Markdoc

Re: Barbarians 'Kay. Could be that I can be of some help here. My Google Fu is strong (hah!) - plus the fact that I can read most scandinavian languages helps. More importantly, I already know this stuff Svinfylking (in modern Norwegian/Danish Svinefylkerene) is kind of hard to translate - the traditional translation has been either "swine-array men" or "pig-snout leaders" - either way, what it really means is the men who stand at the front of a traditional viking battle formation - the arrowhead or pig-snout formation. Basically big, tough nasty guys whose job was to break the enemy battle line. The scandinavian heavy metal/asutra/sweat lodge community has taken the swine part of the name to mean that they dressed up in swine skins or were some mystical brotherhood, but I don't know of a shred of evidence for this, and quite a lot against it. The *reason* for this is the endless debate about the word berserk. The simplest explanation is that comes from Bare-Sark (Bare-shirt or no-shirt). Since the Vikings liked allegorical language, many researchers take this to mean that they wore nothing on their chest - meaning no armour. But it has been suggested that it comes from Bjar-sark or "bear-shirt" - men who wore bear-skins. There's been a whole deal of nonsense written about how they were possessed of the spirit of the bear, etc - but again there's not a shred of evidence for this being the right translation, nor any evidence about anyone wearing a bear-skin in battle. The only reason anyone takes it seriously at all is because.... of the Ulfhednar, which can be translated as "Wolf-skinned one". Unlike the stuff above, there *is* a picture from pre-viking times of what looks like a guy wearing a wolfskin and carrying a sword and a spear. We don't know who he was or what he was - spirit, warrior, priest or what, but there is an association of berserks with animalistic behaviour in some texts, so you never know. Anyway, the mystic brotherhood thing comes from .... the Jomsvikings, who were a well-described group. They appeared to be a mercenary band put together with a strict code of conduct and a strict entry code (to join you had to defeat one of them in single combat) - they swore not retreat except in the face of overwhelming force, to avenge the death of their brothers, not to feud with one another and - oh, yeah - no women. Despite the fact that they are mentioned in several sagas, we don't know if they actually existed If they did, they lasted a bit less than 100 years before being put down by the Norwegian kings in the mid 11th century. Still, it's a cool idea, even if there's no real evidence for any such thing in real life. In my game the vaguely scandinavian-inspired Halsings do have two mystic cults - Bjornbrodere and Ulvebrodere (the Bear-brothers and Wolf-brothers) who do the whole dress up in skins thing and are mortal enemies. Like the Jomsvikings they are exclusive warrior brotherhoods who rent their services out and have secret ritual and martial arts that they teach only to their cult-brothers. cheers, Mark

Re: Barbarians Or the Bar bills. cheers, Mark

Re: Daily Art Findings I'd even go so far as to say "Stap me vittles." cheers, Mark

Re: I Need Some Thugs Dude, he wants *thugs*, not losers. cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Oh, but hey, that reminds me What was the same of Annette's character in Ivan's game? The Female paladin with the Afro who used to hang out with Angror and Smirnoff?. cheers, Mark

Re: Teleport Trap Rather than make it an attack on the teleporter - and require big pusses and some handwaving - why not make it AoE, triggered (by use of teleport)? Then all you need to do is hit the hex where your AoE is centred. Since you already hit the hex and it's AoE, anyone teleporting into the AoE should be sent to the cell with the big Suppress teleport as soon as they land. That's how I've always done it.... Cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art And here's another quickpic from last night. Cheers, Mark

