NickMiddleton

8 hours ago, Brian sutton said:

Anyone knows where I can download Cthulhu rising. 

Neither of the monographs is available any more, nor the original CoC based material from which they derived, but the author replaced the support material (scenarios and other add ons) back on the internet here: https://www.ragingtrifle.com/jn/

I dislike adding additional rolls in to the flow of the game, which has always been my misgiving about augmenting skill, so I exclusively use the first method. I prefer the focus of the "drama and tension" to be on the primary roll, so a player makes a pitch to myself / the group of what skills / passions (or "passion like things" in the case of my usual house rules) and where I / we agree they make sense they get to add the special chance of the relevant skill / passion (maximum of one add from a skill and one add from a passion or passion like thing).

Given the success of RQG, it clearly works for many, but it'll do no harm changing the details.

1 hour ago, Sheelba said:

I don't, at least not for the majority of the time. I intend having cultists as protagonists and part of the allure will be access to magic which doesn't require the kind of study which RQ3 sorcery demanded (or devotion to a God who deals in a contractual manner, or even the need to be part of a community in anyway). So this might fit in here, I'll have a look. But the current BRP rules appear so simple (from the point of the user) that I can't imagine needing to simplify further (although to be fair I haven't been able to read them in detail as they are so far from what I want I just give up every time I try so I'll likely just use CoC magic for cultists who don't have the magic systems the PCs have access to). And if my players can't understand a magic system then well and good, there is mystery in magic. 

I looked at this some time ago and again it isn't what I want. I'm just going to be using RQ3 rules and deal with anything which doesn't smoothly fit into current BRP, I suppose. As with the others I very much appreciate the time you took to try and help me. It is nice to be reminded of the options and the more people suggest the more I find myself thinking through what I want and coalescing my thoughts. Thank you. 

This might be of interest: 

It’s  an overlay for the “full” version of BRP Sorcery system from Magic World & Advanced Sorcery but is entirely compatible with the concise version in BRP-UGE (and Magic World & Advanced Sorcery are useful adjuncts to that system). It owes a clear debt to RQ3 Sorcery, but is also highly streamlined compared to that, but might provided some ideas?

10 hours ago, Mugen said:

…RuneQuest 3 had stats for Orcs, Halflings and Dwarves in its Gateway bestiary. There's also an Elf, but it's a short and agile one, not the tall and noble Tolkienish elf from Warhammer.

Their stats were reprinted in Mongoose RuneQuest bestiary, and also in Mythras.

I guess they're also in Magic World.…

Yup - I think pretty much everything from the RQ3 Monsters Book / BRP Creatures Monograph made it in to the 2012 Magic World book. I listed them for some reason here: 

14 hours ago, LivingTriskele said:

The players are going to start with an equal amount of cultural bonus skill points to allocate over their respective chosen cultural skills.

My question is A) what’s a good TOTAL amount of bonus points to allow for cultural skills per character, and B) what’s a good maximum of bonus points to be allocated per each chosen cultural skill?

I’m considering a total of 40 bonus cultural skill points per character with a maximum +15% per combat skill and +35% per non-combat skills. Does that seem fair?

In Magic World, my general touchstone / baseline for implementing BRP,  each Cultural classification gets a list of 6 - 9 skills and a player chose three from that list to give a +10 bonus (think in my tweaks of MW CG to bring it more in line with the BGB I scaled the adds for culture to +10 / +15 / +20 / +25 for campaign power level)... Your figures seem roughly similar, and I'd say they were perfectly fair.

5 hours ago, The Old Dragoon said:

Does such an animal exist? Or are there too many optional switches for BRP for any one print product, and folks tend to use the customizable GM screens with inserts?

https://basicroleplaying.org/search/?q=screen&quick=1&type=downloads_file

There are a bunch in the files section here that could be printed out and used with generic screens - I think most are for specific BRP games, or for the older BGB edition. This one's not bad: 

 and the InDesign files for it are I think also there.  But as you say - a single screen covering all the options in UGE is not really practical.

31 minutes ago, Mugen said:

My understanding is that this challenge is meant to help publishing games, and not supplements. Even though, of course, games contain material that can be used in other games.

Quote

As part of submission, entrants will need to provide: 

• A pitch for their game (both in long and short form).
• A production budget for their game.
• An outline on how the winnings from the BRP Design Challenge will help bring their game to life 
• A competitor market analysis of their game, showcasing where it fits in the market as a product.
• How the BRP rules have been used in their game. 
• What makes their use of the BRP system, their setting, and/or the gameplay experience unique.

