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Darkholme

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  1. Darkholme
    Oh. I should have mentioned that our character sheets routinely include artwork. Here's a link to a character sheet for a character in my currently ongoing SciFi Game being run under the Edge of the Empire Rules; so you can see what I mean. This player for some reason likes to use his own sheet templates, and uses monospaced fonts and spaces to make any tables rather than actually using tables (I've never been able to figure out what he has against actual tables, but he won't use them, even though he constantly complains about things getting misaligned when he's editing his monospaced notepad style text tables.)
  2. Darkholme
    Hmm. I don't know if this advice is helpful for you, but in our games/for our group, I (or one other guy) come up with a rough character sheet template, which is blank, using Google Docs. I then make a copy of that sheet for each player, and share editing rights with that player. Players put their character in there. The benefit is that I can see all the players' sheets at any time. If the players are cool with it, I also allow them to see and comment on eachother's sheets (but not edit). Players sometimes print the sheet out before game, and sometimes they refer to their laptop screen. I don't really care which - we've typically got 5-7 laptops on the table anyways, with only a single hard copy of the book and several people having the PDF for referencing things. It vastly speeds things up to have a search function. Only one guy doesn't have a laptop at the table, and he just got an android tablet.
  3. Darkholme
    By any chance, does anyone know of a BRP 3-Musketeers-France style supplement? Or perhaps one regarding the Mongolians or Ireland in different time periods than the fantasy mashup of things from 6th century to 15th century for Pendragon's Pagan Shore (maybe an earlier mythical Ireland, or a late dark ages Ireland, or a renaissance Ireland)? How about some stuff on Italy/Greece in different time periods? I also notice a lack of Egypt stuff. And of course, if someone could wrangle up the license for it, I would be very happy with a detailed Hyborian Era or Middle-Earth world guide. Those count as ancient pre-history, right? I have the hardcover MRQII Vikings (Vikings of Legend, but hardcover and full sized). It was quite an interesting read. I can see myself getting some of these books just for the interesting reading while on the toilet.
  4. Darkholme
    So. I've already got MRQ Pirates. . With that in mind, sell me on Blood Tide What does this new d100 Pirate book offer me that my current one does not (besides a prettier cover )?
  5. Darkholme
    I thought about this, and realized it's something I should respond to. I agree that Character design should be about the cultures of X and Y and what makes them interesting in relation to the world, your concept, the other players, etc. I disagree with your notion that Races should not be designed to be "balanced" against one another, because otherwise, it becomes difficult to incorporate characters of different races into the same party. Difficult in that one player's character can be overshadowed in nearly every area by another player's character, and that's just not very fun for the one being overshadowed - at least not according to anyone I've gamed with. It means it works out okay so long as all of the PCs are of the same race, but things can become rather tricky once someone wants to play an elf, or a disir, how do you work that in without some players feeling left behind? There are a variety of approaches that can be taken, obviously, and finding one that is a good counterbalance to the various included races can be tricky in some cases. But if you have a pool of "typical adventurer races" which are at a comparable baseline power level, then that can make your work much easier, as you can say "choose one of these 5 (or 12, or 25, or 10, or whatever) races". And that's not to say you need D&D's CR's and all that stuff to do it, for example Shadowrun does a decent job balancing several playable races against one another.
  6. Darkholme
    Hmm. As you mentioned above, Elves are much more long lived than humans. When you want to bust out the mythic-powered thousand year old elven mage, you can still do it. And just because there's an elven baseline which the players adhere to, that doesn't mean that the elven NPCs you encounter in towns should be close to that baseline. Perhaps by elven standards, the PC elves are incredibly inexperienced, and not very useful, and its only once they've gained that experience that they catch up to and eventually surpass typical members of their society. (I would expect these elves to have attributes in the same range as the PC elves, but much higher skills) But inside the group of PCs, you do want them close to the same level of awesome; if only so that none of the players are playing sidekick to the others (because that's just not very fun, most of the time - though it CAN be entertaining if you have something to compensate for it, like tremendous replenishing stores of luck, to make up for your much lower competency - but in that case you're just as awesome, just not as "powerful"). Of course, your approach of "Give humans more non-attribute stuff" could also work, but it'll be hard to determine just how many extra skills for humans equate to the best collection of attributes your PCs have.
  7. Darkholme
    Hmm. Interesting thought MatteoN. That would be a way to make your randomly generated stats even out a bit more, if you go with the random stats rule. I was mostly referring to the discrepancy between different races, such as how Elves in Legend are basically humans, but better, with no weakness to offset that. Your idea of giving humans extra stuff at character creation to somewhat offset their lower attributes is an interesting one. You could also go the Pathfinder route, and give humans an attribute boost they can put in whatever attribute they want, to make up for the larger fixed bonuses possessed by the other races.
  8. Darkholme
    Haha. Cute.