Re: Campaign idea! Ooo. It's a been a while (like about 16 years), and I don't have the sheets in digital format: the originals are on paper somewhere in my capacious archives. Here's what I recall. The origin of the Immortals was the assembling of a group of human heroes to fight the Dark Lords - basically two extradimensional invasions: first of the fay races and then, of the Things that the Fay were fleeing. In an attempt to stop them, a high priest of Thanataya called a conclave of heroes. He didn't have time to be picky, so included plenty of people who would not have associated by choice. Then he - and a big swag of junior priestlings explained the ritual of immortality, and cast it on those heroes who agreed to it. The junior priests paid the XP - essentially powering the spell with their life force - and expired. In return, each of the heroes got immunity to aging and a spell built as "summon identical duplicate" with a trigger "death of current individual" and a side effect that teleported the new duplicate to a random location on the globe. So the only way to exterminate an immortal was to find and kill the new version before it had time to reset its trigger (not very likley). The very first tarot packs were made with one card for each of the heroes, and they were enchanted to serve as communication devices. But for a population under siege by monsters, copies of the cards soon became talismans and eventually the pack came to have a mystic meaning of its own, with each card still loosely associated with the original Hero's powers. In other words the heroes weren't based on the Tarot - the Tarot was based on the heroes! All that was more than 5000 years ago. The dark lords are mostly history and the Fay have adapted to their new world. They mostly keep out of sight. The Immortals are still around, but every time one dies and a new body wakes up, it is a duplicate of the hero who died *5000*years*ago*. They have no clue about the current state of the world. Others are still alive and have been around for a very long time - so are very powerful. The smart ones have set up messianic religions or cults to act as bases for their new forms (just in case they have an "accident") decked out with symbolism that their original form would recognise, with "holy texts" designed to bring their new versions up to speed. The characters in the game that I remember were: Trey of Swords (NPC). Few "magical" powers but a superb swordsman and the ability to use essentially any weapon effectively. Ten of Swords (NPC). The warrior who never lost a fight and never won a war. Skilled fighter, but his schtick was massive regeneration. He was *extremely* hard to kill (and even if you did kill him, he was still immortal). He was also cursed (unluck) Trey of Pentacles (PC). A magical gadgeteer. Wands, rings, magical lanterns, you name it. Death (PC). A variety of powers centrered around death. XD teleportation (only to areas of massive death). Dangersense (only via others) - he could "see" impending death, which had the nice special effect that he would see the death - so if the group was about to be ambushed, he'd suddenly notice one of the NPCs he was chatting with had several arrows in in his back, that sort of thing. He had Deathtouch - an AVLD HKA. The Tower (NPC). A troublemaker. Crazy as a loon. Shapeshift powers and also transformation powers. Lived to take take pompous people down a notch. The Fool (PC). Gifted everyman. A huge range of skills, skill modifiers and 10 point levels. Could basically do anything at a high level of competency, but had no clear, obvious "powers". Was a perfect match to the player, who was flighty and impulsive but always managed to muddle through OK anyhow. The Hanged Man (PC). The power of Change - the character was basically a big squidgy mimic VPP with trigger. He/she also had regeneration on extra time. He could duplicate other people's powers and skills and appearance if he/she "died" ie: went down to negative body. At the end of the changing period (1 day) the character would suddenly start to regenerate and come back to life with new abilities. Heh. Before her comrades found this out, she "died" to steal some of their powers - and they buried her. She almost didn't make it back out of the grave.... The Devil (PC). He had limited shapeshifting and major emotion-controlling powers - very strong if used one on one or weaker but covering a huge area. He couldn't *force* people to do things but he could certainly encourage them in certain directions. Tried to found his own religion The Magician (NPC). Big *** magical Multipower and occult knowledge. The Chariot (NPC) Warlord type. Good personal combat skills, but a logistical and strategic genius with some minor precognitive abilities. There were more - especially more minor arcana, but I have forgotten exactly who they were. There were, of course, far more non-immortal NPCs. cheers, Mark

