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7th Edition: Say something nice


fmitchell

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Finally I read through the 7th Edition PDFs.  While there are many vocal members of this board that regard 7th edition as a wrong turn, I'm eager to take it out for a spin.  I've always regarded percentile characteristics, the three success/difficulty levels (Regular/Hard/Extreme), and Bonus/Penalty dice as worthwhile changes.  The first two simplify some rules and erase some atavisms in BRP.  Bonus/Penalty Dice provide a simpler mechanism for modifying base chances, akin to RuneQuest 6's difficulty ladder and OpenQuest's removal of any modifiers less than +/-25%.  All three have the potential to streamline the game, especially for new players who aren't wedded to traditional BRP.

 

The full rules gave me more things to like:

 

  • Players roll against Regular/Hard/Extreme scores in most situations outside combat or chases.  For the past several months I've been playing Numenera and The Strange, and as a player I like rolling against a static difficulty rather than dice-dueling against the GM.  As a potential Keeper, I also like being able to choose a difficulty factor rather than guesstimate specific NPC skill levels.

     

  • By allowing players to push their roles, the Keeper has license to make the Investigators' lives more ... interesting.  Again, I'm reminded of GM intrusions in the Cypher System, which gives the GM permission to make bad luck even worse.

     

  • Optionally, players can spend luck points to succeed at skill tests ... and diminish their Luck for the rest of the adventure.  Like pushing rolls, this is another Faustian bargain that gets Investigators into more trouble.

     

  • New Sanity rules sharpen the consequences of madness.  "Temporary insanity" is yet another mechanic to get Investigators into deeper sewage, and is closer to Lovecraft's original treatment of losing one's mind.  Roll-a-phobia is still there when needed, but playing with the Investigators' perceptions -- including blackouts -- can make CoC sessions more unsettling.

     

  • Chases are now a thing.  As the rules point out, Lovecraft's stories contain several chases -- far more chases than gun-battles, in fact -- and now we have tools to represent them.  I'm not sure how the rules as written will work in practice; chase rules in Fate for example merely track relative distance between pursuers and pursued.  Still, I'd like to run one chase the CoC7 way before passing judgement.

     

  • The Core Rulebook offers hints on making magic magical and monsters monstrous.  A frequent criticism of Lovecraftian RPGs and fiction alike is that writers recycle creatures that are familiar and unthreatening enough to make into stuffed animals, and magical tomes and spells that have become long-running jokes.  The book includes spells from previous editions, but prefaces it with ways to make spells unfamiliar, unpredictable, and dangerous to the caster.  Experienced Keepers have figured this out already, but, along with long-standing advice to describe creatures rather than name them, explicit mentions give new Keepers a leg up.

That's mainly what I gleaned from one read-through.  I'll probably want to drill down into specific combat and chase rules before I try to gather a group to search Amidst the Ancient Trees (or something else).

 

Anyone else want to chip in?

 

Say something nice.

 

post-93-0-85356200-1419919323_thumb.jpg

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Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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I have the PDFs and it looks great, visually.

I am on the fence regarding how the scores are presented xx/xx/xx, but I think it will be okay in actual gameplay.

I really cannot see the point of replacing -/+ modifiers with bonus die, I think they should of just gone for simple modifiers like with OQ. Bonus Dice are a nice touch, but really are out of place with all other editions of BRP or CoC.

But on the whole I think it's a great version of the game. The art direction is superb, and some of the optional rules for Pushing Rolls and Luck are very good additions, especially if you prefer a low-pulp flavour rather than straight horror.

In my opinion they made some unusual decisions, but overall it's a step in the right direction for updating an RPG that has barely changed since its inception. It holds its own very well with competing with other RPG systems who now use the same setting (ie: Trail of Cthulhu, Realms of Cthulhu, etc).

I am really going to enjoy holding the hardcover and having a detailed look through it when it arrives

" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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I really cannot see the point of replacing -/+ modifiers with bonus die, I think they should of just gone for simple modifiers like with OQ. Bonus Dice are a nice touch, but really are out of place with all other editions of BRP or CoC.