  9. Darkholme
    Huh. Obviously I wasn't running the default setting, and therefore mixed race parties were not much of a setting issue. The first session or two was a game of Dawn of Worlds, where we collaborately designed the setting, including introducing the major races determining their relations. I added a bit onto dawn of worlds based on a friend's suggestion so that the players started with the collaborative design of gods and pantheons. But yeah, in game, I noticed that the players who chose races with additional dex (such as elves) were just better in combat because they would get more turns; and those with additional int quickly gained the ability to surpass everyone in whatever rolls they chose to make. @Atg: Yeah, I do have some expectations coming from Pathfinder and D&D when it comes to the intelligent races. I would prefer if the races are fairly closely balanced, such that players playing them get a fairly equal opportunities to "be awesome" from a narrative standpoint. My experience was that the elf characters got to be awesome significantly more often than their human counterparts (and in legend elves have no such weakness to iron, either) - a gap which was there from the start, and continued to grow as the game went on due to how skill improvement works. I don't really have pathfinder expectations regarding the difficulty of encounters, however. I understand that RQ/BRP has a much lower power curve, and that a lucky shot from a peasant can kill an experienced adventurer. And I understand that in RQ/BRP the default assumption is usually not "fight to the last man!" like it is in Pathfinder (though, if you're playing in a Lord of the Rings game and you've crossed paths with the orcs of Moria...). FYI in Pathfinder, an encounter with a CR of your Level (or your level+1) is supposed to be roughly an encounter you have a 50/50 chance of survival if you do it by yourself - in a fight with the whole party, an encounter with a CR of your level +4 or +5 is supposed to be one with about a 50/50 chance of wiping out a 4 man party, assuming an equal quality of tactics. When running Pathfinder I often throw its experience rules out the window and replace them with a more Shadowrun style level advancement, but being able to tell how threatening an encounter is to the party is still a useful thing to be able to do.
  10. Darkholme
    Oh; neat. I'll have to check that out. I hadn't realized it covered magic, I thought it was just races and professions. That's much more useful than I thought.
  11. Darkholme
    So, when I last ran a BRP game (Mongoose's Legend), the players wanted to play a wide variety of different species (as is often the case with my group) and I indulged them (as is often the case in games I run). I believe we had an elf, a dwarf, a human, a viking (MRQII Vikings) and something else. Anyways, what came up in play was that races with specific attribute bonuses simply resulted in more powerful characters. IIRC, INT was the best stat long term, because it meant they got higher skill than everyone else when you leveled up. Short term, they wanted Dex (strike rank), followed by Siz for martial characters, and Pow for magic characters. Does this just not show up in other people's games? Are my experiences that elves are just better than humans anomalous? Do mixed-race parties just not come up in other people's campaigns? Does the power disparity exist and just not present itself as problematic? Addage: I came to BRP from a D&D3/3.5/Pathfinder background, wherein multispecies adventuring parties are the norm (and I tend to push it far in D&D, working in erinyes and minotaurs and lizardfolk and satyrs and gnolls as player options if they request them); if that just doesn't really work in BRP, that would be very unfortunate.
  12. Darkholme
    Has anyone here used a BRP Game to run a campaign set in a D&D setting like the Forgotten Realms? Did you just handwave the D&D Magic & Spells into BRP Magic & Spells, or is there some kind of Vancian Magic and/or D&D Spell-List conversion kicking around somewhere?
  13. Darkholme
    I do agree with Auyl. Having a separate general board could be better, if only because the Chaosium guys might feel the same way as Loz does regarding RQ6 - that the BRP board is being diluted with all of the non-chaosium discussion.
  14. Darkholme
    Haha. I'm sure I can run the game just fine with MW/AS, I wasn't trying to say MW is not a complete game or anything like that, or that I couldn't plug in options from other BRP games. Let me rephrase the question. What are some of the interesting mechanical subsystems which I might want to use that are not present in MW, or AS, or RQ6, or Legend? The RQIII Ki system and (RQ4/MRQ1?) Special Type selection are a good example of what I was looking for. This could be anything from interesting magic systems not in those books, to tables of equipment, to spot rules, to additional combat options I could plug in. Since I'm not much familiar with the older products, I really don't know what options I might want to use or where I would fine them. I'm just interested in hearing about some of the interesting subsystems of previous games/games I don't have which people like/might want in their games.
  15. Darkholme
    Okay then. that is where I shall post my general d100 discussions from now on. I took the Basic Roleplaying board to be only for Chaosium's BGB and related stuff. (Where the BGB is a d100 product I am not especially interested in, and would be inclined to use one of the other options as my core book) Any chance I can have these threads moved there?
  16. Darkholme
    I tried PMing him, it seems he has PMs turned off.
