Old Man Henerson

So do you draw these boxes on the side of the character sheet next to hit points? You are right about the hp tracker though, it sounds too complicated for my tastes. Sorry for the confusion, I was never intending to use both systems at once, I was just curious what the advantages of each system has and what kind of games each one would be best suited for.

Mmm. Yeah, that might be a problem to look out for. Thanks for the tip

😂Good one, but those odds are too grim for me to bet on, but who knows, maybe the bet will pay off and you will reap quite the eternal reward from it. That I can agree with. It is also the same with those ghost hunters and finding Bigfoot shows, if anything they filmed was real it would be on the national news instead of some backwater TV channel. Still, Ancient Aliens will hold a special place in my heart as one of the most ridiculous and interesting shows to see, especially for an author like me. That would be quite a hilarious set up, however, aside form having the PCs find several of the clues themselves, you should have whoever the Master Detective was leave some little clues himself for the PCs to find. So while at first they will think that he left them out in the cold, if they are smart enough, they will see that he actually left them every thing they need to succeed. Thanks for the email. For the game I was torn between having a psychic focused adventure or taking inspiration from Cthulhu Tech, perhaps I can still have my cake and eat it too with this. By character scale mecha, does it mean something like the Iron man armors?

Yeah, but wouldn't that be the same thing as someone finding out that the Earth was round instead of flat? Sure people did not like it back then when they first discovered it, but it did not dramatically change how they lived their day to day lives either. It should be the same as finding out about mythos monsters. Unless you need to actively avoid and adapt to the presence of these monsters, your day to day life would not change that much, and even if it did, this new way of life would eventual become your norm.

You betcha! 😉 That is not dead wich can race again. I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist myself, so I am more on the fence about it, although I have more faith in the actual historical accounts and legends than whatever Ancient Aliens Guy and his buddies are theorizing. I have never liked the Idea that the show put out that aliens were behind everything while humans just sit and watch. Still, the show is great for coming up with ideas for books and games. That would be pretty funny to see. Just have Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot show up and give the PCs advice before jetting away. Also telling them to look out for the villain's propensity for following tropes.

Yeah. I will fix that and keep an eye out for it. Thanks again for the tip.

Okay, here is the plot of the game I am currently working on. I got this idea after reading some material from the End Time monograph on the internet. The back story starts in 2020 when a group of astronauts investigate the dark knight satellite. (Wich, by the way, sounds like Batman's satellite TV service) While on the satellite, they learn that the satellite is a beacon for a great cosmic force that is approaching the Earth, and will arrive in 7 years. One of the astronauts, who is really a cultist/monster tries to take over the satellite and gain its power for himself. They defeat him and barely escape the satellite as it explodes. Over the next 7 years te world America, Europe, and China pool their resources and start a Mars mission to send their best people to live on Mars before the cosmic force arrives on Earth, sending up 3 rockets with 100 people at a time about every 2 years. As the cosmic fore draws closer, things on Earth get worse as crime and insanity goes up and cultists, monsters, and UFOs begin appearing and abducting people. At the end of the 7 years the cosmic force arrives and envelops the Earth in a monstrous cloud that the people of Mars can't see through. A few days later, the get radio transmissions from 3 more rockets that left Earth at the last minute and are lead by Elon Musk of all people. The main story will take place 300 years later after Elon Musk and his descendants have made the Martian Colinies into an advanced society and the cosmic cloud over the Earth has disappeared. The PCs will be part of an expedition to Earth to see if they can recolonize the planet. This ofcourse goes horribly wrong and they are attacked by psychics and cultists aided by one of the expedition leaders who has already consorted with the dark powers in order to transcend his human limitations. The PCs will have to survive in a strange and warped world full of psychic monsters and cultists ruled by three cosmic beings that are actually children of the first cosmic force. Along the way, they will find allies among the various resistance tribes and paramilitary organizations who are fighting against the 3 rulers and learn how to gain psychic powers and defeat them. Another force Known as The Light will also help and guide them through their adventure along with providing them its power and strength. The end goal will be to go into the psychic dream realm and steel the shards of the Earth's life force that the 3 rulers have been feeding upon and use them to defeat the rulers, and once they have enough power to defeat the cosmic force itself and free the Earth. I also kind of want to have them use some cool mecha suits like the one on the back of the Big Golden Book, provided ofcourse through Elon Musk Cyber technology. What do you think of the setting?

All very good food for thought. I will have to look over the psychic power list to see how it all works. I am not too worried about mind reading since my game is more action oriented. But I will keep it in mind. The enemies will have plenty of psychics as well so a good deal of the enemies will be on equal fooding with the players in that regard.

What exactly do you mean by going the other direction? Do you mean like my post about if the mythos was not that powerful?

