Sanity As A Dark Side/Corruption Meter

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Just spend PP

SDLeary

If he is using PP in his game. Remeber PPS are an optional rule. That's my point. Lots of ways to handle stuff. For instance the allegiance system from Elric/Stormbinger had an Elan roll that could be used like Divine Intervention and that could work with the Force. But that would also mean that those who call in favors from the Force that way would lose Elan/Allegiance points and thus become more vulnerable to the other side. 

[Old Man Henerson]

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, it depends on what sources the OP wants to use and what take he wants to have on it- after all it is his homebrew, so even if something was positively "X" in Star Wars, it doesn't have to be "X" in his campaign.

Yeah, as far as the force is concerned I am a George Lucas purist. The setting I am working on is going to somewhat similar to Star Wars, but set in the future of our galaxy instead where the players will live in the fractured husk of Humanity's great empire among the other races that have moved in. The plan so far for the setting is that psychics will utilize their latent powers to interact with the sort of unconscious thoughts and energies of all created things that together up a sort of energy field that permeates the universe and touches upon the edge of the Divine realm of the Creator. This field provides increased skill boosts drawing upon knowledge of all creatures to those who are in harmony with this psychic field. The psychic field also provides limited precognition describing what others are thinking and are about to do (I.E. telling you when someone is going to shoot you with a blaster so you can deflect it with you lightsaber or dodge) and the ability to increase healing rates (but not regenerate limbs) and increase strength and endurance (temporarily increasing Character rolls and HP).

The dark side comes in as "The Voices" which are the negative thoughts and energies polluting and corrupting the psychic field along with the dark spiritual enemies of the Creator that are constantly offering the promises of power and indulgence to those who are not constantly tuning them out. The corrupting power of the "dark side" comes from twisting the psychic field to your own destructive whims and using it to increase your own power points  and the potency of your psychic skills rapidly, often (though not always) at the cost of your physically characteristics.

Quote

If he is using PP in his game. Remeber PPS are an optional rule. That's my point. Lots of ways to handle stuff. For instance the allegiance system from Elric/Stormbinger had an Elan roll that could be used like Divine Intervention and that could work with the Force. But that would also mean that those who call in favors from the Force that way would lose Elan/Allegiance points and thus become more vulnerable to the other side. 

I was planning on using power points, but this method is also intriguing. Perhaps I will use both.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Old Man Henerson

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I was planning on using power points, but this method is also intriguing. Perhaps I will use both.

The way it worked in old Strombringer was that you earned Elan points by doing things that please your patron deity, and you could roll against that on % dice to call in some sort of DI, but doing so cost something like half your Elan score. The idea being that while your patron dieity might show up to help you when you ask, you couldn't call them every five minutes. 

In your campaign you could start this off like SAN (POWx5%) allowed for characters who are strong in the force.

You might even allow someone to get some extra points by taking some Dark Side Points at the same time. Maybe even allow them to do so after rolling the dice. That way a PC who fails by say 2% is going to be sorely tempted to take " a piddling 2 DSPs" in order to get their favor from the Dark Side.  

If you don't want to use Alliengance/Elan you could simply allow the Dark Side to offer characters "free" Fate Points/Power Points whenever they take a Dark Side Points. But then you might want to have the Light Side reward characters who do things in harmoy with the universe with a faster Power Point recovery rate. 

Oh, and another weird idea is that you could allow someone to keep a power up beyond the normal duration, but while the do so they do not regenerate Power Points. That wouldn't be a big deal for one or two minor powers but could become a problem if someone used a lot of POW points and now has to keep some power up.

[Old Man Henerson]

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

The way it worked in old Strombringer was that you earned Elan points by doing things that please your patron deity, and you could roll against that on % dice to call in some sort of DI, but doing so cost something like half your Elan score. The idea being that while your patron dieity might show up to help you when you ask, you couldn't call them every five minutes. 

In your campaign you could start this off like SAN (POWx5%) allowed for characters who are strong in the force.

Is the POWx5 thing for your starting allegiance score? The only potential problem I see is that if you use your powers a lot, your allegiance will constantly be in flux, and thus, you would never be able to achieve apotheosis.

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

You might even allow someone to get some extra points by taking some Dark Side Points at the same time. Maybe even allow them to do so after rolling the dice. That way a PC who fails by say 2% is going to be sorely tempted to take " a piddling 2 DSPs" in order to get their favor from the Dark Side.  

If you don't want to use Alliengance/Elan you could simply allow the Dark Side to offer characters "free" Fate Points/Power Points whenever they take a Dark Side Points. But then you might want to have the Light Side reward characters who do things in harmoy with the universe with a faster Power Point recovery rate.

I was originally leaning towards giving out free points for taking Dark Side Points, but rerolling for a few DPS is also pretty cool. Perhaps doing both would be good where taking that reroll/extra power points gives you more Dark Side Points in your allegiance score to draw upon later while also pushing your Dark Side Score closer to your WILL/SAN score.

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Oh, and another weird idea is that you could allow someone to keep a power up beyond the normal duration, but while the do so they do not regenerate Power Points. That wouldn't be a big deal for one or two minor powers but could become a problem if someone used a lot of POW points and now has to keep some power up.

I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying that they could keep their powers running longer but not regain any Power Points while they do so? Would they be able to cancel their powers?

[Atgxtg]

50 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Is the POWx5 thing for your starting allegiance score? The only potential problem I see is that if you use your powers a lot, your allegiance will constantly be in flux, and thus, you would never be able to achieve apotheosis.

Okay, I'm thinking old Stormbringer here where Elan was constantly in flux and there was no apotheosis. So yeah that was my thinking. At least for "aligned" characters such as Jedi. Joe Average probably doesn't have much of an allegiance score. 

50 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I was originally leaning towards giving out free points for taking Dark Side Points, but rerolling for a few DPS is also pretty cool. Perhaps doing both would be good where taking that reroll/extra power points gives you more Dark Side Points in your allegiance score to draw upon later while also pushing your Dark Side Score closer to your WILL/SAN score.

I think the gift works better, especially if it can be done after the dice are rolled. I mean thinkof all the times that someone misses a roll by a point or so. 

I don't think rerolls have the same appeal, especially for tasks that are difficult to pull off. Why take 5 DSP for a reroll when your chance of success is only 10%. And why take 5 DSPs for a reroll when your chance of success is 9-% when you can usually just  wait until next round? But when someone rolls and 11 and just misses by 1%, that's temping. Double so if they can bump a success to a special, or a special to a crtical.  

Besides, rerolls are just luck, and " In my experience there's no such thing as luck"

 

50 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying that they could keep their powers running longer but not regain any Power Points while they do so? Would they be able to cancel their powers?

Yes, and Yes. For example, Let's say there was some sort of Combat Sense power that helped provide situational awareness during a conflict, and that it cost 2 POW to activate. My idea would be that the character could keep the power up indefinitely (at least as long as they remained conscious), but that since they were constantly using POW they wouldn't regain any until they dropped the power - which they could do at will, or would happen automatically when they went to sleep.

Now consider the *sigh* that we see most force users do after a fight in Star Wars. That could be them dropping all the force enhancements they had up for the fight. 

 

What's fun about this is that is is self regulating and punishes players for being greedy with the Force. Someone wants to run around all day with boosted DEX and STR, sure, but no POW recovery. Oh, run into a foe and need some POW points becuase you had DEX and STR boosted, no problem the Dark Side will give you some POW points absolutely free, and just to show you how nice it is, it will toss in the same number of Dark Side Points at no extra cost. 

 

Oh, I might have failed to mention that when I ran Star Wars I was pretty good at temping players with the Dark Side. 

 

[Old Man Henerson]

23 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes, and Yes. For example, Let's say there was some sort of Combat Sense power that helped provide situational awareness during a conflict, and that it cost 2 POW to activate. My idea would be that the character could keep the power up indefinitely (at least as long as they remained conscious), but that since they were constantly using POW they wouldn't regain any until they dropped the power - which they could do at will, or would happen automatically when they went to sleep.

Now consider the *sigh* that we see most force users do after a fight in Star Wars. That could be them dropping all the force enhancements they had up for the fight. 

What's fun about this is that is is self regulating and punishes players for being greedy with the Force. Someone wants to run around all day with boosted DEX and STR, sure, but no POW recovery. Oh, run into a foe and need some POW points becuase you had DEX and STR boosted, no problem the Dark Side will give you some POW points absolutely free, and just to show you how nice it is, it will toss in the same number of Dark Side Points at no extra cost.

