Bilharzia

You could start with base Mythras, which has a fully-fledged character sheet in Roll20, and add any BRP stuff you like. Mythras is closer to older BRP games than CoC7e, it also has a large number of supplements.

Mythras (RuneQuest 6) does weapon Reach very well because it both provides an advantage for the long reach weapon Vs the short reach weapon when the long weapon fighter is at their preferred Reach, *and* the same mechanism provides a disadvantage for the long reach weapon if the short weapon fighter can close to their preferred Reach, the long weapon fighter is in trouble - they can't use the long weapon to parry at all, and any attack they make is severely gimped.

This makes a spear + shield combination quite potent, because the spear allows attacking at a long reach, and will force short weapon opponents to close in, which if they do, the spear & shield fighter defends perfectly well because they can parry with their shield, and in fact they can attack with their shield at full effectiveness.

The terminology used for weapons is weapon Size, and weapon Reach. Each has different effects.

The only downside is being careful to track "at what Reach is XYZ character and NPC engaged at?" because it can change with every combat action.

I am always going to say "Monster Island", but I voted "Mythic Babylon" because it deserves more attention.

I recommend Chris' blog with more info, background, inspirations, play examples

https://egunnu.blogspot.com/

There's "Ships and Shieldwalls" from TDM. It is abstracted enough that it would work with any BRP game.

Mythras and the Monster Island supplement will get you a good foundation for a S&S campaign. Mythras is pretty easy to cut down and also borrow any bits you need from other RQ/BRP editions & supplements as well.

1 hour ago, Barak Shathur said:

But no damage goes through to the body part when you use sunder, am I right? So it only really has an impact if you subsequently hit the same location again. Except now the NPC has to buy new armour after he’s done with you. 

If you disregard the fact that the armour is being destroyed, sure it "has no impact".

Ancient weapons aren't exploding laser beams, sorry, not even battle axes.

I can't see you are interested in anything but hyperbole.

1 hour ago, Barak Shathur said:

Well of course. With enough damage bonus a dagger can penetrate plate. 

A dagger at maximum damage for the weapon and maximum damage bonus can penetrate plate, for a damage of 1 point. If you remove all the important detail from your thinking, you can make a case for anything. 

Well of course a hit from a marshmellow can penetrate plate. (with a critical hit).

8 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

So you have to hit the same location twice in order for this to have any effect? Doesn’t sound particularly effective to me.

Err, whut? Sunder will rip the armour up when it exceeds the AP

8 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

If you can get past the armour. Which an axe can’t do against plated mail or gothic plate.

 

A strong fighter (1d4 damage bonus) will on average hit for 7 points of damage using a battle axe. If the top tier armour did *not* protect against that kind of hit, I would wonder about it. One point above the average will get through plated mail.

43 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

This would work. Do axes, maces and hammers get armour penetration? I haven’t got the rules in front of me. 

The Battle axe is one of the few 1h weapons which can use the special effect Sunder. The only others are Lance and Military Pick, so that effect is quite rare and can be very useful. It also has Bleed, another potentially lethal SE which can kill with a single point of damage. As an aside, spears have neither of these SEs. You may be a bit fixated on damage only, if you are using that as your only metric. Mythras' combat system is a significant advance from RQ3, and that part of the rules is the most radical departure from older RQ. For contemporary fans of Mythras, it's a big deal that changes BRP combat for the better.

I can tell you have a bit of an axe-bromance going on, but your complaint is the first I have seen in about 10 years of RQ6/Mythras. You might be pleased to know that the Mythras 2H axe (Dane Axe, Great Axe) maintains it's damage from RQ3 (2d6+2) but also has Sunder and Bleed. Considering armour values and weapon damages were re-thought for RQ6, this makes the Mythras Great Axe more powerful than the RQ3 equivalent.

Armour piercing - yes this is a trait represented in Mythic Constantinople (puncturing trait) for certain weapons. I would not use it earlier than late-medieval or Renaissance periods as it will make a nonsense of armour & weapons as a whole.

6 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Absolutely. This is why I like the RQ/BRP concept of stabbing: double damage, which allows for deep penetration even through heavy armour. And similarly, a 1d6+1 battle axe has no chance of even slightly bruising someone in plated mail or gothic plate.

