rogerd

I just Val-du-Loup actually and it is one the better BRP books in my opinion. With Incorporeal elder gods etc etc. 

I'd have them as Kaim that bred with humans passing on a magical virus which causes an instability in their DNA causing mutations or some such.

Is it available in PDF?

Good timing on the release of this really what with the series Marco Polo 

Several of the Doctor's adventures become truly horrific if you replace the TARDIS crew with less competent protagonists. There are many times where it seems even the Doctor is in over his head, so imagine how hard it is for people who aren't super-genius, nigh-immortal Time Lords to confront the horrors he faces.

 

For example, I have a hard time thinking that anyone native to 1912 England would have stood a chance against Sutekh. Even a foe as intelligent and technologically savvy as the Doctor was countered and frustrated at every turn, with even his cleverest plans being matched by Sutekh's own intellect and overwhelming mental power.

In EU Sutekh was a universal level threat, as at one point IIRC he is no longer bound in the pyramid.

Not the least of which the Tardis is a eldritch abomination all of its own as it looks like a crustacean with tentacles that rips open reality (Autumn Mist).

Trouble with the Doctor is that he has plot shields from two multiversal entities, plus him being a CSE (Complex Space-Time Event) meaning the universe literally bends over every time he is around.

I think that was intentional. A few Doctor Who stories were inspired by Lovecraft's works.  The Daemons and Image of the Fendahl are some other examples that could make good CoC adventures. 

 

Yeah, now the Fendahl is pretty badass and fully powered there is really no point in statting one, anymore than an Other / Outer god (the ones in the books I used as avatars).

 

 

 

Okay now you need to know that in Doctor Who the Old Ones are the same as the Outer gods, and as such are universe+ sized beings that are not allowed, as per the Guardians of Time to fully manifest within a universe as they tend to pop it. Many of them don't mind this, as an eternity with nothing to do - read meddle in affairs of lower creatures, rather boring.

 

For anyone that wants it, I here is a link for EU Doctor Who thread:

 

http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/doctor-who-feats-and-source-thread.298198/

 

 

I just saw this and added to to my to-purchase list.

So do we have any angels statted in the bestiary? Or perhaps a basic stat-block for some of the pagan god spirits?

Merrie England has some of those, although they are for BRP they should convert well to Legend, as Merrie England was first written for MRQ2.

I know Merrie England has stats for demons and djinns - but I don't recall anything for angels. Which page was that on?

Merrie England, for me, is a good place to get stats for the Lords of Chaos and Order for Elric; if ever I was going to stat them they'd be the level down from Lucifer, as per Moorcock's descriptions.

Having read Advanced Sorcery, i am glad to see that I was right they are just +1 versions of Heroic / Legendary Abilities from Runequest. Unless I've misunderstood some rule?

We have stats for some good mythological creatures - I just love the Djinn; but are we going to get some more for other pagan spirit entities, and most all some stats for angels?

Yeah that is kinda the problem with Daleks in nuWho, as has been stated they are able to fight a Time War, something not done with conventional weapons. So in that sense they would have high armour, and either include absorption at whatever level will allow them to withstand various weapons.

The weaponry does advance, but that's okay. It also seems to be adjustable. The Daleks don't seem to use full power, probably becuase the overkill would be an illogical waste of energy.

They could actually vapourise humans but instead chose a lower setting to cause maximum pain or agony. They're dicks like that.

@ Vex: No worries.

Now you've touched upon a rather interesting point there actually- using some of the magic spells as advantages. It is a rather ingenious way to go about things, and in many ways is closer to bringing BRP into the toolbox mentality of RP's, that being as we all know, mix n' match. And yeah, i see no reason not to have a way of improving those advantages over time. Can players, with your talent / flaw system redeem flaws for points elsewhere, as long as they do not obviously render the negative trait moot?

You are right here. There are times where building an advantage in advance rather than on the flow is absolutely necessary to balance things. Something like bullet-timing, for instance, has so many consequences on combats that everybody around the table must agree on what it exactly allows or doesn't allow. And to do that, nothing best than well thought tested rule... in advance.

^ A thousand times this. Now if I could find my frakkin' rules I'd put them up and someone could test them out if they wanted.

To be fair, GURPS can be played in a really simply manner once characters are created... 3D6 under the skill and that is almost all. But, indeed, the character creation is what takes a lot of time.

Yeah, that's quite often the problem that puts people off - chargen. At the end of the day they just want to play and learn the rules later so it needs to be simple from the ground up.

