BRP Ravenloft

[Atgxtg]

2 minutes ago, Chaot said:

It doesn't make sense to me right now, but it made a lot of sense to me in the early 80s. You had to make sure you were wearing parachute pants too when you rolled. Otherwise it didn't count.

So that's what parachute pants were for! 

 

BTW, One approach you could use is to give the player a certain number of dice (say 25ish), and lets then assign the dice to each attribute, but they only get to keep the best three. What could be neat about this is that somebody who really wanted a high stat could dump a lot of dice into it, but would still cap out an at 18, even when they rolled five sixes!

That similar to what Gary Gygax did in Unearth Arcana, only it gives the player the choice of attributes to prioritize rather than doing it for them by class. 

 

 

[Chaot]

That's a cool idea. I'm honestly not too worried about randomization though. I think an simple distribution of points is best for me. I find that in game decisions make much more of an impact on characters than stats. The closer I can get to the bruiser, the face, the acrobat, the intellectual and the mystic, the better. Get that part over and move on to the game.

[Atgxtg]

Yeah then simply dividing up points (or even rolling the total points and diving them up,like 4D6+60 or some such.) seems best. Especially for a Horror game. 

[Chaot]

Horror is a relative term. I've described my game as pulp mystery. I've had two players describe it as soap opera. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm trying to run Hellboy and  really running Dark Shadows. 

[Mugen]

7 hours ago, Chaot said:

Quicker, yes. The concept is an old hold over from D&D in which you want to make sure that you have at least one really good stat.

Oh, I think I didn't understand it right. I thought you meant that the player had to keep rolling until he got a 16 for ALL stats...

That is, until he had 7 stats between 16 and 18...

Edited July 3, 2017 by Mugen

[Chaot]

Ok, I've had some scheduling issues and did some unexpected traveling. However I now have some fun stuff for you to look at. Feedback and questions are always appreciated. The purpose of the following documents is to make character creation as simple as possible.

[Chaot]

[Chaot]

Next up are character professions. They are almost done. Some are old favorites and some are new that I cobbled together. After that will be short bits explaining the very basics of use Sorcery and Wizardry. Spells and stuff are relegated to the rules books so if you're playing along at home you'll want to get Magic World and Advanced Sorcery for Sorcery and Classic Fantasy for Wizardry.

[Chaot]

Professions are done and I'm officially back in New York. Now it's down to finishing domains and working out scheduling. Hopefully I'll have a game running soon.

Bonus material will be how I work Sorcery, Wizardry and the other powers. Not replicating spells because they are basically out of the book. House rules added in the document are the Brawn/Finesse Damage Bonus, Holding and Rushing Actions and dropping Weapon Hit Points/Breakage. Not present in these documents but evident in the character sheet, I will be grouping weapons into Combat Styles a la RQ6. I'm dropping the combat advantages from that though and limiting a Style to including one to two weapons. I'm reworking shields as well so that they augment the characters Armor roll instead of being their own separate thing.

I've used all of these before and they fall into my category of "The less thinking I have to do during a game, the better."

[sladethesniper]

First off, Thank you!  This may be the push that my wife needs to run Ravenloft.  Her first choice was AD&D, her second choice was 3E (blech), but this may work to have her run it in a GOOD system...(although AD&D was "better-ish" than 3E, now that I can look back on both systems...)

-STS

[Chaot]

Fantastic!

Tell her to take a look at this thread. https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?463484-necro-BRP-Ravenloft. It has a bunch of ideas on how to stat up the Domain Lords. I should really go through that and make them pretty pdfs.

I've basically run two Ravenloft games so far, so there are many out there with more experience in the Dread Realms than me. Often I feel like my game is some unholy mixture of Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter and the Fearless Vampire Killers. I'm not a Ravenloft purist. A trap, I think, in the published material is that so much of it outlines the NPC background in great detail, explaining why they are so doomed and dreadful and stuff. It kind of puts them on a pedestal. In my opinion, they are there to be interacted with and defeated by the PCs. Your wife might want to be ruthless in letting them die.

Be ruthless with the published material too. Change anything you want in the setting. In my game Avonleigh and Nidala were located where the Shadow Rift is now for game reasons. I think my next game is going to be set in Paridon, but I think I'm going to relocate it to existing in Mordent for game reasons. I'm also thinking about stealing heavily from The Walking Dead and adapting it to an event in Paridon.

Last bit of advice I would give. When you read the Ravenloft adventures, they do a terrible job when it comes to player agency. Replacing them with dopplegangers, turning them into monsters, all sorts of things. Don't do this. Open up the option of letting player characters being corrupted though and let the player run with it. Discuss things OOC, in private if story telling needs be, and make sure you're not ruining the players time by messing with their character.

As I was writing that, a new idea occurred to me. I think I'll add a small section on the character sheet that says "Why are you doomed?" I'm just interested in seeing what the players would write.

Speaking of character sheets. I have a few floating around. I want to finish a few domains and I'll post my most recent character sheet. If your wife decides that she wants to run a game.

Anyway, Enjoy!

[Chaot]

Finished up a character creation sheet too!

[Nikoli]

Hi,

This looks great.

I can't seem to find the BRP Ravenloft in the downloads or on Chaot's page. Is it gone? 

Thanks in advance!

Nikoli

[Chaot]

Hi Nikoli, I'm not sure if I actually uploaded it as a pdf. It so happens that I am messing around with Ravenloft files right now. When I get a chance I'll put something in the downloads.