1d8+DB

Hmmm. Perhaps you're being overly ambitious? I would collapse the 'Ages' into three myself: pre-industrial (neo-lithic up to Renaissance), industrial (Steam up to Atom Age), and information age (beginning of internet age up to trans-human/cyberpunk era). I don't think the distinctions are otherwise, game-wise, that significant.

I hear that there's a 'director's cut' that you can only find in Europe! 😉

I suspect there's a quite a bit of importance attached to  who specifically you're fighting.

Tribal Enemies, enemies from within your home culture (in the default setting this would be Sartarites). 

Out of Tribe enemies, enemies from foreign cultures (in the default setting this would most likely be Lunars).

And  'Enemies of All'; bandits, oath-breakers, and the Chaos-tainted.

In the latter it would be straight up 'Murder Hobo' time: kill them, and if they have anything that won't give me a disease or poison my soul with Chaos, take it.

Out of Tribe Enemies would involve personal ransoms, but not necessarily equipment; though much captured equipment might end as a temple offering (no self-respecting Thane is going to want to be seen wearing a khopesh!). 

For Tribal Enemies there's probably a lengthy period of negotiation before the combat;  how long will we fight, what are the boundaries of the battle-field, who are the healers. Part of this negotiation might involve staking 'prizes'. 'If we lose you get two mounts of your choice, and their tack. And if you lose we get Tarrek's  bronze greaves and vambraces,  and the 'Ever Plentiful Jug'. In some cases the 'prize' might be in the form of promises or favors, or even reputation bonuses: 'Tell the next three people you meet how we defeated you this day.'

So looking at the combat example  on page 115,  on round 2, when the ghoul enters melee combat with Harvey; Harvey get's a bonus die for Point Blank range  (which he then looses because he's firing off multiple rounds), there's no mention of the 'Firing Into Melee' modifier.  There's a difference between 'Firing INTO Melee' and 'Firing WHILE IN Melee'. 

In the latter case  you only use the Point Blank range modifier. If you want to be really simulationist you might require a successful Fighting Maneuver  if an individual with a long-arm (rifle) is engaged in Melee, as the shooter has to make sure the  gun-barrel is not batted aside or pushed to the side.

It's your game, and can play as you wish; but I think the intent of the designers is clear-- if you're using a fire-arm in melee, you get the Point Blank modifier (unless of course you are shooting someone beyond your immediate combatant). 

Not in a position where I can check my rulebook: but I thought the 'Firing into Melee' rule was for situations where  character A fires at character B, who is is in Melee combat with character C. The Penalty die is because A is trying to avoid hitting C. So what matters here is how close  B is to C.

So if B and C are in Melee combat, and A is  within Point Blank range (1/5 Dex) of both combatants, I would probably rule that that the Point Blank Bonus and the  Firing Into Melee Penalty cancel each other out.

So one thing you could do are  Gun Cherries (an idea used in Night's Black Agents from Pelgrane Press): minor mechanical effects that the  Play Characters can apply to their weapons; as a heavy pistol in the hands of a mook is just a heavy pistol; but a heavy pistol in the hands of a Player Character is a 'Kruge Arms S-2000 Special Model.' Let the Players create your weapon catalog.

I would consider asking for either a spend of temporary POW to active the Gun Cherry, or require a special success on the fire-arms roll; to reflect the  specialized training that the Player Character has to draw on to get the most of the weapon.

A Shoggoth?  I would say no; that's deep Mythos mojo there. A cryo-sleep chamber? Definitely.

No, as the OP noted,  it appears to be a real, though rare cartridge: it looks like it had two major iterations, the 1877 Colt, and  the .41 Remington Magnum (from 1963).

Yeah, the 'Powers' are the way to go: I was thinking of Teleportion instead of Super Movement, but that works.

I wonder about using Passions to manage the Pact, Loyalty to the Bureau vs. Demonic Corruption as oppositional drives. Also, depending on how dark you want the tone,  you might want to incorporate Sanity Rules, as  being a conduit for demonic powers might be somewhat traumatizing. 

I wouldn't discount the 'psychic influence' of the Mythos. Just finished F. Paul Wilson's 'Conspiracies', the 3rd book in his 'Repairman Jack' series, which is Mythos 'adjacent'; and there's definitely a kind of mental miasma in places where the 'Otherness' has bled through (the hotel hosting the SESOUP conference and the basement of Melanie's house). 

Obviously in no way canonical, but it suggests how entities of Mythos might just radiate 'wrongness' in a non-visual way. 

Personally, if I brought this to the table I would most likely use the combat mechanics/equipment list from Openquest, the Passions/Factions from RD/BRP/Pendragon/Mythras, and the Magic/Sanity rules from CoC/Dark Ages. 