 (My emphasise)… as said elsewhere, it’s a VC-like pitch for seed funding new BRP powered games as commercial ventures. It doesn’t specifically exclude supplements, but it is very hard to see how such things would qualify.

In so far as it stimulates an increase in the diversity and variety of BRP powered games, I’m intrigued to see what the outcome of the contest is. Doesn’t appeal to me at all, although it will be interesting to see what games result from this. But this, on the face of it, is not in the immediate future going to directly stimulate the publication of supplements one could adapt to one’s own games.

On 2/27/2024 at 10:18 PM, Renfield said:

Using BRP, have a fairly generic implementation here.  STR    DEX  CON  INT   CHA

But we also have, you know... skills.  Like... 50 of them.

So why do we need CHA,  when I have 7+ skills that do various charisma stuff? 

Does BRP really need those base attributes at all?

They serve a function, in that they provide a quantification of a characters raw capability / natural talent distinct from the skills and knowledge they have acquired through their upbringing  and training, formal and informal. Whether that function justifies their existence for you only you can say.

On 2/27/2024 at 10:18 PM, Renfield said:

Are they there for when players and GM are like "I have no idea what you are doing, roll a attribute that sorta fits as generic catch all" ??

We have been playing 5 sessions now and never needed to roll CHA as a action... the skills seem to have it all covered.

Am I missing something here?

There is a grand gala, which all the adventurers are attending. They are hoping to connect with the Crown Prince, who it is widely believed will be attending incognito, looking to recruit... Rather than relying on any particular skill, a GM could ask for everyone to make a Charisma check... Because they are not making a Bargain, issuing a Command, putting up a Disguise, picking the correct social mores (Etiquette),  Fast Talk-ing someone, Perform-ing a role,  Persuad(e)-ing anyone, flaunt ing their Status or Teach-ing anyone... they are trying to project their presence as appealing and hoping the prince will pick them.

Now, one could easily see a way to look at interpretations of a specific skill that would serve instead, but equally one can see that a more generalized assessment of how charismatic a character is has value. Whilst many historical and real world figures we talk about as being "Charismatic" have specific talents in terms of the named skills that are in default BRP, many of them don't have obvious strengths in those specific areas, but do have a more generalized quality that draws attention, that lets them dominate or stand out in social situations that we happily gloss under "they are very Charismatic...".

The key thing is that the characteristic rolls are very broad evaluation of qualities. So a GM should always give less information / benefit from a successful characteristic roll than from a successful skill roll. My go to example: any character can make an Idea roll to see that there are tracks on the ground. But only  a successful roll against the Track  skill should reveal anything about / from those tracks.

Via the BRP-UGE SRD thread I found this:https://github.com/raleel/basic-roleplaying-UGE/blob/main/BRP-UGE-Logo.png

see:  

Yeah - this was never intended as a rigid tool for specific casting thresholds / limits: I stopped doing such things in my BRP games a long time ago; which is not to say one couldn’t build such a system from these suggestions of course.

This is intended as an overlay to the existing MW / AS Sorcery rules to add a little more interest and colour. In the previous Sorcery document I uploaded there is a (very loose) sketch of a taxonomy of “types” and “orders” (as in “orders of magnitude”) for the full MW/AS published spell list. One absolutely could create specific skill level requirements to access specific types / orders of spells etc: but it’s not something I want in my games, so I haven’t done it.

It’s a long time since I’ve run RQ3 sorcery, but my recollections of doing so and my house rules for it were unquestionably factors in coming up with this.

On 1/17/2024 at 6:09 AM, smiorgan said:

But now I'm curious about the larger work.

21 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Larger work? ORC related?

Before the end of the original active phase of Magic World Ben had raised the idea with the informal mailing list of contributors (of which I was one) about a "Magic World Companion" book, modelled after the original RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer  Companions Chaosium did way back when. I floated a few ideas, and sketched a few more; some of those sketches gradually morphed in to house rule notes in the the intervening years; during early lock down in 2020, casting around for things to do (I was still working full time from home, but was not socialising or F2F gaming) I started working on them, with a vague notion of doing something using the then still available Chaosium "Small Publisher's license" (couple of years previously Marcus Bone and I had chatted about doing something with that, but we both then got busy with other stuff).

Basically, I have a Companion-esque compilation of addons, variants, revisions, supplementary material and a scenario that amounts to a 124 page book. I am currently mulling what to do with it - the "Small Publisher License" is no longer an option, but I am hopeful that something may happen on the Community Content Program front, but nothing has been formally announced as yet. The book has sat on my hard drive, basically finished, for most of the last year, so a few more months will do no harm.