Okay, I see what you mean here. It makes sense based on the Star Wars cannon itself, and it is a clever and a good way to tempt people to the Dark Side or to be more mindful of their power use.

23 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Oh, I might have failed to mention that when I ran Star Wars I was pretty good at temping players with the Dark Side. 

I can see that you were good at it. Did you manage to get any of your players to fall?

Now the only thing that remains for this game is to figure out the benefits of the Force/Light Side, which unlike the Dark Side, should be slow and difficult, but a ultimately more rewarding path than giving into the temptations of the Dark Side.

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Okay, I see what you mean here. It makes sense based on the Star Wars cannon itself, and it is a clever and a good way to tempt people to the Dark Side or to be more mindful of their power use.

Yeah, a thing with most of the Star Wars RPGs was that the Dark Side would give you some perk for calling on it. Usually a hefty bonus to what you wanted to do.

3 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I can see that you were good at it. Did you manage to get any of your players to fall?

Not really. I did tempt them, but It was more a case of the players failing to grasp the setting, and creating flawed characters who were destined to fail. 

One player decided to make a force sensitive pirate, despite being warned about it (being force sensitive makes you more at risk to the dark side, and pirates tend to engage in somewhat suspect behavior). Then the player got all caught up in the tech and hardware. Said group were D&D players and were always intimated by the Empire having them outmanned and outgunned  (just like in the movies). Group died by fighting when surrounded (they should have surrendered and escaped later), but said player admitted that the NPC Darksider would have turned him by offering him his own Star Destroyer to command.

 

Second failure was even stranger. We were playing in the Clone Wars and said player wrote up a force sensitive character, and was surprised when Yoda refered to have him trained as a Jedi, for much the same reasons as why Anakin was denied training, plus this guy was 20 years old. Player was told out of character that much like in the films events would happen to would lead to the character being trained down the road. But the player still wanted to bear a grudge against Yoda and the Jedi. Not a good start for a potential Jedi PC. Later of the PC found a lightsaber off of a dead Jedi, got incredible possessive about it despite it not really belonging to him, and then wanted murderous vengeance on the NPC villian who took it from him, despite being warned about how it could lead to the Dark Side, leading to the player becoming even more resentful of Yoda and the Jedi. Basically he was like Anakin on steroids. All very puzzling as everyone at the table, including said player, had seen the prequels. Palpatine was actually using the PC as a pawn to undermine the Jedi. He'd tell the PC how he agreed with his suspicious of the Jedi and that he'd do more if only he had a good right hand man he could trust. One of the other players choked on his soda when I dropped the "If only I had someone I could trust to act as my hand." line. Then Papatine send the PC out on a mission, and if he did good, praise him publialy over the Jedi, and if he did bad, well he had a lightsaber so the  Jedi must have failed.

The group broke up due to work schedules, but it was a toss up as to who was going to turn him to the Dark Side. Dooku could do it by offering him revenge of the NPC who "stole hs lighsaber" while explaining  how the situation was all a misunderstanding and not of this was what he wanted, etc.etc. Palpatine could have done it by humoring the PC and slowly making him into the Emperor's Hand, which was the way things were headed. The PC never admitted to (or even thought) that he had ever done anything wrong and so everything was always someone else's fault and he never addressed any of his shortcomings. Most of the other players thought the player was trying to go dark. 

 

3 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Now the only thing that remains for this game is to figure out the benefits of the Force/Light Side, which unlike the Dark Side, should be slow and difficult, but a ultimately more rewarding path than giving into the temptations of the Dark Side.

Well one of the biggest benefits is Self Control. Darksider's are always ruled by their passions and tend to do things that might not be for the best. Kinda like the kid who eats a big bag of candy in one sitting. He wanted to do it at the time, but he probably regents it later on when he doesn't feel so good. So a lot of the benefit of the light side would be mastery over emotion and impulses. 

You might even want to consider Ki Skills. That was a thing in the old RQ Land of the Ninja supplement. Basically it represents the perfection of mind and body and turns the critical chance with a specific skill  into it's own skill. But then there are force abilties that might boost skills. 

[Bren]

On 6/8/2023 at 6:53 PM, Atgxtg said:

As a thought:

You could treat SAN as Willpower and when a characters fails a test they gain Dark Side points rather than reducing SAN. 

• If a character calls on the Dark Side they get a bonus to their PSI/FORCE USE roll based on their total dark side points (say +5% per 10 DSPs or some such) but they also gain more DSP by doing so.
• Said DSP bonus would also apply as a modifier to relevant Passion rolls. For example,. if someone has 20 DSPs they  would shift their Vengeful/Forgiving traits by +10/-10%
• Characters could get a Willpower roll to try an override their emotions, with the difficulty based on the situation. Forgiving someone who ate the last piece of pizza is easier than forgiving someone who murdered your family.
• When the DSP total exceeds the character's WILL (i.e. SAN) score they have been seduced by the Dark Side.
• Character who remain true to the Jedi Code could meditate away DSPs over time (say 1 DSP per Success Level). This would help to explain why Jedi meditate so much.

I was going to comment that a bonus based on existing DSPs doesn't tempt someone not yet tainted. But then you posted this:

On 6/9/2023 at 6:31 PM, Atgxtg said:

You might even allow someone to get some extra points by taking some Dark Side Points at the same time. Maybe even allow them to do so after rolling the dice. That way a PC who fails by say 2% is going to be sorely tempted to take " a piddling 2 DSPs" in order to get their favor from the Dark Side.  

I think this is brilliant. I know this would tempt many, probably even most, players. I like that it starts them out slowly. Let your anger out just a little bit.

[Old Man Henerson]

On 6/11/2023 at 11:23 AM, Atgxtg said:

Not really. I did tempt them, but It was more a case of the players failing to grasp the setting, and creating flawed characters who were destined to fail. 

One player decided to make a force sensitive pirate, despite being warned about it (being force sensitive makes you more at risk to the dark side, and pirates tend to engage in somewhat suspect behavior). Then the player got all caught up in the tech and hardware. Said group were D&D players and were always intimated by the Empire having them outmanned and outgunned  (just like in the movies). Group died by fighting when surrounded (they should have surrendered and escaped later), but said player admitted that the NPC Darksider would have turned him by offering him his own Star Destroyer to command.

It is surprising how many people do not seem to get the nature of the Force and the Dark Side, hence why we have seen the "gameification" of the Force in all the Star Wars video games. No one really seems to understands it and then you get things like "Gray Jedi" that just want to use dark side powers while still being good.

On 6/11/2023 at 11:23 AM, Atgxtg said:

Second failure was even stranger. We were playing in the Clone Wars and said player wrote up a force sensitive character, and was surprised when Yoda refered to have him trained as a Jedi, for much the same reasons as why Anakin was denied training, plus this guy was 20 years old. Player was told out of character that much like in the films events would happen to would lead to the character being trained down the road. But the player still wanted to bear a grudge against Yoda and the Jedi. Not a good start for a potential Jedi PC. Later of the PC found a lightsaber off of a dead Jedi, got incredible possessive about it despite it not really belonging to him, and then wanted murderous vengeance on the NPC villian who took it from him, despite being warned about how it could lead to the Dark Side, leading to the player becoming even more resentful of Yoda and the Jedi. Basically he was like Anakin on steroids. All very puzzling as everyone at the table, including said player, had seen the prequels. Palpatine was actually using the PC as a pawn to undermine the Jedi. He'd tell the PC how he agreed with his suspicious of the Jedi and that he'd do more if only he had a good right hand man he could trust. One of the other players choked on his soda when I dropped the "If only I had someone I could trust to act as my hand." line. Then Papatine send the PC out on a mission, and if he did good, praise him publialy over the Jedi, and if he did bad, well he had a lightsaber so the  Jedi must have failed.

The group broke up due to work schedules, but it was a toss up as to who was going to turn him to the Dark Side. Dooku could do it by offering him revenge of the NPC who "stole hs lighsaber" while explaining  how the situation was all a misunderstanding and not of this was what he wanted, etc.etc. Palpatine could have done it by humoring the PC and slowly making him into the Emperor's Hand, which was the way things were headed. The PC never admitted to (or even thought) that he had ever done anything wrong and so everything was always someone else's fault and he never addressed any of his shortcomings. Most of the other players thought the player was trying to go dark.

