savage and wild universe.

Their society was molded by an ancient race of Old Ones which they now regard as gods. These Old Ones gave them early technology and artifacts that set their society on track to reach the stars. The Trilarians now advocate the spread the goodwill and education across the universe, continuing the beneficial legacy that the gods bestowed on them.

Their affinity for peace and constructive dialogue should never be interpreted as weakness, as the Trilarians are deadly when threatened. Once angered, they will strike out with the total confidence in their righteousness, answering to no one but the gods. Athletic, agile, and highly educated, they will fight to the death with the conviction that they are the chosen messengers of the Old Ones.

 

From this I get:

Access to certain 'magic' (in the Arthur C. Clarke sense) artifacts from their Old Ones; these could do all sorts of effects

'Trans Dimensional' sounds a bit like the Guild from Dune. Maybe it comes from their artifacts. Maybe allow a teleport to a known or strongly visualised location. Or maybe that power requires a group effort from a number of Trilarians, so it wouldn't be something they could do in combat.

"gifted pilots, diplomats, and educators" -- you could give them skill bonuses for those without being too much of a combat nerf

Obviously, able to breathe under water indefinitely; maybe even in space?

I'm playing a Coriolis campaign at the moment. I'm finding that Traveller-inspired randomised improvisational style really useful for it. I'm sure the Coriolis writers use this too; it has its own d66 random tables scattered throughout the rulebook.

I remember seeing this one in a store back in the 90s and I was sorely tempted but even then it was very expensive (probably justified by its size) and I hadn't been playing enough Call of Cthulhu to justify it. I did regret not buying it; it disappeared from print soon afterwards. Nice to see it is back and who knows, maybe I'll pick it up now. (I have been playing -- extremely slowly -- my way through the old Curse of Cthulhu campaign. I started in 2004.)

On 2/5/2021 at 2:44 AM, Zenith Comics Presents... said:

I know Pendragon does, and certainly the math is easy to adjust for that, it does reduce the granularity to be sure, but ultimately has anyone changed the d100 primary mechanic to a d20 one?

I see potential with in it, and certainly as I like to call my house engine "Bastard Sword", there is a certain amount of not puritan nature to my view of games, but I am curious if anyone has done this and if there are any pitfalls or triumphs to be shared from that experience?

 

Check out Fire and Sword 

By one of Runequest's original designers RayTurney. It has many interesting ideas including using the d20, hitpointless combat, abstracted cost-of-living and ways to track reputation and favours with different organisations. I learned a lot from reading Mr Turney's design notes for the game.

I ran Troubled Waters from River of Cradles as my first Runequest adventure. I started Borderlands later but by then the characters had no interest in working for Duke Raus. We completed the first adventure, then transported far away via a mystic portal from Horn Gate.

I've got Dorastor: Land of Doom but I've never run it and it looks like it is designed to slaughter PCs (think Tomb of Horrors in AD&D). So probably not such a great choice for a first adventure, if that's what you meant.

9 hours ago, rsanford said:

Free form is cool but I have always been concerned that Malstrom’s magic is to weak and limited. Deep magic is cool though. The Second Way magic, on the other hand, is on the verge of being game breaking.

 

If you want subtle magic, the Maelstrom system is excellent. It's hard for outsiders to tell if an effect is the result of magick, or a freak of nature. It's also great because it is situational and makes the spell caster think about their situation and timing. A spell to kill all of your enemies with lightning bolts is easier to cast on top of a tor in the middle of a howling storm than in a cellar underground. As for power level, there are many natural effects which can be very powerful. The Maelstrom system is all about modifying the likelihood of things occurring. Only 'impossible' things are hard (but not impossible) to magick into existence.

14 hours ago, MrB_Douglass said:

 

 

In my Lankhmar low-magic campaign I use a combination of Maelstrom freeform magick and Rolemaster Spell Law, where each list of spells is counted as a skill.

The Spell Law spells are generally less powerful than the D&D ones. Between Spell Law and the Maelstrom system I can accommodate a wide diversity of spell casters. In fact no two are alike, which is as I like it.

It is certainly an excellent super-hero comic, one of the best. In it Mr Gaiman manages, by transplanting them from modern USA to 17th century England, to reveal the unchanged essence of these superheroes.