I'll take a stock of my options in the spring: retooling it all to be strictly ORC compliant currently looks like a lot of work that doesn't appeal; the free / at cost PoD via Lulu route remains viable in principle and is least challenging at this point, but if there is to be a CCP and it covers MW that's where I'd like it to be. One way or another I'll do something with it by the end of August this year.

26 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

Unrelated question: what is a “sea axe”? Is it like a viking long axe? I sure hope they don’t mean a seax 😄

Kinda... it is a hangover from the original Elric! / Stormbringer text - which refers to a Sea Axe... as a smaller but still two handed axe, as opposed to the Lormyrean Axe (which is a BIG two handed axe). The illustration in SB5 suggests that a Sea Axe has a single bladed head, and the Lormyrean Axe is double bladed.

On 1/12/2024 at 2:38 PM, Ravenheart87 said:

...Your sorcery idea sounds neat too. And tempting, because the sorcery spell list is a bit more flavourful than the magic spell list.

As previously discussed:

... and as noted, although written for the "full" Sorcery system in Magic World / Advanced Sorcery this should be entirely compatible with the concise version of Sorcery in BRP-UGE. The separate download I did on Sorcery in the Reaches (see downloads section) doesn't explicitly reference this, nor does this reference that piece, but they are definitely complementary.

This came up in the BRP thread about Call of Cthulhu and BRP as an engine for the Hybroian Age and I said there I'd extract the relevant bit from the larger work it is currently part of. Enjoy!

13 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Was it? Where can we read about this?

No idea where that idea arose but it’s nonsense. The Moorcock IP license ended circa 2006 and went to Mongoose; Ben Monroe started looking at, and talking to a small group of peeps (including myself) about, a version of Elric! / Stormbringer 5th edition with all the Moorcock IP removed and made a generic fantasy game in late 2011 or early 2012. It was a tribute to his friend and mentor, and Chaosium grandee, Lynn Willis who was very ill at the time, and who sadly passed away before the game was printed in early 2013 iirc. The project was never intended as anything other than a standalone generic game making Willis & co’s work available again without the previous IP, which was still licensed to Mongoose until 2013 iirc.

And, to be clear, although many of us, including myself, refer to Magic World as a version of Elric! without the Moorcock IP, it was based on the revised text of Stormbringer 5th Edition content wise, with a variety of small elegant additions and refinements by Ben. Elric! gets mentioned because its layout was something Ben, and those of us commenting on his work, all really rated and had hoped would be the inspiration for Magic World's layout: we were alas disappointed.

21 hours ago, Ravenheart87 said:

I had a BRP-lite homebrew I never finished where I did something similar, but put the magic spells into four or five skills. I might revisit the idea, but instead of D&D-like rigid magic schools I think I should put them into actual traditions which might overlap here and there if they share similar interests - kind of like Combat Styles in Mythras.

Sounds cool! Ever since I read Earthsea as I kid I’ve liked the idea of schools & domains of magic. We never fully grokked SPIs Dragonquest, but we co-opted the magic system into various games and settings back in my early gaming days.

21 hours ago, Ravenheart87 said:

Your sorcery idea sounds neat too. And tempting, because the sorcery spell list is a bit more flavourful than the magic spell list.

When I’m home and have access to tools I’ll extract the write up from larger work it’s currently part of and stick it in the files section here.

3 hours ago, Ravenheart87 said:

....On a different note... If you had the BRP rulebook only, which magic system would you use for a sword & sorcery setting? I like in Magic that each spell is a different skill, it neatly goes hand in hand with the rest of the system, but since the original WoW MW booklet the spell prices got really high, plus the casting test followed by resistance roll feels a bit much. Sorcery is cool and has a great spell list, but I feel it lacks something with not having skill rolls, and the demon summoning cost still feels wrong (it kept the 9 MP starting cost, the book also mentions varying costs for demons á la Elric!, but omits any rules about how to calculate it and how it works).

Personally, I loathe a single skill per spell (makes it all way to fiddly IMO, especially if one adds additional skills a la RQ3 Sorcery)... but a SINGLE Sorcery skill is very appealing, and something I now do in Magic World, with an option to NOT roll for "rote casting" without risk, or roll and get bonuses at the risk of failure or fumble imposing deleterious effects on the casting.  

1 hour ago, sladethesniper said:

What is everyone's opinion on a single skill NPC, such as Viking 45%, so that skill is basically a composite of all the skills that a viking should have without gettting into crazy detail. Naval tactics? Sure, for a longboat, 45%. Archery? Sure 45%. Axe 45%, Shield 45%, etc. etc. 