 

Actually, they are a cunning way to make the game similar to D&D, which is now based on such a mechanics. Bonus die in D&D Next has been widely criticised and is not as elegant a mechanics as it sounds initially. And trying to appeal to the D&D crew has never been a success factor for CoC in the past.

As Cam said, the OQ way is much simpler, and allows you to inflict more than one penalty at a time without being clunky.

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Actually, they are a cunning way to make the game similar to D&D, which is now based on such a mechanics. Bonus die in D&D Next has been widely criticised and is not as elegant a mechanics as it sounds initially. And trying to appeal to the D&D crew has never been a success factor for CoC in the past.

 

That wasn't nice.

 

Seriously, attributing a dumb reason to 7e's designers and then calling them dumb for that reason ... it's probably one of the classic logical fallacies, but I can't remember which.

 

I would like to see some of this criticism of the Bonus/Penalty Dice mechanism, though, because rolling twice and picking the better/worse result is older than D&D 5e.  Granted, I'm more familiar with adding multiple d6 and removing low/high dice.  Compared to that d20/d100 loses some granularity.

 

On the other hand adding and removing straight modifiers doesn't mimic how probabilities work.  With the CoC 7e Bonus Die, a skill roll at 10% only jumps to 19%, and a roll at 90% jumps only to 99%.  The Penalty die works similarly, and by the same amount in the other direction.  (The biggest change is at 50%, with +/-25%.)  Intuitively it makes sense that an amateur with a bonus wouldn't get dramatically more lucky, and an expert with a penalty would still hit nearly as often.  Note also that the authors of RuneQuest 6 encourage using multipliers to represent levels of difficulty, perhaps because probabilities are ratios.

 

Also, using Bonus/Penalty dice we can determine Hard/Extreme/Fumble results simply by reading the appropriate die.  In BRP if we just add 25% directly, we must remember to add to the +5% to the Special success threshold and +1% to the Critical success threshold.  In the heat of battle it's sometimes hard to remember.  Treating a bonus as a second chance of success, and a penalty is a second chance of failure, is coarse-grained and probably unrealistic but at least it's quick.

 

Finally, Bonus/Penalty dice aren't the sole mechanic for calibrating levels of difficulty.  Out of combat, skill rolls are almost exclusively unopposed, and ranked Regular, Hard, or Extreme for the three corresponding levels of success.  Bonus/Penalty Dice mostly apply in the heat of combat or chases to represent circumstantial advantages or disadvantages.  (Sometimes the Penalty Die applies to unopposed skill rolls when the character is impaired in some way.)

 

In any case, I'd like to see the new mechanics in action before I pass final judgement.  Hopefully I can interest my regular group (or someone) to help me give CoC 7 a spin.

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Frank

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I would like to see some of this criticism of the Bonus/Penalty Dice mechanism, though, because rolling twice and picking the better/worse result is older than D&D 5e.  Granted, I'm more familiar with adding multiple d6 and removing low/high dice.  Compared to that d20/d100 loses some granularity.

 

 

 

AFAICT, you aren't supposed to roll twice, just have an extra 10s die on hand to use as the bonus/penalty die. Roll three dice, utilizing the bonus/penalty aspect as required,

 

SDLeary

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AFAICT, you aren't supposed to roll twice, just have an extra 10s die on hand to use as the bonus/penalty die. Roll three dice, utilizing the bonus/penalty aspect as required,

 

I'm aware how it's done.  As far as probabilities go, though, there's little difference between rolling two tens dice and a ones die and rolling one tens and one ones twice, and no difference if you only care about being at or below a specific number.  The designers probably realized that the extra ones dice didn't really matter, and rolling three or four dice at once is easier than four or six.  You could theoretically roll a d100 by rolling a single d10 twice; two dice at once are just faster.

 

EDIT: This demonstrates bonus and penalty dice probabilities, including the equivalence of highest(2d100) and highest(2d10)*10 + d10 : http://anydice.com/program/4f98... and yes, I know that in the latter expression a roll of 0-0 would actually mean 10% and 9-0 would be 100%, but it still generates values from 1 to 100 at the right frequencies and I really didn't want to write Anydice code for d{0..9}*10 + d{0..9} with a special case to interpret 00 values as 100.