9 hours ago, Agentorange said:

On the settings front I felt that some of the Monograph settings had the legs to be developed. The Green and Swords of Cydoris spring to mind.I like both of those a great deal. so to sum up, for me more than anything else Magicworld didn't feel it had a purpose.....

 

Yeah The Green and Swords of Cydoria were two of my favourite monograph settings too (also Rubble and Ruin).

I've refereed one session on roll20. It wasn't BRP (it was Coriolis) but I can give my impressions of how it works.

The interface is a bit clunky but usable. There's a central visible screen (as described below) with a sidebar. The main bit of this sidebar you'll use is the chat window where you roll dice etc, but there's also a 'journal' section which has all of the character sheets and a 'jukebox' which lets you play sound effects and music. I was interested in this bit -- why not use the advantages of an online platform as well as enduring the disadvantages? You can also use the 'settings' to change the size of your video avatars and -- I like this one -- roll 3d dice across the screen visible to all players.

For the referee, you need to do quite a bit of prep to upload your maps or pictures to create different screens which the players can see. The screens have three layers: a base (map) layer, a token layer, which the players can interact with, and a GM-only layer on top which the GM can change the visibility of objects there. The layers are a bit like those in Illustrator, Photoshop or the GIMP; they can have elements visible, there can be a grid overlay etc. The GM then moves a bookmark to indicate which screen is visible to the players at any given time. They were a bit fiddly to make but the tutorial was adequate. I found that it was tricky to create these screens 'on the fly' during the session but my pre-prepared ones worked quite well. In my session my players switched between a introductory scene-setting picture and a map of Coriolis Station where they were doing their investigation.

To set up character sheets I created the character in the 'journal' section and then gave ownership of the character to their player. It was a new system for my group so I had had some 'zero sessions' with the players already on the platform to create their group and characters. I didn't find the character sheets perfectly easy to use but they were OK. I pretty much left it up to the players to refer to them during the session (similar to a live session).

I had my adventure outline written up in a text file (an org-mode outline so I could easily flick around between sections) which I referred to on my computer while running the session (alt-tab back and forth). To change maps was just a matter of moving the bookmark between the pre-prepared screens. I also had the rulebook on the table next to my laptop, and spent a bit of time flicking around in that. Next time I would probably include some page references in my outline file.

I used names only avatars partly to save screen space and partly to create an audio-only and more immersive RPG experience, a bit like a radio play. Again, trying to extract the strengths from the platform. However there were a few technical glitches and having no avatars made me miss some connection issues.

Overall the session went quite well. A roll20 session needs to be quite well prepped, at least the technical side of pre-uploading maps, images and music you might need. There are music and sound effects available on the platform, but you need to go through them and listen to stuff to decide what's appropriate for your game.

On 7/16/2018 at 7:07 AM, soltakss said:

I wrote the Land of Ice and Stone supplement for Mongoose. Unfortunately, very few people seem to be interested in Old Stone Age roleplaying, which is a shame. I also wrote Merrie England supplements for Alephtar games (RuneQuest, BRP and Revolution, not Legend) and a few things in fanzines and so on. Not a lot, but enough to get started.

 

Unfortunately true about the Stone Age roleplaying (I bought Land of Ice and Stone, BTW). There are interesting rpg settings, and there are the ones your players will agree to play in..

Magic World's main claim to fame was that it was the closest thing to Elric! that was in print at the time. My main campaign is a Nehwon swords and sorcery game using Elric! rules. I have two copies of that game, and my friends have a couple more. I didn't really need to buy Magic World (though I did anyway).

I'm about to start a Coriolis game on Roll20. It will be the first time I've used the platform as a GM (I have played D&D there this year).

M-Space has this Special Effect, which is basically suppressive fire:

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Pin Down. This firearm special effect forces the target to make an Opposed Test of their Willpower* against the attacker's hit roll. Failure means that the target hunkers down behind whatever cover is available and cannot return fire on their next Turn. Note that Pin Down works even if no actual damage is inflicted on the target (perhaps due to a successful evasion or shots striking their cover instead), as it relies on the intimidation effect of gunfire passing very close by. Although a pinned victim is unable to fire back for the requisite time, they can perform other actions provided they don't expose themselves to fire in the process, such as crawling away to new cover, communicating with others, reloading a weapon and so on.

