Lloyd Dupont

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

Treating them just like any other Monster demeans them slightly, which is fine and dandy, but might not get the feel that you are after.

treating them as untouchable NPCs is very frustrating for the Players, as they might have come up with a plan to defeat them.

Nailed it!  

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

However, attacking and killing Greater Demons and angels is sort of missing the point. You are better off negotiating with them, making deals with them, gaining information from them, perhaps even worshipping them, or at least gaining them as a Feat which gives you power. 

Good point too...
In my remote campaign idea though there will be little choice...
But it might be fun to introduce some encounter before that.. you just motivated me to do just that!

In fact one important upcoming NPC is just that.. But the plan is already to negotiate! ^^
they are looking for precious magic stone at the moment.. Next they will try to visit the "king of the dark forest" (the magic stone will be a gift to .. it?) they don't quite know what it is, the dark forest is full of undead though.. and they have a clue the "king" could help them go back home....
 

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

Wait for Merrie England: Age of Crusade? 

Ok, waiting!   

I got some vague plan (2 campaign down the line) to eventually make an ascendancy / immortality campaign... In which they will meet many such beings... Not always in good term!

anyway probably got one year to think it about! ^^

In the very long term of this campaign, player might meet super supernatural beings. Like greater angels or demons.

I wonder how do they flesh out in RD100? Looking for suggestion!  

The only idea I came up with so far, they might have many area attacks which damage everyone in an area... (how would that work with a sword though?)
Obviously single target damage could be higher and multi target damage could be in the reasonable range of mortal normal attacks...

And I might reintroduce HP, increase toughness a bit and HP a lot and add HP regeneration to the mix....

Also, of course, death is just a mere inconvenience until the time they regrow a new body...

Speaking of super strength and other amazing super powers!

Behold! I give you, the... Amazing Man Spider! 😮 

You got me curious, can you elaborate on the system?

I see one has to read at least 2 books (player and GM)! Lots of reading! 😕 

I ask because I am chronically unsatisfied, haha I went from Classic Fantasy to Mythras to BRP to Revolution D100. And now  wonder if this one will (also) bring some interesting new ideas to the table!  

(my players joke about that, hahah, the latest joke being "now we are playing D&D" to which I of course reply "never!!!    ")

.. how to survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse!

https://www.boredpanda.com/suit-of-armor-zombie-apocalypse/

Become a Bikeght!

They use shape stone to put some small stone block together and meld it into a smooth one piece block... 

The idea was, hey those Dark Elves use magic extensively everywhere, it should show even in the architecture me think, and I came with the idea that they might improve building finish and polish with shape stone. As for the stone, I imagine it to be a sturdy building stone, like Granite, it was a temple after all.

Anyhow the player were also under the impression they only "broke the wall" because they luckily and unknowingly hit hit just at the edge of the illusion!
So I can still make whatever decision I want about future walls  

Checking BRP now.. I guess it should have between 7 to 11 armour and about 30HP.... (p101 wall spell and p277 material armour)

I guess whatever I decided could be justified depending on the stone...
Oh well.. it is done now anyway!  

They were totally (just) detected.. The issue, which I handled in their favor, is how much time it would take... (i.e. a big enough hole to find the illusion in under a minute or 2)

MY player are stranded in a remote planet, or "dimension" since it's a fantasy adventure... full of dark elves that practice magic extensively.

Those Elves have seemingly 1 piece stone walls on luxury building (the benefits of shape stone, hey?)

Now at one stage the players took it upon themselves to try to shatter one of those walls with a war hammer...

Now I have no doubt you can shatter a plaster, wood or brick wall... 
But I have to say, I am not sure about a stone wall...

BTW, it was not the super thick outside wall of a castle, but an inner wall inside a .. temple.
Well.. I gave them a hole (beside, there was a gaping passage right in the middle, hidden by an illusion :P  ) ...

But I am curious, generally, how sturdy this wall should have been!

just to add some confusion I want to share the Revolution D100 dice trick as an additional suggestion.

If your ten dice rolls higher than your unit dice it's a special (they call it advantage).
the higher your skill the higher your chance to roll a special. (it's not a straight 10% of skill but grow from 0% to 50% of your skill chance as skill goes from 0 to 100%)

Many (but not all) D100 rule variation are big on social background. It's in Runequest DNA.

Some rule have table to make it easy. I dunno about Runequest rule in particular though.

Many preset adventure will somehow tie in your social background. Some magic are also heavily tied to your social background (i.e. strong emphasis on social duty for priest or shaman and particular location for replenishing power)

This is an approach to adventure that you can try or ignore as a GM.

