Sanity As A Dark Side/Corruption Meter

[Old Man Henerson]

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

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. 

I did think of time dilation as being part of the back story of an important NPC, but I am not sure I will use it. It might end up being some sort of affect under special circumstances. I will probably work on a table for travel like you said though, that will be very useful.

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

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.

This was very useful. Combat does not have to be nearly as "balanced" as in D&D like you said since it is basically already balanced around your fixed hit points. I do recall however, talking to you a long time ago as you were suggesting lowering the combat percentages of enemies so the party would not get destroyed as often.

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

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.

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. 

About that, I got a PM from soltakss yesterday and he gave me the apparently legendary Star Wars conversion for RQ6. It was pretty good and had the great Force abilities I was looking for. It even had the Dark Side Points and corruption like we were talking about. Now I am wondering if I even need to buy M-Space anymore since with this and the Big Golden Book, I have about everything I need to create a campaign. M-Space's star ship and vehicle creation sections still call to me a little. I could of course wait until the potential BRP Spaceships book comes out, but I have no idea how long that will be.

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

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. 

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. 

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.

LOL, that is funny with you and the treant. I do agree with you though that enemies do not have to get better or skills become useless. I like that RQ/BRP ensures that there is no such thing as a useless weapon or skill.

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

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.

Yeah, I will have to start playtesting here with all of this new material, thanks again for the advice, I will be sure to keep it real with my players as well.

[Atgxtg]

6 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I did think of time dilation as being part of the back story of an important NPC, but I am not sure I will use it. It might end up being some sort of affect under special circumstances. I will probably work on a table for travel like you said though, that will be very useful.

THe idea I was thinking of was basically that every time the PCs go somewhere more time passes for the universe than it does for them. It's a neat Sci-Fi thing but it does have the possible drawback of events outpacing the PCs, or NPCs aging out of the game faster. 

6 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

This was very useful. Combat does not have to be nearly as "balanced" as in D&D like you said since it is basically already balanced around your fixed hit points.

Combat is almost always a threat in BRP-type games, so a GM doesn't have to worry so much about the bad guys being able to challenge the PCs. 

6 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

 

I do recall however, talking to you a long time ago as you were suggesting lowering the combat percentages of enemies so the party would not get destroyed as often.

Yeah, BRP games tend to be less forging that D20, too. A PC in D20 who gets knocked below 0 hit points is slowly dying but can be saved. A PC who is knocked below 0 hit points in BRP is dead. One knocks down to half hit points by a nasty hit is probably out of the fight and in a bad way. Tacitcs and spells matter more too. A good ambush can take out half a party before they even get to declare actions. 

 

6 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

About that, I got a PM from soltakss yesterday and he gave me the apparently legendary Star Wars conversion for RQ6. It was pretty good and had the great Force abilities I was looking for. It even had the Dark Side Points and corruption like we were talking about. Now I am wondering if I even need to buy M-Space anymore since with this and the Big Golden Book, I have about everything I need to create a campaign. M-Space's star ship and vehicle creation sections still call to me a little. I could of course wait until the potential BRP Spaceships book comes out, but I have no idea how long that will be.

soltakss is good folk. Yeah, than might do most of what you want.

6 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

LOL, that is funny with you and the treant.

It's part of the silliness that comes with being able to bring PCs back from the dead easily. 

6 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I do agree with you though that enemies do not have to get better or skills become useless. I like that RQ/BRP ensures that there is no such thing as a useless weapon or skill.

Almost no such thing. There are some rare cases where one character is immune to an attack, but it doesn't come up often.

6 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Yeah, I will have to start playtesting here with all of this new material, thanks again for the advice, I will be sure to keep it real with my players as well.

I hope  it all works out well. 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Atgxtg

[Old Man Henerson]

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

THe idea I was thinking of was basically that every time the PCs go somewhere more time passes for the universe than it does for them. It's a neat Sci-Fi thing but it does have the possible drawback of events outpacing the PCs, or NPCs aging out of the game faster.

Yeah, that is mostly my concern, if it happens all the time things will get weird really fast.

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

soltakss is good folk. Yeah, than might do most of what you want.

Now I just need to figure out if I want to transfer all the powers into psychic abilities or leave them as they are. Another thing I need to figure out is how these force powers work, for example:

Quote

Most of the talents have several levels of increasing power,
which can be achieved if the user accepts an incrementing
Difficulty Grade to The Force skill roll. Although
this requires more Tenacity to use, the maximum penalty
the user may attempt depends entirely on their rank;
representing the higher levels of technique and training
required.

For example, a Jedi Apprentice cannot increment the power
level of Telekinesis, being limited to moving just a few kilos.
A Jedi Master on the other hand can attempt to move objects
up to a hundred times heavier, suffering a difficulty grade of
Formidable and increasing the cost to 3 points of Tenacity to
do so.

(Tenacity being Magic Points)

There are some similar rules for boosting magic powers in the BGB but the difficulty grade seems to go beyond making difficult roles. Here, there are several levels of difficulty ranging from none, hard, formidable, and herculean. There is nothing in the BGB that corresponds to this very well, so I am just thinking that I will turn these into skills that you can add Power Points to like how psychic powers work.

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It's part of the silliness that comes with being able to bring PCs back from the dead easily.

It does seem to get rather silly considering how little of a threat that death can be in D&D. I never played so extensively so as to revive anyone from the dead, but a lot of D&D can become silly it seems, like for instance, forgetting how magic works after you use it.

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I hope  it all works out well. 

Me too, thanks for all the help sir!