Something I had been thinking about streamlining for BRP too. Maybe have skills split into: Combat, Physical, Mental, Social, Manipulation. Now instead of there being set values, the GM determines whether you start at Dex or Dex X2 etc. Plus then mental skills like Knowledges are a darn site easier, you can either have a basic skill and have a good general knowledge and for each specialisation picked you gain an extra 20% to tests on that. Hell maybe specialisations could be a trait? Although I am not sure that would improve the game quite frankly and you'd be quickly over burdened with lots and lots of traits. So I'd be inclined to keep my first suggestion though, for ease and speed at chargen.

Several version of BRP have advantages and flaws, including the Worlds of Wonder and Superworld boxed sets. I think they can benefit the system and campaigns, but they can also be overused and/or abused. Quite a few BRP players and GMs are against them.

Personally I think they help to cover features and abilities that aren't covered or not possible with the standard rules.

Kind of like World of Darkness and Unisystem currently is - not a good thing as it makes choice and min-maxing more prevalent, something I tensely dislike and makes chargen a rather tedious process as you feel like you need to double check everything picked by the players, twice over.

Hungrier. And they want all your marbles, baby.

Aaaaaarrgh!!!!!

I rolled for San loss and got a 100---is that bad???

Hungry shrews. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQSCkvNQfhA

Are they anything like Hungry, hungry Hippos?

Cool, I will take a look at this tomorrow - thanks for the correction

I don't have the time to read this interesting article... But are you sure that frictions are taken into account. On the moon, a lead ball falls exactly at the same speed than a feather. No problem. But on earth, with atmospheric friction, the feather (or a leaf) won't ever reach the terminal speed of a lead ball. Otherwise, parachutes wouldn't work.

Yeah.....fairly sure, as given enough time everything should reach terminal velocity as gravity just has to push harder. Although now you've added some doubt about parachutes and how they work now. I will have to go research when my daughter is in bed

Yes. "Breathing from the hara" (more than the stomach, that is, about one inch below the navel) is the key here. Quadrupeds always do that because their posture (shoulders blocked by the front legs on the ground) enforce them to breath like that. Just take a quadruped posture and you will see that you are naturally enforced to "breath with the stomach".

That's just the thing, they make it sound all mystical, it really, really isn't. Think about how it works for a second.

Western thinking means we breathe from the chest, thus the lower half of our lungs is never fully used, it is compressed by the stomach. Now for Chinese and Japanese you push your stomach out and fill your lungs from the bottom up, thus gaining full use of them. This is a thought that occurred to me until I read one of Attanssio's books about all Eastern teachings being written in code - then epiphany whacked me full on

That's simply not true, everything does not fall at the same speed. Terminal velocity actually varies based on shape and aerodynamic drag. That's why a fighter jet can still hit the ground faster than the pilot when the engine cocks out, even without a parachute.

What is different is the time taken to reach this velocity, which is offset by drag and buoyancy. But once it is reached, terminal velocity is the same no matter what your size, period, and has in fact been proven numerous times.

http://www.bitesizephysics.com/Lessons/gravity.html

hyper-intelligent

There is another RPG where you can amp up your intelligence called Alpha Omega, trouble is with things like this is that you end up with Sherlock Holmes and it becomes virtually impossible for a GM to run due to description and the amount of information that they would being able to deduce in instants. You'd be better having dragons like this sherlock Holmes as a dragon type character. It could be run, albeit with difficulty for you. So that they do not know everything about the person and can interact and be outwitted and beaten in human form.

FYI, I have done an expanded SIZ table where I use the x2 mass = +8 SIZ (or half mass = -8 SIZ) and scaled it all the way down to ant SIZ (about SIZ -100 on my revised scale). If we assume the +1D6 per 20 SIZ in the BRP rules works both ways, then a SIZ -100 ant should take 5D6 less damage from a fall, which while not perfect does help a bit. Falling damage in BRP is a bit off (it is tied to distance instead of velocity).

To be honest I am not sure whether it is even worthwhile going into too much depth with this. Falling is tied rather intimately with distance, velocity, and mass. After a certain distance everything falls at the same speed anyway, whether ant, hammer or whale. It is the resultant increase in mass that does the damage.

But smaller creatures recover much quicker from fatigue... And I'm not sure that they don't travel as much. Actually, I'm even sure of the contrary. Birds are the animals that do the longest travels and the ones that surely require the most important stamina.

Yes they do, but I suspect that is more down to correct breathing than anything else. Example here, when I was younger I used to love running, but never had much stamina no matter what I did. Even my early foray into martial arts did not help. It wasn't until I started one that delved into some of the mysticism behind it that we came to conclusion it is mostly written in code. I found that once I employed 'breathing from the stomach' my stamina increased many fold; likely due to more oxygen into the blood, but I could actively use running machines and thought nothing of running four miles, I used to struggle with a couple of miles prior to this.

