NickMiddleton

9 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

…
- but all sort of area damage got broken. Dragon does 4D6, it's super deadly. Now with location I divide by 7. 24 becomes 3 or 4, almost but a scratch? and should I subtract armor from that? Classic Fantasy - Mythras is better written for area damage + localized HP in my mind, but I was planning to use BGB monster and the Big Book of Monsters (written for BGB as well)

Dragon breath in UGE differs from the BGB and is I’d suggest an error in transcription. The BGB version is quite explicit: “If the optional hit location system is being used, this damage affects each of the target’s hit locations: 4D6 is rolled once; and the damage is applied to all hit locations equally.” I.E. one 4D6 roll, average 14, so 14 points to each location…

9 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

- what about poison?

UGE and BGB seem aligned here; from UGE: “ If the poison overcomes your character’s CON, then its full POT is done as damage to hit points. If the poison does not overcome the character’s CON, it has a lessened effect—usually only doing half the poison’s POT in damage (round up). See page 186 for sample poisons. Poison damage is always damage to total hit points or to a characteristic.”

11 minutes ago, Mugen said:

What makes RQ possession so uniquely gloranthan ?

I've read it a long time ago in RQ3 and I don't remember it very well, but it didn't strike me as something that couldn't work in other settings.

IIRC, both possession from the spirit and exorcism by the shaman/exorcist required a Spirit Combat.

Was more thinking of the approach and nature of Spirits in RQG, as that’s the RQ version I’ve read most recently and which is easily available. The RQ3 take was more generic iirc, but is out of print. My vague recollection is that the MW rules are based on the RQ3 rules, but Id have to double check to be sure.

Just finished a run through the Red Star, was a big hit with my regular Wednesday group. Any idea when the next part might see release?

Annoyingly, the riposte rule from Stormbringer 5e was omitted from the BGB, so Jason had to publish his take in a thread here... and it looks like it failed to make the UGE as well 🙄... 🤣

Against a similarly skilled opponent, a master swordsman wouldn’t split their attack. That rule is for emulating Elric! / Conan leaping at three average guardsman on watch and cutting them down before they fully realise what they are facing. Against a fellow master it’s a finely balanced exchange of blows at full skill, until one rolls a substantially better success than their opponent.

This is a longstanding feature / bug of baseline BRP: “even” contests (especially with very high skilled opponents with minimal chances of failure or fumble) are finally balanced stalemates, until one side edges an advantage. I looked at some tweaks and alternatives in the arête chapter of Advanced Sorcery and many other BRP games have taken other approaches. But the way the base system is built, evenly matched contests often need outside forces to influence things to bring things to a rapid conclusion: as I said, to some a bug, to some a feature. In BRP, even sainted sword masters approach combat with caution, and should do all they can to stack odds in their favour…

The BRP-UGE entry on Ghosts briefly sketches ghostly possession; Magic World has a more extensive set of entries for various spirits and the effects of possession by them, as does RQ (albeit that’s Gloranthan specific). I don’t recall any Exorcist-style demonic possession rules per se in BRP sources, but there might have been in a monograph, or in other D100 roll under sources. Stormbringer / Elric! demons weren’t handled that way alas.

I would start by closely reading the MW spirit rules, and then think about revisions that you would want to bring them more in line with your chosen influences. In MW spirits are highly focused (Fear spirit, madness spirit etc), with singular drives. A “demonic” possession would be more multi-faceted, a malevolent scheming, potentially quite cunning entity. IIRC there is always a sense in which the victim of possession is intrinsically valuable to the demon, but also that there can be wider aims of sowing mischief and undermining faith in those close to the possessed individual.

2 hours ago, Bob Ross said:

So… back in ‘81, Chaosium created a RPG for Thieves’ World. 
And not too long ago, Chaosium released its OOP collection of Stormbringer material to Drivethrurpg .

Any chance we could get the same for Thieves’ World, Ring World or other long out of print properties?

Would love to get a copy of Thieves’ World… without paying $200+ for a used set.

Chaosium published a multi-rule system setting boxed set adapting the Thieves World in to multiple then current RPG rule sets, and one supplement.

The Stormbringer material was available in PDF for a while, after Chaosium, Mongoose and Michael Moorcock agreed a settlement and transfer of the RPG license to Mongoose.

Mongooses license has subsequently ended: none of the Stormbringer material is legally available currently.