 

EDIT 2: Since the URL above will eventually (soon?) expire, here's the AnyDice script:

output d100 named "Regular"
output ([lowest 1 of 2d10]-1)*10 + 1d10 named "Bonus (as written)"
output ([highest 1 of 2d10]-1)*10 + 1d10 named "Penalty (as written)"
output [lowest 1 of 2d100] named "Bonus"
output [highest 1 of 2d100] named "Penalty"
output [lowest 1 of 3d100] named "Bonus x 2"
output [highest 1 of 3d100] named "Penalty x 2"

Frank

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That wasn't nice.

 

Seriously, attributing a dumb reason to 7e's designers and then calling them dumb for that reason ... it's probably one of the classic logical fallacies, but I can't remember which.

 

You put the word dumb in my statement, not me. Actually, I used the word "cunning". I said this mechanics has been questioned in the other widespread game that uses it (it's a fact) and that copying THAT game has never been a great deal for CoC (another well known fact - see Cthulhu D20).

That this implies that I think that Mike is dumb... erm, this is your conclusion, absolutely not mine. I feel entitled to questioning other game designers' choices, as long as I do this in a civil way. Please do not mistake questioning and criticism for insults.

As for the criticism about the bonus die, the biggest and most immediate point is that it does not add up, so once you have inflicted a penalty on a foe or gained a bonus for yourself you have no incentive for further tactical thinking, as gaining any other advantage would be a loss of actions. This has been criticised as a disincentive to making cool actions in combat. I have seen many people - including beta playtesters of D&D Next stating so, and openly stating they houserule the advantage die in their games.

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Actually, they are a cunning way to make the game similar to D&D, which is now based on such a mechanics. Bonus die in D&D Next has been widely criticised and is not as elegant a mechanics as it sounds initially. And trying to appeal to the D&D crew has never been a success factor for CoC in the past.

As Cam said, the OQ way is much simpler, and allows you to inflict more than one penalty at a time without being clunky.

 

Trying to appeal to the D&D crew isn't quite right, to be honest. The advantage/disadvantage mechanic existed in CoC7 long before the D&D playtests were released. It wasn't a matter of CoC7 copying D&D5  so much as a case of parallel evolution.

 

Whether or not that mechanic works for you is a completely different story. 

 

I like some of the changes to CoC7, there are others I don't care. My personal favorite, however, has to be the reworking of Credit Rating.

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Trying to appeal to the D&D crew isn't quite right, to be honest. The advantage/disadvantage mechanic existed in CoC7 long before the D&D playtests were released. It wasn't a matter of CoC7 copying D&D5  so much as a case of parallel evolution.

 

Really? I have not followed the evolution of this particular ruleset. I am a strong believer in parallel evolution in game design, so this would not surprise me at all.

It is even possible that it was Next that plag... erm, took inspiration from 7e, then.

But I still suspect that the fact that this particular change remained in effect in the final manuscript is not disconnected from the fact that it is also in D&D.

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You put the word dumb in my statement, not me. Actually, I used the word "cunning". I said this mechanics has been questioned in the other widespread game that uses it (it's a fact) and that copying THAT game has never been a great deal for CoC (another well known fact - see Cthulhu D20).

 

A game design specifically intended to entice players of another game even though other similar attempts have failed seems like the very definition of "dumb".  Which is why it's a motive I wouldn't attribute to game designers without proof.

 

There are also a few differences between CoC7 Penalty/Bonus dice and the D&D 5 equivalent:

 

  • It's possible, if rare, to gain 2 bonus or 2 penalty dice.  3 or more in either direction is equivalent to "automatic" or "impossible", respectively.

     

     

  • Bonus and penalty dice cancel out one-to-one, which is more significant given the previous point.

     

     

  • The full rulebook lists explicit combat conditions worthy of Bonus or Penalty dice.  I haven't seen the recent PHB or DMG, but my impression was that Advantage/Disadvantage was completely at the whim of the DM.