Of course. This list is quite short and players will inevitably think to a lot of other traits that are used to depict novel or movie heroes... Some traits of this list could also be modified. Animal empathy is for example presented as a disadvantage (the character is too sweet with animals and let them dominate him). But it could perfectly be regarded as an advantage (the character understand animals better and can make them obey more easily, like a horse whisperer).

Now, as Vexthug wrote it, the most important thing to keep in mind is that traits work better when they are tied to the game world.

I come from GURPS, which is a game in which advantages and disadvantages are an important part of the character creation. Perhaps even the most important one. That is why the list of advantages and disadvantages given in the rules is huge... But even with GURPS, if the game master doesn't select the traits that are available in his game world, and the ones that are forbidden, and if the player doesn't justify the advantages and disadvantages he chooses with a good character background, things inevitably sound odd. Likewise, if players take too many traits, performing them during the game is too hard and, eventually, some of them become just forgotten words on the character sheet...

So, in my humble opinion, a complete list is not the most important.

First because no list can be complete, especially in a universal roleplaying game which can handle SF as well as fantasy. And second, because the best is when a player imagine a trait inspired by the background and that perfectly corresponds to the character he wants. Moreover, best traits are those that are fine tuned, not generic ones that could fit to every character. Two different alcoholic characters doesn't have exactly the same problem with alcohol for instance... One can become very bad tempered while the other one will just make a lot of gaffes and be very clumsy...

I sort of agree, and disagree at the same time. For instance somewhere I did invent some rules for bullet-timing in in BRP; basically using three levels of Fast Reflexes and Enhanced Time Sense (originally Gurps and has found it's way into Unisystem thanks to John Snead). As I cannot find it, I'm working from memory. It basically awarded extra Combat Actions, and something else. But yeah, Gurps went too far with advantages and disadvantages and went from a generic game to one over burdened with mechanics that I lost interest.

At the moment I am verging on another system of advantages being relatively simple in nature:

1 point = fingers, toes, eyes

2 points = arms, legs

4 points = torso

8 points = whole body

I've not worked up from there yet into creating other stuff yet.

FAE is Fate Accelerated edition of the Fate core rules system from Evil hat games. It's a $5 rule book that's just 50 pages long for a narrative style RPG. There's a lot of games using this system in one form or another, like Icons, Dresdon files. I'm currently running an Icons game and it plays much truer to the super hero genra than any of the other game I've used in the past, like Hero and Mutants&Masterminds in my opinion. But I prefer BRP for my fantasy and sci-fi games they need a little more crunch for me, but I do like to add some narrative elements to them.

Miles

Sorry I forgot to provide a link http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/114902/Fate-Accelerated-Edition?term=fate+ac

it's a pay what you want for the pdf.

Mining other games for good ideas and adapting them to your favorate system is always worth doing if done right. Why not adapt GURPS adv./diasads to the game

as long as it adds to the enjoyment. for me I would make them up as needed and avoid making a long laundry list of options.

I know OQ2 has a relationship system for things like rivals, enemies and family, and I think RQ6 may have something similer.

but if you want special powers and abilities you can use the super powers and mutations from the BGB to make just about any effect you could want.

Plus you can reflavor battle magic to mimic advantages/feats as well.

Just some thoughts, I would love to see what you guys come up with tho.

I suspected that you meant Fate Accelerated but didn't want to make any assumptions without confirmation. Now I do have that somewhere on my spare hard drive. Although I have never played in a game, I want to, although I also have things like Savage Worlds and innumerable other stuff that I haven't played - and want to play at some point. Trouble is most sites I try to play on, the RP's just fizzle out rather quickly and unfortunately I don't have time to arrange around the table games.

Although I have across a foreign system - Sistema Daemon. It is in Portugese but if you have Google Chrome it will translate automatically. Interestingly enough it has stats almost identical to BRP family, although it drops Siz in favour of Agility and Perception. Damage bonus is on strength alone. This does have quite a few traits that can be bought at chargen.

Sistema Daemon Fan Creation

Now this is so popular in Brazil (from what I've read as I live in the UK) that even the Devs has been creating fan supplements - the above being one such example.

