Shaira

Hi Penn, I too am a huge fan of Gamma World, though this isn't what I had in mind with Chronicles. Think more of an extremely far future earth, where ancient technology and demons and sorcery exist side by side. Add in some Byzantium and ancient China, shake and leave to ferment - and you're on the way to what the Chronicles is about. In play, it *feels* like a fantasy roleplaying game. You can go adventuring; there are monsters, wars, eternal threats, evil chaos nasties, and badlands aplenty. There's also a richly detailed civilization which is millennia old, living on the ruins of other, even older, even longer-lived civilizations, going back to a mythical golden age "when the stars sang with the songs of men". There are gods, and demons, and sorcery; and there are ancient artifacts which no one really understands any more, except maybe the artificers of the Temple of Khosht, and they don't really know *that* much. There are legions armed with "flamelances"; cities tens of thousands of years old which have strange, highly-carved conduits which can mysteriously "recharge" exhausted artifacts; and the Autarch of Korudav is said to have his own personal "flyer", which can cover hundreds of miles in a single day. The first Chronicles book is very much an introduction; it's a big setting, with a lot of detail, so we've chosen to focus on one part of it, the "great city" of Korudav, which takes several days to walk through end to end. Also known as "The City of Leaden Walls", it has tunnels, undercities, a port district, and its ancient citadel, with its incredibly ornate-looking towers and streets where no sunlight falls, is lit by mysterious globes of "manatine energy". Future books will provide more detail on critters, temples, regions of the "Springtide Civilizations", adventures, and so on - the Chronicles book gives a selection of all those in a single volume. Hope that helps! Cheers, Sarah

Hi guys, Thanks for everybody's feedback on the ad copy for The Chronicles of Future Earth - we've put together something a little less poetic and hopefully a lot more informative I think Dustin will be posting it shortly, but it should run something like this: ***** It is the end of the Fifth Cycliad, the unimaginably far future of planet Earth. A world grown strange with time, where the stars are but a distant memory, and demons, sorcery and ancient technologies hold humankind in thrall. The Venerable Autocracy of Sakara, oldest and greatest of the Springtide Civilizations, is decaying from within. In its vast and crumbling cities strange races eke out lives unchanged for millennia, while ancient enemies gnaw at the edges of the world, ready to wreak a terrible revenge. In these dark days a cry goes out for heroes, to stand against the dying of the light and save the world from the sins of its past. Sorcerer, priest, warrior or prince, everyone knows the end of an age is at hand. Will you answer the call? Welcome to The Chronicles of Future Earth. ***** Hopefully there's a bit more information there. If you'd like any more info, please fire away! Cheers, Sarah

Hi guys, It's great to see mention of the game on Dustin's blog at last However - there was a typo in the name. The actual setting name is "The Chronicles of Future Earth". I've asked Dustin to change it, but just wanted to get in there early before everyone gets used to the wrong name! I'll be v. happy to answer questions etc shortly - I'm just waiting for Dustin's official announcement before piping up Cheers, Sarah

Hi Jason, I'd be very glad to take a crack at these - I don't know much about fencing, but I've read a heckuva lot of planetary romance and am a huge fan, so I'll try and drum up some Barsoomian goodness at our gaming table for a couple of sessions, see how it goes! Plus, of course, anything that adds options to the BRP combat system has got to be good! :-) Cheers, Sarah

Yay! I've only just looked at this scenario - immortalized in a chainmail bikini at last! :thumb: The Gods of Valhalla smile upon us all! Triff - flattery will get you everywhere Now, where'd'I put that WD40.... Sarah

I'm having problems with the Download too - I've emailed Dustin too, hopefully it'll get sorted very shortly! Incidentally - I've been talking a lot with Dustin recently and things do seem to be getting moving again over at Chaosium. They've had a couple of men down sick for the past several months which seems to have knocked them for six; it looks like they're now starting to deal with that, get some new editors, etc. I've actually had an MS with them since last July (!) which they've wanted to keep under wraps for the time being - mostly I think because they haven't wanted to commit to dates, etc (very wise in retrospect...) - but which looks like it's *finally* getting back into gear again. Which is nice. Lordy-lordy. Well - there's stuff coming off the press at last! :thumb: Cheers, Sarah