     

     

It's also worth noting Newt Newport et. al. devised the OQ +/-25% rule precisely because players will grab for as many modifiers as they can get, often slowing down play to do so.  If every "cool maneuver" gave a combat bonus, some players would do every attack swinging from a chandelier, then backflip away while sliding down a bannister.  It's up to DMs/Referees/Keepers/etc. to reward only creative, plausible, and appropriate maneuvers.

 

It seems to me, then, that CoC7 Bonus/Penalty dice are more analogous to OQ's +/-25% increments, only the dice are doing the math.

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Frank

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It is even possible that it was Next that plag... erm, took inspiration from 7e, then.

But I still suspect that the fact that this particular change remained in effect in the final manuscript is not disconnected from the fact that it is also in D&D.

 

And that's the insult, to both design teams: that one "plagiarized" the other in choosing an (uncopyrightable) mechanic older than both games, and that a design team chose a central mechanic because another popular game uses it.

 

You might as well say Monte Cook chose d20 roll-over tests for Numenera because D&D uses it (as opposed to him being most familiar with it, which he states up front), or that you chose RuneQuest/BRP mechanics for your products because Mongoose RuneQuest was trendy* (as opposed to you liking the system and having OGL content to speed up development).

 

* Yes, I know, it was never trendy.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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Well, if you really want to see an insult in what I write, who am I to deny you the pleasure?

Feel free to write insulting posts on my behalf, and to blame me for them. I am sorry but I do not have the time to do so on my own.

Or in other words: you succeeded in your purpose of having me leave the thread. Have a nice debate, I will no longer bother you.

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My last comment might have been a bit too pointed, but ...

 

The reason I started this thread was to cut through the cloud of negativity, often from the same few but insistent voices, and concentrate on what's actually in the game.  In particular, I'm tired of hearing stuff like "they're trying to be D&D Next", "they're dumbing it down and making it more like a pulp game", "they're adding more action for young people", and so forth.  All of which is less about the new rules themselves and more about what people think the designers were thinking.

 

For example, a common criticism of 4th edition D&D was "it's like a MMORPG".  Granted, I never played a MMORPG, so I don't know if that's true.  Certainly nobody ever explained how it was like an MMORPG; it just was one.  Now I loathe that version with a fiery passion, but not because it resembled something else.  I loathed it because I had to stop my fun if somewhat light-weight roleplaying experience to chug through a skirmish board game.  At least board games provide tokens to keep track of modifiers and other conditions ... in which case D&D 4 would have made WFRP 3 look like Candyland.

 

So if CoC 7 has a core mechanic that resembles a D&D Next core mechanic, I'll assume the designers saw it there or elsewhere and thought it solved a problem for them ... not that they thought "we'll throw that in so D&D players will feel at home in our game", especially since they wouldn't.  If CoC 7 has a chapter on Combat whereas CoC 6 described combat in the Skills chapter with numerous side bars, I'll assume the designers thought they'd collect and extend combat rules, especially with regard to rules changes and existing BRP/RQ conventions.  If they add a chapter on Chases, I'll assume they noticed how many Lovecraft stories ended with chases and thought it high time they provided rules for them.  If they pull a chapter on Mythos connections in history, I'll assume they cut it for space or (especially in light of making the Independent/Servitor/Great Old One/Outer God classifications optional) they wanted Keepers to make their own connections.

 

Above all, if Chaosium takes their flagship product in a new direction, I'll assume they're trying to attract a broader audience, not cynically and ineffectively trying to lure a few narrow segments.

 

Will this new version succeeds in the marketplace?  Who knows?  D&D and Pathfinder steal everyone's oxygen.  Retailers used to like hefty hardbacks, and a volume each for GMs and players is a time-tested strategy.  Maybe the rules themselves don't appeal to a new base, for whatever reason, and the old audience clings tightly to 6th Edition.  Maybe the new volumes attract enough new and existing players that the naysayers are no big loss.  Time will tell.

 

My only point -- and I do have one -- is that we evaluate this version based on its own merits, not on what kind of unwashed riff-raff it might attract.

