Grimmshade

Thanks!

Has anyone created any characters from actual pulps (The Spider, The Shadow, Doc Savage, etc.) using Pulp Cthulhu?

I thought there would be all sorts of these stat'd up, but I haven't seen any. 

Reading it again I'm still uncertain, but also still think it makes too much paperwork to actually permanently sacrifice Magic Points.

I'm just going with the idea of spend and sacrifice being interchangeable in this case. 

I'm trying to remember if there is any instance of temporarily spending POW, as opposed to permanently spending it which happens in several spells. It might give some insight into wording.

Already played through once, good stuff so far. Survived but learned nothing.

Looking forward to another play this week.

(A few of the links to entry numbers either didn't seem to have a link attached, or went to the wrong entry. No huge deal, and I didn't note which ones but I will next play.)

That's what I'm thinking too, as it causes extra record keeping and other problems if it actually means you give up the MP permanently.

When the text in a spell says "sacrifice" Magic Points instead of "spend," does the caster lose them permanently? (and if so what happens if you use HP for some of those MP?)

55 minutes ago, goldenwheeldancer said:

I hear you. The writer himself was responding to some of your questions so that's probably why there was defensiveness! Once the non-writer Chaosium'ites got into the thread a solution was set up pretty quickly! Anyway, I Enjoyed some of your threads here and it sounded like you were setting up some wild rides so sorry to see you go!

Thanks man. It's actually a great community here. Many happy adventures!

2 hours ago, goldenwheeldancer said:

You mean their stance of immediately setting up a thread where clarification questions can be asked in order to create an official errata/clarification document? That sounds pretty good to me. There don't seem to be all that many people THAT bothered by the bugs - especially with Chaosium being willing to sort them out.

Nope, I mean their stance of saying nothing is wrong because they have sold a lot of copies and basically calling me and the others grumbling whiners. 

I appreciate that an official answers thread was opened. It's too bad that disrespect to us consumers had to come first. Answers were really all I was looking for in this thread.

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Sorry they lost you. Rather than force you to go through any kind of refund process, I'll buy it off you eBay style, shipping included. What's a good price?

I really appreciate the offer!

I've already been contacted by Chaosium about the refund however. If it doesn't work out I'll definitely sell it to you.

I'm writing to Chaosium for a refund. That seems totally fair to me, as long as it works out. I don't want to troll the forums just because I don't feel satisfied with the current state of the rules. It doesn't change my opinion of the current rules, but now nobody has to hear me constantly complain about them. 

As someone who came into the game excited, I am very much put off by the company stance on this, and won't spend any more money at Chaosium.

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

The only difference is that the text says that impaling weapons do not actually cause damage to the parrying weapon. Other than that they are identical.

Maybe it would be clearer if the Impale section also pointed this out.

No, it says that the weapon takes twice the damage it normally would. Chart mentions nothing of this. 

Adding agreement that this complaint is not about typos. I could honestly care less about typos when I'm trying to figure out how major components of the game work. What is the function of a rule book if not to provide, clearly, the rules the game? This book is the equivalent of a video game company releasing a beta build and expecting the consumers to fix it. 

How exactly does limb damage work? Nobody knows! Why is the critical hits vs normal parry text so wildly different than the chart? How do attacks per round work? Why does one area say you can only move half and take action, but another mentions taking your whole move and acting? Why is Augmenting with another skill worse that just using one skill if the Augmenting skill is less than 50%? Why does Meditating seem like such a bad option? Do skills over 100% act like as described in the Skills section or as described in the Combat section? How exactly, step by step through the normal character process, do you make a centaur PC?

This is a $55 book man, and we spent that $55 to have the rules to play the game. I wish game companies offered returns for refunds from dissatisfied customers like most other companies do, because I sure wasted $55 on a product that doesn't work as advertised.

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

This is pretty much the feedback we get. The handful of grognards grumbling about a few slight discrepancies seem to be looking for something to grumble about. Then again, it could just be a case of "not really my kind of game" - which is just fine. No game is going to work for everyone. I got a long laundry list of popular games that don't work for me.

Jeff

I'll post all the examples of contradictory rules tomorrow when I'm not at work.

It's bad form to say anyone who has a legit complaint is just grumbling. I was put off by the poor editing, but still excited to play. Now I'm considering eBay.

A place to go for fixes and known problems with options would be a huge help at this point.

A really good example of combat would also be a huge help, but the examples in the book have errors in them too, which makes me dubious a combat example wouldn't also be error filled. 

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

Reviews are interesting, but like movie review, RPG reviews reflect the interests of a subset. The most valuable feedback I get is from our various convention game organisers, particularly from Todd Gardiner, but also from some very active newbies. Needless to say, the combat mechanics are a perhaps surprisingly big draw.

Honestly, it's just muddling through the errors and inconsistencies that is making me think twice about the system. I've been roleplaying since the late 70's, and owned the 2nd edition Runequest box (and still own the 1st edition Call of Cthulhu box.)

I don't find the rules all that overly complex, I'm just disgruntled at having to decide between two different versions of a rule in the same book, or rules that clearly contradict themselves. It makes reading and learning the material a chore.

Luckily there are many helpful fans here on the forums.

I'm a bit disappointed in my reading of the Core book. I wish all the glowing review I read before purchase had mentioned all the errors and rule contradictions. It's a very difficult book for a Runequest newcomer to get through.

I'm currently reading the Combat chapter, and the limb damage is difficult to decipher, the Parry chart and the section on Critical Parry differ completely, the example of using Runes has a -10% penalty for failure instead of -20% mentioned earlier, combat with skills greater than 100% is different in the combat chapter than it is in the skills chapter.

