Markdoc

Re: Why no heavy cavalry? Ah, but there's a catch. Although it's expensive, it's still cheaper than *losing*. Even people who lived in the wide open plains and relied on light skirmishing cavalry eventually recognised the need for heavier shock cavalry - or were subjugated by people who did. Of course, the shock cav don't need to be especially numerous. So I'd go for other options. 1. It just hasn't happened YET. In Japan, it took a long time for them to get around to developing shock cavalry. But when it finally happened, Takeda Shingen's shock tactics crushed every army he faced, until he sat on an especially pointy potty. Everybody - and I mean everybody - immediately started to develop their own shock cavalry corps. But the idea had taken so long to take hold, the next big thing had already arrived. Mass cavalry charges against massed firearms, not so effective, neh? That gives two options. A. Some genius works this out and starts conquering his neighbours. Soon, Heavy Cav are part of the landscape. There's plenty of roleplaying plot hooks here. Who is this genius? Where'd he get the idea from? What else has he got up his sleeve? Where can I get me some o' them? B. It's already been tried - and it's just not effective - it's too easy to spook or mind-control the horses, or they become uncontrollable when fireballs start flying, etc. In other words, magic does for shock cav what massed firearms did for them in Europe. 2. It hasn't happened for another reason. The horse god thing is not so silly - in Runequest, in fact, the main setting almost entirely lacks horse-mounted cavalry because of a pissing match between the various gods. So people ride all sorts of other things, but not horses. So the impala people, for example, have no shock cavalry. The Rhino people, on the other hand, have nothing else. cheers, Mark

Re: Why no heavy cavalry? Yep - and thanes was one of the first words I thought of as well (also considered Hersir, Huskarl etc) because that's very close to the feel I am going for - in this setting, the 6 kindoms are scattered across multiple islands. Feudal lords are not landowners (or at least not primarily) - they are shiplords. Instead of owning X hides of land and supplying X knights, a shiplord must supply X ships (and the warriors to crew them) and have enough income to support that lot (from land, trade monopolies, whatever). So the military structure is a more formalised (and medievalised) version of the early scandanavian Leidang system. But there's a catch. I'm IN scandanavia - so the word Thane (Thegn in Danish) carries if anything, even more baggage than knight - especially if I throw in the ships thing. Life's *****, no? cheers, Mark

Re: Firebrand? Just a simple RKA/energy (no range, personal immunity) sitting as a linked attack on the HKA. cheers, Mark

Re: Two Weapon Fighting as SPFX You can certainly do this - here's a character with exactly that sort of power: http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/character_archive/Father_Azrael.html It's a very old character (worked up in the very first version of Heromaker, IIRC). If I was doing it today, I'd call his weapons OIF (handgun of opportunity) so that he could do it with any gun he could lay his hands on. Since he's paying for the powers, ambidexterity, rapid-fire, etc is unnecessary. cheers, Mark

Re: Magic system question

Re: Why no heavy cavalry? Oh - and in a mostly unrelated note - in the game I am ramping up right now, I also have no heavy cav. The game reason is illustrated in the herophile art thread: http://herogame.dans.cust.servlets.net/forums/showthread.php?t=32056 The real reason though is that I wanted to have a feudal warior class (knights, right?). On the other hand I didn't want all the emotional baggage that comes with the word knight. They behave in many ways more like samurai - but THAT word comes with even more misleading baggage. So .. knights without horses and knights without land. That breaks one of the emotional links and makes it easier to feed the idea that the word "knight" does not mean "code of chivalry" or "damsels in distress" - but simply refers to a full-time warrior in heavy armour who fights for a lord. cheers, Mark

Re: Chickens?

Re: Herophile Fantasy art and here's the ones I did last night. This picture actually sort of applies to two other threads as well - the "why no heavy cavalry" and "giant Chickens" thread. There is no heavy cav in the archipelago and here's why - the only suitable mounts are Dadaks - really big, bad tempered birds. They can fight alright (lookit them claws!) and they are reasonably fast but they lack the stamina and weight to act as shock troops and they can't run around with an armoured warrior on their back for long. So they are used as scouts and outriders (called "prickers") for raiding and skirmishing. On long marches the soldiers walk/jog and then mount up when they need speed. These guys are also Samadrians - a scout/archer and an officer of lancers - which is why they both wear more armour than is usual for outriders (Samadrian prickers sometimes dismount to fight on foot, so they are more like mounted infantry than is common in the other kingdoms). A light helmet and a stout leather vest is more usual. cheers, Mark