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Frank

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Well, on a good note, the PDF version is a treasure to read so far.
Not only is the content clear, but the visual presentation is easy on the eye.
This is greatly welcomed by myself, after finding reading 6th edition a chore at times due to the text fonts and general layout - I often refer to my 4th or 5th editions if I want to find an answer quickly, and not have a headache doing it.

So this new edition is a welcome change after the 6th edition in my opinion, especially for its visual appreciation.

" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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  • 8 months later...

I've not yet read the whole 7th ed. but I skimmed it for the updated rules. And seriously. this is the first edition i really call a new edition in a long time with regard to CoC - and a vast improvement for my part on the basic BRP engine that I sorely love as the best classic rpg engine out there. Rules are clearer (saying something considering how clear they have been since 5th in my opinion), the few progressive rules updates fits nicely for a bit more narrative control for the players while not changing the classic GM "power" as say Fate (my favourite narrative games system) does to a certain degree.

Really looking forward to testing them out - as so far, in term of Cthulhu gaming, Trail have been my champion since it came out, but 7th editon seems like it can give it a run for the money.

Hoping the books will not be extreme priced (bought the pdf's on Chaosium and that was very hefty indeed) considering the very high international shipping (feels like way over hundred bucks for both Investigator and keepers book + shipping...

Tea and Madness

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Say something nice about CoC? Sorry, I can't ...:P

Fair enough.  Not sure why you had to tell me you couldn't, but whatevs.

 

Hoping the books will not be extreme priced (bought the pdf's on Chaosium and that was very hefty indeed) considering the very high international shipping (feels like way over hundred bucks for both Investigator and keepers book + shipping...

Yeah, that's likely to be a problem.  Hopefully Chaosium -- once they no longer have Kickstarter promises to keep -- can set up European printers, distributors, and/or publishers.  Because just the Keeper's book is a lot of dead tree to ship over the Atlantic.

Frank

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By the way, another hidden gem in the rules is removing opposed rolls outside combat.  To BRP veterans that may sound insane, but hear me out.

I've been playing a lot of Monte Cook's Cypher System in the past year.  One of its best ideas is that everything boils down to a roll against a Difficulty Level from 1 to 10.  Everything.  Shooting at a floating inverted pyramid?  Prying information out of an innkeeper?  Calling down lightning?  The GM looks up or makes up a number from 1 to 10, and the player tries to beat it*.  Oh, and the player always rolls the dice.  The GM rolls no dice except for a d100 on random tables, if she wants to.

In CoC7, if a player uses a non-combat skill on an NPC, e.g. Intimidation or Fast Talk, the GM determines whether the roll is Average, Hard, or Extreme based on the NPC's opposing skill.  So why even give an NPC an opposing skill?  Exactly!  The GM could just note an NPC would require a Hard skill roll for Fast Talk, but an Average roll for Intimidation or Credit Rating.

So imagine the Investigators go off in a direction the Keeper didn't anticipate.  The Keeper improvises an inn, and then an innkeeper, and decides to make him hard to fool and easier to scare or bribe.  That translates directly to Hard for Fast Talk but Average for Intimidation or Credit Rating.  Like a Cypher System GM caught off guard or improvising a whole adventure, our Keeper simply sets a level based on story logic and lets the player roll for it.

Now, in previous editions the Keeper could just as easily make up a skill number and do an Opposed Roll, but some of us, at least, have a problem coming up with the "right" number under pressure.  30%? 50%? 75%? 90%?  How hard should it be to crack that guy?  What if the NPC criticals?  Setting a fixed difficulty eliminates extraneous randomness.  While four options (Auto/Regular/Hard/Extreme) seem pitiful compared to a number from 1 to 10, it's probably about as many options as a GM needs for most encounters with ordinary humans.  Also, whereas a novice Keeper would either get flustered or happen upon the Opposed Roll technique (or worse, the Random Skill followed by Random Roll Against Skill), this shortcut is implicit in the rules.  (Better if it were explicit, admittedly.)

Part of the brief for CoC 7, I'm convinced, is to draw in new players by sanding off BRP's rough edges and baking in the sort of techniques Keepers used to develop only through experience.

