mrk Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 (edited) That said, the original rules are ment to be modular. You should use only whatever you want or fits into your campaign. My world is greatly influenced by Davids and I use much of his rules, but I don't use a majority of his monsters or things that originated on his world. An example being his Star Power Mage, I like the class very much but because they never existed on my world I don't let people play them unless the character originated from somewhere else. Same with a tankard of Rumble Tummy ale... ...but it's good tasting stuff I must say Edited February 3, 2009 by mrk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aycorn Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 I don't really have anything to add, except that I too have the original three little books (and the three that came after), which I picked up for maybe $2-$3 apiece about 20 years ago at a local used bookstore. And I too have great affection for them - what a wild ride! Amateurish, chaotic in the extreme (forget organization) and incoherent ... it's like Hargrave just wrote down whatever was going through his reeling mind at the moment, typed it up and published it. Who could forget monster entries that included things like "% Liar: never lies"? And tremendous fun! Yes, I've mined them for ideas -the Black Fisherman is my idea of a very cool monster, and I've been tempted for years to use Kill Kittens. That spirit of anarchic fun is missing from so many RPGs anymore. I remember Hargrave's COC scenarios. One was a straight-up dungeon crawl. The other, "Dark Carnival" was something of a disappointment because it set up an obvious but still very cool mystery (it's one of the best-written COC scenarios up to that time), but degenerates into a dungeon crawl (and a lethal one at that - let's face it, COC is not made for non-stop combat). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrk Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 (edited) But that's what's so cool about Dave's CoC work. He went against the grain of a traditional Cthulhu scenaro and added a bit of a dungeon crawl aspect to them. Plus the stories themselves are pretty dam wicked. Like in, "The Carnival" , were the people who work their are much more horrific then the monsters lurking below. Also some of the prose he wrote in the scenarios showed he had the potential of becoming a very good fantasy novelist. He was a rough diamond in the making and I think he had stayed with us longer he would of made it on some sort of mainstream level the way Sandy Peterson did with Id Software and maybe even higher. I heard of one fairly big film producer that's an admire of his work and the people at Blizzard are fans too. He even had a dedication in the credits of the first Diablo game. One last thing about whose CoC scenarios. With a little tinkering and changes, if you take the mound from Black Devil Mountain and combine it with the caverns level from The Carnival, you have one very nasty dungeon complex! One Player I ran it through told me that was the nastiest place he's been in since Tomb Of Horrors. I took it as a complement. Edited February 3, 2009 by mrk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tywyll Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 Was thinking about BRP Arduin on the way to work today. I don't think I'd use Con+Siz for HP, simply because starting characters (hell any level of character) could be as easily frangible as standard BRP characters. What I might do instead would be to allow characters to sacrifice a POW for a permenant +d3 HP, or d3 PP for Casters. Something like this would allow for the 'levelled growth' of characters overtime that did occur in Arduin. I might cap HP at Con+Siz, and PP at 2xPOW (or probably POW + Racial Max, so that a character's sacrificed pp don't fluctuate with their expended POW). I might allow a POW to buy a single point of permanent Armor. Possibly cap these at 1/4th your Con (or 1/8(Con+Siz)). If I used a magic system like the Wizardry one, I'd probably drop damage dealing spells down to 1pp per level, or in some way make the spells more useful (possibly allowing for casters to 'prepare' ahead of time and those spells they prepare will be 1 for 1, but those cast on the spot will be 3 for 1). I'd make a whole bunch of messed up monster... I'd let characters roll on the special table after creation, giving them whatever they've rolled in BRP terms. That'd do for a start I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrk Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 If your using BRP, then you don't need to use much of Arduin's game mechanics. The only thing you might have to work out is how you would convert the spells. Arduin's manna point system works a lot differently then how magic is depicted in BRP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tywyll Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 If your using BRP, then you don't need to use much of Arduin's game mechanics. The only thing you might have to work out is how you would convert the spells. Arduin's manna point system works a lot differently then how magic is depicted in BRP. Um, yeah, I wasn't suggesting using any of the mechanics, just making some changes to BRP to capture the flavor (and converting the special tables because, lets face it, they are awesome). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrk Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 All the special abilities, oddities, ect. Are great fun, but I like the world itself and how different it is to everyone else's. Afterall what sounds like a REAL dungeon: Skull Tower or the Temple of Elemental Evil? I'll take door number one please. