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Darkholme

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Posts posted by Darkholme

  1. IIRC Mongoose no longer has the "Elric of Melnibone" license, which is why you can't but PDFs of any mongoose elric stuff nor Chaosium elric stuff.

     

    I believe that's what p_clapham is referring to.

     

    I doubt we're going to see Talons of Winter any time in the near future.

  2. When the announcement that Mongoose had surrendered the licence back to Michael Moorcock, and the PDFs were no longer available, came out, I did a bit of asking around. I got in contact with Howard Morhaim, Mr Moorcock's agent in the US. Howard was nice enough to answer my questions about the licence and stated that they had been approached by another well known company aboutit (this was 9 months or so ago). I was unable to secure any rights myself (as I was unable to offer any money :P ), but he did say that their goal was to make sure the older material stayed available as far as possible. 

     

    I know that doesn't quite answer the question you asked, but I thought you'd find it interesting...

     

    Marcus (who wishes he had a few thousand dollars free to get the EC licence!)

    So then, they may become available again some time in the near-ish future, perhaps?

  3. A few weeks ago, I had a dilemna about low damage-dealing weapons vs high armor and people offered alot of really good suggestions(most of which can be found in the rules btw). However alot of it went against my creed of simplier and faster. I really wanted to have it where every turn, some dynamic of combat changed, did not like the situation of hitting the same thing and not scoring some damage for alot of turns. So I asked my question to my players, after some dicussion we've thought to add power attack and deadly aim from Pathfinder. The idea is that any attack can sacrifice accuracy for damage, every 5% of accuracy can be sacrificed to add 1 extra point of damage. This allows combat to flow pretty quickly, while keeping the advantages of wearing plate mail since you have to stack more damage to reliably penetrate it.

     

    What do you guys think of it?

    So Power Attack?

     

    It could work.

    I've been toying with the idea of changing weapons myself. I've been toying with the idea of RQ6 style flat armor (but without hit locations) and more importantly, removing damage rolls. My thought was that for every 5% you succeeded by, you add damage to your attack, depending on your weapon, and all weapons do 1+amount based on the attack roll. So if someone rolls well enough, they can kill a man in plate armor with a punch. Currently my idea involves a table, so that a greatsword will do more damage, faster. It's hardly a fleshed out idea, and you would have to Iron out the kinks/refine it, but you might be able to do something with it.

  4. I don't care what name you call it just give me scenarios, scenarios or adventures, adventures maybe even campaigns, campaigns. Pleeeeeease

    Once Classic Fantasy is out, you should be able to pull out adventures written for AD&D, D&D BECMI/RC, or OD&D and run them in RQ6 just replacing statblocks. You might even be able to manage it with 3.5/Pathfinder/5e.

    • Like 1
  5. I've peeked through the PDF a bit, it looks interesting.  Wizards end up with more spells than clerics at first level.  Still not a fan of the Vancian magic system.  One of the reasons I prefer Runequest or D&D 4E.

    I don't mind Vancian casting for magic, but it really bothers me when someone puts an X uses/ time period limit on most abilities.

  6. I doubt Moorcock will sell you a copy of Elric! RPG in either dead tree or pdf format. He had a falling out with Chaosium a long time ago, which is why Mongoose was the last company to produce a Young Kingdoms oriented RPG.

    I heard about that. From what I understand from his forums, Chaosium sublicensed out Corum, and he says they didn't even have a license for Corum.

     

    I can see that falling out being a reason he wouldn't want you to give your money to Chaosium, but I would think if you were handing him money directly for digital copies of licensed products which he has the rights to and the original company no longer does, he wouldn't turn down free money.

  7. Does anyone know if/where I can buy a pdf-version of Elric! rpg? (The chaosium version).

    I know I have pretty much the same ruleset in MW, but the Elric book has such nice art/layout, I want it in pdf also.

    Ive got the dead tree version already.

    Unless it's for sale by Chaosium, I don't think you will have any luck,

     

    I picked it up a while back on DTRPG, but when Mongoose lose the Elric license, they stopped selling it there.

     

    You can't find any of Mongoose's Elric stuff in PDF format these days either. So when it comes to PDFs, I think you're likely out of luck until the next time there's a license for it.

     

    You could try contacting Moorcock, maybe he has the ability to sell copies of the RPG, since they had to license it from him anyways.

  8. Players are free to object when I don't use feats in the 5E games I run, but to no avail. Feats are the number one reason for referee burnout and munchkinism. On the other hand, I'm sad to see skills downgraded - the only reason I got into 3E in the first place was because they introduced a skill system. In fact, on-and-off I tinker with a d20 game that is entirely skill-based, and has no levels. It's quite interesting.

