Ideas from Tirikélu RPG

[Questbird]

Over at the recently-revived Tekumel BRP thread I mentioned a game by Dave Morris (of Dragon Warriors, Fabled Lands fame) called Tirikélu. This prompted me to have another look at the 1990s free game, which looks inspired by Runequest, Dragon Warriors, and shares some ideas with Fire and Sword. It has some interesting ideas in it which could be applied to BRP. Here are the ones I found, mostly to do with combat. (Spell casting is also interesting but I'll leave that for another post)

1. It uses a d20, roll low instead of d100 (as discussed in another BRP thread) Well, technically you roll 2d10 not 1d20.

2. Initiative is d20 + (DEX above 10) instead of straight DEX rank

3. You count down initiative ranks (like DEX ranks). When it's your turn you can act or defer, except for parrying or evading, which you can do in response to others' actions.

Combat actions

All actions either take a full round or half a round.

Full actions include

• an attack at full skill
• a parry at full skill
• a dodge (called Evade) at full strength
• plus a few others you'd expect like casting a spell etc.

Half actions include

• parry at half skill
• attack at half skill
• and some other lightweight actions like draw a sword, nock an arrow etc.
• If you do two actions in a round the second action happens at the very end of the round

Ripostes

Any time you successfully parry a failed attack on you, you have the opportunity for a riposte. This means you get a free attack which doesn't count against your limit and can't itself be parried BUT the target is whatever you rolled to do your successful parry. So in BRP terms if you had skill of 50% with your weapon and you successfully parried an attack by rolling 30%, you could make a riposte attack at 30%.

Weapon damage

All weapons do between X and 10 base damage. X increases with your weapon skill and is also modified by the type of weapon. For example a two-handed weapon increases X on average, while a dagger or punch decreases it. Your damage bonus is added to this, but in Tirikélu damage bonus is a maximum of +5, dependent as in BRP on STR + SIZ.

Parry damage (to people)

On a successful parry, you subtract the defender's damage bonus (remember +0-5) from the attacker's and the remainder goes through to the defender. Doesn't really matter for armoured opponents but can make a difference for unarmoured or against huge creatures (in such cases: try to dodge not parry)

Armour

Pretty straightforward, fixed values from 1 to 9, very similar to RQ3 values. Stops that much damage, except on a special hit (1 in 5).

Shields

These are handled in a better way IMO than in a lot of BRP variants. A S-M-L shield simply adds 3-5-6 points to your armour value, but only against front or left attacks, on a roll of 1-2 on d6 for S-M and 1-3 on d6 for L. They do protect against special attacks, but at half value. If an attack does more damage than their value, their protective value declines by one. There's also a mechanism for bashing with a shield which requires a successful Dodge (Evade) check and can be parried or evaded as usual -- possibly allowing for a riposte.

'Close' combat

Basically Wrestling range, closer than normal combat range, requiring a Dodge (Evade) roll from the attacker which can be dodged or parried as usual by the defender. Once in close combat you can't Parry; only dodge.

Edited May 25, 2021 by Questbird
modified parry damage section

[Lloyd Dupont]

Some neat ideas in there, thanks for sharing! 🙂

[Kloster]

On 5/25/2021 at 7:24 AM, Questbird said:

Ripostes

Any time you successfully parry a failed attack on you, you have the opportunity for a riposte. This means you get a free attack which doesn't count against your limit and can't itself be parried BUT the target is whatever you rolled to do your successful parry. So in BRP terms if you had skill of 50% with your weapon and you successfully parried an attack by rolling 30%, you could make a riposte attack at 30%.

Nice idea. I'll have to check. I thik it can be added without too much trouble to RQ, and can give a bit of swashbuckling. Let's see.

[Questbird]

10 hours ago, Kloster said:

Nice idea. I'll have to check. I thik it can be added without too much trouble to RQ, and can give a bit of swashbuckling. Let's see.

 

Dave Morris had played some Runequest and one of the things he disliked about the system was the potentially lengthy attack-parry-attack-parry sequences when two competent opponents faced each other. He's even written a recent article about it ( https://fabledlands.blogspot.com/2021/05/cut-and-thrust.html ).

 

[Kloster]

8 hours ago, Questbird said:

Dave Morris had played some Runequest and one of the things he disliked about the system was the potentially lengthy attack-parry-attack-parry sequences when two competent opponents faced each other. He's even written a recent article about it ( https://fabledlands.blogspot.com/2021/05/cut-and-thrust.html ).

 

I never had this problem with RQ combat, because we used extensively RQ3's options and maneuvers, and every dirty tricks we could. One more option is one more thing that avoid the lengthy, non fun combats. As a bonus (for me), I am a former fencer and love the swashbuckling style of combats.

[Bill the barbarian]

On 5/27/2021 at 6:48 PM, Questbird said:

Dave Morris had played some Runequest and one of the things he disliked about the system was the potentially lengthy attack-parry-attack-parry sequences when two competent opponents faced each other. He's even written a recent article about it ( https://fabledlands.blogspot.com/2021/05/cut-and-thrust.html ).

 

I have fond memories of the sword fight twixt the Dread Pirate Roberts and Inogo Montoya, but combined with Dave Morris’s comment (below) it takes on a whole new life, Thank you for pointing this out!

Quote

A combat should be a little story, with a beginning, middle and end. But it's only worth playing out the beats of those mini-stories if they're going to be interestingly different each time. We'll tolerate combat mechanics that take longer to resolve if they generate dramatic outcomes

Dave Morris from Cut and Thrust