If it's fantasy you're looking for, you could do worse than grab the pdf of The World Builder's Guidebook, an old AD&D supplement. At $5 you can't really complain, and it's actually very good - practically nothing to do with D&D, and chock full of all kinds of geographical and sociological info. It's a good read. If it's hard Scifi, then try to get a copy of The World Builder's Handbook (notice the completely different names of these two supplements, heh? This has a *lot* of tekkie stuff, but it's less stats & numbers than the Star Hero & 2300 stuff that's currently out there, and also has decent explanations of what you're doing when building a world, including building a culture. Very different animals for very different jobs, but I can recommend both! Hope that helps, Sarah

Hi all, Just to say I've just heard from Dustin that the BRP Adventure Monograph (from the various submissions last July / August) is almost with us, with the PDF arriving possibly in Feb and the dead-tree version "several weeks" later. It seems that a lot of the delay was down to editors falling through, etc: this looks like it's been sorted out somewhat. I know we're still in monograph-land for the publications, but it's BRP and it's support, so things may be moving forwards again after the winter! Incidentally - I was looking at my ancient Chaosium Apple Lane and Snakepipe Hollow books t'other day, and marvelling at how far printing has come these days. What we call monographs today are *somewhat* better than what we used to consider full print products back in the day! Now, we just need to get them into the shops... Cheers, Sarah

Last I heard (early December) they were finishing off the artwork. I think it might be next on the list for dead-tree publication.

Just following Rust and Leonmallett's leads on the monograph PDF thread... Merry Christmas to everyone at Basic Roleplaying Central, and a Happy and BRP-filled New Year 2009! Oh - and a brisk three cheers for Sverre for all the hard work running and managing these boards this past year. Cheers Sverre! :thumb: :cool::happy: Sarah

Hi Nick, Congratulations - that looks like a great scenario, and it's excellent to see it's made it to the shelves before Christmas! I'm planning to pick up the PDF as an Xmas prezzie shortly... Cheers, Sarah

Basically, if the opposed parry roll results in a downgrade of an attack to a level which is still a success, your parrying weapon or shield takes damage, as follows: Crit Attack : Successful Parry = Attack downgraded to Special, Parrying weapon or shield takes 4 points of damage Crit Attack : Special Parry = Attack downgraded to Standard Success, Parrying weapon or shield takes 2 points of damage Special Attack : Successful Parry = as above. So, eventually, your shield or weapon is going to fall apart. The "Slung Shields" rule on p264 *more or less* says this. Basically, if you're using the optional Hit Locations, your shield will add 1/2 its AP/HP to your armor in those locations shown on the Shield Table on p263. I say "more or less", as it's a little unclear what happens if you're actively using the shield for parrying when you're hit in one of the locations covered: the wording on p264 suggests you *don't* get the additional protection in that case, but it would be easy to decide otherwise. My main motivation is to learn the "new" BRP RAW so that if and when I write BRP stuff, it's using the published rules and not my own variant - variants being, as you say, very easy to create! I agree with you, however - you can houserule lots of things easily within BRP without breaking things, which is one of its great strengths. At the moment I'm trying (stubbornly, some would say ) to play the RAW, and still haven't decided which optional rules I'll end up adopting, but I do have a few contenders of my own for houseruling! Cheers, Sarah

IMHO there are several reasons why Parries changed from RQ3 to BRP / SB5. First, there's considerably more bookkeeping for probably no additional realism. Whilst it may make attractive mathematical sense to roll your weapon damage against a notional "shield penetration value", and then see if you "get through" enough to potentially wound or even kill your opponent, it kind of confuses the concept of what a successful parry *is*. You could define a successful parry as: i.) Successfully putting my shield between me and an attacker's weapon ii.) Successfully blocking the attack of my attacker's weapon. For simulation purposes, it really is an artificial decision as to whether you define a Parry as (i) or (ii). RQ2/3 defined it as (i), BRP defines it as (ii). Personally, I would consider a parry in which you get injured / damage gets through as a failed parry / block, but that's just me. Given that it's an artificial decision, it's as well to go with the one that speeds up combat - ie where you don't have to roll damage each time you attack. Second, you can view real-world parries as all or nothing affairs; they deflect a blow, or they don't. Eventually, in the case of shields in particular, they get hacked to bits, whereupon they are useless; until that moment, a successful parry can deflect a blow. BRP seems to have taken a conscious decision to go with that. Again, it's an artificial decision either way. Third, the RQ2/3 Parry doesn't match the Opposed Resolution mechanic which BRP has adopted for combat (and other things...). A successful Parry or Dodge degrades the Attacker's success level, and the results are based on that. It's still quite possible to parry in BRP and get injured - a successful parry vs a special attack will do that, for example. The RQ2/3 rules just don't fit into that paradigm. On the original question on the difference between shield parries and 2h weapon parries (from my post on RPG.net ) (BTW - this is also summarised in the Clarifications & Errata in the Wiki): i.) If you use Strike Ranks, a 2H weapon cannot attack and parry on the same SR, whilst a 1H weapon can attack and a shield parry (or vice versa >:->) on the same SR. We've talked on these boards about houseruling that the same should be the case if you use DEX ranks too - it's a v. useful feature of shields and off-hand weapons. ii.) Shields have more AP/HP than weapons, so when you parry with them it's harder for them to get damaged and break. iii.) You can leave your shield slung and it'll protect you handsomely against missile weapons. A 2H weapon can't do that. Cheers! :thumb: Sarah