That's just half of the combat chapter. 

Is the Bestiary and GM Kit this full of errata and contradictions? I'm having a little buyers remorse for a $55 book.

10 hours ago, David Scott said:

I have a centaur in my group too. We just imagined he was an adventurous sort and used the Sartar background tables.It worked well. Disadvantage - high Beast rune and size.

Did you use a culture template for skills, or skip that part since they get the centaur base skills?

So, for instance, Sartar skills, etc.

4 hours ago, d(sqrt(-1)) said:

One tweak I've considered (not tried, but it isn't actually contradicted by the original RQ2 rules), is a way to avoid the bookkeeping on locations, but keeps the rules pretty much the same:

- The location HPs are viewed as thresholds. Any damage to them comes off general HP as normal, but you DON'T track/reduce the location HP. You DO still track wounds in locations and also blows doing double or triple damage. e.g. Arm has 4 HP. If hit for 3-, that comes off general HP, if 4+, arm incapacitated and you note a wound (up to 8 HP max) and lose general HP, if 12+ arm severed.

If nothing else I think this would be useful for GMs, and it's not actually that different from how things currently work.

 

This is actually how I was considering playing it. Less bookkeeping overall and still accomplishes the same thing.

I thought I'd make threads about my Runequest Glorantha noob group's progress through the game. We are new to Glorantha, fairly new to Runequest (I owned the original 2e, and ran some 6e), but we aren't new to RPG's (I've been playing since late 70's)

Tonight we made characters. It took forever! The background part was really fun, but too most of the time. My wife decided to play a death knight sort of undead hunter character rather than a necromancer like she originally wanted. My brother in law made a human thief from Pavis instead of the duck he was thinking about. My sister made a Lhankor Mhy from Sartar, and my friend made a centaur hunter.

We didn't finish the centaur. The Bestiary says that you can make non-humans with it, but it gives pretty crap advice for doing such. I didn't know what to include and what not to. High Characteristics for the centaur seemed to heavily outweigh any negatives for being a centaur. I allowed him to run through the background rolls with the rest of the group, because we figured his family could have been mercenaries in Sartar or something. In the end I had to tell him I'll research the rules more to figure out what he gets.

The thief seemed happy but wanted to be from Pavis, which feels like it should be separate from the other Prax tribes/clans. I ended up allowing him to mostly use Sartar as a base since that's where the book says Pavis original population came from.

I don't think the Lhankor Mhy philosopher player is going to be happy with sorcery. The spells begin with very low percentages.

The undead hunting Humakt heavy infantry warrior worked out well, even though it took some effort to get a decent Greatsword skill level. 

We didn't pick spells yet, and a couple other things need to be double checked. 

It late now, I'll write more tomorrow if I think of anything else. 

How can one small and very important section be so full of questions.

Personally, I don't see how going into negative HP is worth tracking, unless it's in the tracking of individual wounds I guess.

Actually, the way that section is worded makes it sound like if a limb goes to -3X even with multiple hits it is severed. 

16 minutes ago, Psullie said:

There is no such thing as negative HP.

Example: 4 HP arm, lets say 14 total HP. 9 damage -> Arm drops to Zero and Total HP 14-8=6 - arm is useless and this incapacitates our hero. Next round, same arm takes 3 damage - arm still at Zero but Total HP drops to 3. last round same arm takes 5 damage - arms still Zero but Total HP drops to 0, PC is dead. 

No lets assume that the third and final wound didn't happen. Our PC has a useless arm with two wounds, one wound at 4 damage and one at 3 damage. These could be healed with First Aid (one attempt per wound) or Magic. A triple damage score maims a limb which can only be healed with a 6 point Heal,

These are the kind of examples I need! Thanks for the explanation.

So, what if first attack arm takes 5 damage. Arm is at 0 and now useless. HP is at 9. Arm now takes 8 damage. Arm is still at zero, HP is at 1, character falls unconscious due to 1 HP, but would also be incapacitated due to arm taking double HP if general HP was still above 2?

26 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Actually I think it does make sense. Everything in the "exceeds double" is correct, a 4-HP location can't take more than 8 off your general HP, any extra damage above that is ignored, except that if a single blow inflicts 3x the HP, then it is severed.

But what if it takes double, and then takes more damage?

So a 4HP arm takes 9 damage. Arm is now at -4, and general HP is at (total-8). Now the arm takes 5 damage. Does the arm actually take any more? Does your general HP?

So...

The way I read it is: A limb can take up to double it's total HP an no more in a single hit. However, if the damage total happened to be higher than three times the HP total, the limb is severed, even though those extra HP are not removed from any totals. 

It also seems like the Double and Triple damage has to be from a single hit to cause the extra complication.

This leads me to wonder why we track individual body part HP at all. If its not total damage, but simply One, Two, or Three times the amount that matters, then why keep track of body part HP? If we do track it, what is the effect? It seems like a body part could easily be whittled down to negative the amount of total character HP pool and have no extra effect.

Just read the damage section thoroughly and have a few questions:

1) The general HP won't take more than twice what a limb can take in a single limb hit, but what about the limb? Do you track the entire damage total in the limb?

2) Are the Double and Triple hit location results per total location HP lost, or on a per hit basis? (Is an arm severed after multiple hits that take it to -triple the total?)

4 hours ago, d(sqrt(-1)) said:

Will there be a log of changes? As someone who uses the rulebook rather than the pdf it's a bit annoying if I have to hunt through to find the changes from the print version.

I agree. I generally go through and change my hardcopies with sticky notes, as I don't like PDF as my main rules source.

Change logs are very much appreciated.