Personally I tend to err on the side of ignoring such rule. However I think most D100 settings will be less Monster rich than AD&D and the social background is a big part of the reasons for which you fight or pick your ennemies.

alright.. one player was sick this weekend and we postpone yet once more! 😮 

but it;'s good, I woke up this morning with a good idea about this item:

• when one focus into it a bird view of 5km around can be seen inside (like on of those glassball toy)
• one can zoom in or out.. but no go inside building, nor pierce illusions or disguise
• one can either send dream to the whole area
• or one can focus on an individual and communicate telepathically or send dream if asleep
• on can focus on an individual and keep telepathic communication even if one goes indoor our out of range, but last until communication is broken

all of that is nice and reasonable.... and reasonably impressive...

and I got an idea for an astral plane connection (that will be useful later)

• one can send his/her spirit to the astral plane from here and can fly around
• but it's not anchored... I will have to make a map of astral thing "around".. first attempt will pear at a black infinity.... 
• from the astral plan it can pear at the real world... would prove useful later on, not so much for spying since it will be imprecise that way, but to find the way back home... since they will have to use the astral plane as a gateway back to their home planet

Well... They can now polymorph into flying creature.. so scrying is not much of a deal... (except it's safe though)

Telepathy is.. mmmm.. thanks for your feedbacks.. I have to think about it some more...

Maybe those 3 base power are enough after all hey?! 😮

2 hours ago, g33k said:

I'm seeing a big ol' hunk of "Dream Magic" theme here.

In Glorantha, AFAIK, that speaks to an East Isles origin...?  So you might want to look into any ideas that gives you.

Obsidian, of course, speaks to volcanoes.  Also IIRC to dragonewts... which ALSO have tie-ins to dreams.

Dreams are notable for their oracular / scrying nature, seeing what has not yet happened, what is very distant, what happened long ago; equally, dreams are notable for being un-clear and obscure.  So you can use this to drop hints, to foreshadow, to guide lightly; but preclude making it a military-grade (adventurer grade) recon/intel omnitool.  And if it has Draconic influences, it could readily be even LESS comprehensible...

 

Yes I have Dragonewt and Dark Elf in that place...

Though Dragonewt.. mmm... have been enslaved by the Dark Elf....

Well it was just an inspiration....

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Sounds like a Palantir from Lord of the Rings. Some questions:

• Are there limits to how far it can broadcast dreams and to how many people it can broadcast too at once? Or does it blanket everyone in the area?
• When you say that it can communicate with one known target, is that one specific person, period, or any one person that the wielder knows, but one at a time?
• When scrying how does it shift it's point of view, and can it go indoors and through rooms? Can it be used to just look for an item or person without knowing where they are? Is the scrying just visual or can the PC eavesdrop as well?
• Also, what are the requirements, die rolls,  and costs for the character to use the item? 

 

What I would be worried about is the players sitting around doing nothing while one player does lots of recon via the orb before they  head out on any given adventure. For instance getting detailed maps of the enemy potion, a head count of their numbers, who and where the commanders, and prisoners are. I think a lot of groups with such an item would spend hours getting all sorts of minor and irrelevant details before attacking, because they could.  Likewise they might use it to coordinate attacks from multiple locations, because they could. That is where the magic point costs come in. It's keeps the PCs from spending all day using the orb, or falling back to it as a crutch whenever something doesn't go according to plan. 

Thanks for pitching in!

• The dreams would be a few kilometer radius.. not set in stone now.. maybe 5km.. it's indiscriminate though... to everyone.
• You can target one person at a time.. it's simple telepathy. you have to touch the item and focus on the person you know, the real power is the very very long range. probably the whole planet (but no more)
• scrying is like a bird, you can't see inside building. range would be limited like the dream, maybe 5km too. it's not big a deal, clairvoyance already does it
• I am playing with Revolution D100, simple spell casting out of combat is not too concerned with costs in RD100.... so is the orb

The orb is related to Loth (a Dark Elf goddess of dream in my settings) and it's a tool for Dark Elf priest to control their population.
And while all these power look, ultimately it's not that.. powerful...
So I wanted to spice it up with some sort of weird power that would feel suitably strange and powerful but not adventure breaking.... I was wondering if I could somehow make it a doorway to a specific realm in the astral plane somehow... (to help the priest in their summoning or something) But I fear it might be too dangerous with little benefit...

To give you theme appropriate clue on the idea I was edging for, here is a summary of my cosmology...

• there are (only) 2 infinite plane of existence. primal and astral 
• astral sea is more or less what you imagine. Also, just like the prime plane has planets, astral has realms which could be as big as (and similar to) discworld or as small as a small room. with their own self contained environment.
• Creature appear in those realm through spontaneous generation, literally, some sort of creative magic process that do not follow evolution but.. imagination?. Hence all sort of weird creatures can be found in those place. But often a given place has many of the same kind of creature, just like our world.
• Summoning take creatures from those astral realms and bring them to our prime one
• Gods live there too
• Some realm contains a brazier of creation, a pure fire of primordial energy that continually infuse the cosmos with creation (and is also deadly up close, usually, but it has also some other tricks....).
• Lolth, goddess of Dark Elf, in my story is a goddess of dream (the orb is in one of her temple). which mean she has powerful dream magic
• One can travel to the astral sea and realms either in spirit or in flesh. I am inspired here both by D&D cosmology but also by Cthulhu very own Dream world.
• one can travel from one planet to the other in the prime plane by crossing the astral plane (in the flesh) as a shortcut, which happened to the players (they were abducted), are now far from home

2 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

The second facet is that the specific skill system in RD100 is even less compatible with advancement by training than the other MRQ derivatives. An advancement in a skill has heavy consequences in Rd100, so I have strong doubts about letting players obtain one by throwin tons of cash at an instructor as we all used to do in the glorious old days of RQ

It is my thought exactly (with your last paragraph as well)... I was wondering if there was ... some sort of mitigating idea that could give the player a tiny extra bit of agency...