No, for me, RQ3 still has the best weapon stats of any game I've seen. Battle axe does 1d8+2 damage while broadswords and short spears do 1d8+1 but can impale. The axe will hit harder on standard blows, but the spear and sword have the capacity to inflict those horrible deep stab wounds. 

Afterthought: it would be nice if axes had a shield breaker effect. Like sunder but applied to shields. Would make them a lot more fun. And also historically accurate as I understand it.

Oh Christ

Methinks you are protesting too much. A spear is +1 more than a broadsword, +1 more than a longsword, +1 more than a mace, and so on ... it's a long hafted weapon. Note though that the difference is slight. Don't take any of my references as definitive anything. They are arbitrary links I found in less than a minute, but they refute your claims that there are "no illuminations of medieval knights with short spears" - there are clearly plenty, on horseback or on foot. If you know the Norse sagas you know how much spears were used - a lot, and not just because they were cheap, they were a favoured and potent weapon, and not just in pitched battles. A lance is just a spear, it doesn't have to be just the poncy high medieval jousting lances, it's also a spear, and typically, one-handed.

Although I don't use it much in my games, Reach is modelled by Mythras and supports the differences in weapon reach where a short sword fighter will have an advantage if they get under a spear fighter's reach.

In terms of SCA experience Pete Nash, who is responsible for most of the RQ6/Mythras combat rules, is a SCA knight of many years.

Try the Mythras Discord if you want a wider discussion. Plenty of HEMA and other martial arts guys as well as physicists, doctors, historians, military guys, rocket scientists and others with a lot of experience who will be happy to argue about nerfing spears or not until the aurochs come home.

2 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

 And vikings liked their axes. Must have been a reason. 

The most common weapon of the Vikings was ... the spear.

https://www.vikingmartialarts.com/viking-warfare/2017/3/6/the-viking-spear

Mounted knights used a 1h spear in the form of a lance. Spears have disadvantages along with their advantages - reach is one. If someone gets inside your reach when you have a spear, your attack advantage is gimped, this is when a sword or axe becomes useful - it is still potent in a close range fight especially if you are armoured, a spear, not so much. Spears can also be broken more easily. Swords also have a symbolic value which is a bit higher than spears so they tend to get depicted more.

You can see the "sword on a stick" principle clearly here. Bronze age sword (top) Bronze age spear head (bottom). The spear is going to be more potent, it is basic physics that a toddler finds out waving a stick around.

The main weapon of the period was the spear, not only for the peasant but also for the professional soldier and even the nobility. It was the traditional weapon that Woden used and remained the weapon par excellence among the Germanic peoples even during the tenth and eleventh centuries

https://regia.org/research/warfare/spear.htm

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I’ve seen very few (no) illuminations of medieval knights with short spears.

https://www.pinterest.com.au/greek_hero1/medieval-spears-manuscript-images/

https://manuscriptminiatures.com/search?tag=127

Do more research 🙂

That's the 10,000 year weapons table, so you could tweak the damage for different eras, but it is perhaps the most potent 1h weapon you can use.

Thanks, we enjoyed doing them.

On 9/28/2021 at 12:23 PM, Leew said:

Thank you for the link! I wonder how hard would it be to adapt the Player's guide to BRP...

Edit: or the mongoose actually does that?

No, the various Legend conversions do not touch the Player's guide to Xoth. I did some of my own conversion when I ran a RQ6/Mythras campaign using Spider God's Bride, and even got permission to go ahead and write a conversion of the Player's Guide for Mythras (from Morten and TDM). In the end though I got caught in a dilemma between creating a version for a system that I liked and played, RQ6 later Mythras, versus the shoddy Legend conversion of Spider God's Bride, which I *hated* at the time of release and that opinion has not changed much. It seemed pointless to continue doing a full conversion for the guide when all the adventures were bad conversions, and which used Legend at that. You can still read my thoughts about the Legend version here - http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?t=55333#p751331

Other Mythras GMs are more charitable and have found the Legend SGB useable. It did get some corrections but those are frankly still pretty weak. If you use it I would recommend picking up the PDF of the original, XP1, from xoth.net. It is cheaper and has more detail than the conversion. Incredibly, quite a bit of the detail, especially when it comes to NPCs (and some of the background) was cut in the Legend version. Some of the Legend NPCs look ridiculous (and certainly weak) when compared with the originals. The Legend authors did not have a good grasp of the system, and it shows.