The Thieves World license lapsed many years a go - during the original d20 boom Green Ronin obtained a new license and released a d20 adaptation (both a set of rules for the setting and extensive setting material). That license has also ended.

Chaosium are gradually re-issue ing items from their back catalogue as PDFs (and sometimes POD): but its not a priority, and they have to prioritise their limited resources as they judge most effective.

And whilst it’s conceivable that older items with a single licensor such as ElfQuest or Ringworld MIGHT eventually see re-release, I would speculate that the complexities of agreements required to cover the something like 20 systems / trademarks  in the original boxed set of Thieves World make it probably the least likely in Chaosium’s back catalogue to get re-released alas.

You need two things: in game mechanisms for these things to  come into existence (how does a character create a new spell?) and gm rules guidelines for novel items that fit with the rest of the system.

There are rules in Magic World  for researching new spells, and it’s supplement Advanced Sorcery significantly expands the sorcery spell list (MW & UGE sorcery are the same).

Otherwise, I am not aware of any formal rules: the best advice I can give is to carefully examine the existing rules and look for patterns, obvious omissions and inclusions. There are no “teleport” type spells in sorcery for example, and few if any spells like D&Ds Fireball & Lightning-bolt. Spells that fit the patterns of existing spells should have similar costs and requirements; spells that do not should be carefully consider - adding them changes the feel and tone of the system substantially. If that’s intended, all well and good; but be wary of unintended consequences!

The same approach applies to all the power categories in UGE: be guided what already exists for the scale, scope and cost of new powers; analyse the existing material for obvious patterns and styles; evaluate novel additions carefully for the consequences of their inclusion, intended or otherwise.

28 minutes ago, Eligor said:

Hello everyone, I've played RuneQuest for a while, but my group want to play something more "streamline", fantasy-wise. I saw that Magic World exist, so i guess that it could fit, and I've also saw The Book of Magic for the BRP (classic), so now i was wondering if both Magic World and The Book of Magic are dated compared to the new BRP Universal Game Engine and it's best to just run the new BRP, or if maybe The Book of Magic can be implemented in it and it is still compatible. 

Thanks all for your answer

Magic World is a complete and quite comprehensive and (IMO) really coherent fantasy RPG that is fully compatible with BRP-UGE and its really not particularly dated compared to BRP-UGE. The Book of Magic is an adaptation of the RQ3 Magic Book to the old BRP BGB, and it needed another full editing pass before it was released and honestly I wouldn’t recommend it.

I would get Magic World and BRP-UGE: the former is a great fantasy game, and the latter gives you lots of options to expand and add features to MW.

I am biased in that I helped Ben Monroe prepare the MW manuscript (and wrote a chapter for its one supplement, Advanced Sorcery); but I also, way back in dim and distant, was part of the group that Jason Durall convened to comment on / review the manuscript that became the original BRP-BGB (from which the UGE is a refinement).

Serendipitously, I have reached out to Chaosium privately to clarify the status of Outpost 19 earlier today.

I can’t find a definitive public statement, or private email to me regarding Outpost 19,  other than some correspondence with MOB back in 2015 that touch on it, when the existing agreements remained in place (and Chaosium were rather busy trying to ensure the company survived).

I can’t speak definitively for anyone else, but if Chaosium are content that rights to Outpost 19 have reverted to me, I’d still want to go over it carefully: it was written for the BGB incarnation of BRP, and it uses a few names from the Future*World segment of Worlds of Wonder that would need changing at the very least. But it is on a list of potential projects for release for BRP under ORC (as well as some Magic World fan stuff that the PoD releases inspired me to go back to).

I have quite a lot of the BRP monographs, I could probably sort a list of names.

1 hour ago, tedopon said:

Does the new version have RQ3 magic system included? I had the monograph years ago but it went away at some point. 

Nope, but the PDF of the non-monograph, not particularly well translated to BGB BRP, version is still available as a PDF from Chaosium: https://www.chaosium.com/the-magic-book-pdf/

23 minutes ago, Mugen said:

I'm shocked by the difference between both maps shown here.

I adore the original William Church map from the original edition of Stormbringer; but it, like much of the rest of that edition, was not meticulously or rigorously checked for 100% accuracy to the published fiction at that point - and let's be honest, Moorcock himself even back then was not a writer interested in the minutiae of continuity... ...iirc it wasn't until Elric! (circa 1992) that Bakshaan got moved inland...