2 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

However, if you really want to introduce training, you should make it a downtime conflict. You could for example assess half of the trainee skill as the RP to beat, perhaps modifying it by the difference between the trainer and the trainee skill level. Then the trainer rolls Communication [Teach] once per week until the RPs are beaten, and this adds +1 to the improvement points for that specific skill, to be combined with any IP allocated to the skill during last improvement session until enough IPs are accumulated to grant an improvement roll. Consequences accumulated in the conflict should apply to the trainee and not the trainer, and could either be heavy debts incurred to pay for the instructor, or "Lessions not fully learned" that make some skill rolls fail at the most inconvenient time during an adventure. 

I think something like that will possibly please the player and be reasonable!
Thanks Paolo!

We haven't played for 2 weeks due to some life issue..

Anyway one issue I think one of my player have, since we last switched from BRP, is that he feels that training is harder in Revolution than in BRP.

In BRP using a mix of XP and a mentor he was able to quickly improve some new skills. Whereas he feels limited by the skill slot and cost of improvement in Revolution.
While I am not entirely convinced and have to find out more information on the particular skill he feel unable to successfully develop next session I wonder...

In BRP one can improve specific skill percentage.

Could there be some sort of equivalent in Revolution? ie. teachers that help you improve your raw skill percentage? How would that work?

I understand it's much more powerful ask, since they improve all their traits and add new slot, but just asking here!

cool idea!

I know, I know, this is just an RPG web site...

But since there was a lot of talk about Star Wars or chemical spaceship propulsion I thought it timely to share this most down to earth, plain English explanation of curved space time and general relativity. Enjoy!

It is going to be a big black obsidian like orb.... in line with the aesthetic them so far..  

yeah the communication aspect is part of it!

I am thinking the realm might be a challenge realm.. but it's not like one gain XP by killing monster like in D&D.. so not sure it is helpful...

Hey thanks for answering!

This is a tricky one btw, it's not really a general purpose Astral Travel device. **IF** it allows astral travel at all, it will be only on a domain controlled / allied to my version of Lolth the goddess of Dark Elves (in my campaign she is a dream goddess, not an evil spider goddess, though she does champion slavery and obedience to your dark elf master).. so it would be nice if there is a possibility for them to gain something... 

But it seems hard to me to go to an opposed deity and gain something.. Those adventurers are not that powerful enough for such challenge.. or could they? 

Maybe I should just draw a map of the domain, put the goddess palace very far from the entry point, and place some interesting stuff here and there... Mmm....

You gave me an idea... instead of leading to a stronghold of the enemy divinity, it could lead to some challenge realm of the divinity, where follower could go for training and experience and looting... and so could the player now?! I think that's a possible concept...

4 minutes ago, Questbird said:

Traveller also had the Ancients, who seeded humans on different planets (Solomani, Zhodani, Imperials, Darrians and a whole lot of others who never independently made it into space) and created the Vargr and the Aslan (?) through genetic engineering etc.

Me think the Elerians in Master of Orion were the produce of genetic experiment on ancient human by either Psilons or Orions or Antarians hey?!

And so would it be in my campaign!

I have some sort of "powerful magical item" that's going to be found by the players soon.

Although, while powerful it's not that useful. I have a list of powers ideas for it.. and I am wondering whether the last power is a good idea and how it could improve the campaign... hence asking for feedback...

- 1st it let user broadcast dream to all in a large radius
- 2nd it can communicate telepathically with one known target anywhere
- 3rd, perhaps it can scry, as if bird view, in a large radius

and finally, the last power I am wondering whether it is a good idea or not, or how to make it a good idea... otherwise I might just skip this power

it can let the user project his mind in some particular domain in the astral sea (one related to the previous owner's deity) and perhaps the user can visit the place in dream form.. or perhaps creature from the domain can materialise around the magic item (to steal it back, for example).

Now I wonder if this power is really going to be interesting in play... If monster can materialise from it, most likely it will be an overwhelming force, not very rewarding gameplay to crush the players without warning and apparent reason. And why would the players visit the realm? It's probably be quite hostile to non believer...

I wonder what other GM take would be on such ability / concept? as a way to spice up their campaign?...

And nope, players have no advance warning & knowledge or clues about the item....
Although.. I have an opportunity to retrofit it, if they take go some future path I have in mind... A path that is very poorly lit, they can super easily skip it...

Damn... is it because of the Sith that the galaxy is not colonised yet?! 😮