Xoth remains a decent (if highly derivative of Hyboria) S&S campaign setting and series of adventures, SGB being the best.

I wrote some capsule reviews for the other adventures for the Mythras Discord, I repeat here:

Quote

XP2 "Song of the Beast Gods".

I wanted to write a few capsule reviews of all the Xoth series, using the original XP1 to XP6 not the Legend conversions.

XP1 is a big one, so I'm going to leave it for now and go on to XP2 "Song of the Beast Gods". XP2 is a 28 page scenario written for Pathfinder. It sets up a dynastic crisis (driven by two feuding royal sisters) for a small Yar-Ammonite (Egyptian analogue) city of Khadis into which the PCs can become embroiled. The introduction clearly spells out who the major NPCs are, and what the big plot is - preparations for a cult ceremony which will transform Khadis for good.

 With a scenario like this (an isolated location, competing NPCs, precarious political situation, secret cults, secret histories) I prefer a number of different hooks to grab the players. A variety of hooks should tell you something about the location, the NPCs and their interests. With these it's much easier to tailor the rest of the scenario to your group, different PCs will get pulled in by their individual interests, and may already "know" (through their background) some of the NPCs in Khadis. Instead we get a pretty weak "save the slave girl caravan" encounter, which gives the PCs a NPC contact who can lead them straight into the action.

After the introductory encounter most of the remainder of the text describes the city of Khadis, the palace, and a couple of hidden areas in the city. There is a page at the back discussing a possible sequence of events which I suspect is how it went during playtesting but is nevertheless quite useful as it runs down some of the possibilities for the adventure climax.

What's good: the setup is ok, a recipe for immediate conflict and danger for the PCs if they go straight for the palace, and plenty of opportunity to get into trouble. If they take a different approach there are a couple of alternatives to get access to the hidden area of the city. I can see players getting very confused, fast, and not trusting anyone, which might be a wise decision. There's not a lot of incentive to play the hero, except the promise of some reward. If one or more of the players are interested in getting involved with the royal feud, this is a pretty good one.

Spoiler

Secret Cult - There's an underground cult of the Hyena around which the climax hinges. This has a bit of flavour and matches the setting. It's complemented by a special kind of embalmed creature in giant and smaller sizes the PCs can encounter.

Converting to Mythras: Most of the NPCs are pretty average guards, captains and scholars-cultists. Both the Zoth-Ur cult and the Beast-Gods can be translated into Theist cults with matching miracle and Folk Magic spells. The NPC levels are quite low at 2-3 so there are no overly powerful magic effects in use.

What's not so good: Introduction is not convincing. NPCs are adequate but thinly drawn. Details of the city of Khadis are very slight and its presence is peripheral to the scenario. It would have been useful to know more about the secondary NPCs and where their allegiances lie. Player and PC buy-in will have to come from the GM and players.

Final Score:
Swords: 4
Sorceries: 3

Quote

XP3: The Citadel Beyond the North Winds

Men of Yg Arkanth Mal, He is the witch-king of Galuga, grandmaster of necromancy and alchemy. Consort Eliyh and now, the bards of Tartuun whisper, the witch-king of Galuga seeks a new queen. For the minions of Arkanth Mal sweep across the borders of Tharag Thule and Lamu, slaying men and taking only young women as slaves back to Galuga, the Citadel beyond the North Wind!

XP3: The Citadel Beyond the North Wins is an odd one. It's pitched at a higher level than any of the other adventures (8-10) and is for the most part a couple of dungeon/monster crawls without much else going on.

As far as I can make out, there's one narrative thread: big bad necromancer Arkanth Mal is kidnapping women and bringing them to his palace in an attempt to re-embody his dead consort Eliyh. Enter the PCs. As the introduction says it is more complicated than that - for one, there is another, even worse sorcerer further to the east - Boras the White King.