Re: The First Hurdle: Creating a *gulp* Magic System Here's a simple (and therefore probably faulty) riff off the delayed effect suggestion. If you require delayed effect for your Wizards (but not Sorcerors) that does two things. 1. it makes the wizard's spells cheaper and 2. forces wizards to assign them in advance. Combine this with extra time on wizard spells - the 5 minutes suggested is good. If you use a VPP, this cheapens the control cost on the pool, for wizards, but not by much. What it does do is cheapen - considerably - the cost of each spell, so a Wizard will have more spells in his VPP than a sorceror, but has to set them up in advance, given similar points invested. However, a possibly simpler approach is to use Multipowers instead. They have the advantage that they are significantly cheaper to buy. VPPs cost a lot. The payoff with a VPP is flexibility, but what you propose to do limits that flexibility, making it kind of unappealing for players. If you go for a multi, instead of Delayed Effect (which personally I don't much like) simply require wizards to take Extra Time (5 minutes) and Trigger on their spells. Don't require that for sorcerors. Require all spells to be on charges. This will (at least initially) reduce the cost. So for example, one wizard could have the limitation "6 charges" on all his spells - in which case the multi reserve takes the same limitation (which reduces its price). This means you can use any slot, in any combination up to 6 times. BUT! Because of the 5 minutes prep time on wizard spells, you would actually want to set them up in advance: meaning a wizard could either take 5 minutes and cast any spell he wants (reading it from his book, say) OR he could use an already prepped spell via trigger. A sorceror with the same kind of multi could just use his spells without Prep, but he'll have fewer spells, or weaker spells or both, because he won't get the big price break on Extra Time. Another, more powerful wizard might have 12 charges on all his spells (but he's going to pay more to have more spells). Using this system, a wizard would be able to cast an already prepped spell. But then he'd have to study up and reset the trigger before he could use it again, unless he had already prepped multiple uses. Does that make sense? cheers, Mark

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Why is it that Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness and Jack of Shadows never get any love? As for the Great Book of Amber, I bought it in Maryland a couple of months back - but Kath had already bought me the Fantasy Masterwork volume with just the first 5 stories, when she was in London. Like Mike, I could care less about the second series, so I exchanged the GBoA for the new Game of Thrones book at Borders in Seattle last week. Chain stores are good for something! cheers, Mark

Re: Really Bizarre Armor Pondering

Re: Variable Power Pools I'm using VPPs in my current FH game. The problems with VPPs (unlimited flexibility, time wasted out "figuring out" a power, etc) are essentially avoided by the dodge already mentioned - only "already learned" spells are allowed. This lets the players swap in and out already defined powers, which is not too hard. I let players create new spells - by permission - but that requires the approriate skills, and in-game research, finding useful icky bits of monsters, etc. That keeps it under control. Also the "only learned spells" thing makes mages almost pathological in their search for old manuscripts, hidden knowledge and other people's spellbooks - which is as it should be Essentially, this gives the mage a multipower with a potentially unlimited number of slots (but it tends to start off weak). In addition, the average VPP with "mage limitations" (gestures, incantation, etc etc) can normally run 2-4 spells at full power, which is not generally the case with a multi. There are some downsides, however. The pool cost can't (and shouldn't) be limited, meaning that a VPP in a heroic level game costs a significant chunk o'points. A 150 point character rarely gets over 30 AP in their pool, which means no "instant killer" spells. Of course from my point of view, that's a feature, not a bug In short, as long as the GM knows what he want and knows what he's doing, VPPs can work fine in a fantasy setting. cheers, Mark

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen Julian May's Pleistocene series seemed pretty much ready-made for gaming the first time I read it. High tech, psionics, nasssty monsters and all wrapped up in a limited, well-detailed setting, making it easy to GM. Most of the major characters just scream "player character" - the players could get a wide choice of powers or chracter types, but not so much that the characters would be "samey". Likewise, Joe Haldeman's "All my sins remembered" would be a good setting. In the book, prime agents worked alone, but given that the major character routinely got betrayed, captured and tortured, maybe his organisation might reconsider, oh, I dunno, giving him a little, you know, backup? As a game, the players would get to reconfigure their characters via multiform and then get dropped somewhere new with a definite goal, but little external support: an ideal setting for the GM. Something new and different, but you don't have to worry about the players running out on your scenario. At the same time, the players should have enough operational freedom not to feel too compressed. cheers, Mark