Since the main argument of Descartes was that animals don't have any language, my main counterargument was that they have one. But, in these years (about 20 years ago), there were few indisputable proofs. I used the example of Washoe and Koko, two female monkey which spoke AMESLAN (American sign language for deaf people). Both of them had no problem to speak that language and to generalize words like "open" too everything which can be opened, including taps. Furthermore, Washoe (a chimpanzee) created new concepts, like "striped horse" for zebra or "face-hat" for mask while Koko (a gorilla) used words to lie from time to time. But these was not great proof, of course. Everyone can remain doubtful by saying that these are monkeys, which are the most close to us animals... I am very far from having established that all animals have a conscious.

I wouldn't say that animals have the intelligence of a 5 year child. In my humble opinion, they have a different intelligence. Some recent psychology researches show that there are different kinds of intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences

Cats, for instance, may have a low logical-mathematical intelligence, of course, but their bodily-kinesthetic one is indubitably far much higher than our. And they surely smile about our failure in that topic... I remember climbing once in a tree and telling to my cat: "Hey! Look how I climb well." My cat looked at me. As soon as I went down, my cat ran until the top of the tree. She didn't climb. She ran vertically, thanks to its claws. It make me laugh and my cat seemed very happy, as if she was saying: "Hey! Just look what climbing really means."

Cool, thanks for that. I will try to look into this in more detail.

My reason for my beliefs have funnily enough come from science, as paradoxical as that may seem.

If the universe is a hologram, some scientists even refer to us as living in a holodeck, and I remember seeing at least one other documentary on Youtube from established scientists referring to consciousness possibly being the Prime Mover - what we perceive or don't, effects reality. the similarities between this and various religions became rather striking for me - so I guess it either comes to: we are either all part of the program, or all life that has a conscious identity is both, part, and a part of the greater reality.

My master report title was: do animals have a spirit/soul? ("une âme", in French). It was an answer to René Descartes' theory of animal-machine.

And what did you conclude, and why?

EDIT: Obviously don't need a full expose, just some stuff to maybe go and read. Personally I am of the opinion they do due to Hindu and Buddhist beliefs about being reborn as animals and vice versa. Plus we know they have the intelligence of around 5 year olds. So by that argument we are holding that intelligence is the basis on the existence of soul, so therefore babies wouldn't have one either. So I think every living being has one.

1) In my humble opinion, this is essentially due to our medicine. If we hadn't this medicine, things would certainly be very different. Just look at people who don't have access to our medicine, either far from our western world or far from our modern time in the past. Does that mean that our medicine makes our constitution higher? I'm not sure at all. To the contrary. If our medicine suddenly disappeared, I'm quite sure that a lot of people would die within a year, if not just a month. So, in my humble opinion, we are not really healthier than animals, we just have a medicine than keep us alive for a longer time. In roleplaying game terms, it means that we have bonuses to our rolls. But, of course, that is just my opinion and lot of people disagreed with me on Steve Jackson Games forum... Which is fine! I've no mean to prove what I say.

Very true, as from what I remember people a several thousand years ago were getting together and having children around 11-ish, and many did not live to see their 30th birthday. If you caught a cold in that day and age, you died. It was that simple. Look at Victorian London - at how prevalent it was for the people who caught colds to get infections or to die from consumption. It wasn't until antibiotics were invented and we could treat such things enabling people to survive. Now look at certain areas that have turberculosis that is immune to all known antibiotics. It almost seems as though we have come full circle once more.

When I was studying philosophy at university, I make a lot of research about the soul of animals. And these last few years, I learned so many things that could have been very useful for my master report... Opinions about animals fall one after the other very rapidly.

What kind of research did you do? Just kinda curious really and what conclusions you reached.

I've never been a fan of advantages and disadvantages tied mechanically to the character. But I do like them tied to the world. I'm thinking of using fae's fate point concept for my games. The high concept, trouble and aspects help tie the character to the world fellow players and give a short background for the PC. With these aspects you can give the PC some motivations and RP material and dual the fate point economy. You don't have to use the fate system to the extreme that Fae does but does help me make my story and world more engaging for my players. This style of play may not be for everyone, but I like it.

Miles

Which Fae RPG is this? Just wanted to know so that I can take a look.

Cthulhu by Gaslight has a system of traits that are either advantages or disadvantages. They are rolled at the character creation but could also be chosen. They add bonuses or penalties to some stats or skills.

Some examples :

• Aged (Disadvantage): Add (1D3+1)x10 years to age; age affects statistics starting at age 30 for EDU, 40 for physical attributes (p. 36 of Call of Cthulhu 6th edition).
  
• Ambidextrous: Uses either hand without offhand penalties.
  
• Eagle-Eyed: +(2D3)x5% to Spot Hidden.
  

I do have that supplement but have not read it yet.....time being what it is and all that. What do you think of the ones in CbG? Are there any others you think could or should be included?