Spoiler

Boras is in fact Yon-Ylath-Ul, a primal polymorphous being, physically and magically powerful, protected by large numbers of his subjects, the Naathi. These people don't get a sympathetic treatment in the text as well as getting a raw deal being ruled by a fake-human king.

There are three locations detailed - the border-town of Tartuun, the Citadel, Palace and the Prisons and Pits of Galuga, and the Ziggurat of Boras. Galuga is the most detailed, as it is the home of Arkanth Mal. It's effectively a big dungeon filled with dangerous creatures the lower down it goes, and protected by Mal's minions.

Tartuun is thinly drawn, serving as a possible starting point for the PCs as it has a connection with the slavers who work for Arkanth Mal, and is largely filled with villains.

I am not sure what I would do with this. It's the weakest of the XP adventures I have read so far. Just about all the NPCs are about as bad as you can get, or they are bland. None of the NPCs has much of an agenda or interest, unless it's serving Arkanth Mal. The Necromancer's own agenda is explained clearly enough in an overly-long backstory but there are no other characters presented to either oppose, complement or complicate things. There isn't even a patron NPC who wants to hire the PCs in a rescue plan, other than 'old men and women asking for help'.

Spoiler

The interests and motives of the larger villain Yon-Ylath-Ul, are not described, he is just literally, a big bad blob. The only reason the PCs might dare infiltrate his ziggurat is if Arkanth Mal persuades them to rescue his children, who are being held by Yon-Ylath-Ul.

Final Score:
Swords: 2
Sorceries: 1

Quote

XP4: Land of the Silver Lotus
Xoth ur ia fthagn natamis yuralla

This is a bigger book than XP2 or 3 at 48 pages, and it's about 10 times better than both of them. The structure is much more like a multi-location sandbox than anything so far in the Xoth series, as well as that, this could fit perfectly into a Monster Island campaign. The setting is a small archipelago of three islands which could easily be found off the coast of Monster Island, they could even be positioned as part of the Hina Bay atoll, as the biggest island is only 7 miles long which is about the size of some of the Hina Bay islands. Again, the system is Pathfinder, this time it is set at level 4-6 so converting it to Mythras is a bit easier than something higher level.

Spoiler

||Although it's a sandbox there's an underlying meta-plot of an ancient lost city and a long dead necromancer, Kwalu. This plot is initially hidden from any explorers searching after silver lotus, but becomes known slowly through contact with NPCs of the islands.||

I don't like the use of "pygmy" which is used all the way through to describe two of the island groups, since each group has a name (the Barana and the X'urana), I don't see why their actual names could not be used. It's here that the book (and Xoth in general) is not as good when it comes to describing and using cultural groups adequately, when compared with Mythras. The racist cliche of "hostile evil pygmies" was already tired and offensive when I first saw it as a teenager in 80s RPGs (in White Dwarf magazine), it's not quite as bad here, but it's pretty close. To make it worse, the leaders of both groups on the island are both obsessed with height, and in having sex with taller people, which might even involve the PCs. That said I *also* don't like the use of "Savage" to describe the lowland jungle tribal groups in the Monster Island supplement, or the descriptor of "Primitive" in the core rules to describe what could be "Hunter Gatherer". When you look at the list "Civilised, Barbarian, Nomad, Primitive" ... spot the odd one out!

To get adventurers interested in and investigating the island, there are a number of obvious but plausible hooks, either they are shipwrecked and stranded, needing to stop for repairs, but more likely they are there to acquire the silver lotus drug. The Silver Lotus of the title is an addictive drug similar to Black Lotus of Monster Island but with much more complex and potent effects.