On 3/8/2023 at 8:54 AM, Valvorik said:

Would the rules work for that sort of game?

I would see no reason why not.  

The main change would be the absence of  gunpowder weapons (save for a rare 'handgonne' or 'bombard').  The Close Combat weapons list would be largely unchanged (though you might want to lose the rapiers and side-swords).

You might have to fudge the armor definitions a bit;  substituting mail for buff-coats for instance.

Pretty much the main 'mechanical' difference between a renaissance period game and a late medieval period game is going to be the growing prevalence of gun-powder weapons. Everything else, the social and cultural changes, the transition from feudal states to  absolute monarchies for example, are just going to be matters of roleplaying 'fluff.'

How many monsters should a TTFRPG have?

I like 'Bestiaries': I have vols. 1 thru 5 for PF 1e. They're lots of fun and I get a lot of inspiration from them, but I don't think having hundreds, or thousands, of monsters is necessary for a great campaign.

How much really comes down to just a few numbers in the stat-block?

There is the old bit of 'DM' advice about 'The Bear'. X Hit points, X Armor Points, a Bite and a Claw attack doing X damage. Change up the description It's an a savage denizen of the deep woods. Its an emaciated, shambling undead. It's a scaled, reptilian survivor of a lost world. Its a Bite and Claw attack. Multiple monsters from the same stat-block.

The same monster can yield up a wildly different 'feel' depending on the encounter context.

Run into a party of broo/orcs in the wilderness. Fight them before the gates of a beleaguered village, or face them in their subterranean lair. Same monsters, different encounters requiring different Player Character tactics.

In a setting where 'Nightvision' isn't ubiquitous environmental conditions can radically change an encounter. Can you even see what's creeping beyond the circle of torch-light.? So the terrain and other conditions can and should bring variety to encounters.

Monsters can be categorized by their combat roles: mooks, 'snipers' with ranged attacks, perhaps magical ones; creatures which do brutal damage; creatures which can only be harmed by select attacks; and creatures which can target character abilities and equipment. Monsters in different combinations of these roles can lead to a lot of varied play.

A troll with a pack of zombie servitors at night in a humid swamp.

A giant and his wolves in an alpine pass while a blizzard rages.

An encounter with a monster should be more than just putting a miniature on the table.

Finally, for the 'grim-dark' style I prefer; having ten different types of humanoids for each terrain type is just silly.

I think generally my games probably break down as follows:

40% Human. Peasants, traders, nobles and their entourages, bandits, raiders, and cultists.

25% Non-humans. What-ever intelligent non-humans are present in the setting.

10% Animals. Could include mega-fauna, dinosaurs, or 'giant' variants.

15% Mythic/Magical. Your dragons, basilisks, giant's etc.

8% Sorcery-spawned. Undead, demons, constructs, and the like.

1%. Unique. Legendary creatures, fallen gods, vortices of sentient magic, planar travelers.

So there's an  indie game of  'colloborative' story-telling and narrative role-playing called 'Microscope'.  You can play  and create epic arcs ('The Five Thousand Reign of the God Emperor'), zeroing in on specific periods ('The Trade Wars') and key figures ('Lady Rhaya Mhazil of the Ardara Counting House'). I thought I would like to try it to create a back-ground/history for use in a more conventional TTRPG.  You could also use it to to create a narrative frame-work that you could then slot your  PD/BRP 'mini-campaigns' into for a generational/supra-historical game.

So its not  an OSR, but '13th Age' might be a possibility; it's pretty much 3-4e D&D, but very much pared down and simplified.  Pretty much all the  familiar classes and  'peoples' are present.

Some brief notes on some OSR games that I own.

'Lamentations of the Flame Princess':  Pretty much a straight 'white-box' clone. Stuff written for it pretty much slews to the horror side of play, so might not be entirely appropriate for some younger players.

'Knave':  Seven pages of rules only.  Very bare-bones. There's a  2nd edition in the pipe-line. Its only a few dollars at DrivethruRPG.

'Dungeon World':  This introduced  player-sided mechanics, which has been widely embraced in the  OSR world; only the players ever roll the dice.  There's a 20-sided mechanic: 15+ you succeed, do damage, etc.  9-14, you succeed, but the DM gets a 'Move'; they can introduce a complication (more Orcs rush into the melee), 13 or less and you fail and the  DM gets their move.

'Mork Borg':  This made a quite a splash when it came out, largely for its gonzo art-style and lay-out.  Another game with player-sided mechanics.  Rules  are pretty much reduced to a few a paragraphs.  It's grim-dark turned up to '11'.  It's goblins are terrifying (fight one, and if it survives the combat, you will become a goblin).