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simlasa Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 I picked up a few of the Arduin Dungeons back in the day and as I recall they were relatively disappointing, despite colorful names and monsters... just big mazes full of random monsters. Then again, most all dungeons were like that back in those days... Seems to me a lot of the Arduin stuff would fit into an expanded (multiversal) Moorcockian campaign... like some of the wilder vistas that Elric travelled to, as in 'Sailor On The Seas Of Fate' (I think that's the one... where he gets sucked into some parallel world on a mission with some other incarnations of the Eternal Champion?). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrk Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 (edited) I wholly agree. The Arduin Dungeons could of been a lot better and I wish he would of fleshed them out even more like Gygax did with his great early dungeons like Hidden Shrine and Tomb of Horrors, but he wanted to keep them basic and let the GM fill in the rest. I do know he wasn't completely happy with the final products and I'm sure he would of rewritten them again if he had the chance. An interesting thing about the Arduin Dungeons is their completely different then the one's he used in his home games and some people who were familar with the published dungeons were sometimes "shocked" by the differences when they had a PC entering one for the first time. None the less, there's still a lot of coolness and neat ideas within them. Nobody could fill-in a piece of graph paper like David could! Yeah, he was a huge Moorcock fan and added a lot of Elric material to his campaign. I actually have a copy of Stormbringer he wrote up as an artifact card. Edited February 16, 2009 by mrk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simlasa Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 I actually have a copy of Stormbringer he wrote up as an artifact card. That's so cool! Gosh I'd have loved to have played in one of his games... I'm sure I wouldn't be disappointed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrk Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 (edited) I was fun times indeed. Just to give you an idea, from 79 to 83, David would host "Grimcon". It was the official Arduin convention and he'd have all the top GM's in the Bay Area running a game or two for the entire three days. You also had the "Arduin Tournament Dungeon". Each year, David would create for the Con some new hellish dungeon complex that were hand-drawn on a dozen GIANT-SIZE maps with a GM each running ten or more players who were given a 1st level character to play that David would actually write up himself complete with a bio and history( He must of written over a hundred PC's to give out). If you could survive the first round and make it to the second and third, the final game would be GM'ed by David himself and who ever survived would win some prize and their character would have the title of a lord and marry into the royal family. It's one of the reasons why I like David's CoC scenarios so very much. They remind me a bit of those Tournament Dungeons and what an Arduin game was like: a sinister roller coaster that was fun as hell to ride. Edited February 16, 2009 by mrk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tywyll Posted February 19, 2009 Share Posted February 19, 2009 Yeah, he was a huge Moorcock fan and added a lot of Elric material to his campaign. I actually have a copy of Stormbringer he wrote up as an artifact card. Well... don't keep us waiting, what were the stats he gave her? :confused: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrk Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 It's pretty much like how Stormbringer has been written everywhere else: high attack factor, high damage factor, drains a percentage of your life points,ect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simlasa Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 (edited) What was that RPG where you actually played the sword? (not Stormbringer precisely but somesuch demon-in-weapon's-clothing). EDIT: I was thinking of Bloodlust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlust_(role-playing_game) Edited February 20, 2009 by Simlasa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrk Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 (edited) I'm not sure what your saying. Have I used the sword in other RPG'S? I've never had a Character of mine ever wield Stormbringer, but one or two "retired" PC's I still own, have a few original artifact cards when they ventured in Dave's home games plus from some other campaigns GM'ed by people who played with him. That's not counting the xerox copies I already have. Never heard of a RPG called Bloodlust. Edited February 20, 2009 by mrk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simlasa Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 Sorry for the confusion... the discussion just had me remembering something I'd read about a French RPG where the PCs played as the god-weapons... like Stormbringer and Mournblade. But for a moment I couldn't remember the name... A non-sequitur... off topic... thread digression... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kloster Posted February 27, 2009 Share Posted February 27, 2009 Sorry for the confusion... the discussion just had me remembering something I'd read about a French RPG where the PCs played as the god-weapons... like Stormbringer and Mournblade. But for a moment I couldn't remember the name... A non-sequitur... off topic... thread digression... Bloodlust, by Croc, G.E.Rane and Stéphane Bura (currently, by Asmodée Editions). Runequestement votre, Kloster Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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