Spoiler

||The lotus grows underground and harvesting the lotus leaf is incredibly dangerous since the plant itself is a very dangerous "boss level" adversary, a bit like an amalgam of several of the plant "creatures" found on Monster Island, converting this creature would be a fun exercise.||

Spoiler

||There's a beached pirate ship on one of the smaller islands of the group, with an interesting crew member, but that's about all the pirates have going for them. Unfortunately the pirates as a whole are one-dimensional characters and don't have any suggested interest or agenda on the island, they are just beached for repairs. Unless the PCs attempt to recruit the pirates as allies they aren't going to get involved. There are 40 pirates crewing the ship so raiding them for their meagre treasure seems like a bad idea and will prove unrewarding. If I was running this I would make their group smaller, and wreck their ship entirely. This would turn them into more of a threat since they would seek a way off the archipelago - most likely using the PC's ship. On the same island as the beached pirates, there's a dormant (but also cursed) temple nearby the pirate ship the PCs might be curious to investigate, and re-activate.||

The Barana control access to the silver lotus, so it's likely the PCs will have to visit and negotiate with the Barana king, Tiku. The collection of NPCs who are presented in the Barana village hide power struggles and interests which create an interesting and volatile setup for the PCs to walk into.

Spoiler

||Not everyone in the Barana village are who they appear to be. The shaman (correctly) thinks the current king is dangerous to the tribe, and an adopted member of the Barana is secretly and covertly posssessed by the spirit of a former chief, both of these characters will complicate things and will likely drive the PCs deeper into the island's danger spots.||

There are a collection of prisoners held by the Barana which might interest or compel the PCs into a rescue attempt, although they have no detail beyond a couple of words. These prisoners could be part of a plot-hook, such as a rescue.

The other tribe, who are opposed to the Barana, are the swamp-dwelling X'urana. They are not easily encountered but can provide allies or adventure seeds for the PCs. They aren't directly involved in the main plot of adventure, but could get mixed up with the PCs either through the GM pushing some X'uruana at the PC group, or even one of X'urana prisoners held at the Barana village might lead them to their swamp village, if released from the prison.

Spoiler

||The most interesting NPC of the X'uruana is the shaman Y'Xatu who is both powerful and has crucial knowledge concerned Kwalu.||

The PCs may get sent on a temple-raid to find some crucial maguffins. This temple turns out to be guarded by slug-creatures worshipped by the X'uruana. I find this a bit of a daft notion, but there it is. The temple itself is infested with all kinds of nasty but fairly predictable creatures. Given the X'uruana live in a swamp surrounded by crocodiles, I would use that if I was converting to Mythras. As it is they only play a minor role as simple hazards. I would make the X'uruana crocodile totem animists and change the temple to be themed around the crocodiles. This is largely because I find the idea of slugs as antagonists more comical than threatening.

Spoiler

||The final two locations detail the forbidden city and the temple of the necromancer Kwalu. The city will feed some more of the background story to the PCs, a load of treasure and a number of undead and unatural guardians. The final location is a Death-cult temple still maintained by the original priests and cult members, who are now all undead, accompanied by more undead and dangerous creatures. Depending on what maguffins and allies the PCs have brought with them the final encounter with Kwalu may go easily or badly. There is a quick escape route if things look dicey for the PCs. If they do flee Kwalu will make for a nasty adversary who gets worse with time.||

The Good: a number of varied locations with lots of conflicting NPCs who have reasons to get involved with the PCs. The hidden plot is well integrated into the setting and as it becomes revealed tells you more about the current situation.

Spoiler

||Some unique creatures/characters which make challenging and unusual conversions into the Mythras equivalent - the Silver Lotus 'boss-plant', the shaman Y'Xatu, and the necromancer Kwalu. The silver lotus, and the silver lotus caverns are well developed in much more detail than black lotus, or any of the drugs detailed in Monster Island.||

There are plenty of ways to involve the PCs into the various schemes bubbling away on the island, both using the suggested hooks, and other ways will suggest themselves from the detail in the locations.

The Bad: so-called 'pygmies' are just people who are on average shorter than other people, obsessing about this even gets confusing when reading through because the text does not always distinguish between the Barana and the X'urana. Having the leaders of each group be so concerned about height gives them cartoonish personalities. The X'urana and the pirates could have been better integrated, there's no compelling reason to visit the X'urana swamp village, and doing so is dangerous, the pirates aren't that interesting but with a few tweaks could be made so.

Final Score:
Swords: 6
Sorceries: 4

We have just published 3 interviews for the Opposed Roles podcast. 

