fmitchell

A hearty "me too" from me. Also, for those of us who want a jump start, is this the list of options from Basic Roleplaying that approximate Magic World? Higher starting characteristics Simpler skill bonuses Skill ratings over 100% Attacks and parries over 100% Allegiance Plus random AP from armor.

Any machine designed for planetary combat would need to be sealed, not only against water but against the fine powdery sand present on the Moon, Mars, and probably elsewhere. Cylons and Daleks (technically cyborgs, if not organisms in mini-tanks) certainly wouldn't let liquid water compromise their effectiveness. R2 units were designed for the rigors of combat, albeit in a supporting role, so sealing off vital components improves their durability too. Not to mention, anything sealed against vacuum will also keep water out. Also, Cylons, Dalek travel machines, and R2 units are products of an advanced technological culture, so perhaps their manufacturing processes seal off water-sensitive components, either as a byproduct or as a trivial step. Currently, waterproof electronic and mechanical devices cost extra, but it's hardly a cutting-edge technology. Then, too, modern electronics generally consist of sealed IC chips soldered onto exposed circuit boards; future manufacturing might produce completely sealed circuit cubes, optical components immune to water, or who knows what else.

Or they're made of aerogel. Which they'd have to be, since that much meat and bone would collapse under its own weight. (Except for magic, I guess.) FWIW, The Book of the New Sun included proportional, "realistic" giants that had to live underwater once they reached a certain size.

Are you talking a toe-to-toe battle? What if the high-skill mundane used some cleverness? I really want to play that scene where the rag-tag misfits outwit the cultists, whack the sorcerer-priest before he calls forth the Big Bad, and saves the helpless sacrifice. (Who's an old man with rotten teeth, because even in fantasy life's not fair.) Very much agreed. I'm a fan of low-magic settings; area-effect fireballs and the like are right out. One world or corner of a world might have classic FRP wizards, another derives their magic from spirits, still another might channel psychic energy to boost their abilities. Luckily BRP and the rest of the family come with three to five different systems out of the box, and if you don't like any of those you can write up a prototype in an afternoon. (One day I'll finish that Ritual Magic system ...) On the other hand, if you have a different vision of how magic and/or psionics should work in, say, d20, you're kind of stuck, because there's the SRD rules, there's third-party publications of varying quality, and there's you effectively rewriting half the Players' Handbook. Not to pick on D&D; so many other systems have a single vision of magic hardwired in, and you might as well rewrite the entire rule book if it doesn't match yours.

This does sound cool. (A little misplaced in a Sorcery book, but cool.) It reminds me of Iron Heroes (d20) in which characters can take a hefty skill penalty to try something cool ... although in BRP a) special and critical successes after-the-fact can replace skill penalties up front, and everything is a skill, or very nearly, so combat, non-combat, and "class" abilities use the same elegant framework. Thank you. One thing I hate about certain other RPGs is the "Christmas-tree syndrome", where high-powered characters need "magic items" hanging off them to reach their full potential. (BTW, Iron Heroes explicitly rejected this philosophy: "it's not the sword but the hand that wields it." If it weren't for the plethora of class abilities and point pools I might be playing it now.) Imagine Narsil or Excalibur were exceptionally well-made swords that give exceptional fighters an edge (literally), hardly worth bothering with in high-magic games; their power to influence events flowed from the exceptional people who wielded them and those who believed in them.

To soapbox a bit, I think the main failing of feats was that many of them fell into three categories: You get a +N to blahblah. You can ignore a fiddly rule that's hard to remember anyway. You can do something that anyone could do given enough strength/speed/luck. (Iron Heroes' skill challenges did a better job of representing this.) The idea of mundane characters having an equivalent of spells -- stunts, techniques, what have you -- is decent enough, but having played in a Spirit of the Century game I prefer conflicts where players can try crazy maneuvers on the spur of the moment, and maybe make them part of their regular repertoire. That this big surprise is in Advanced Sorcery makes me think it's more like the cult gifts in Mongoose's Elric of Melnibone or RQ6. I prefer heroes to be larger than life but not overtly magical ... but we'll see.

The PDF is still available, though, under Downloadable Books. These days, I buy games on PDF: cheaper and they don't take up room in meatspace.

MW Sorcery is essentially the "Sorcery" system from the Big Gold Book, Elric!, and Stormbringer 4e/5e. If anything, this Sorcery system mechanically resembles Spirit Magic from RQ3, Battle Magic from RQ2, or Common Magic from MRQII/Legend. RQ Sorcery, on the other hand, starts with the skill-based BRP Magic system from the Gold Book and adds rules to amplify or combine spells. Chaosium's Magic Book renamed it Wizardry to avoid confusion, but RQ and Glorantha material keeps the old name.