Wow, just wow. That guy was completely and unironically replaying Revenge of The Sith. On the one hand, it would have been interesting to see where the story would have went, but on the other hand, your description of that guy makes it sound like this game would have ended up on r/rpg horror stories. How did the other players interact with him?

On 6/11/2023 at 11:23 AM, Atgxtg said:

Well one of the biggest benefits is Self Control. Darksider's are always ruled by their passions and tend to do things that might not be for the best. Kinda like the kid who eats a big bag of candy in one sitting. He wanted to do it at the time, but he probably regents it later on when he doesn't feel so good. So a lot of the benefit of the light side would be mastery over emotion and impulses. 

You might even want to consider Ki Skills. That was a thing in the old RQ Land of the Ninja supplement. Basically it represents the perfection of mind and body and turns the critical chance with a specific skill  into it's own skill. But then there are force abilties that might boost skills. 

Yeah, this is what I was thinking. The allegiance system in the Big Golden Book has suggestions for one bonus that add temporary skill and HP boosts that I thought would make some good Force bonuses. It would be a hard path and one where you would have to refuse some dark side points, but it will ultimately be more powerful. Where might I find Ki Skills and the RQ Land of the Ninja supplement?

[Atgxtg]

9 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

It is surprising how many people do not seem to get the nature of the Force and the Dark Side, hence why we have seen the "gameification" of the Force in all the Star Wars video games. No one really seems to understands it and then you get things like "Gray Jedi" that just want to use dark side powers while still being good.

I think what happens is that instead of seeing the Eastern Ying-Yang harmony in balance thing that it was based on, they see a more Eternal Champion/D&D thing with both sides being extremes with balance in the middle -probably because that was was they were familiar with. 

9 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

 

Wow, just wow. That guy was completely and unironically replaying Revenge of The Sith. On the one hand, it would have been interesting to see where the story would have went, but on the other hand, your description of that guy makes it sound like this game would have ended up on r/rpg horror stories.

 

It was entertaining but frustrating. He brought a lot of baggage to the table based on past D&D experience that didn't apply in D6. That happens quite a bit. I used to tell him that no matter how good he got he'd never be a star destroyer, because he would look at most opposition and challenged as being a matter of needing more experience. He didn't grasp the concept that a character is never going to be able to deal or (or take) the sort of damage that  say, an AT-AT could.  But in D&D a PC could get the same AC, hit points and damage as anything else, with enough levels, magic and so on. There was one adventure where the group nearly got captured/killed by Ventress because he wanted to finish looting the dungeon (actually a Sith outpost) despite the separatists looking for the place and being a few hours behind the PCs. He only left because the Clone Trooper commander who was with him told him flat out that there was nothing the Clones could do against Ventress. As it was she shot his ship three times before he made the jump to lightspeed. 

 

9 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

How did the other players interact with him?

Much the same way the had for the last 25 years of gaming with him.  He wasn't a bad guy, just that he tended toward seeing things from his point of view, and just assume the players characters were in the right because they were the player characters.Nor was he the only one who brought in ideas that might have worked eleswere but not in Star Wars.  

9 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Yeah, this is what I was thinking. The allegiance system in the Big Golden Book has suggestions for one bonus that add temporary skill and HP boosts that I thought would make some good Force bonuses. It would be a hard path and one where you would have to refuse some dark side points, but it will ultimately be more powerful. Where might I find Ki Skills and the RQ Land of the Ninja supplement?

Probably Ebay. The thing has been out of print for years. I can look up rules for you if you like. Basically what it did was allow the critical chance to be raised separately from the main skill. Thus masters of a skill could use iit to perform an action perfectly. There might have been an option of spending POW points to boost it too. It would make characters very powerful. 

[Old Man Henerson]

11 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think what happens is that instead of seeing the Eastern Ying-Yang harmony in balance thing that it was based on, they see a more Eternal Champion/D&D thing with both sides being extremes with balance in the middle -probably because that was was they were familiar with. 

Yeah, it is easy to have that assumption. Reading into what inspired Lucas when creating the Force yields some interesting insights into how the Force really works, especially when you learn how Eastern Medicine defines balance as being whole and healthy while anything that makes you sick is seen as imbalance, i.e. balance is not being equally well and sick. The particular sect of Buddhism that Lucas used for inspiration had that same view of balance when it came to evil within the universe as well, evil being a cancer or imbalance that would have to be removed before the universe could once again be in balance; a view not too dissimilar to the Christian view of evil and which probably resonated with the original audience when the movies first came out.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It was entertaining but frustrating. He brought a lot of baggage to the table based on past D&D experience that didn't apply in D6. That happens quite a bit. I used to tell him that no matter how good he got he'd never be a star destroyer, because he would look at most opposition and challenged as being a matter of needing more experience. He didn't grasp the concept that a character is never going to be able to deal or (or take) the sort of damage that  say, an AT-AT could.  But in D&D a PC could get the same AC, hit points and damage as anything else, with enough levels, magic and so on. There was one adventure where the group nearly got captured/killed by Ventress because he wanted to finish looting the dungeon (actually a Sith outpost) despite the separatists looking for the place and being a few hours behind the PCs. He only left because the Clone Trooper commander who was with him told him flat out that there was nothing the Clones could do against Ventress. As it was she shot his ship three times before he made the jump to lightspeed.

I have not played too much of BRP yet, but reading through the rule book, I can also see the power levels of this game are way less than in D&D. The raised lethality however does seem to promote more tactical thinking and, in my opinion, ironically makes the game much more story driven when you don't have to constantly be looting dungeons for levels.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Probably Ebay. The thing has been out of print for years. I can look up rules for you if you like. Basically what it did was allow the critical chance to be raised separately from the main skill. Thus masters of a skill could use iit to perform an action perfectly. There might have been an option of spending POW points to boost it too. It would make characters very powerful. 

Thanks for the offer! I would like hearing more about the rules if you have the time. I do think though from what you have told me about ki rules so far that the BGB probably has everything I need to make sufficient Jedi type characters for the game. I guess you could also give force sensitive characters skills over 100% to represent a similar level of training like the Galactic Knight character in the back of the BGB.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Yeah, it is easy to have that assumption. Reading into what inspired Lucas when creating the Force yields some interesting insights into how the Force really works, especially when you learn how Eastern Medicine defines balance as being whole and healthy while anything that makes you sick is seen as imbalance, i.e. balance is not being equally well and sick. The particular sect of Buddhism that Lucas used for inspiration had that same view of balance when it came to evil within the universe as well, evil being a cancer or imbalance that would have to be removed before the universe could once again be in balance; a view not too dissimilar to the Christian view of evil and which probably resonated with the original audience when the movies first came out.

Exactly. Lucas mentioned it during interviews, and I recall a priest bringing it up when people brought up Christian symbolism and mythology in the story, with the preist replying that it's really more or an Eastern style philosophy laid over a Western style hero's story. 

It's why the "Grey Jedi" and "Dark Jedi" concepts don't really work according to how Lucas set up the Force. Someone is either in balance or not. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I have not played too much of BRP yet, but reading through the rule book, I can also see the power levels of this game are way less than in D&D. The raised lethality however does seem to promote more tactical thinking and, in my opinion, ironically makes the game much more story driven when you don't have to constantly be looting dungeons for levels.

I haven't played" too much" BRP either.😊

But I have played some and run more than I've played and, yeah it's differernt from D&D. Combat is for keeps and thus taken a bit more seriously, and yes adventures tend to be more story driven and focused.

In my experience the biggest hurdle I've seen with people coming over to BRP isn't with BRP specifically, but with the assumptions they bring with them from other games, notable D&D. "You must unlean what you have learned" is a real thing here. New players just accept things for what they are while experienced D&Ders assume things are supposed to work out the way they do in D&D and that the game is somehow wrong when they don't.

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Thanks for the offer! I would like hearing more about the rules if you have the time. I do think though from what you have told me about ki rules so far that the BGB probably has everything I need to make sufficient Jedi type characters for the game. I guess you could also give force sensitive characters skills over 100% to represent a similar level of training like the Galactic Knight character in the back of the BGB.

I'll dig it up. It can be very dead;y, as the setting models the cinematic Samurai genre, so it's even more lethal than standard RQ/BRP. It might not be bad for Jedi as ligthsaber combat had Kendo roots. 

[Questbird]

On 6/17/2023 at 1:50 AM, Atgxtg said:

I'll dig it up. It can be very dead;y, as the setting models the cinematic Samurai genre, so it's even more lethal than standard RQ/BRP. It might not be bad for Jedi as ligthsaber combat had Kendo roots. 