    Ah. When I say "strongly object" I mean they would likely be a requirement for me to want to play in a 5e game. I would object so strongly as to say "I don't think I'm going to be interested in this campaign guys". and would proceed to play other systems with my group instead. (I might be convinced to try it once with great hesitation, but I am pretty sure that my opinion on the matter wouldn't change and I would drop it 3 or 4 sessions in).

     

    From my perspective, the selectable feats are the most important aspect of D&D character creation, they are what makes characters feel different from one another. Especially with the way they handle skills in 4e/5e, where your skill bonus is fixed rather than based on a massive pool of points which you spread around (like in Pathfinder).

     

    An entirely skill-based d20 system might be interesting, depending on how it was handled; but that's not 5e. 5e without feats is a system where there is basically a single character of each race & class, and all others are almost exact copies of that one.

  9. Yes, it uses feats (though those feats are supposed to be a bigger deal), but you get like, half as many opportunities for them, and they also serve as your opportunities to increase your stats. They're also mentioned as "optional" in that you might get stat increases but not be allowed to take feats (though most of the people I've talked to have said they would strongly object if a GM told them no feats).

  10. Haha. Oh wow. Such awful puns. :P

     

    Your post got me looking into these retro-clones. I intend to look into Castles & Crusades, LoFP, Basic Fantasy RPG, and For Gold & Glory. I've played a bit of 2eAD&D, and I picked up the collector's edition AD&D1e reprints they put out a year or two ago (and have read but not played the 1e reprint) - and I remember thinking 1e didn't have much to draw me to it, and I recall 2e being a bit too clunky & not customizable enough. We'll see how it goes though, and I could be wrong.

     

    I do like lots of 2e Adventures and Setting supplements, and converting them to 3.X can be a bit of a pain; If I don't end up liking any of the retro-clones, maybe some day I'll take a stab at my own AD&D/BD&D material-compatible retro-clone. I would be surprised if it ended up sharing any of the same rules though. I expect it would end up being a 3e/PF/4e/5e/T20/M&M3e/FC/13A inspired ruleset of some kind designed to produce statblocks with the same number patterns as used in AD&D 1e or 2e so I could pick up my Ravenloft/Faerun/Planescape stuff and run with it with more customization in character creation and without the things I recall being clunky in 2e.

     

    But maybe Darkholme will be what I'll call the Pathfinder "Retro-Clone" type thing I've already started on and have been working on in my spare time for the past couple weeks, to integrate my extensive houserules into the core book for my home games.

  11. No, but it may as well be - the existing OGL and SRDs are perfectly adequate for legally creating compatible products. I believe some were already released before the PHB, even. Of course, under the terms of the OGL you can't claim compatibility - but big, bold FIFTH EDITION sprawling across your cover will sort that out. The only question is whether WotC will provide some kind of logo licence, ala Mongoose Traveller and Legend (or the original D&D 3E licence).

    Hmm. I thought about that, I'm not sure if you could work in Advantage/Disadvantage, the terms may be trademarked. But besides that, I concur. You could make an OGL alternate core book, if you were so inclined, like a retroclone, but not retro. You ouldnt use any of the text from the 5e book, and you couldn't directly copy their tables, but beyond that, yeah; you could do it, if you really wanted to.

  12. Is 5E OGL?

    It is not; and thus far I don't think it's clear what kind of license they intend to use.

     

    The approach of making everything a "Power" is a very large part of what turned me off of 4e. I hated the "boardgamey" taste it left in my mouth, and destroyed any verisimilitude it had for me ("What do you mean I can't swing my sword the same way twice in a fight?"; "Wait, how am I swinging my sword to heal myself exactly?"; "Why can't I try to trip a dude without a magical trip power?"; "Why did I have to unlearn an old power to get a new one, and why don't I get better at them as I become more skilled"-unless you pick the upgraded versions of the same ones in which case it's "Why can I only learn to do 4-5 things?"). And aside from that, it felt like their approach for balancing classes seemed to be to just homogenize them as much as possible. The magic was dull and lackluster in comparison to 3e and 2e, being mostly a collection of blasts and the like (they removed the fun magic). The other major objections I have with it are the minis-combat-fetish it has (with all the "shift" powers it has, 4e doesn't play that well without minis and a grid), and the fact that NPCs/Monsters have virtually noting in the way of stats for outside of combat. (I have other more specific objections, like the completely butchered into uselessness Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, and retconning all kinds of creatures, such that all sorts of things are totally different if I try to use 4e for existing campaigns or settings: 3 player races, a multitude of monsters, the planes which exist). Essentially they took the parts of 3e that most turned me off, and built an entire game around it, while discarding almost all the parts I liked.