Re: Really Bizarre Armor Pondering Actually that wouldn't have much effect. The only difference between 21st century steel and 14th century steel is that we can turn out the high grade stuff much more consistently and in huge quantities. There's only so much you can do with steel - you can't make it much harder without making it more brittle and you can't make it lighter without making it softer. So our best steel is not a great deal better for armour than the best a good armourer could turn out in the high middle ages. Of course, we could make it so it didn't rust so easily and we could churn out suits by the million if we wanted to As for general purpose armour (good vs firearms AND good versus hand to hand weapons) I'd suggest a different approach. Kevlar and other fibreweave armours are designed to stop a projectile that has light weight, low momentum but high velocity, by bleeding off the energy through stretching and spreading the impact over a wide area. That won't work against sharp pointy objects that cut - especially heavy, high momentum ones that don't deform. So kevlar's not very good against swords, arrows or flechettes. It does work OK against blunt hand to hand weapons. Newer fibre weave armours with a much higher thread density do offer better protection against cutting/piercing weapons, but they still get cut - and once they are cut, they're not very effective. Ceramics will stop higher energy attacks - but they often shatter in the process. Mixing ceramics with fibreweave is designed to reduce the energy of an impact to the point where the ceramic doesn't shatter (that's why the ceramic is on the *inside*). I dunno how that would fare against a high momentum, low speed attack like an axe, but I suspect after a couple of good whacks it'd crack. Steel, on the other hand, deforms - even tears - but doesn't shatter easily. So maybe your best bet would be to combine steel with fibreweave instead of ceramic. It'd be heavy and bulky, but not a great deal more than conventional medieval plate. It'd probably offer less protection against high energy firearms (though ironically, maybe more against armour piercing rounds) than conventional fibreweave+ceramic but more against medieval style cutting weapons. It'd certainly offer beter protection against firearms than medieval armour and it'd certainly last longer: remember that modern body armours are designed to be at least partially disposable. After your trauma plate has taken one good hit, you are supposed to replace it. If your fibreweave has a hole or a cut in it, you are also suposed to replace it (I know that doesn't happen in real life, but the performance drops off radically once integrity is compromised). cheers, Mark

Re: Growing Up Polytheistic There's lots of different ways of handling this - in my current game, everyone acknowledges the big Twelve dieties, plus one rather less important diety, but not everyone actively worships all of them. Most people belong to a cult that venerates a specific deity - so warriors generally belong to a local cult of the Horned Man, the warrior's favourite god. They acknowledge that the Butterfly Girl exists, but so what? What's she got to do with their lives? The advantages to belonging to a smaller cult are simply that it provides a social and religious network that is closer and more relevant to them. That allows me to have polytheistic religions but still indulge in cross-cult politics and intrigue. It's not unrealistic either. As noted, in the Roman empire, people often identified and worshipped far more with one cult than others. That didn't lead them to claim that they had the one and only truth - simply that the amount of energy and the cost of involved in being a participating member of one cult left little time for being involved with others, so you chose the one that suited you best. It's not so big a step from there to a monotheistic-style bigotry, if you wanted to run things that way. If gods really did interfere with daily life - and some of them were distinctively nasty - I can see the heads of other religions deciding the worshippers of those gods had to go. You can find a model for virtually any kind of religious practice in history if you look cheers,Mark

Re: Game world That's not a bad idea. Right now I am focussed on getting the first few months adventures for the new FH game beaten into shape. I'll be posting them as they are played, just in case my players are tempted to peek Hopefully that will be of interest. If all goes as planned, it'll be a series of adventures that link up into a campaign good for 2-3 years gaming, like my Sengoku game. But I'll have a look at pdf'ing them when I get a minute. cheers, Mark

Re: Game world The Gothick Empires stuff will move (when I've gotten around to updating the various links that point at it: probbaly in a week-10 days). I've been wanting to expand it for a while, but haven't had the space. There will be a pointer to the new site. The Angelfire site will get the expanded WH40K Hero conversions. Everything else will stay where it is. cheers, Mark