 

I'd be very interested to hear about these Ki rules too. Land of Ninja isn't exactly easy to find these days.

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Questbird said:

I'd be very interested to hear about these Ki rules too. Land of Ninja isn't exactly easy to find these days.

Okay, I found the boxed set, here we go (quick paraphrase and condense):

Gaining & Improving Ki

How you gain an improve Ki

• An adventuer who has achieved 90% or more in a worthy skill has gained ki.
• Ki is measured in percentile just like an ordinary skill.
• Ki begins at the characters critical success chance (i.e. 5%), and remains separate from, and raised independently from the base skill in the future, or from other skills. For example Kenjustu (Swordmanship, yeah I guess RQ3 beat Mythras to combat styles) Ki only applies to Swords and only grants Sword powers.
• One Ki has been gained in remains dormant and useless until the adventure seeks out a Master to train them.
• Initial training is 50 hours (in RQ 3 that was about the same time as it would take to train a skill, or about a week worth of training).
• An Ancestral Kami can be used in lieu of a Master (I suppose Force Ghosts count)
•  Ki can be increased though experience, practice and training, but as if it were at the rating of the base skill (i.e. if your Sword skill is 94% you improve your 5% Ki score as if it were at 94%.  
• Oh, and LotN has an Instruct divine spell that lets lets someone teach a skill that they had mastered at 1d3% per point in the spell. So if you run into a Master with 10 POW invested in Instruct you could get a huge boost quickly. 

Using Ki

What KI does and how to activate it.

• Character spends one or more magic points or POW points depending on the Ki Type.
• Adventure then attempts a skill roll. If the roll is under the Ki % the result is a critical success, and the character may earn a check in the Ki skill with GM permission.
• If the result is not under the Ki result it is treated as a normal skill roll with the corresponding success level (critical, special, normal) but the character receives no experience check  for the skill.
• A Ki roll once initiated by spending magic/power points cannot be aborted.
• Ki skill can be augmented by using the Cermony skill. (In RQ 3 Ceremony was a magic skill that allowed a character to spend time preparing for a spell and if the roll was successful they would boost their chances of success by  one or more D6, depending on how long they prepped- in the case of ki the benefit was limited at double the ki skill score - that is someone with 10% in a Ki skill could only raise it up to 20% through ceremony, no longer how long they prepped).

Ki Special Abilties

Neat things you can do with KI above and beyond a critical success. Here is a simple. 

• Get extra attacks with Jo Stick and Nunchaku
• Missile Weapons can hit a desired location and ignore armor (the latter is true of all criticals in RQ)
• Can declare and throw an unlimited shiruken, but must spend a magic point and make a successful ki roll for each one in other to throw another. Failing a Ki roll results in the rest of the attacks automatically missing. 
• Parry Ki allows for multiple parries. Spend a MP and if the parry ki is a success the character may attempt a second parry, and so on,.
• Dodge Ki works similar to parry ki
• Iajutus Ki. Iai is the fast drawk skill and reduces the Strike Rank that a character attacks on. Iai Ki is treated as a critical success (which means attacking on DEX SR with no modifier for SIZ or weapon) and beats other Iaijustsu rolls on a tied success level. 
• Yademejutsu (Arrow-Cutting) Ki:  Yado skill is used to cut arrows out of the air, basically a  parry against arrows (or blaster bolts). Yado Ki allows a character to parry multiple arrows in a daisy chain manner similar to parry and dodge ki.
• Craft KI: Each worthy craft has it's own ki skill. All retire permanent POW to use but created a minor magical item. For instance a tailor might craft a fine Kimono that improves the wearers APP by one. 
• Performance Ki: Each skill has it's own corresponding Ki skill. Requires the expenditure of 1d6 magic points but if successful the user gets a minor glimpse into the future, summed up in one word or short phase 
• Agility KI: Allows for amazing feats of Climbing ki lets people move along sheer walls and ceilings, Jumping Ki lets someone jump twice his height vertically or four times his height horizontally. Throw Ki allows an object to be thrown exactly where desired or even ricochet, at up to twice it's normal range (it could be adapted to retrieve a lost lightsaber). 
• Perception Ki: Allows the user to see and hear things beyond the normal human range, notice if someone is disused of if they have any Ki.
• Basically every skill has some special Ki perk.

Okay, that the gist of it. I can go into some spefic skills in more detail or go over one's is didn't cover if someone has any requests. But I think I laid out enough of it so that people will be able to understand how Ki skills worked.

 

Now I think it's pretty obvious how Jedi seems to draw upon this sort of thing. Most Jedi powers work a lot like modernized versions of Ki powers. Even the different lightsaber forms could be adapted to BRP by given each it own unique Ki abilities (Form I could get a sweep attack adapted from the attacks by giant sized creatures, Form II could get a riposte attack on a successful parry, Form III could parry for nearby allies, Form IV could have acrobatic spinning attack that would count as attacking on the move without losing the defense, Form V could redirect blaster bolts instead of just parrying them, and so on).

Even Jedi hand crafting their own lightsaber and empowering it with the Force matches up fairly well with craft ki. There is no running skill in RQ3 but one could be added and Run Ki could grant a Boost Of Speed. Likewise there is no Persuade Ki, but Mind Trick could be added. Force Push could be a adaptation of Throw Ki. Instinctive Astrogation would be tied to an Astrogation skill. Most Force Powers have obvious ties to a normal skill, and some analogue. If I were to use Ki skills in a Star Wars-esque BRP game I'd probably do up a list of powers and a list of skills and match them up, then come up with KI powers for the skills that were overlooked. In fact now that I wrote posted this stuff here I think it fits the Force even better than I originally thought. 

The 90% requirement is similar to Rune Lords in RQ. I suppose a GM might lower or remove it for a Star Wars game, but might need to put other restrictions on it, increase the 50 hour training time to acquire a ki skill for those with base skills below 90% (say 50 hours per point of fumble chance),or require a base skill roll to see if the training worked (which wouldn't be much of problem for a master with 90%, but might take several tries and several weeks or months for a padawan with 40%) . 

Anywhere there is is. 

 

 

[Mugen]

15 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

•  For example Kenjustu (Swordmanship, yeah I guess RQ3 beat Mythras to combat styles) 

I've always considered Kenjutsu as the main inspiration for Combat Styles.

15 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

• Parry Ki allows for multiple parries. Spend a MP and if the parry ki is a success the character may attempt a second parry, and so on,.
• Dodge Ki works similar to parry ki
• Performance Ki: Each skill has it's own corresponding Ki skill. Requires the expenditure of 1d6 magic points but if successful the user gets a minor glimpse into the future, summed up in one word or short phase 

In the french translation of LoN, most ki powers cost POW and not MP. I always suspected it was a translation error, and these few examples seem to prove I was right. For instance, in this translation Ki parry cost MP and Ki dodge cost POW.

[Old Man Henerson]

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay, I found the boxed set, here we go (quick paraphrase and condense):

Wow, that is all cool material! Thanks for retrieving it all! I will see what of it I can adapt to the setting.

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Now I think it's pretty obvious how Jedi seems to draw upon this sort of thing. Most Jedi powers work a lot like modernized versions of Ki powers. Even the different lightsaber forms could be adapted to BRP by given each it own unique Ki abilities (Form I could get a sweep attack adapted from the attacks by giant sized creatures, Form II could get a riposte attack on a successful parry, Form III could parry for nearby allies, Form IV could have acrobatic spinning attack that would count as attacking on the move without losing the defense, Form V could redirect blaster bolts instead of just parrying them, and so on).

Even Jedi hand crafting their own lightsaber and empowering it with the Force matches up fairly well with craft ki. There is no running skill in RQ3 but one could be added and Run Ki could grant a Boost Of Speed. Likewise there is no Persuade Ki, but Mind Trick could be added. Force Push could be a adaptation of Throw Ki. Instinctive Astrogation would be tied to an Astrogation skill. Most Force Powers have obvious ties to a normal skill, and some analogue. If I were to use Ki skills in a Star Wars-esque BRP game I'd probably do up a list of powers and a list of skills and match them up, then come up with KI powers for the skills that were overlooked. In fact now that I wrote posted this stuff here I think it fits the Force even better than I originally thought. 

The 90% requirement is similar to Rune Lords in RQ. I suppose a GM might lower or remove it for a Star Wars game, but might need to put other restrictions on it, increase the 50 hour training time to acquire a ki skill for those with base skills below 90% (say 50 hours per point of fumble chance),or require a base skill roll to see if the training worked (which wouldn't be much of problem for a master with 90%, but might take several tries and several weeks or months for a padawan with 40%) . 