I think I've mentioned this before, but the D&D paradigm tends to expect PCs to stand toe-to-toe with foes and slug it out until one side keels over and dies. This is not traditionally how it works with BRP games - there are many more options available to characters, including the much respected "Run Away..." strategy . Given the possibility of criticals and fumbles in combat, the option of ambush, stealth, ranged attack, and "strategic retreat" ("Run the Other Way...!" ), it's worth getting out of the D&D mindset with BRP combat. Thanks to the random element, combat is rarely "balanced". AFAIK, CRs in D&D3 were a method of assessing relative challenge for the purpose of assigning experience points. Given BRP doesn't have XP, CRs aren't much use on that score. Bear in mind that, when a BRP party begins combat, they should be doing several things before running in screaming and waving swords: i.) Assess enemy capability (recon). Spot rolls and spells like Rat's Eye, etc, are great here, as are Idea rolls, Weapon rolls as Knowledge rolls (to possibly get an angle on how capable the foe looks), checking out any obvious "enhancements" (plate armor, glowing weapons, tons of weird-looking amulets, rings, crystals, etc). ii.) Select strategy based on the above. It's generally sensible to either ambush from afar with ranged weapons if possible, or failing that to arrange to get terrain advantages in a melee ambush. Use magic to create darkness or light, enhance your weapons or armor, etc. If the enemy looks like a baddy plus a load of mooks, decide whether to concentrate on the baddy, or take out the mooks first, again based on apparent capabilities. Muddling a bunch of low power Mooks can swing things drastically in your favour. iii.) If the foe appears *way* too powerful, maybe try to avoid combat, or, if it's too late for that, try and get past the enemy whilst saving your skins - Run Away! (Spells which increase your MOV or hamper the enemy are great here). If you still feel you need to balance encounters after that, then keep the enemy's skills relatively limited in number. With a single melee weapon, ranged weapon, and dodge skill, you can assess whether a given foe is above or below or roughly equal to a PC in competence. Spells tend to be enhancements (Sorcery) or replace a weapon skill as a principle attack (Magic). Finally, if you find you've got it all wrong and the PCs are getting creamed and are unable to escape, you can use the Fate Point rules as a last resort. If you want it to be a huge rarity to do this, make them burn permanent POW rather than PP to upgrade the quality of their rolls. Just a few thoughts. D&D3 CRs were, IMHO, a pretty flawed device in the first place (I much preferred the D&D1 XP calcs, and eyeballing it for encounter "balance"), and trying to hammer them into BRP will probably generate a lot more heat than light! Cheers, Sarah

As RMS said above, in the rules as written your parry chance is equal to your weapon skill - it's not a separate skill. The better you get with your weapon, the better you get at attacking *and* parrying. Dodge is a separate skill - admittedly just a single skill - but you have to raise it in addition to your core weapon skills to be able to dodge. Add to that the often crippling effects of ENC on your Dodge skill, and most people will generally have a better chance to parry than dodge - at least to start with. Also, circumstantial modifiers (like trying to Dodge in a narrow underground tunnel...) are generally more penalizing to Dodges than Parries. But, yes, for all intents and purposes Dodges and Parries are *exactly* the same thing in the rules as written. So, if, like me, you use the "Separate Attack and Parry Skills" optional rule, things are a little more problematic. Based on the rules as written, there is little incentive to raise your parry and not your dodge - dodge is a single skill used in all circumstances, whilst you have to have multiple parry skills all raised separately to produce the same effect. I get the feeling that I'm eventually going to have to houserule this (currently the issue which is problematic in theory isn't *actually* causing any problems in game play!) - by using one of the Optional Rules (Separate Attacks and Parries) I've introduced a factor which the RAW don't accommodate by default. I'm thinking possibly houseruling a Riposte on a Critical Parry wouldn't be too unbalancing, and might make people want to concentrate on parry skills rather than dodges. Cheers, Sarah