23 minutes ago, Mugen said:

For instance, in the top one, Bakshaan is a port near the sea. On the bottom one, it's an inland city near a river.

...something I've been making jokes about, both online and in published material, for decades... see for example the ERRATIC ILMIORAN SAILOR in the Old Hrolmar monograph, 😉

I’d guess it’s supposed to be +10 / -10… and house ruling it as such would do little harm imo. Weirdly, seems to be an artefact from the BGB.

1 hour ago, Ravenheart87 said:

The big difference is in Mythras you chose a special effect as a result of your attack roll, while in BRP some of those effects are either combat maneuvers you announce in advance (these are covered by spot rules) or the special results of weapon attacks (bleeding, impaling, etc.). Mythras of course has a bunch of additional special effects, but you can convert them following the above logic.

However, it does no harm to the flow of the game if one allows a choice of special effect in line with a spot rule once the Adventurer has rolled a special or critical success, as DreadDomain suggests. Indeed, my general approach these days# is that if the Adventurer has the relevant specialisation (e.g. in Pikes & Polearms) they can attempt to disarm, trip or pin an opponent in lieu of dealing damage as their normal attack with the weapon, but if they achieve a result that would result in boosted damage on the Attack defence matrix, in addition they can deal damage, or enhance the out come of the special effect.

But I long ago stopped trying to articulate in specific terms every possible edge case and map every combination of things that  might occur in play and instead try to derive broad principles that I and my players can all grasp that we can then quickly discuss and agree on how they might apply to specific situation when it arises.

#bear in mind I have four Combat skills (Melee, Unarmed, Missile and Projectile, with weapon groups etc as specialisations within those).

Buried in the Spot Rule for Explosions (page 147 - 148) is this: "Damage from most explosives is general, and not applied to any specific hit location. If using hit locations, divide the damage among 1D4 hit locations, rolled randomly." In the Spot Rule on Falling (page 148) it says "If hit locations are used, a fall does damage to 1D4 hit locations, but a falling character making a successful Jump roll can specify on which hit location they land. The entire damage done by the fall applies both to the rolled hit location and to the falling character’s total hit points. This is an exception to the rule that a limb may take only twice its hit points in damage." The Spot Rule on Fire and Heat (page 148) adds "Hit locations may determine where fire affects a character. In these cases, the quantity of hit locations affected derives from the size of the fire, at the gamemaster’s discretion.  For example, a torch affects only one hit location, but if caught inside a raging house fire, all their hit locations are affected."

Given those spot rules and the description of the Fire spell (a 1m radius circle of damage around a pillar of Fire that can be dodged and that armour, Protection and Resistance are effective against) I'd say the intent is it deals rolled damage, divided amongst 1D4 locations on a roughly human sized target.

But avoid fumbling that Dodge roll, as it could leave you entirely inside the damage radius - and I think I'd also want to think about making Fire damage when fully engulfed apply to both locations and total hit points.

1 hour ago, g33k said:

This appears to lead to the "use case" of somebody actively-parrying against high-velocity missiles (including bullets) coming at them from multiple directions.

Which -- unless it's a supers-level (or comparable) game, seems to me to be absurd on the face of it.

You have a 5-20% chance to parry ONCE: the second Parry will be at -30, so below zero chance of succeeding (remember, skill is NOT applicable in this case, it’s purely about the size of the shield). So a 1/20 - 1/5 chance that the shield happens to be in the right place to foul ONE high velocity missile attack.

It would be nice if the Shield tables in the equipment section made explicit use of the terms "half or small", "full" and "large" for the shields, rather than leaving one to infer them... 

Just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons... my interpretation of the rules on Page 153:

Quote

As described on page 132, while used in hand-to-hand combat a half or small shield has a base 15% chance to block a missile, a full shield has a 30% chance to block a missile, and a large shield has a 60% chance. If your character kneels behind it, a full shield has a 60% chance to block a missile, and a large shield has a 90% chance. Only successes are blocked; special successes and critical hits are assumed to strike their intended targets. If your character is trying to parry a very fast missile weapon, such as an energy weapon or firearm, they have only the shield’s base chance as the chance of success.

and page 132:

Quote

Your character parries melee attacks with their shield just as they would a hand weapon. Against missile weapons, a half or small shield has a base 15% chance to block a missile, a full shield has a 30% chance to block a missile, and a large shield has a 60% chance. If your character kneels behind it, a full shield has a 60% chance to block a missile, and a large shield offers a 90% chance. These values are used in place of your character’s skill rating.