Anywhere there is is.

A lot of the Ki stuff does map pretty well to Jedi abilities. A few psychic powers might fit better in places, but for the most part these work swimmingly. If we wanted to cut down on training times, we could make some of these abilities alignment score rewards too. It will be hard enough to resist taking on DSP to achieve some of these levels anyway. My only potential concern is that some of these abilities (like always landing critical hits) might be overpowered. Presumably, the dark siders would have some level of comparable power to match our heroes, but it might be easy to cut through everyone if they are always criting their attacks.

On 6/16/2023 at 8:50 AM, Atgxtg said:

I'll dig it up. It can be very dead;y, as the setting models the cinematic Samurai genre, so it's even more lethal than standard RQ/BRP. It might not be bad for Jedi as ligthsaber combat had Kendo roots. 

I can see now how this game would be more deadly than BRP now. You must have quite a few extra character sheets on hand while playing this.

On 6/16/2023 at 8:50 AM, Atgxtg said:

I haven't played" too much" BRP either.😊

But I have played some and run more than I've played and, yeah it's differernt from D&D. Combat is for keeps and thus taken a bit more seriously, and yes adventures tend to be more story driven and focused.

In my experience the biggest hurdle I've seen with people coming over to BRP isn't with BRP specifically, but with the assumptions they bring with them from other games, notable D&D. "You must unlean what you have learned" is a real thing here. New players just accept things for what they are while experienced D&Ders assume things are supposed to work out the way they do in D&D and that the game is somehow wrong when they don't.

You definitely have to unlearn what you have learned to play BRP as a D&D player. The fortunate thing for me is that, other than a few times with some friends playing 5E D&D, I mostly played with an old copy of AD&D or a homebrew system my sister made up that was percentile based. Half the reason I got BRP in the firs place was that it's character stats were very similar to AD&D's unlike many of the other generic systems that I had looked at. The similarities and easy percentile system has made getting acquainted with BRP much more enjoyable, especially now that I am finally starting to understand the rules.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Wow, that is all cool material! Thanks for retrieving it all! I will see what of it I can adapt to the setting.

Hope you get something good out of it.

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

A lot of the Ki stuff does map pretty well to Jedi abilities. A few psychic powers might fit better in places, but for the most part these work swimmingly.

Yeah and consider that in Eastern philosophy spiritual health is just as important as physical health, so some of the psychic abilities/magical powers could come from spiritual skills. There is probably a spiritual skill that helps with recovering magic (Force?) points.

 

It also might helpt to explain Dark Side powers and why they are shunned. You kinda wonder what sort of skill would lead to Force Lightning. You can see how it is some perversion of the norm.

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

f we wanted to cut down on training times,

You could but the time to get a power, basically one week is fine in RQ/BRP terms. 

THat it takes a long time to increase Ki skills is due to thier being very powerful, as their primary benefit is the greatly increased chance of a critical success. Someone with Lighsaber 120% and Lightsaber Ki 65% will critical 65% of the time when they spend a MP. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

we could make some of these abilities alignment score rewards too.

I dunno. I mean Luke and Leia did a bunch of nice stuff but their force powers didn't awaken until they were exposed to Force use.

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

It will be hard enough to resist taking on DSP to achieve some of these levels anyway.

Doubly so since Ki abilities  requires MPs to activate. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

My only potential concern is that some of these abilities (like always landing critical hits) might be overpowered.

It fits the Samuai Kensai and Ninja stories.. Basically in those stories you have one master swordsman or ninja who does incredible things. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Presumably, the dark siders would have some level of comparable power to match our heroes, but it might be easy to cut through everyone if they are always criting their attacks.

LOL! You should look at the old D6 Star Wars RPG some time. In that game characters got Force Points that they could spend to double all their abilities for a round. It is kinda a problem when one side in a duel spends a force point and the other doesn't. You pretty get the scene where the Jedi try to arrest Chancellor Palpatine.

But keep in mind that a character only gets a critical if they roll one natural or spend a MP and roll under their ki skill, which starts off at their critical chance and goes up slowly. 

 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I can see now how this game would be more deadly than BRP now. You must have quite a few extra character sheets on hand while playing this.

Well, it's playing a Rune Level character in RuneQuest. By the time the powers come into play a character already has a skill at 90%, and the ki skills are slow to improve, so it's a gradual process. On top of that there is magic in LotN which helps to counterbalance some of this. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

You definitely have to unlearn what you have learned to play BRP as a D&D player. The fortunate thing for me is that, other than a few times with some friends playing 5E D&D, I mostly played with an old copy of AD&D or a homebrew system my sister made up that was percentile based. Half the reason I got BRP in the firs place was that it's character stats were very similar to AD&D's unlike many of the other generic systems that I had looked at. The similarities and easy percentile system has made getting acquainted with BRP much more enjoyable, especially now that I am finally starting to understand the rules.

That's good. I find it makes it a lot easier for players to pick up a game if they haven't been indoctrinated into D&D thinking. I don't know why but it is the only RPG that players tend to drag in with them. 

[Atgxtg]

8 hours ago, Mugen said:

I've always considered Kenjutsu as the main inspiration for Combat Styles.

In the french translation of LoN, most ki powers cost POW and not MP. I always suspected it was a translation error, and these few examples seem to prove I was right. For instance, in this translation Ki parry cost MP and Ki dodge cost POW.

Probably a translation error. Also, prior to RQ3 there were no "magic points" and instead you spent POW, which was considered to be temporary POW unless permanent POW was specifically stated.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

My only potential concern is that some of these abilities (like always landing critical hits) might be overpowered.

Until a player gets really experienced the ki chance won't be much higher than the critical chance anyway. You could tone this down by:

• Separating the ki roll and it's success level from the skill roll and it success level - but then you'd need to give some benefit from the ki roll. Lightsaber Forms could help here. 
• Use RQ style parries instead of BRP combat matrix. Basically in RQ if you made your parry roll you at least parried the attack becuase you got to use your parrying weapon's armor points to reduce the damage, even from a crtical attack. Now a normal Sword had 10 AP in RQ3 a Katana 14 AP, and a lightsaber can probably stop a lot more than that. At least twice as much (28 points), which sould stop most crticals (Future world had energy sword do 2D10, and M_SPACE has a Force Sword doing 2d8). So a crtical hit won't mean as much against someone with a lightsaber anyway.
• Oh, and since lightsabers can stop so much you might want to change it from seeing if the lightsaber can stop to damage to seeing if the Jedi can hold onto his weapon or if the force of the attack knocks it out of his hand. You could use a STR roll, skill roll, an opposed roll, or even the resistance table (STR+DEX vs damage?) 

[Mugen]

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Probably a translation error. Also, prior to RQ3 there were no "magic points" and instead you spent POW, which was considered to be temporary POW unless permanent POW was specifically stated.

The translation says "points de POU", which someone familiar with RQ2 might understand as a temporary POW loss. It's possible the translator thought it would be better to not use the word "Magic" for Ki, and was familiar with RQ2. But it's never explained...

 

[Atgxtg]

7 hours ago, Mugen said:

The translation says "points de POU", which someone familiar with RQ2 might understand as a temporary POW loss. It's possible the translator thought it would be better to not use the word "Magic" for Ki, and was familiar with RQ2. But it's never explained...

 

It's a possibility. That's one of the things about 50 year old translations of game rules. I know that back in the day there is some stuff that we all knew about RQ2 rules that seemed very clearly spelled out, that when read today seems a bit fuzzy. 

Of course it could have just been a translation error too. I know Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea suffered somewhat when translated into English. For instance the title refers travelling a distance of twenty thousand French lieue (about 78 thousand kilometers) while submerged, as opposed to travelling to a depth of that distance. Also in some translations they translated units of measurement over without converting the values, that is 100 meters was translated as 100 feet, which throws off all of the sound mathematics the Verne used for the Nautilus. I think it's only fairly recently that corrected translations have been made available. 

 

And in the gaming world the bad (but probably well intentioned) editing of 5th Edition Pendragon lives on in infamy.

 

So who know with Land of the Ninja?

 

[Old Man Henerson]

22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Hope you get something good out of it.

I most certainly will!

22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah and consider that in Eastern philosophy spiritual health is just as important as physical health, so some of the psychic abilities/magical powers could come from spiritual skills. There is probably a spiritual skill that helps with recovering magic (Force?) points.