---

* Technically the player tries to roll the Difficulty Level x 3 or higher on a d20.  Skill levels, special abilities, ordinary gear ("assets"), certain unique items ("cyphers" and "artifacts"), and spent levels of Effort decrease the effective Difficulty Level; if it goes to 0, success is automatic.  An astute reader will note that an unmodified roll can never exceed Level 6, which is why players have several options for lowering the effective difficulty.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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I've been playing a lot of Monte Cook's Cypher System in the past year.  One of its best ideas is that everything boils down to a roll against a Difficulty Level from 1 to 10. 

Everything

.

I remember seeing this type of single consistent mechanic start to manifest in Mekton 2 and Cyberpunk 2020, over 20 years ago.

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I've run 7 sessions of 7e CoC over the past year (our first session was last Halloween) for three players (only one of whom had played CoC before).  While I initially disliked the change from 3-18 attributes to %, the new players found the latter scale more intuitive ('80%' intelligence made more sense to them than '16'). 

The party has completed 3.5 adventures, and has suffered one casualty (so far!).  I've relied primarily on the Quick Start rules, dipping into the PDFs for additional support when necessary.

The games have been great fun.  Flavour-wise, I can't discern any difference between 7e and 6e.  While I'm not a fan of all of the changes, some of them have been very helpful (e.g., the removal of the RR chart, the slight downgrading of the importance of EDU, the changes to CR, etc.).  My players seem reluctant to use the 'push' mechanic, but perhaps they'll warm to it over time.  The advantage/disadvantage mechanic has been fun in play (players like rolling dice!).  

I'm a great fan of earlier editions of CoC, and would gladly run 6e again for a group that preferred it.  But in my experience of running 7e, it is a fine game.  I look forward to running more of it!

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I remember seeing this type of single consistent mechanic start to manifest in Mekton 2 and Cyberpunk 2020, over 20 years ago.

RuneQuest's "roll d100 for everything" is well over 35 years old.  "Player rolls all the dice" is at least as old as the Buffy RPG, probably older.  I'm not saying Numenera was original, just that the simplicity and consistency was striking.  That, and the asymmetry between player-facing rules (tiers, pools, Edge, Effort, skills, assets, Descriptors, Focuses, etc. etc.) and GM-facing rules (negotiate a number, let the player roll for it, narrate what happens), cut through a lot of my prior assumptions about what an RPG should look like.

I realize this is the "compliment CoC 7" thread, but one of the BRP-isms that I like less and less is that NPCs and monsters have about the same complexity as PCs.  Its great if you want to allow any kind of creature at all as a PC, but as a feature it imposes more complexity for very little benefit, especially in CoC.  Defining NPCs with difficulty levels instead of skills mitigates that somewhat, but once combat starts each NPC/monster needs at minimum HP, Armor, % to hit and damage (for each weapon), DEX (for initiative order and base Dodge), and any special skills like Stealth, (increased) Dodge, or Listen.  RuneQuest requires even more: Combat Actions, hit locations (w/ HP and AP for each), etc.  Compared to the one-line monsters of Original/Basic/Advanced D&D, the Monster Rating of Tunnels & Trolls, or Cypher System's omnipresent Level (from which you can derive Health and possibly damage if not given), that seems like a lot.

Combat in BRP or CoC is generally more dangerous than in other systems, so the extra detail is probably warranted especially if you're striving for "realism".  And Keepers can always use "average" creature stats or a small library of stock NPC types.  Still, I wish you could summarize any nameless NPC with a number or two.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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I realize this is the "compliment CoC 7" thread, but one of the BRP-isms that I like less and less is that NPCs and monsters have about the same complexity as PCs. 

This is very true for RuneQuest (any edition): stats are expansive AND you still have to look up spells! In contrast I've always found the complexity of CoC, Stormbringer etc. very manageable. 

Interestingly, the original Magic World in Worlds of Wonder had simplified monster stats with the same value being used for STR/CON/SIZ/Hit Points. Maybe not the brightest idea ever, but there was the intention of trimming down complexity on the GM's side.

 

 

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