If MW is a strict subset of BRP (right?), then theoretically any BRP supplement is a MW supplement. (So is any CoC supplement with a little tweaking.) As a practical matter, though, I'd love to see: - Adventures for Magic World, hearkening back to old D&D and RuneQuest modules. - Settings for Magic World beyond typical Medieval Times and Conansville: Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian, Arabian, African, Russian, Central and Eastern European, Greek, Egyptian, etc. Lost worlds and red planets might also fit, or even a *real* Dark Ages book, perhaps centered around Charlemagne. - Alternate magic systems beyond the Gold Book, perhaps integrated with the settings above. For example, a Norse book might include rules for period-appropriate ritual witchcraft (seidhr) and runic magic.

Hah, new avatar! (Not that you'd want to date it.) Thanks.

I'm a little leery of introducing new characteristics: my goal is something simple that still conveys the differences between living things and animated non-living matter. Perhaps I should restructure my article as follows: Constructs using the basic 4 physical characteristics, with SIZ reflecting volume and CON standing in for structural integrity. Constructs using no CON and split SIZ, the larger value used for calculating HP and Damage Modifier. Constructs using HP only (a la RQ Earth Elementals) plus standard measurements for height, width, and weight. Hit location rules for all constructs. Major wound table for robots and full-body cyborgs. Optional rules for targeting a golem's chem. Optional "power level" rules. A similar breakdown applies to the meaning of POW for constructs: Constructs using POW as a stand-in for physical energy. POW restricted to fully sapient golems, psychically active robots, and/or cyborgs, and necessary rule modifications. Power Point batteries for super-powered robots. Optional "battery power" rules for robots without POW or PPs. Entities within cyberspace, and POW/PP as a measure of influence within it. The last thing I want is something like Mongoose Traveller's alternate damage system for vehicles and robots, much less something with GURPS-like levels of detail. I'd like GMs to be able to drop robots into their campaigns without learning a whole new set of rules. Golems in particular should mesh with other fantasy creatures.

At one point I considered density multipliers, but split SIZ got too confusing: Hit Points use mass-based SIZ, Strike Rank uses volume-based SIZ, and Strength Bonus uses ... which one?

A while ago I threw together some rules for Constructs in BRP. Recently in lieu of doing something useful I got to thinking about those rules again, and I wonder if maybe I should separate the three cases: Golems react to damage like solid (or hollow) inanimate objects. The disparity between standard SIZ values and their density makes me think I should treat them like RuneQuest elementals, substituting height/width/volume for SIZ and calculating damage based on STR alone. Robots, especially non-sapient ones, also react like inanimate objects albeit ones with parts. Maybe I should devise a specialized Major Wound table for them. Cyborgs are most like regular organisms or undead, so it might make sense to give them CON, especially since the brain (at least) is alive. On the other hand, full body cyborgs are most like a tiny fragile organism riding a human-sized vehicle, much like a Dalek but usually prettier and not genocidal. Maybe they're closer to robots after all. Or maybe, since I actually wanted to simplify constructs, I should just stat them like regular creatures with unusual resistance to damage (golems need a sledgehammer or mining tool to partially bypass armor, robots have their own major wound tables or hit location reactions, cyborgs use robot rules except for the head.) Plus, OpenQuest, Age of Reason, and Merrie England already did golems, so I'm not sure what else I can add. Sigh.

I've been having the same problem, and all I get is: vBulletin Message Unable to save image

That's a fairly loose translation from the original Martian. The actual word denotes a small burrowing pseudo-cephalopod, although it literally means "thing that tastes like everything else".

Cthulhu Invictus has an interesting take on the Greek gods and titans. The Olympian gods were mortals who encountered a Mythos artifact/gate and gained superhuman powers. They defeated the Titans, an older elite of mortal scholars and scientists opposed to the Mythos. If I were doing this, I'd make the world like ancient Greece but not. The Titans would be wholly original eldritch abominations, only nebulously described but known by their "children" (i.e. monsters). Their names would sound Greek, even be Greek with some extra work. If equivalents to the Olympian gods exist, they might be powerful but insubstantial psychic entities, masters of advanced science, equally alien beings with better P. R., or fictions based on old superstitions and long-dead heroes. Alternatively you could create a human-friendly religion based on an anachronistic faith like animism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Socratic philosophy, or modern humanism.