It also might helpt to explain Dark Side powers and why they are shunned. You kinda wonder what sort of skill would lead to Force Lightning. You can see how it is some perversion of the norm.

Eastern medicine is vastly superior when it comes to healing and maintaining the body. I think we in the West get to hung up on the philosophical problems when a lot of Eastern ideas are more focused on observing and caring for mans body holistically. The Force being derived from that sort of thought, a mixture of BGB psychic powers, super powers, magic, and Ki abilities would probably best represent the spiritual nature of these powers and the Energy Field (for lack of a cooler name) that fills the setting of my game. I also believe like you said that this does explain the dark side abilities like Force Lighting as being so malignant and corrupting thanks to their torturous and destructive nature. That of course, has not stopped people form thinking that they can be "balanced" in light and dark and use wicked powers of Force Lighting for good, which is precisely what I hope to avoid with this tread.

Quote

You kinda wonder what sort of skill would lead to Force Lightning. You can see how it is some perversion of the norm.

Perhaps we should add some sort of "Dark/Corrupted Ki" skill to use dark side abilities like Force Lightning. Or might also be better just to stick with some sort of Dark Side Points and allegiance like we discussed earlier in the thread. Or it could be another lightsaber form like you were saying.

22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

You could but the time to get a power, basically one week is fine in RQ/BRP terms. 

THat it takes a long time to increase Ki skills is due to thier being very powerful, as their primary benefit is the greatly increased chance of a critical success. Someone with Lighsaber 120% and Lightsaber Ki 65% will critical 65% of the time when they spend a MP. 

I think I am still in D&D mode and get antsy when I think of long periods of time. Of course, I was thinking that traveling warp speed between the stars would take a week or to of time depending on the distance, so there is plenty of time to do such training while flying between the stars.

22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I dunno. I mean Luke and Leia did a bunch of nice stuff but their force powers didn't awaken until they were exposed to Force use.

Doubly so since Ki abilities  requires MPs to activate. 

Separating allegiance from powers (at least in the beginning) might be a better implementation. We may even just remove allegiance altogether and make the Dark Side just a sanity type pool that gives you power but messes you up in the process while being "Light Side" means just getting the abilities straight but without any debilitating side effects or taking your character away.

22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It fits the Samuai Kensai and Ninja stories.. Basically in those stories you have one master swordsman or ninja who does incredible things.

It all does fit the Samurai/Ninja stories, and it also fits the lethality of lightsaber combat as well. Now my only problem is giving non-psychic a way to be relevant, other than giving them copious amounts of power armor and weapons or cybernetics ala Starship Troopers or Metroid.

22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

LOL! You should look at the old D6 Star Wars RPG some time. In that game characters got Force Points that they could spend to double all their abilities for a round. It is kinda a problem when one side in a duel spends a force point and the other doesn't. You pretty get the scene where the Jedi try to arrest Chancellor Palpatine.

But keep in mind that a character only gets a critical if they roll one natural or spend a MP and roll under their ki skill, which starts off at their critical chance and goes up slowly. 

That is rather overpowered lol. Spending MP and starting out with low critical chances should be a way to keep everything balanced.

Quote

Doubly so since Ki abilities  requires MPs to activate. 

Another thought I just realized however, is that if dark side characters can just use their DSP to either re-roll near misses or get MP to power their Ki skill, Dark Siders would truly become over powered. Perhaps Jedi type characters could use something like a Battle Meditation to even the odds?

22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That's good. I find it makes it a lot easier for players to pick up a game if they haven't been indoctrinated into D&D thinking. I don't know why but it is the only RPG that players tend to drag in with them. 

It is weird because I do feel that pull that wants me to think D&D in this game and just fight it out instead of seeking advantage wherever I can. As a GM I also have to make sure that the players do not go into those sorts of battles, although it is easier to let the players be tactical rather than be tactical myself.

23 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Until a player gets really experienced the ki chance won't be much higher than the critical chance anyway. You could tone this down by:

• Separating the ki roll and it's success level from the skill roll and it success level - but then you'd need to give some benefit from the ki roll. Lightsaber Forms could help here. 
• Use RQ style parries instead of BRP combat matrix. Basically in RQ if you made your parry roll you at least parried the attack becuase you got to use your parrying weapon's armor points to reduce the damage, even from a crtical attack. Now a normal Sword had 10 AP in RQ3 a Katana 14 AP, and a lightsaber can probably stop a lot more than that. At least twice as much (28 points), which sould stop most crticals (Future world had energy sword do 2D10, and M_SPACE has a Force Sword doing 2d8). So a crtical hit won't mean as much against someone with a lightsaber anyway.
• Oh, and since lightsabers can stop so much you might want to change it from seeing if the lightsaber can stop to damage to seeing if the Jedi can hold onto his weapon or if the force of the attack knocks it out of his hand. You could use a STR roll, skill roll, an opposed roll, or even the resistance table (STR+DEX vs damage?) 

These rules sound wonderful and put some more balance to the game Thanks alot!

[Atgxtg]

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

 

Eastern medicine is vastly superior when it comes to healing and maintaining the body.

Uh, I respect that as your opinion, but I don't agree with it. Now in a game world...

 

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Perhaps we should add some sort of "Dark/Corrupted Ki" skill to use dark side abilities like Force Lightning. Or might also be better just to stick with some sort of Dark Side Points and allegiance like we discussed earlier in the thread. Or it could be another lightsaber form like you were saying.

I think Dark Side points do/are the same thing. Being filled with negative KI = turning to the dark side. The Points are just a way of expressing that in game terms.

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I think I am still in D&D mode and get antsy when I think of long periods of time.

A week isn't a long timei in BRP. You generally make improvement rolls on a weekly basis.  The idea was that adventure would go have an adventure make improvement rolls, heal up, and then go on another adventure. So it might take a couple of years of game time to master a skill. 

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

 

Of course, I was thinking that traveling warp speed between the stars would take a week or to of time depending on the distance, so there is plenty of time to do such training while flying between the stars.

Yeah, that would be convient. Have an adventure; board your ship; and spend a week in hyperspace training. Speaking of ships, were you going to have a fixed time of a week like in Traveller, or would the distance and complexity of the route matter? Also, just a heads up but Star Wars ships travel much faster than that.

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Separating allegiance from powers (at least in the beginning) might be a better implementation. We may even just remove allegiance altogether and make the Dark Side just a sanity type pool that gives you power but messes you up in the process while being "Light Side" means just getting the abilities straight but without any debilitating side effects or taking your character away.

I think it depends on what allegiance does in game, or if there is another way that provides those things that you like better.. 

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

It all does fit the Samurai/Ninja stories, and it also fits the lethality of lightsaber combat as well. Now my only problem is giving non-psychic a way to be relevant, other than giving them copious amounts of power armor and weapons or cybernetics ala Starship Troopers or Metroid.

That is the classic Star Wars RPG problem.If Force Users are so OP then how do non-Force users deal with them and/or stay relevant to the campaign? Well, there is no solid answer to that, but some of what's been tried with vaying degrees of success:

• Learning Curve: Basically Force Users start off really weak and slowly mature into powerhouses. This is how D6 Star Wars did it, and similar to old OD&D/AD&D handled magic-users. Really weak at first, then they get decent, then they become overpowering if given the chance to act first. This tends to work out poorly at the begging and end, but great when you are in the sweet spot. It's also how Ki powers will tend to work as written. 
• Other Activities: THis is the George Lucas approach. Basically the Force Users duel amonst themselves while thier allies fight the minions of the evil Force Users. Works great as long as everybody stays in their own lane. 

 

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

That is rather overpowered lol. Spending MP and starting out with low critical chances should be a way to keep everything balanced.

Oh, this might sound surprising but game balance isn't really a thing, at least not how it is in D&D. GMs in BRP generally don't make encounters (un)"balanced" at 25% of the party's strength. 

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Another thought I just realized however, is that if dark side characters can just use their DSP to either re-roll near misses or get MP to power their Ki skill, Dark Siders would truly become over powered. Perhaps Jedi type characters could use something like a Battle Meditation to even the odds?

Well, you might not wan't all of the variopus ideas and options in play at the same time, and might want to cull some stuff.  Or you might want a few more perks for the Jedi. Some suggestions:

Regular Mediation might increase the rate that the Jedi recover MP. Maybe DSP's subtract from this as someone who is angry will have a harder time peacefully meditating?   