Hi Merak ;-) I'll add some more comments later - this is something I've been using too, but not for Star Wars and more from the standpoint of the HeroQuest rules than Pendragon, but it's the same ballpark. First: use Allegiance for Dark Side / Light Side. It's a % skill, so you can use it as a skill; it can have different effects at different levels (like the Ally and Apotheosis thing in the BRP rulesbook). You'll probably have to drum up some specific Dark Side and Light Side Ally and Apotheosis benefits. Second: have traits which are definite Dark Side / Light Side things (like Pendragon Virtues); Compassionate vs Cruel, Just vs Arbitrary, that sort of thing. Then, MAKE SURE you use them in play, even to the extent of putting the PCs in situations where they're a factor - if a character does the Cruel thing, they get Dark Side points, etc. If they *don't*, they get Light Side points - possibly reducing their Dark Side powers, that sort of thing. Third: use the Complimentary Skill rules. If you're modelling Force Powers with, say, Psychic Abilities, allow a character using them in an evil way to use their Dark Side Allegiance score to Compliment their Psychic Ability roll (Allegiance / 5 as a bonus). Also, you could allow a character to Compliment a Dark Side Allegiance roll with one of their negative traits (ie the highest of the lot); so, Darth Evil uses his Cruel 60% to get a +12% bonus to a Dark Side Allegiance roll (probably to use Some Evil Allegiance Power in an appropriately Cruel way). Fourth, get creative with Opposed Rolls. Example: Leia is persuading Luke not to kill Darth Vader (or something... ). Leia's Persuade skill is Opposed by Luke's Hate (Darth Vader) passion / trait. Allow unusual skills and traits to be used to oppose as long as there's a good game narrative reason for it. That's it for now! Cheers, Sarah

Well, a cheap-and-cheerful advantage if you use Strike Ranks is that the second weapon can parry in the same strike rank as you attack - which you can't do with a single weapon only. Not sure if there's a corresponding rule with DEX ranks - it would be a good one to have. Obviously this is no different from shield behavior, but it's worth enumerating the advantages which two weapons have over one weapon, for example. A minor houserule would be allowing a riposte - IE if you critical parry you can attack back immediately, but only with a weapon in your off-hand. I think this is the SB5 rule, off the top of my head. A second houserule might be to allow multiple attacks *against the same target* by dividing the skill roll in 2 if you wield 2 weapons - the current "multiple attacks over 100%" rule requires you attack different targets, but assumes you're wielding only 1 weapon. A third houserule might be to allow a "Full Offense" tactic, like "Full Defense" only in reverse - you give up all your dodges and parries but get to make two attacks. You require two weapons to do this - you can't do "Full Offense" with a single weapon. Just a few preliminary thoughts. Cheers, Sarah

It's the "Halloween Scenario Competition" monograph - you could write either CoC or BRP. It's *not* the BRP scenario comp from last July - I don't know where that's got to at the moment, maybe it's one of the things Dustin's trying to get out for Christmas... Cheers, Sarah

This was originally a Stormbringer 5th edition spell called "Hell's Bulwark". In SB5, powerful blows could chew up shields. Basically, if a blow exceeded the AP/HP of a shield, the excess would be deducted from the shield's AP/HP. No damage would "get through" to the wielder at that stage - it would just carve up the shield. Naturally this would tend to snowball, and your shield would be useless after a few such blows; the Hell's Bulwark spell allowed you to beef up your shield to proof it a bit against damage from powerful blows. Even in SB5 the spell didn't increase (directly, at least) the shield's protective power for the wielder - parries were still basically all or nothing. Incidentally, there was a weapon counterpart to this, which destroyed weapons regularly. Basically, if a powerful blow exceeded a parrying weapon's AP/HP, the parrying weapon would break immediately (not like a shield, which would decrease in effectiveness incrementally). Whatever you might think of the merits of the above two rules, the fact is they introduce an extra (and usually unnecessary) die roll into the attack/parry sequence. In SB5, you would attack, opponent would parry, then even if the parry succeeded you'd still roll damage, to see what happened to the parrying shield / weapon. In BRP, that extra die roll has been "shifted" into the Attack / Defense Matrix, in principle speeding up combat (in my experience it speeds up in practice, too). Now a weapon doesn't always have to roll its damage to see if a parrying weapon / shield is damaged - that's a feature of the relative success of the attack & parry, as referenced on the Matrix. Where does this leave Sorcerer's Bulwark? Of slightly more limited usefulness, I would say; it gives your shield more lifespan. However, if you happen to be wielding a Primitive Hide Zulu Shield against a Greatsword, a spot of Sorcerer's Bulwark 4 will go a long way! Cheers, Sarah