Kristin's Sami-Norse campaign: (Animism part 2)

This is an interview with Kristin about her 11th Century Sami & Norse campaign set in the far north of Norway.

Kristin's Sami-Norse Campaign

Raleel's Shadowpunk: (Animism part 3)

Raleel talks about his rules adapting Shadowrun and Cyberpunk into the Mythras rules.

Shadowpunk - hacking cyberspace into Mythras

Dan True on Mythras Combat

Dan is a martial arts practitioner, teacher, and the writer of Mythras' combat modules. The upcoming "Book of Schemes" for Mythras is due for release sometime in 2022. There is a follow-up interview with Dan about his new book, but that episode will be released closer to the publication date.

Dan True on Combat

58 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

But does that abstraction really simply anything? 

Not sure what you mean. As I said, again, it is a preference of abstraction Vs book-keeping. The older RQ style of tracking every single attack/parry clash with AP attrition I found was tedious, but you do you. Mythras still allows weapon and armour damage, but you have to call it out by using Sunder.

Quote

 I'll add a bit of irony myself in that adding more options and variant rules to the rulebook makes the rules more "crunchy and fiddly" as it means a GM will need to make choices rather than use something "as is".

That's not irony, that's expected, but relying on clichés about Mythras does yourself and others a disservice. Mythras is detailed, adaptable and consistent, and with that it does demand more from a GM than most BRP games or the BGB. The BGB itself is all over the place since it was never re-written from scratch as a consistent ruleset, it was and remains a compilation of rules from different games.

10 hours ago, D100 said:

Whatever happened to Rodney Leary and classic fantasy?

(from the original post https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/designmechanism/classic-fantasy-2021-2022-line-up-t3637.html )

Rod:

Classic Fantasy 2021-2022+ Line-Up

This gets asked often, and I actually presented this list during our Design Mechanism Virtual Con last year. However, I figured I would post it here for those that couldn't attend. 
There are no dates for these, and everything listed is subject to change, but this is what we have planned for at the moment. Also, the list is not arranged in any form of chronological order. 

Adventures
Lost Temple of Set – Darvin Martin (in art direction and editing)
Danger at Dunfel – Rodney Leary and Che Webster (pre-editorial pass)
Last Gift from Atlan – Ken Seward (first draft turned in)
*The Star Prophecy *– Chad Bowser (first draft turned in)
Skytower – Ian Fletcher (first draft turned in)
War on Twilight Peak – (proposal accepted) Sean Hillman

Rulebooks and Supplements*

Classic Fantasy: Unearthed Companion – 200-220 pages of new classes (anti-paladin, assassin), over 160 new spells (80+ arcane, 80+divine), new monsters (many of them high rank: demons and devils,  beyonders, draco-liches (one of each color) just to name a few. Plus an adult version of each dragon (5 chromatic and 5 metallic) already written up so you only need to alter it with an age template. Finally, a load of Rank 4+ magic items and other surprises.

Classic Fantasy: Player's Handbook - 300ish page book designed with Classic Fantasy players in mind. No monsters. No treasure. However, it will include the full rules needed to play Classic Fantasy and no more flipping through multiple books just to create a character. This will also incorporate revised character classes and balance changes brought on from five years of additional playtesting. 

Classic Fantasy: World of Greymoor – 100+ page setting book detailing the territories in and around the kingdom of Greymyr, including their armies and navies with stats compatible with Ships and Shield Walls for some territorial warfare. Plus, history, calendar, weather tables, overland travel rules, wilderness survival rules, encounter tables according to terrain type, and world map.

Mythras Classic Fantasy Revised: As for the Player's Handbook above. Classic Fantasy itself will get a revised release updating the rules and incorporating playtest changes. It's actual release format is still undergoing discussion, so this is the one book that I really can't answer much in the way questions.

Classic Fantasy: Witchcraft and Alchemy – 32-page sourcebook including the Witch character class, witchcraft, and rules for the creation of potions and elixirs.

Classic Fantasy: Psionics and Psionicists – 32-page sourcebook including the Psionicist class, psionics, and psionic monsters. Including the 5 psionic gem dragons.