Remember, if you beat a dead horse long enough, it will rise up as a zombie horse to plague the world of man once more. Thus it is with fandoms and genres. I couldn't agree more with that. When I was younger, I would watch episodes of Ancient Aliens with a clipboard in hand and write down ideas from whatever zany episode was on. A few of these ideas have even made their way into the book I am writing. That is definitely one of the more interesting ideas I have heard. You could also have it so while all the players are arguing and searching for who the murderer is, that Mr. Body is slowly transforming into a monster and will start to feed on the players or take them through his secret portal to Planet X to be eaten there.

Sort of, but not really. Mankind has always had dark monsters and world ending horrors lurking around throughout all of history. This is just the first time we can discus all of them in one place.

Thanks for the link. Looks like some interesting stuff.

There are always more secrets to find, not to mention you could have PCs who are not familiar with the book go on an adventure through it, perhaps even have them trace the protagonist's path through the book. I believe he left out entire portions of the land that you could go exploring through, not to mention what ever mission you have for the PCs could take them up beyond the walls of the canyon and into the icy ruins of the old world above where they could learn the true reason the earth has fallen into darkness. The Possibilities are endless. I found that site awhile ago myself. Probably for the same reasons you did. I copied all the stats and gathered some of the best pictures I found and have now been working on a world book in a word document for privet use. I still have a lot of work to do, but I think that this would make one of the best game settings in recent years.

Sounds like Murder in Hotel Transylvania ha ha.🤣

This leads to another question I have had in my mind for a long time. Are the sanity rules even realistic? Assuming things like bigfoot, faeries, and aliens are real and assuming even a tiny portion of encounters are real, most people are not driven insane by their encounters with these beings. To me, it seems like Lovecraft highly underestimated the strength of the human mind, as I would imagine, eldritch super beings aside, seeing something like a deep one or shogoth would be no more damaging to the mind than seeing bigfoot in the wild.

Yeah... Sure was.

Ah. I see. There are a few powers like mind shield and dead calm that could help out a little, but I see your point. I guess you could tailor your enemies so their powers were weaker than the PCs like you said a while ago, so that might be a good compromise. I forgot to take into account the lethality of the game, still in the D&D mindset 3PP/1D6 for a quick kill seems a lot more reasonable now that I think about it. Though I also see Loyd's point about causing chaos with mindcontrol and transformation spells, perhaps both types of powers should cost more points for their potential lethality? While I will agree that high level magic users are not a good idea for a long running campaign, the stories I usually like to tell are more like long, drawn out one shot campaigns with beginnings, middles, and endings. Once my PCs reach endgame level of powers, it is time to face the BBEG and finish the game. So I am not too worried about the longterm effects of powerful magic on a campaign beyond their impact on the story. To each his own however.😉

I had thought the same thing LOL.

I have looked at it before, it sounds so much like the old AD&D game I have LOL. Perhaps I will have to look into it at a later date.

The other thing I an not so sure about with psychic powers is if Astral Combat is supposed to be the main mode of combat for psychic games since there seems to be relatively few combat powers.

Ah, I see now. so perhaps we need to reverse the cost of attack spells and manipulation spells? Although, unless you have the extra energy super power, using MP will be rather exhausting.

I have actually thought a little about doing that. I saw in the quick start edition of BRP that they had a psychic character with a healing power, so that got me thinking about just ripping the healing magic power from the magic section and turning it into a psychic power. I also think that combining the power sections is a great idea. the other powers I wanted to make up was a psychic ability to control lightning or electricity and another one called Mind over matter that was sort of like the resistance super power where your body could keep moving and fighting despite how damaged it was, at least until you hit 0 HP or run out of power points. Yeah, this is where my setting gets complicated. Humanity in the game as been divided in two, one half surviving on an Earth where most of society has regressed into feudalism and tribalism while being ruled by four cosmic children of a planet eater who are feeding of pieces of the Earth's psychic field, and the other surviving on Mars where they are technologically advanced and are terraforming the planet. On Earth, Psychic powers are fairly common and are earth shattering, with storms of psychic energy warping the people and animals of the world and with at least one psychically charged human killing one of the god children after steeling his Earth piece and forming a haven on the moon. On Mars however, psychic powers are all but unknown, or are hidden by the higher ups in the colonial government. The PCs will be people who come to earth on a recolonizing mission, completely unaware of the state of the Earth and the existence of psychic powers, though they themselves will soon come to posses them.

I have 2 questions. For localized hit points, are you talking about hit points by location? And wouldn't 1MP/D6 ratio be extremely easy to abuse?

What kind of vulnerabilities do you mean exactly?

There is a free version here at this site. it is in the public domain now so it should be fine to download. Alternatively, you could get a book on amazon somewhere. I hope you enjoy it. 👍