Use Case One: Against a melee attack. Parry with Shield using Shield skill. Multiple parry penalty applies.

Use Case Two: Against a low velocity missile. Parry with Shield using Shield Skill but possibly with a bonus if the base chance boost from page 125 increases skill (e.g. Kite versus a thrown Axe is +45%). Multiple parry penalty applies.

Use Case Three: Against a high velocity missile. Parry with Shield using table listed base chances only. Multiple parry penalty applies.

Use Case Four: Hunker down behind shield. Shield has a flat chance to block ALL normal missile successes, but has no effect on special or critical missile successes. Multiple parry penalty does not apply.

The problem comes about because it Elric! (from where much of this rules text, but not all of it, comes), one could not Parry missiles at all. There was passive blocking, but Parry was only possible against melee attacks. Ah well.

5 hours ago, JDGwf said:

Am I missing something? If a tiny halfling successfully grapples a giant robot (from a raised platform), and the halfling chooses to " Knockdown Target (Head/Chest/Abdomen): The attacker automatically overbears the target, dragging both characters prone. The target must make an Agility roll or suffer 1 point of general damage (or to a random hit location)." (p42)

How does Frodo knock down Ultraman? I understand there are some overbearing rules on page and the resistance table, but Rules as Read the robot is knocked down.

Should this be clarified?

What's Ultraman's Grapple skill? And their STR and SIZ , exactly? Because in some games, if the Halfling manages the roll, fair play to them.... 

More generally, from this "...multiple attackers can attempt to grapple a single target, though no more than two attackers can hold any one location..." I would infer that the Grapple rules as written assume "typical" humanoids (i.e. baseline SIZ of 2D6+6) being involved, and would house rule that beyond a certain multiple of SIZ, a smaller entity CANNOT meaningfully Grapple  larger - say 3 x SIZ - So a SIZ 7 Halfling CAN grapple a SIZ18 human, but NOT a SIZ 22 Troll. Probably have a reverse penalty as well (So for the Troll, trying to grapple the Halfling is hard, but for the human it's a normal roll). The exact thresholds are somewhat arbitrary, but the intent is clear, I hope.

Or, more succinctly, what Soltakss said.

On 4/15/2023 at 4:15 AM, pansophy said:

Removing the amount of Combat skills for not so combat heavy games, using only: Brawl, Melee, Firearms, Heavy Weapons & Throw. 

Mine are Unarmed (fighting not holding anything), Melee (fighting with things in your hands), Missile (throwing and other ranged weapons powered and aimed in the same action - javelins, bows etc), and Projectiles (ranged weapons where aiming and powering are separate actions: crossbows, fire arms etc).

I also these days use a lot of “specialisations” -  Weapon Groups in Magic World are specialisations for example. But they can also be a style: so Duelling is a potential Melee or Unarmed specialisation; Firearms FIBUA (Fighting in Built Up Areas) and Marksmanship potential Projectile specialisations. I tend to make field, artillery and siege weapons specialisation by technology / role in Projectiles.

I should really do something with my draft Magic World / BRP companion…

20 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

We often see "Community Content" like Jonstown Compendium or Miskatonic Repository as if it is some kind of shop window that helps us easily find the content we want. But it's first and foremost an IP licensing scheme.

On the contrary, CCPs happen to be IP licensing schemes (and that is why they appeal to IP owners), but their appeal to the customer base is in fact primarily as a community shop window for purchasers - that's why they have worked so well for IP owners like Chaosium, WotC, Free League etc. The people buying from the DMs Guild, Free League Workshop, JC or MR? They largely don't care about the licensing niceties, they just want MORE content for the Forgotten Realms / D&D 5e, Coriolis / the Year Zero Engine, Call of Cthulhu or Glorantha; and the sheer volume of material published through CCPs these days makes it pretty clear that the overwhelming majority of fan-publishers have weighed up the overheads and are happy with them.

CCP's are legitimised fan fiction. They let fans indulge their desire to riff on the thing they are fan of with a gloss of legitimacy, but in a way that lets the IP owner retain control of their IP, and without the attendant risks to their IP that unrelated fan fic brings. And they give a game crowd-sourced support at a fraction of the cost that the same volume of support from the game publisher would require.