Classic Fantasy: Chaos  and Chaos Hunters– 46-page sourcebook including the Witch Hunter class, rules for horror, creatures of chaos, and mind-shattering elder things from beyond time and space. All given a Classic Fantasy spin.

*All page numbers are early estimates and subject to change

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

But RQ3 armor points weren't  size based. A long wooden spear didn't have more AP than a shortsword.

Yes they were, as a combination of size and materials. Smaller weapons have fewer AP than larger weapons, in general, but metal is better than wood, in general.

So a dagger has AP6, a hoplite shield AP18. Quite a difference, and as I said, Mythras effectively abstracts this.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

But faster and less bookkeeping isn't always better. 

I said nothing about what was better. It is a preference, but I note with some irony that Mythras/RQ6 is often claimed to be more crunchy and fiddly than BRP but the reality is often the reverse.

The CF expert set has changed the table format into a slight light tone which is more readable. I imagine the new CF self-contained book will take a similar approach.

On 6/25/2021 at 2:45 AM, Lloyd Dupont said:

I kind of have a blindspot against that Mythras rule (it's in Mytras 2E as well, not just Lyonesse)... though I cant quite express why, should think about it again...

Weapon sizes and parrying in Mythras are largely just an abstraction of RQ3 Armour Points for weapons, it is a faster way of resolving attack and parry clashes. There is less book-keeping doing things the Mythras way.

There is no Mythras 2E btw.

22 hours ago, g33k said:

Q - how "mythic" or "fantastic" is this?   I was surprised to see nothing "fantastical" in the blurb...

Obviously, if you have other Mythras content the answer is "as 'mythic' as you want it to be!"
But I mean within the covers of this new book, as written?

Do we have "Conan-esque" tropes of desert-hermit sorcerors?
Biblical allusions to priests calling forth miraculous powers, blessing (or retribution) of Marduk, Haddad, Inanna, Enlil, etc?

High fantasy?  Low fantasy?  No-fantasy (historical)?

 

TYVM!

 

These should give you some idea, the types of magic:

A spell from Sorcery:

1 hour ago, Kloster said:

I am not saying RQ3's combat rules are perfect, but they are, in my opinion, the best combat rules BRP has produced, and one of the best I have played.

::cough:: splutter, really...I don't miss fatigue, layering armour, armouring enchantments, the escalating damage/magic war, ye gods no thanks. RQ6/Mythras isn't perfect but it's a huge step up from RQ3's many unfortunate mis-steps.

As I said, easy to houserule, and in fact Mythras Imperative fixes action points at 2, which means for example one attack and one parry. Not difficult to track. Personally I got rid of Cycles in my own game as well. Getting hung up on that means you are missing out on a lot. I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to opine the lack of BRP innovation while at the same time not even trying a game that has done precisely that, and has been successfully publishing a growing range of supplements for nearly 10 years now. I think it's £6 (?) on Drivethrurpg at the moment.

On special effects - one is gained with every level of success, eg. a successful attack against a failed parry, you might gain, for example an opportunity to Trip your opponent, if successful you have gained a big advantage. It is typically these moments which prove decisive, not hacking everything up into pieces like most other combat systems, including BRP and RQ3.

On 5/18/2021 at 4:54 PM, Barak Shathur said:

I guess I'm trying to provoke a debate about what could be better in BRP. 

If that is your main complaint you might want to look at Mythras. It is approaching a decade since it (RuneQuest 6) was first published (2012) so it might be time to update yourself. There are many more options which Mythras combat introduces, in my mind it radically changes RQ/BRP combat in favour of special effects, and weapon differences count. If you don't like some of the more complicated aspects of Mythras (Action Point differences, Turn cycles, Reach) they are pretty easy to ignore or houserule.

On the differences you start with between battle axe and broadsword, you are ignoring a few things. One is milieu - where is your setting? when? which cultures use what and why? cost differences? tactical differences? In Mythras the weapons are similar but have different special effects, both have bleed, but a broadsword also can use impale, and the axe has sunder. An impaling weapon is going to do more damage on average and can severely hamper an opponent's skill (an impaled broadsword will penalise combat skills by 50%). An axe will not impale, but using sunder can damage armour.