'Warlock' and 'Warpstar':  The first is fantasy while the second is  space-opera.  Heavily influenced  by  the Warhammer line, with 'Careers' and  'Wound tables'.  Besides your skills  you only have two characteristics: 'Luck' and 'Stamina' (hit-points).

And to finish I'll name-drop three that I don't  have, but  appear to have large followings:

'Dungeon Crawl Classics'.

'Index Card RPG.'

'Old School Essentials.'

As I see   it it comes down to two things: lethality and  character potentiality.

Games with fixed hit points, like the BRP family, don't allow characters to easily blow past mooks: even a goblin  with a pointed stick can, with a good enough roll, take down the mighty warrior-thane, and if there's enough of them, soaking up your parries and dodges...

Then there's  super-heroic power levels represented by 10+ lvl. D&D  characters. Now it is possible to play characters of this level in BRP games (Jaleel the Razoress, Elric, etc.),  but it isn't an inevitable progression, like it seems to be in most D&D campaigns, and  there's the issue of power creep in the latest iterations of D20 games.  Even a 3rd or 4th level  5E (or Pathfinder 2) character is pretty powerful compared to their BRP equivalent, with plenty of Feats, Talents, Class Abilities and the like.

So to me games like MW, and the like, are the TTRPG  equivalent of  Sword and Sorcery sagas like Conan or Elric; while D&D is  Wuxia and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Personally I think it comes down to  a difference between 'cool' and 'heroic', with MW being under the latter; but ultimately it's largely a matter of taste.

Deranged and dangerous foes of  the Mythos are somewhat surprisingly inconspicuous in the literature. It would seem to be  a natural theme for the Delta Green  setting ('We had to destroy the village in order to save it.')

The ultra-paranoid, and hyper-violent pair, from the film "The Void"  would be good templates.

So, as I understand it you are  wanting  a setting agnostic system based on a  percentile dice mechanic, and the BRP system is a little bit minimal? These are what  I see your options as.

1.) Use what online resources are available, and fill in the gaps; mainly this forum and the many RQ/CoC tutorials. As the latter games are extrapolated from the basic BRP mechanic they should be useful.

2.) Purchase the  RQiG and CoC starter kits (PDFs available for about 10$). Each one has a starter solitaire scenario that teaches  basic games rules  and concepts. You should be able to get a good grasp of what is possible with a BRP derived system.

3.) Check out Alephtar Games 'D100 Revolution': which is a setting-agnostic percentile dice based system. They have a sub-forum here.

4.) BuRPS. Don't like the 3d6 roll in GURPS? Swap it out with a percentile roll. Your GURPS barbarian has a broadsword skill of 16? Welll multiply that by 5% and you have a percentile based skill (and yes, I know the math doesn't exactly track; a 3-18 range will actually break  down to a little over 6%, but it should work).

Yeah,  I don't think that BRP was really in print long enough to create the kind of fan-base that would create video tutorials for it. Compared to other setting-agnostic systems (GURPS/SAVAGEWORLDS/FATE) it seems be more of a tool-kit for RQ/CoC players that want to branch out, than a stand-alone system too; at least that's kind of the  feeling I get from it. 

Mechanically, RQ:RPiG (RuneQuest: Role-playing in Glorantha) is a little bit closer to BRP than 7th ed. CoC (as RQ:RPiG still retains the 'controversial' Resistance Table). Though both games are probably close enough that  that you should be able to get a basic idea of gameplay from tutorials for either game.

It might help to know what kind of game/genre you were looking to use it for: high fantasy, space-opera, swash-buckling adventure on the high seas?

Typically, and no doubt a lot of this is due to the influence of D&D, I would resolve the rolls as they come up, with the possibility of players altering their actions depending on the result of the roll, and I imagine this is how most people play. However, there's something to the idea of forcing people to commit to a statement of intent. 

Realistically most people's reaction time would force them to 'follow through' even if the situation changed. Perhaps you have to have a certain Dexterity minimum to 'improvise' in combat.

Consider this scenario:

The beast-man swings at the hero. The hero states he'll attempt to dodge. The beast-man misses, but the hero fumbles his dodge, 'he slips on some offal on the cave-floor and falls'.

Ultimately it is your game,  and I don't think either way is 'wrong'. I suspect forcing  people to commit to a Statement of Intent is  probably more in line with what the game designers intended.

It's been a while since I've read  the 7ed. rules, but if I remember correctly combat should be treated a near simultaneous 'exchange'.

So, at the beginning of the round, Lady Luckless is being held by a Cultist. She attempts to break his hold,  which immediately triggers his reaction: he's not letting go. If there's a clear Pass/Fail in the results, then what happens is pretty obvious.