    On the positive side, I will say, that its much more logical "Pattern & Progression" based monster and NPC design was a breath of fresh air (aside from the stats/abilities that were missing), and that Mooks serve a useful purpose in superheroic campaigns. Additionally, the idea of having a crappy bonus to default to based on your level, rather than 0, was a decent idea, and the 4e offline character builder was an excellent piece of software.

    • Like 2
  13. I'll check out the free rules. I may end up sticking with 4th edition though. Of all the editions I've played/ ran it has been the easiest, and felt the most balanced.

    Hmm. I'll give you that. 4e definitely handles inter-character power balance well. I have objections to it for my own games, but character balance issues are not among them. :)

  14. Interesting. I'll have to take a look at it.

     

    A heavily-houseruled Pathfinder is one of my go-to systems, simply because IMO it's in a different category than all of the other fantasy games I've played, in the fact that is supports high powered magic once you hit the 12-18 range. That, plus the mountains of supporting material and character options.

     

    When I look at lower magic RPGs, the most fun I've had thus far was with RQ6 and MRQ2/Legend.

    • Like 1
  15. 13th Age is a pretty cool D20 game, and feels very D&D to me. I picked it up in case the only players I had available insisted on doing D&D, as it feels like a good stand in with some modern concepts. Its all self contained in one hardcover book, slightly slimmer than the BGB, so no buying the old trigfeta of Players, Dungeon Masters, and Monsters handbooks in order to be able to play the core rules.

    13th Age is a d20 game? I had not realized that. I do prefer the approach of PHB+DMG in a single core book. It's one of the things Pathfinder definitely improved upon from D&D.

     

    I exclusively went back and forth between Vampire the4 Masquerade and D&D 3.X for a good 8 years, mostly 3.X. I wasn't all that interested in 2e D&D, and I had almost no experience with other systems. D&D 3/4/PF are the only fantasy games I've seen which have the steep power curve from "stupid teenagers" to "expert demigods", and I guess I've grown rather accustomed to "setting where everyone has the potential to grow into superhuman capabilities through training" fantasy, which most other systems don't do–either you start out super powerful, or you stay within "human potential". That power curve is the biggest reason I haven't found another system which I can use to replace D&D entirely.

     

    I like the d100/BRP/RQ System, but to me it fills a lower powered niche (to do otherwise I would have to make skills and monsters scale much higher and introduce scaling hit points and much more powerful magic), which means I don't see it as a replacement for OGL3eBasedd20, but an alternative game for when I don't want characters getting to such high power levels.

     

    From what I understand, they intend to make the 5e Realms much closer to the realms as it was in the late 90's up to what it was in in 2007 at the end of 3e, I've also seen hints that they're going to deliberately support play in multiple time periods, which would be a very nice improvement.

  16. Yep, that's an old post you're linking to there, Darkholme. The D100II SRD is in version 1.3, which will probably be the last one. You could use it to write gateway-type scenarios if you know the ins and outs of the OGL. It's here on the site, too, as smjn says, as well as in the downloads section on my blog: http://dreamscapedesign.net/downloads/

    Ah. my bad. My point still stands though, that it exists. :)

     

    I have no idea what game Darkholme reminds you of. I happen to be a longtime fan of X-Men Comics & Cartoons, and Darkholme is Mystique's surname (Raven Darkholme), and it was a name I just always thought was cool. It's on the list of surnames I've been considering for about a decade (I've never really liked any part of my legal name, and have long considered changing it, but have yet to come up with the money to make it a reality or decide on what my new name would be).

  17. For me it's even worse when a large part of the text is composed of supposedly inspirational "fluff" (in my experience often just awful prose) and accounts of what must happen in my game, according to someone who is neither the GM nor a player in my game.

    Ugh; yeah. That might as well just be empty white space. Useless. Same with endless droning on with unneeded or overly long examples, or–the thing that drives me crazy with Pathfinder content, character options that are absolutely awful. They're not useful to anyone who wants to be at all effective, they're an unwanted surprise to newbies, and they only serve to block the development of good options in the future. Annoying clutter to sift through to get to the real content, which gives the developers the unfortunate impression of "We've Already Adequately Covered this Niche". These are my pet peeves in RPGs.

     

    Real Content™ is the reason I buy RPG books, not white space and filler text.

     

    But when I get a concisely written, well designed chunk of RPG content, with fluff that's useful content rather than worthless filler, using a reasonable font size and amount of white space; oh man–that's the stuff.

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