  17. Darkholme
    Sorry to hear that. It's also somewhat frustrating from the other end, when you go to make a post and see "Hmm. There's no "Right Place" for this thread.". Alastor's skull tavern is for off-topic discussion, and it's definitely on-topic to the forum even if not to the RQ6 board; and I don't expect that posting to the BRP will go over much differently than posting here; but I guess I will see. And trying to figure out who to contact regarding it has also been frustrating. Hopefully the thread I posted in the off-topic board gets seen by someone who can make new boards, and we get a general d100 board soon.
  18. Darkholme
    Could one of the admins make a General d100 board? Since there doesn't seem to actually be one, I've just kindof been choosing a board at random (whichever of the many boards seemed most relevant) to post to and tagged my threads as being not game-title specific. However, Loz has now asked that I (and others) not post any general purpose d100 threads on the RQ board anymore. Rather than have other publishers also get annoyed at me, I figured I would find an admin and ask for a general d100 discussion board to be started. The only Admin I could find was Trifletraxtor, and he seems to have PMs turned off, so here I am. Once/if a general d100 board is started, If (by any chance) you could also move the six threads I've started in the past month to this new board, I would be very grateful. As it currently stands, I cannot discuss multiple game lines simultaneously or cross-game-line ideas without it being off-topic to whatever board I post it in. Thanks. ~DH.
  19. Darkholme
    Umm. Sure. No real reason I chose the RQ board. Sorry to have bothered you. I shant post to the RQ Boards again unless it's specifically/exclusively regarding a RQ6 product.
  20. Darkholme
    Umm. Sure. No real reason I chose the RQ board. Sorry to have bothered you. I shant post to the RQ Boards again unless it's specifically/exclusively regarding a RQ6 product.
  21. Darkholme
    Thanks, Nick. I will consider that as a starting point.
  22. Darkholme
    I've played some Legend/RQ6; and while I haven't played a ton of it, I know that the magi systems they have are all very different from the Ghosts of Albion magic system. I haven't looked at OQ or Renaissance much though, and I haven't heard about Magi & Flintlock before. I will definitely look into those.
  23. Darkholme
    So, I know that BRP has seen a wide number of magic systems over the past 35 years - and I know that many of those systems have been reprinted and updated in a variety of sources over the years as well. I've got a few BRP sources with magic systems in them; I was curious if there was an article which breaks down all of the magic systems available (and the most up to date source for that system) and compares them. I've got a few sources, but not the extensive collection that many folks on these boards seem to have. Obviously for magic systems there's RQ6 and MW and Call of Cthulhu. Beyond that I'm not sure what magic systems are in what books (and I'm not all that familiar with many of the magic systems in RQ6 either - I've read through it, and played it a bit, but nothing in depth/long-running. So, if one was looking for an exhaustive list of up-to-date versions of RQ magic systems, where would they find them, and what do these individual systems offer? Have you guys tried adding/removing different magic systems from your games? What effect did that have on the games themselves? And what are your opinions of the various magic systems? Which ones do you consider worth including? Which ones do you not?
  24. Darkholme
    Hmm. That's too bad. BRP has a very large number of magic systems, and I'm not familiar with all of them, so I was unsure. I agree it would be a good thing to have converted, but my d100 Rules Mastery is not yet up to the task. I don't yet have a good enough sense of the systems balancing points nor a strong enough understanding of the power curve involved in the existing magic systems to build a new one. Maybe some day (if nobody else has taken the time to do so) I will convert this over; but it's not going to be right now. Thanks for the info though, Great Old One!
  25. Darkholme
    Since we still lack a general d100/brp board, and instead only have boards for specific game lines, I had to pick somewhere to put this. Ghosts of Albion/Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Cinematic Unisystem) has an interesting magic system; basically: You know individual spells. Spells are designed following a set of rules, rather than pulled from a published list (In fact, IIRC the book doesn't include any pre-built spells) You make a skill roll to cast spells. More powerful spells are more difficult to cast Complete Failure: Nothing Happens Partial Failure: You fail to control/direct the magical energies conjured. Roll on a table of spell backfire effects, ranging from getting lucky and the spell still working, the spell happening late, to being less effective, to hitting the wrong target, to the caster getting burned in the process of casting the spell, to completely unintended magical effects. Casting (most kinds of) spells causes fatigue. Fatigue gives you penalties on future spellcasting rolls. Characters can have a Magic Threshold, which gives you a power level of spell you can just cast indefinitely without taking fatigue. There's a system for multiple casters collaborating. Magic spells often have longer casting times based on their power(multiple rounds), but those casting times can be incrementally reduced all the way down to a single action. The degree of success on a spellcasting roll can be used to apply metamagic effects (increase range, duration, etc) to your spell on the fly. You can do things to get situational modifiers (such as longer casting time) to make spellcasting easier. Theoretically anyone can cast spells (using the occult knowledge skill), albeit not with reduced casting times, or from memory. Is there a magic system anything like that in any variety of d100/brp? It's my favorite magic system, but I'm just not that big of a fan of the rest of unisystem these days; it's a bit too World of Darkness for me.
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