If both succeed, or both fail, I would think one of the following outcomes would be likely:

• Lady Luckless frees herself, but incurs another disadvantage: she falls, she looses the knap-sack holding the dynamite, etc.
• Lady Luckless frees herself, but incurs damage.
• Lady Luckless doesn't free herself, but gains advantage; she shifted herself and her captor closer to the door, she gets one arm free, etc.
• Lady Luckless doesn't free herself, but manages to injure her captor.

I would probably ask the Players what outcome they would most like to see; that, within reason,  would allow for maximum 'fun'.

But again,  I could probably do with some refresher time with the rules.

My opinion, in Case #3, is  that the held character is only given one chance to break the grapple that round. If she doesn't break the hold,  she cannot  take ANY action, including defensive actions, for that round. This is the point at which your attackers  deliver a merciless beat-down. 

Short-tailed River Stingray

Any fans of “River Monsters” here?

A menace to the people and animals that live along sub-tropical rivers; not because they're particularly aggressive, but because when resting in the shallows, these animals are almost perfectly camouflaged, and when stepped on they lash out powerfully with a bodkin-like spine in their muscular tail.

A spine covered with a mucus that hosts colonies of flesh-eating bacteria.

The saucer like body of these creatures can reach a diameter of over 1.5 meters and weight of 220 kg. Note that the characteristic ranges provided are intended to represent the rare 'giants' among these animals.

STR 2d6+6 (14)

CON 3d6 (9)

SIZ 4d6+6 (20)

DEX 2d6+6 (14)

INT 2

POW 3d6 (9)

APP –

Hit Points: 14

Damage

Bonus: +1d6

Armor: 3 points leathery hide

Move: 10 (Swimming)

Attack: Tail-lash(with spine)

%: 30+3d10

Damage: 1d6+1+DB

Notes:  Impaling. When using hit-locations, against bipeds and quadrupeds most likely locations

are going to be the lower limbs.

Necrotic Toxin

POT 16. Causes suppurating wounds that are very slow to heal (1d4 additional points

of damage every 24 hours would be one possible option.)

Skills:

Hide against river bottom 80%.

The Supernatural Variant.

For a fantasy or horror game. INT is now 3d6 and POW 3d6+6. The toxin requires a difficult ritual to stop the gangrene-like decay (most likely involving a contest of POW between the healer and the 'devil-ray'). Those who succumb to the toxin leave their graves shortly there-after, shambling to the river where the ray dwells. There they burrow into the gelatinous mud at the river's bottom. They're now the undead servitors of the creature, a kind of aquatic zombie. Each ray will have 1d6 such zombie slaves. These rays are also very like to have some sorcery. Common spells possessed by a 'death-ray' are: Summon Water Elemental, Sorcerer's Armor, Sorcerer's Razor, and Summon Demon. Any summoned demons will have an affinity for water and aquatic environments.

So it's probably pretty likely that HPL got it  wrong about  pre-human ruins, like the City of the Elder Things, surviving over millions of years into the current era (the Anthropocene epoch). Pretty much no structure, made of normal matter, is going to withstand over a million years of exposure to the elements, and tectonic movement. The glaciers would have ground the Elder Thing City into dust before the mammoths died out.

If human being disappeared today, in a million years  the only  traces we would leave behind would be the presence of radioactive isotopes and  plastic micro-particles.

So if you wanted to incorporate  pre-human ruins in your game, and you want to do it 'realistically', what would you do?

A couple of thoughts:

1.) They're self-repairing. You could have ageless 'repair' shoggoths  waging an endless war against epochs of desuetude. Or perhaps a creeping tide of 'gray ooze' nanites, constantly reabsorbing and rebuilding; in this case the 'ruins'  could actually be expanding, and will perhaps one day cover the planet!

2.) What million years? There could be some relativistic time-dilation occurring within the ruins; so that, within a certain area,  only centuries, or even decades have passed since they were abandoned. This would be particularly effective for  play in  a modern setting; GPS and cell-phone coverage is not going to work  in a area that is out of synch with the local time flow by twenty-million or more years!

3.) They're not made of normal matter. They would be impervious to any tools, to any analysis. A citadel of 'dark matter' perhaps (hmm, invisible in just about the whole spectrum)?

Any other ideas? 

A real minimalist approach would  be to just simply use crew roles, with  a single percentage rating assigned to the role. So a character might be Command/Ship's Operations, Sciences, Medical, Engineering, or Security. Additionally  you  could split the rating, a bridge officer might be Command 60%, Security 25%, and Engineering 15% (simply dividing 100% here). It's not particularly realistic, but it is somewhat aligned to the source material.  Everything comes down to the color of your uniform!

Anything that doesn't fall within  a crew roll would be down to characteristic rolls.