Now, absolutely, BRP has far less to offer in a CCP to potential fan publishers than games which are built around specific settings / extensive IPs. But the BRP monograph program, for all its many flaws, demonstrated there was some interest in creating material specifically for BRP, not just Chaosium's own settings, that could be released with that "gloss of legitimacy", and a desire and willingness to purchase such material. Is the actual revenue Chaosium would raise enough to justify / cover the overhead of such a scheme? That's Chaosium's call: but a CCP for BRP would be "exposing" far less Chaosium IP than any of its other CCPs, and the fact that the monograph program (with all its flaws and lack of effort / resources from then Chaosium management) wasn't a huge commercial success is a poor guide to how a better conceived / executed BRP CCP program might do.

20 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

Sure, there are advantages to the support with publishing that the CC programs provide, and the shop window aspect, but with the ORC licensed systems you're out of the playground and into the wilderness. You don't need to ask, you just create, and sell. Plenty of people already do this on DTRPG, ORC just lets them adapt an existing rules system if they prefer to do so, or to sell add-ons to it.

Yes - but bluntly people could ALREADY do exactly that BEFORE this release - so what was the point of this? Yes, we now get to put the "Powered By BRP" logo on something if we use this... But there are multiple alternative D100 open games one could adapt and use, and other non D100 systems that one could work with as well, most of which have more support and backing from their originators BRP-UGE has currently.

The folk who would be happy to be "...into the wilderness"? They are ALREADY out there and BRP under ORC will barely register with them - they have a plethora of "open" licensed D100 rule sets already to work with and are doing so. They HAVE been doing so for well over a decade. If this is nothing but yet another attempt to put that genie back in the bottle somehow it is laughably too late (and already long failed); if it is just a quick cash in on WotC's spectacular PR fumble at the start of this year with no follow through behind it, it will garner some modest interest and then fade away: and, purely personally as first and foremost not an RQ or CoC but a BRP fan, that would be a shame.

20 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

Maybe you could articulate more clearly exactly what you'd want from a BRP CC program that would justify the loss of freedom that BRP UGE under ORC has already provided?

A BRP CCP would provide a platform for BRP fans (we exist, and we don't all regard RQ / CoC as the be all and end all of BRP...) to indulge our desire to support the game we are a fan of with greater reach and recognition than simply hurling ORC based publications in to the open void of the internet.  A CCP program could make available some basic layout templates / guidelines, some useful graphic components (where does one get a print ready file of the "Powered by Basic Roleplaying" logo exactly?) to help get fans started, and would help promote the new core book and provide a ready eco-system of potential support for other more substantial BRP - ORC based projects.

18 hours ago, Korzhin iz Adban said:

I have had what I think is a great idea for a Lovecraftesque mini-campaign which, however, is not suited for The Miskatonic Repository, according to Michael O'Brian.

Will we be able to publish it on Drivethrurpg, via some kind of licencing-program?
Or is that yet unknown?

The ORC license is an open license - provided your work conforms to its requirement, you can attempt to publish it by any method the license is compatible with.

 But currently there is no Community Content Program for generic BRP based material (using ORC or any other arrangement).

21 minutes ago, g33k said:

"Lovecraftesque" is a bit of a (c) minefield.  There's plenty of public-domain content... and also plenty that's NOT in the public domain.

This might prove useful to such an endeavour: https://cthulhureborn.wordpress.com/2023/04/03/the-open-mythos-a-free-open-resource-for-ttrpgs/

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/431991/Basic-Roleplaying-Universal-Game-Engine?cPath=74_5621 up at DTRPG...

And at Chaosium: https://www.chaosium.com/basic-roleplaying-universal-game-engine-pdf

Isn’t Chaosium HQ somewhere like Ann Arbour, Michigan these days? That’s, err, 5 hours behind London UK? So in all seriousness, I won’t be expecting anything until mid to late afternoon UK time. I can be patient. Honest. 😬

5 hours ago, Ravenheart87 said:

Only three more days left! I don't have the patience to watch Salt & Serpent. Did anyone glean any interesting information from the stream about what the new edition will be like?

I'm hoping it shows up on YouTube at some point as I loathe Twitch with a passion.

That's my hope...