OK, here's what's happening to me: 1. I load http://www.basicroleplaying.com and I see the front page ... but I'm not logged in. 2. I log in. 3. I'm redirected to http://basicroleplaying.com/content.php ... "fmitchell, you do not have permission to access this page", blah blah blah Maybe this will go away when I make my 10th post. I don't post that often (except in bursts), so that might be a while.

I get the same thing from loading basicroleplaying.com/ . No subpage, just the root.

Another alternative I've contemplated is a "wound" system like D6 or True20. I haven't thought it all the way through, but here's a first attempt. 1. Weapons have a "survivability" rating, perhaps based on RQ6 difficulty grades: Very Easy, Easy, Standard, Hard, Formidable, Herculean. 2. Characters have five (or so) wound levels. Stealing from D6, these are Wounded, Severely Wounded, Incapacitated, and Mortally Wounded, plus Dead. Each has a checkbox next to it. Successive Wound Levels impose increasing penalties to skills and movement. Incapacitated restricts the character to one AP a round and Endurance rolls every combat round to stay conscious. Mortally Wounded permits no actions and Endurance rolls every minute to stay alive. 3. When hit, characters make an Endurance roll at the weapon's survivability level. A Critical Success means that the character takes no damage. Success means that the character checks off Stunned or worse, Failure means Wounded or worse, and a Fumble means Incapacitated or worse. 4. If a checkbox is already filled, characters check off the next worse level. For example, if a character is Wounded but not Stunned, and succeeds a survivability roll, he will still be Wounded. The next time, though, he will take Severely Wounded whether he succeeds or fails; a critical will mean no damage, a fumble goes directly to Incapacitated. 5. Armor increases the survivability rating by one to three levels. Unusually large or deadly weapons might add directly to minimum wound level, e.g. critical success means Stunned or worse, Success means Wounded or worse, etc. Again, I haven't thought this through completely. I'm borrowing from roll-over systems with unlimited degrees of failure which are hard to translate to a roll-under system with exactly two degrees of failure. As written, for example, there's no way to kill someone with one blow, and being Incapacitated is a 1 in 100 chance. This system emulates Total Hit Points and obviously doesn't accomodate hit locations or RQ6 Special Effects (MRQ2/Legend Maneuvers).

Technically, Swords & Wizardry is a retro-clone equivalent of Original D&D; LL is closer to Holmes or B/X. LL does have an OD&D "emulation mode" through Original Edition Characters.

I'll wait for Classic Fantasy Next. It's supposed to support all preceding styles of play simultaneously!

Slightly off-topic, and blasphemous to boot ... As flexible as the "monsters are people too" approach is, I sometimes envy D&D, Tunnels & Trolls, and Cinematic Unisystem (among others) for having a shorthand for NPCs. A minimalist approach like Chaot's would cite the creature's HP, AP, primary attack % and damage, any alternate attacks and damage, and notable skills and special abilities. For all other purposes one can assume STR = CON = SIZ = starting HP, DEX 10, INT 10, POW 10, MOV = human, and no magic unless noted in the creature's description ... and even then, it might be better to cite strike rank, combat actions, etc. directly for brevity and convenience. Note that NPCs intended primarily for peaceful interaction might detail important skills, magic, and special abilities, and then default to an average creature of his/her/its species if things go pear-shaped. Of course, as "tzunder" said, BRP and RuneQuest are far less monster-driven: combat is far more deadly, and there's no convenient shorthand in the rules as written. Usually each monster is hand-crafted for the situation, which is perhaps as it should be.

To quote Philip J. Fry, "Shut up and take my money!"

You could just port the Magic and Religion systems for that authentic Harn feel. Since that might be too much work, though, I'd pick RuneQuest Sorcery for the Shek-P'var wizards, RQ Divine Magic for priests, BRP Psychic Powers for psionics, and MRQ2 Spirit Magic for shamans (if you use them). I don't see a role for Battle Magic / Common Magic / Folk Magic / RQ3 Spirit Magic unless you want to give wizards and priests some non-combat utility spells. One problem with this lineup is that RQ Divine Magic is extremely powerful compared to the system in HarnMaster Religion, and conversely RQ Sorcery will seem weaker because it eats up so many MP. One alternative is to give priests Allegiance plus BRP/Elric Sorcery, although I'm not sure that does them justice either.

Isn't CthulhuTech closer to Lovecraft meets Neon Genesis Evangelion?