I've just added this as an "official" Clarification in the Wiki. :thumb: Cheers, Sarah ps. Erm... I mean I've added the clarification of the parrying procedure, not that I'm the "official rules explainer"... oh... err... I'll get my coat. :shocked:

I've just added this to the Errata in the Wiki. Cheers, Sarah

Very nice - that would work fine. Perhaps you might have a bit too short a life for solid metal shields, but maybe not. However - and just for the sake of discussion - how about this? If you look at the Attack / Parry / Dodge matrix, you see that for any result where a successful parry has downgraded a more successful attack, the parrying weapon (or shield) takes damage - either 2 or 4 points. The mechanism you need is already there - it's just that Primitive Shields seem maybe a bit too sturdy in this instance. I'd be tempted to reduce the Primitive Shield AP/HP to, say 2 or 4, from 10. That way it'd withstand one or two blows from a greatsword, no more, but be absolutely toast if it ever took a Crushing blow. It would mean we didn't have to change the rules - just the spec for the shield. How does that work? Cheers, Sarah

Let me know if you find anything... Seriously, though, I don't think there *is* anything in the rules per se that says specifically you can't parry, say, a troll maul with a kitchen knife. It's essentially the same as the "Parrying a Brontosaur with a Dagger" conundrum. In RQ2/3, it was patently suicide; in the BRP RAW, you have to make a GM call (a pretty obvious one, admittedly), that you *can't* Parry a Brontosaur with a dagger (or anything, really) - you have to Dodge. There is no rules mechanism that makes it ludicrous - it has to be a GM call. Two parts of the "Parrying" section on p191 indicate this detail. The operative word in the above is "could". The GM has to adjudicate whether a parry is even possible. Normally I would say "no" to the kitchen knife wielder parrying the troll maul... You also have, again on p191: At the moment I'm trying to play the game as written without houseruling anything, hence my interest. I personally can handle the GM call here; my concern with the Parrying rules as written are actually more to do with the "Separate Attack and Parry Skills" optional rule which I use. In my case, given that for all intents and purposes Dodges and Parries in the RAW are the same thing, the question is why you should bother developing a separate Parry skill at all. Why not put all your attention into Dodge? To be honest, it's not *actually* become an issue in my games yet, but the potential is there. If you keep Attack and Parry as the same skill, this issue doesn't arise - but with the optional separate skills, it may be necessary to revert to the old RQ system to make the separate Parry skill meaningful. I'm keeping my options open, but playing the "RAW" for now to "stress test" things a bit. Cheers, Sarah

Damn! There goes my day job...

In the Rules As Written shield AP/HP are used completely differently from the way they operated in RQ 2/3. A successful parry, whether with weapon or shield, deflects ALL damage from the incoming weapon; you don't roll damage and compare to the parrying weapon's HP, with the excess "getting through" - not in the RAW, at least . Shield AP/HP are only used when dealing with damage done directly to the shield itself, as in an attack to try and destroy a shield or parrying weapon (p206); or when resisting Damage vs Shield AP on the resistance table when parrying a Crushing blow (p196). As a result, comparing RQ shield AP values with BRP shield AP/HP values isn't actually comparing like with like. Of course, you can *play* BRP using the old RQ Parrying rules, but it's not the RAW; if you do that, you may even want to adopt the RQ shield values, as the BRP ones represent more the "damage resistant strength" of the shield, rather than the amount of damage it can stop "getting through". Hope that helps. It's a major difference from RQ, and is basically how Stormbringer handles parries, AFAICT. Cheers! Sarah