--M-Space, p.65

 

* in M-Space Willpower is a skill which begins at POWx2

BRP doesn't have Special Effects, which you gain from a difference in success levels between attacker and defender. However you could have a BRP attacker announce a Pin Down attack in their declaration. For each defender with lower DEX rank in the attacker's line of fire, make a check as described above. This costs one clip of ammunition, regardless of the outcome for regular firearms. For weapons designed for this kind of thing like rapid fire miniguns etc, you could have the attacker make a Luck roll to avoid running out of ammunition for each round of 'Pin Down' fire.

I think I missed Leviathan and Twilight's Peak but I remember playing Annic Nova and The Chamax Plague.

Not that it's not interesting, but Magic Systems in BRP is some way off topic from "D&D vs BRP".

On 9/5/2020 at 3:50 AM, seneschal said:

\Huh?  We Were Supposed To Play TODAY? -- Getting a group of three to six people together on a consistent basis is difficult, especially as those individuals age out of high school and college, get jobs and spouses and kids, move out of state, etc.  The most sprawling "campaign" I managed ran 3-5 play sessions (honestly can't remember) and ultimately even one-shots became impossible.  Given the skittishness of my associates, attempting a phonebook-sized epic with props and handouts would have been daunting even in high school.  How did you guys manage it?

 

I started young. My older brother was given Holmes D&D and we didn't know what it was. I found other gamers at primary and high school, and some others along the way. We had time to play for many hours in those days. I ended up GMing more often than not. I wasn't so confident with my own stuff as a kid so we played many pre-made adventures. I stuck with various incarnations of D&D and Traveller for years, but tried Gamma World and Paranoia and some others. Later I got into Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. It wasn't till the 90s that I picked up Elric! and was so amazed.

For me running campaigns is one of the good things you can do with RPGs, and something which distinguishes it from computer RPGs and other games. I've run several of my own, or partially confected from adventures I've read. My best campaigns have lasted about 10 sessions.

One of the things I like about pre-made adventures is that they can be a shared experience for gamers. For example, lots of people have experienced some version of The Keep on the Borderlands or various incarnations of Pavis, Sun County, Big Rubble or the Spinward Marches, sometimes multiple times or with different gaming groups.

Of course, wives, kiddies and the rest happened to me and my friends too. A bit over a decade ago I started a regular monthly roleplaying session, as a compromise -- but it has lasted. I agree it does make long-term campaigns more difficult. It's hard to remember plot points. Sometimes people couldn't make it, so we ended up having several campaigns on the go (not all GM'd by me). Sometimes we'd have a meh session, which is more depressing when it's your only session for the month. I'd prefer to to game more frequently. By 2019 I was getting a bit burnt out with it, and a bit bored with my long-term Nehwon campaign and my players' characters. I started a Renaissance campaign and my players bailed after the second session. Then 2020 happened and RPGing ceased for me until the middle of the year when I got contacted by an overseas friend who wanted to play D&D.

I think my regular sessions will resume, maybe with some changes next year. I did like the 6-week block idea -- thanks @David Scott. I might propose that to my players. I got sick of monthly chopping and changing between campaigns -- often due to very late cancellations. It resulted in poorly-planned and unsatisfying sessions.

17 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

🤢

But yeah, I also like a level 7+ party is unbeatable unless you use lots of big monster of other unlikely high level party... or multiple large wave of monsters.. 😕 

The last straw for GMing D&D for me was many years ago when a party of 5th-6th level adventurers wiped out an entire tribe of orcs in a pitched battle. No tactics, just hack 'em up. It was like tanks vs. infantry in the 20th century.

6 hours ago, hix said:

alright let's make some wild assumptions:

Lasers do damage with heat, needing contact over duration to do significant burn. So you have to be close to keep contact.

Railguns do instant kinetic damage, but because of their relatively slow speed have less range.

Missiles/torpedoes do instant damage but have range limited by fuel. they can also be detected, so you can't shoot from too far away.

what else ya got?

 

Traveller had meson cannons where an antiparticle was calculated to decay inside the boundary of an enemy ship. Who knows what the range of that might be.

But OK. If it's close range the next thing is that people will most likely have the same weapons (lasers or some kind of radiation weapons are the most likely, given the speeds). Any weapon which hits is likely to be pretty deadly (unless you have force shields) so it comes down to who shoots first. So ambushes and stealth will play a big part. A ship without much signature (or deliberately powered down to have low emissions) would wait for another and then BLAM, light up, and light 'em up. Unless they get detected first, in which case the other ship alters course and speeds away.