That would allow much more simple NPC writeups of Gangster 22% or Politician 61%.

For any other, outstanding or strange skills you can still use them so that our Politician 61% also has art(painting) 44% and guitar 81%, but those are skills that are outside of their primary skill set.

OK or stupid? I ask because I am about to embark on making several hundred NPCs (they will be posted here) but I just don't want to make a list of 10+ skills for every single Charlie's Angel, MK fighter or every single Transformer.

-STS 

Makes sense to me: it’s a refinement / streamlining of the Magic World (page 220-221) approach, e.g.:

”Average: All abilities are at 10, preferred skills at 40%, other skills at 20%. HP = Con (10), 3-4 points armor. Weapons always do 1d8 damage.”

On 1/1/2024 at 9:42 AM, TrippyHippy said:

Maybe I could be pointed in the direction of some but as far as I am aware, there isn’t that many supplements available for this current iteration of BR:UGE.

It is early days still but I would like to make some sort of call out to third party creators or Chaosium itself, that what the game really needs is a bunch of short, creative mini settings - no more than 50 pages tops - that could be printed out from PDF files, maybe with a short adventure or two included. I’ve seen a few people suggesting they are working on settings, but what I am suspecting is this means larger setting books (200 pages or so). There is a place for this but short, cheap and quick stuff for one shots gets into the whole spirit of a universal system more I think. 

What do other people think?

I have always had a huge soft spot for the Call of Cthulhu adventure anthologies Strange Aeons - whilst they were were all (obviously) within a single rules / setting framework, they were distinctive stand alone adventures and  "settings" in a way... ...I was also a contributor to the BGB era BRP quick-start's "shorty" adventures - originally an idea of Dustin Wright's, inspired by the one page dungeon phenomena.

I have been noodling away at a hybrid of those two influences for BRP: UGE: a set of short, one shot scenarios with pre-generated characters; each set in its own distinctive setting and with its own particular sub set of options from BRP:UGE. Whether I get anywhere with it is another matter (role changed at work last year so job takes more of my time, and my health has been a bit shit last third of the year as well), but we shall see.

I have always thought that adventures are what an RPG systems needs. Not everyone uses them: but their existence helps build a sense that the game is supported, that engaging and committing to it is not striking out in to the wilderness; and I think it has an impact, even on those people and groups who don't themselves use anything or little of "official" published material.

So I think whatever happens with my own efforts, the basic idea is sound, and whether its really short little things like the original Shorties, setting / adventure anthologies such as TrippyHippy proposes or something in between (as I am working on slowly), stuff that supports BRP:UGE by showcasing the range and variety it can easily accommodate is worthwhile.

A well crafted “random” encounter table condenses pages and pages of world building into a succinct single table. They are woefully under appreciated IMO as a key part of filling out settings.

Every table of gamers uses what it prefers, and no one else’s preferences dictate to anyone else: but I would encourage anyone to look at Gwyndolin’s table and consider how one might create an equivalent for any particular locale or region of one’s own setting, and how that can concisely evoke its nuance and detail.

9 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

… Is that in the recent BRP Fate Point rules?

!i!

From a quick skim of Page 115 from the PDF on my phone, don’t think so. But can’t see any reason one couldn’t include it with some house rules? 

Page 17: "Only with a gamemaster’s permission can you raise or lower a starting characteristic beyond the range of 3–21. For higher power levels (epic and superhuman), the characteristic maximum should be ignored."

Page 18: "Like INT, human POW has no set maximum, and can rise indefinitely."

Page 121: "Generally, characteristics other than POW can’t improve beyond the species maximum (for humans, this is 21), but for epic or superhuman power level games, this limit is ignored."

Taken together, I think the intent is that the Species Maximum (of 21 for humans) applies to normal and heroic level campaigns, but such limits should be ignored for epic and superhuman power level campaigns. Which begs the question of what the chance of improving POW for a character with 21+ POW would be; my off the cuff ruling would be a flat 5% or the characters Experience bonus, which ever is greater.

For folks considering investing in software for book publishing - Affinity 2 suite is heavily discounted currently (until 04/12) and whilst I can't speak from experience, I gather that many who have used it and Adobe Creative Suite regarded Affinity as a viable alternative - and its a one off fee, no monthly sub...

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/

I had some spare cash, so splashed out on upgrading my copy of Affinity Publisher 1 to the full version 2 suite. Hopefully will have some time during Christmas break to have an experiment properly. Now just need to some decent SF Stock art for... reasons... 😉 

Both issues of uncounted worlds are in the Downloads section here at BRP Central as well.