Re: Warhammer 40K Space Marine Power Armour Thread necromancy! (just noticed this thread via a link on a more current thread). On Radios - although it's not noted in the original descriptions, recent stuff on marines describes them as having "thought-link" communictions - so I suspect they should have mind link - via a cybernetic implant, although you could just say they have radio hearing and transmit. As far as armour goes the way to look at it - for me - is not that that regular marine armour saves on a 3+, but that it fails to protect on a 1 or 2, whereas Terminator armour fails only on a 1. In short, it's *twice* as effective. That gap gets bigger when you consider AP weapons. In addition, it gives an invulnerable save. So it should be *significantly* crunchier than regular armour. At the same time ramping it up to 18 DEF seemed like a bit much (maybe not though - in the game, Dreads are tougher than most armoured vehicles...). On Rating the armour, you have to account for the fact that it has a Marine inside it, which adds significantly to the DEF against STUN. If Lasguns have 1d6 RKA (which seems about right: they're not terribly lethal even to normal humans in their T-shirts) then the max stun you can generate is 30 - enough to hurt (but not Stun) a marine. You'd need multiple hits to stand any chance of taking one down: the average hit will do no Stun. Basically a squad of guardsmen is blasting away hoping to get 2 or 3 lucky hits. Even if they do, the marine is down, but not wounded (although I guess they could keep blasting and start doing double damage once he's out, so it would be possible to kill a Marine after he's down). For the Table top game, that's OK - it's assumed that figures which are taken down are not necessarily dead. It also matches the book sources, where the marines really can storm forward under a hail of lasgun or autogun fire - the vast bulk will just scratch their armour up. Likewise ordinary small arms - even Bolters - are not terribly effective against Terminator armour, so DEF 12 seems pretty reasonable. cheers, Mark

Re: All heroes are NOT created equal While you can run games with characters of different points levels or power - and it can even work well for a while - those kinds of games don't seem to have staying power. Eventually the players who are second stringers get tired of it, even if they are good sports to start with. Heck, it doesn't even work that well in the comics in the long run: you just need to look at the ascension of Batgod to see that there are limits to how long a mismatched team can survive before powergaming sets in. cheers, Mark

Re: Maximum Damage From Weapons

Re: Maximum Damage From Weapons Teach me to be more specific. Here's the actual rule: If you exceed twice the damage maximum for your weapon, there is a chance of it breaking, which is 9+DC added (not the base DC) of the weapon. Thus, a dagger, where you can normally only add 2 DC, would break on a 12- (or more) if you exceeded the limit, since you would need to add at least 3 DC to exceed the normal limit, whereas a longsword (4DC) would break on at least a 14-, since you would need to add at least 5DC to exceed the normal limit. This is quick and simple, but not very realistic (it's way easier to break a spear than a zweihander, for example). It *is* fairly punitive, but then it was meant to be. I didn't want people exceeding damage limits regularly - especially with larger weapons. cheers, Mark

Re: Game world

Re: Maximum Damage From Weapons One possibility for heroic games I played with was to allow muscle-powered HTH weapons to do more than double DCs - once. If you were strong enough you could whack someone really hard and break your weapon in the process. I dropped the rule because it encouraged people to carry 4 or 5 swords but for a cinematic game it was kind of fun... cheers, Mark

Thanks to Bblackmoor, I've got a new site to host the stuff for my new FH game. It's at: http://www.rpglibrary.org/settings/gothick_empires/ It's still a bit bare-bones: there's a lot of material still to add, but there's enough up now that it's not a complete waste of time (well, no more than any roleplaying site is a waste of time). cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Cliches Sorry - crossthreading. AmadanNaBriona was writing about the "Fatal Fool" - Lady Gregory also referred to him/it as the "devouring fool". Basically the archetype is the dangerous, unpredictable character, who leads other people into perilous (sometimes fatal, but always life-changing) situations. The original Puck is one such character, but færie legends of any sort are replete with them. The Joker in DC comics could be said to be a modern version of the same idea. Basically it's a variant of the trickster archetype, but more malevolent. Loki instead of Coyote, if you like. cheers, Mark