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Everything posted by NickMiddleton
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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?
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Against a similarly skilled opponent, a master swordsman wouldnât 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 itâs 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: âevenâ 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 arĂȘte 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 favourâŠ
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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 thatâs Gloranthan specific). I donât 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 werenât 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 âdemonicâ 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.
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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 itâs 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 Chaosiumâs back catalogue to get re-released alas.
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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 itâs 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 âteleportâ 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 thatâs 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.
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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 wouldnât 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).
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Serendipitously, I have reached out to Chaosium privately to clarify the status of Outpost 19 earlier today. I canât 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 canât speak definitively for anyone else, but if Chaosium are content that rights to Outpost 19 have reverted to me, Iâd 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.
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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... ...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, đ
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Iâd guess itâs 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.
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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).
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An old question: Area damage and Location HP
NickMiddleton replied to Lloyd Dupont's topic in Basic Roleplaying
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 characterâs 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 gamemasterâs 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. -
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, itâs 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.
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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: and page 132: 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.
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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.
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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 âspecialisationsâ - 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 companionâŠ
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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. 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. 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.
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Will ORC let us publish BRP books on Drivethrurpg?
NickMiddleton replied to Korzhin iz Adban's topic in Basic Roleplaying
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). This might prove useful to such an endeavour: https://cthulhureborn.wordpress.com/2023/04/03/the-open-mythos-a-free-open-resource-for-ttrpgs/ -
That's my hope...
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BRP-based Magic World now available again in POD format
NickMiddleton replied to MOB's topic in Basic Roleplaying
I am biased, but I don't care - I am SO pleased to see this happen, especially when Chaosium clearly have such a huge full slate of higher profile and clearly more immediately commercially rewarding projects being worked on. -
Just so bloody pleased to see this happen!