In some other Star Wars RPGs have Force Points which are very powerful, but don't always come back. Points spend defesnively do, but those spend for evil aggressive tasks are lost, which is turn makes such characters call on the dark side for points. . If you were to reduce the rate that MP are restored for dark siders , yit might even things out with the Jedi. For instance they could regenerate MP based on their "Sanity" (maybe rename that balance or harmony?) rather than their POW.

So if Darth Meaning has POW 18 but Sanity 30 and 60 Dark Side Points, he'd only recover MP as if his POW were 6 (30/5) instead of 18, or one third the normal rate. .

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

It is weird because I do feel that pull that wants me to think D&D in this game and just fight it out instead of seeking advantage wherever I can.

Yeah, that's common when you swtich game systems. The unlearn what you have learned thing applies to GMs even more than with players. Playtest an ambush in BRP to see how greatly it differernt from D&D.

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

As a GM I also have to make sure that the players do not go into those sorts of battles, although it is easier to let the players be tactical rather than be tactical myself.

Yes, just as long as you don't overdo it and wipe them out. Remeber what I wrote above about game balance, well the sneaking thing is, since characters in BRP have fixed hit points, are more fragile than in D&D, and are always at risk of getting killed by any attack, the GM doesn't need to run comment opponents to make the players feel challenged. In D&D if you have 80 hit points, you won't worry too much about some 1 hit die goon shooting at you with a blaster that does 2d8. If he hits, he hits, 2d8 damage, even if a critical won't take you out of the fight. But in BRP, when you got 16 Hit Points, some green stromtrooper with blaster 20% that does 2d8 damage will probably drop you with one hit. He doesn't actually have to hit to make the players feel threatened about being hit. And that is what a GM needs to know to pull this stuff off. You just need players to understand that one shot can drop them.

 

26 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

These rules sound wonderful and put some more balance to the game Thanks alot!

That's what forums are for, sharing ideas and such. I probably swamped you with too much, considering that you are new to BRP. Good Luck and may the dice be with you. . 

[Old Man Henerson]

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

I think Dark Side points do/are the same thing. Being filled with negative KI = turning to the dark side. The Points are just a way of expressing that in game terms.

I suppose that you are right, Dark Side Points are already negative KI, so there is no need to make multiple point systems like that.

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

A week isn't a long timei in BRP. You generally make improvement rolls on a weekly basis.  The idea was that adventure would go have an adventure make improvement rolls, heal up, and then go on another adventure. So it might take a couple of years of game time to master a skill. 

I still have to get used to how long that can take, but I think it will be okay, most of the games I have run so far have probably been closer to one shots and the only real game of BRP that I ran for awhile was a pretty fast passed adventure as well.

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, that would be convient. Have an adventure; board your ship; and spend a week in hyperspace training. Speaking of ships, were you going to have a fixed time of a week like in Traveller, or would the distance and complexity of the route matter? Also, just a heads up but Star Wars ships travel much faster than that.

I was probably going to wing it and just decide what the jump distance was for each world they went too, no jump would be the same unless the players went back to the same world from the same jump point. As for Star Wars ships, the setting is more inspired by Star Wars than directly copying it, so ship travel will be vastly different than in the movies and games.

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

I think it depends on what allegiance does in game, or if there is another way that provides those things that you like better.. 

I will definitely have to review everything that has been said in this forum before I finalize my mechanics. I have a lot of material to work with now thanks the help of you and the others. My original idea was that the dark side points/allegiance would do their own thing like we discussed while the "Light Side" allegiance would give you benefits like increased skill points and/or HP so that you would be more likely to succeed, kind of like the Ki points.

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

That is the classic Star Wars RPG problem.If Force Users are so OP then how do non-Force users deal with them and/or stay relevant to the campaign? Well, there is no solid answer to that, but some of what's been tried with vaying degrees of success:

• Learning Curve: Basically Force Users start off really weak and slowly mature into powerhouses. This is how D6 Star Wars did it, and similar to old OD&D/AD&D handled magic-users. Really weak at first, then they get decent, then they become overpowering if given the chance to act first. This tends to work out poorly at the begging and end, but great when you are in the sweet spot. It's also how Ki powers will tend to work as written. 
• Other Activities: THis is the George Lucas approach. Basically the Force Users duel amonst themselves while thier allies fight the minions of the evil Force Users. Works great as long as everybody stays in their own lane. 

These are good suggestions that I will have to think about. Of course, being BRP, this problem is somewhat negated as critical hits are still definitely a danger to all characters. BRP actually does a great job of keeping everything grounded in that regard. That and player creativity is always a wild card.

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

Oh, this might sound surprising but game balance isn't really a thing, at least not how it is in D&D. GMs in BRP generally don't make encounters (un)"balanced" at 25% of the party's strength.

Would you mind explaining this a bit please. Are you saying that I should only send enemies that are 25% of the party's strength?

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

Well, you might not wan't all of the variopus ideas and options in play at the same time, and might want to cull some stuff.  Or you might want a few more perks for the Jedi. Some suggestions:

Regular Mediation might increase the rate that the Jedi recover MP. Maybe DSP's subtract from this as someone who is angry will have a harder time peacefully meditating?   

That is definitly a good idea. I was thinking I would purchase M-Space in a few days and I know from you and others that they have some meditation powers that I was going to look at and see what they did and if they could be adapted like this. DSP subtracting from MP regeneration is great too!

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

In some other Star Wars RPGs have Force Points which are very powerful, but don't always come back. Points spend defesnively do, but those spend for evil aggressive tasks are lost, which is turn makes such characters call on the dark side for points. . If you were to reduce the rate that MP are restored for dark siders , yit might even things out with the Jedi. For instance they could regenerate MP based on their "Sanity" (maybe rename that balance or harmony?) rather than their POW.

So if Darth Meaning has POW 18 but Sanity 30 and 60 Dark Side Points, he'd only recover MP as if his POW were 6 (30/5) instead of 18, or one third the normal rate..

These are some pretty good ideas too. I will have to think on all of these as this makes a great way to be attracted to the dark side.

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, that's common when you swtich game systems. The unlearn what you have learned thing applies to GMs even more than with players. Playtest an ambush in BRP to see how greatly it differernt from D&D.

Yes, just as long as you don't overdo it and wipe them out. Remeber what I wrote above about game balance, well the sneaking thing is, since characters in BRP have fixed hit points, are more fragile than in D&D, and are always at risk of getting killed by any attack, the GM doesn't need to run comment opponents to make the players feel challenged. In D&D if you have 80 hit points, you won't worry too much about some 1 hit die goon shooting at you with a blaster that does 2d8. If he hits, he hits, 2d8 damage, even if a critical won't take you out of the fight.

Yeah, it is definitely a challenge to unlearn what little D&D I have experienced. I do like that that fixed HP does keep the payers from growing overconfident and being completely unafraid of combat. I literally remember a D&D story where someone was holding a Player or NPC hostage at knife point and all the players realized that it was pointless since a dagger only did 1d4 of damage.

Quote

But in BRP, when you got 16 Hit Points, some green stromtrooper with blaster 20% that does 2d8 damage will probably drop you with one hit. He doesn't actually have to hit to make the players feel threatened about being hit. And that is what a GM needs to know to pull this stuff off. You just need players to understand that one shot can drop them.

LOL, this is a stormtrooper we are talking about, so he probably has -50% to hit anything. Getting to the point though I think the fixed HP and lethal weapons almost keeps the game grounded and story driven rather than becoming a hack & slash game. If everything can kill you, the players have to use more tactics and mabey even avoid combat and use other skills to get to their objective.

On 6/20/2023 at 8:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

That's what forums are for, sharing ideas and such. I probably swamped you with too much, considering that you are new to BRP. Good Luck and may the dice be with you. . 

Thanks a lot to you and everyone else who posted here. Don't worry about information overload, I would be pretty lost with out this information. I will probably copy everything here and sift through it later. I am starting to get a pretty good idea about what I want to do in this game now.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I suppose that you are right, Dark Side Points are already negative KI, so there is no need to make multiple point systems like that.

Not unless doing so does something to help the game. Basically negative Ki, Dark Side Points and allegiance are mostly the same thing, and probably should be combined, unless you have some reason not to.

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I still have to get used to how long that can take, but I think it will be okay, most of the games I have run so far have probably been closer to one shots and the only real game of BRP that I ran for awhile was a pretty fast passed adventure as well.

It not really all that different from how long it takes to reach epic levels in D&D. Someone with 90% in ability in BRP is a master and something like a 10th level character is D&D terms. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I was probably going to wing it and just decide what the jump distance was for each world they went too, no jump would be the same unless the players went back to the same world from the same jump point. As for Star Wars ships, the setting is more inspired by Star Wars than directly copying it, so ship travel will be vastly different than in the movies and games.

That works, but... you probably should build a table of travel is as you go along so that your players won't start wondering why it took 2 weeks last time but 3 weeks this time. 

You might set up a base time (1 week, 1 day, 1 fortnight, etc), or even a base die (1d4, days, 1 d6 days, 1d4 weeks, etc.) depending on the distance and complexity of the route, and then modify the time by astrogator's success level. For instance, say a trip has a base time of 1d6 days, but the time is halves of a special success and is the minimum on a critical success.

You could even do weird dilation FLT effects where a trip always takes one week for the passenger, but more that a week might pass for the rest of the universe. 

Again just throwing stuff out there. 

 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Would you mind explaining this a bit please. Are you saying that I should only send enemies that are 25% of the party's strength?

Just a bit? Uh, sure. It's kinda a game theroy thing but basically "balance" encounters are specially designed not to be balanced but instead to be less than balanced., that players figure this out, it affects their expectations and behavior, and that  and that BRP is somewhat different, and they will get slaughtered with deer in headlight faces, accusing the GM of running an unblanced game and so on unless the GM breaks away from the "balanced encounters'  idea. 

 

Now the longer explaination (sorry): 

D&D 3E/D20 was mostly (re) built along the lines of "balanced" encounters, with balance being considered to be about one quarter of the party's relative strength, and which will reduce the party's total hit points and magical spells by about 25% . The idea being that the party will go through two or three encounters before they will need to stop and rest up to replenish their hit points and magic. After about a dozen such encounter the PCs will "earn" enough XP to level up.  That's what the Challenge Rating System did. Now things can vary a bit here and there, and Boss battles can bend this a bit, but in most cases the encounters are built with a strong bias in favor of the players. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly isn't balanced. It's deliberately unbalanced. It makes sense to have unbalanced encounters though, as a DM both wants to give the party challenging encounters. 

 if the encounters were truly balanced, then the PC would be expected to lose every other fight and you'd have to roll up new player characters every other week. 

Pretty much all RPGs favor the players in this way, but they differ in the ways the favor the PCs and to what extent. Latter D20 games vary the percentages a bit, but it's a resource management model. The idea is that the party's idea is that hit points and magic spells are resources that get used up and have to be replenished before the party can continue on. The thrill and risk of combat comes from the variances of the die rolls and just how that approximately  25% of losses, exceeds 25%, and how it is distributed among PCs. For instance in the typical party of four that D&D 3E was designed around 25% could mean one dead PC.  Depending on the party's level, even  a dead PC might be hit points and spells that can be "replenished" with rest and recovery. Again it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does affect  the players expectations and how players will judge an encounter. For instance I know D&D players who went after a dragon in BRP that they were warned about, and whose lair was marked on their map as a warning, because they believed that since the dragon was "part of the adventure" then it must be something the party could handle or else the adventure was somehow "unbalanced". The same players also don't consider a fight to be a serious encounter unless the players get reduced to half their hit points. So over time the player grew to expect balanced encounters, even the ones they initiated (it must be the GM's fault if a 1st level PC jumps off of a 20th level cliff), and viewed combat as  ts as resource attrition. It's a sprial too, as the encounter must always be increased to maintian the 25% parity thing. An encounter that was balanced for first level PCs isn;t balanced for 5th level PCs.This means that the opposition continually esclates as the campaign goes on. A group of 12th level PCs just don't run into any of those bands of 1st level bandits they used to. So NPCs are rated relative to the PCs abilities. 

 

Now BRP is a different animal. First off, because PCs have relatively fixed hit points, and a good hit, special or critical can take down just about anybody, there is always a risk of getting taken out in any encounter. A kobold with a spear is no threat to a 16th level fight but certainly is to an highly experienced PC in BRP - just ask Rurik Runespear.  Fight are less about resource management,because serious injuries impair characters and starts a death spiral. A D&D group that has lost 50% of it's hit points "had a good fight." A  BRP group that has lost half it's hit points is probably one or two people standing with rest of the group being over their maimed or dead, both of which tend to be more of a long term impairment than in D&D. So a GM doesn't need to throw as much as the group, or inflcit the same level fo damage to have a thrilling combat encounter. Just having someone shooting at you is normally enough. And sometimes a NPC is just who is is, no matter how experienced the PCs are and if they go after them it's their own fault. 

 

So there isn't really anything like a balanced encounter in D&D terms. That is you don't have a set percentage of party strength to work with. And that before you get into the actual PCs abilities and the talents of the players. So a GM has to learn how to gauge what is a suitable challenge for an adventure  As a general rule though, you probably want to underestimate things at first, as it easier to deal with a too easy adventure that a too difficult one. This also means that PC imrpvoment doesn't nessitate escalting the enemy, so many NPCs can be rated on an absolute scale rather than one realtive to the PCs. IN BRP the average city  guard can have 12 HP, leather armour, sword at 50% , throughout the campaign.  

A lot of this is perception and how the GM sells an encounter or bad guy too. Players don't usually see the NPCs character sheets so they don't know is the evil bad guy has Great Axe at 135% or just 35% but acts like it 135%. This is important because you need to get the players to realize that things are different, dragons won't be downsized to suit the party, and that in general they should withdraw from a fight long before the group loses 50% of hit points.

 

 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

That is definitly a good idea. I was thinking I would purchase M-Space in a few days and I know from you and others that they have some meditation powers that I was going to look at and see what they did and if they could be adapted like this. DSP subtracting from MP regeneration is great too!

It's got good stuff. It's hard to say what that good stuff will be to you, as I'm not you, haven't gamed with you, and haven't interacted with you on line long enough to get an idea of your tastes.

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

These are some pretty good ideas too. I will have to think on all of these as this makes a great way to be attracted to the dark side.

Well any existing Star Wars product especially earily RPGs are rersouces to a GM interested in running a Star Wars type game. Same is true for any RPG similar to what a GM wants to run, really. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Yeah, it is definitely a challenge to unlearn what little D&D I have experienced. I do like that that fixed HP does keep the payers from growing overconfident and being completely unafraid of combat.

See previous comment about game balance and players expectations. Basically 1d4 doesn't mean much to character with 60 hit points. 1d4+2 with double damage for a special and max double that bypasses  for a critical almost always means something to a PC in RQ/BRP. So a GM doesn't have to escalate the opposition constantly because the of PC improvement. This means that a GM can come up with a set of stats for Stormtroopers and keep them the same, no matter how good the PCs get. If Luke becomes a Jedi the GM doesn't have to make all the stromtroopers better to "balance" that. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I literally remember a D&D story where someone was holding a Player or NPC hostage at knife point and all the players realized that it was pointless since a dagger only did 1d4 of damage.

I played in a similar situation where we told the bad guy (some sort of treant) to go ahead and kill the hostage as we could just raise them but no one was going to raise the wood from our next campfire. I got extra XP for that. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

LOL, this is a stormtrooper we are talking about, so he probably has -50% to hit anything.

They are just camera shy. They are awesome off screen. Actually considering that the ones we see have Vader looking over their shoulder, and how he handles failure it no wonder they choke.

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

 

Getting to the point though I think the fixed HP and lethal weapons almost keeps the game grounded and story driven rather than becoming a hack & slash game. If everything can kill you, the players have to use more tactics and mabey even avoid combat and use other skills to get to their objective.

Yeah. Pendragon, might be one of the better example of that. It tends to rate the typical PCs in terms of average, experienced, elite, etc. with generic stats that can be used no matter how experienced the PCs (actually PK's in Pendragon) are. Yes, VIPs get custom stats, but for the most part generic stats work because that guy with a dagger is always a threat. Maybe not much of one, but even a  1% critical chance is a chance. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Thanks a lot to you and everyone else who posted here. Don't worry about information overload, I would be pretty lost with out this information. I will probably copy everything here and sift through it later. I am starting to get a pretty good idea about what I want to do in this game now.

Playtest if you can. Try running the same fight but present the bad guys (same stats) as more threatening to the player in one situation and see how it changes their behavior. 

Oh, and it okay to make mistakes, all GMs do so, all player notice but not all GMs admit to thier mistakes. It perfect okay to confess to the players that you messed up and fix something, especially starting off.