Re: Magic system question Thanks, KS - I looked hard at the totemism magic system. It's got a nice feel, but is hugely powerful, since you only pay for Fam.s - a character built with that system would kick the butt of everybody else in my game. I know the feel I want - it's mechanisms that I am after. The idea of paying cost/x where X decreases over time is an interesting one 8and one that I hadn't considered). In the end I think I'll pass, since I like to stick as close to standard Hero system as I can. Thanks for the input, though! cheers, Mark

Re: Combo Attacks? One other possibility os to let people buy Aid - with an increased maximum plus trigger "only for Combo Attacks" -1? -2? - it's pretty limiting. That way you can max out the Aid ahead of time, and then unleash it as a combo when it's needed. cheers, Mark

Re: Why no heavy cavalry? Actually, the Arabs had plenty of heavy cav - the Arab armies that spread islam were mostly spearheaded by shock cavalry who charged with leveled spears. The Syrians' armies were mostly composed of Heavy Cav, supported by spearmen and crosbowmen - as were those of their neighbours like the Persians and Egyptians. That's why they took such a beating from the first crusaders - they were throwing shock cavalry against better armed, better trained, better motivated shock cavalry mounted on heavier horses. You're probably confusing the Arabs with the turkish successor states that relied on masses of light skirmishing cavalry. cheers, Mark

Re: Magic system question Yep, I have checked out KS's awesome site, but none of the magic systems there do exactly what I want. As far as Independant goes, it is normally on a focus, since there has to be some way that you can lose it, but it doesn't have to necessarily be usable by others: it could for example be on a unique focus that no-one else could use. In this case independant just means that if you lose it, it's gone forever. To take two examples. Sauron makes a magic ring and fixes it so only he can use it. It's a focus, IIF, personal. Since he's a munchkin, he bought all his stat.s down bought and then put them in the ring, so without it, he becomes a shapeless form of malice. If he loses it - by getting his finger cut off, say - then he can retreat to his dark kingdom and make another one. The GM might say that it takes a lot of time and gold n' stuff but he can make another one, at which point he's back in the game. Isildur might have the old one, but it doesn't do him much good. On the other hand, if Sauron makes it so that the ring is an independant focus, then he loses all the points that went into it. Isildur still can't use the ring, but Sauron can't make a new one. All those points are still tied up in the ring. If it's destroyed, kiss 'em all buh-bye. So in this regard, it works the same whether a focus is involved or not. cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art And since I was discussing my new FH game, here's a picture I whipped up last night showing some Samadrian knights, to give the players a general feel for what they look like. In this game the "knights" actually fight on foot as heavy infantry (hence the pikes 'n stuff) since the various kingdoms are mostly islands (so ship to ship combat's important) and the only mounts available are too light to act as chargers for heavily-armoured men. cheers, Mark

I'm in the throes of designing a new setting for my FH game. The basic idea is that in the area, there are two magical traditions: the Church/cult magic of the Sea people, who now pretty much rule the lands and the magic of the original inhabitants which is much more mysticism/shamanism oriented. These two cultures live pretty much in harmony (think Shintoism/Buddhism in Japan) these days, although it wasn't always so. Here's the problem - I want each type of magic to have quite distinct "feels". I've done the Church magic - it's based on VPPs, so the casters are quite flexible in spellcasting, although total power is limited ('cos VPPs are expensive).The VPPs are also limited in the sort of spell you can have, because it's quite difficult to learn spells from outside your cult. On the other hand you can modify spell the spells your know to your heart's content, as long as you can fit it in your pool. Finally, there is a system of plusses and minuses to the (required) skill roll, so players will have to think about material components, rituals and astrological conjunctions if they want to succeed at funky magic stuff. Being a magic user in the tradition of the Twelve means that you can do many things, but you are going to have to think about how you do your casting a lot. It's not suited for combat magery, but it makes an excellent backup. Also, if you want to be an effective spellcaster, by definition you need to sink a fair few points into it. so most mages are specialists. However, I want the indigenous magic to have almost the exact opposite feel. Casters in the tradition of the Forest Man have only a few spells, but they can be cheap (so many people have one or two little spells, or "gifts" as they are called) - buandt they can also be powerful. Also, spells in this style of magic are essentially personal: so mages buy spells that affect them. So for combat, instead of fireball, you have a spell that makes you strong and fast. Instead of flight, you have a spell that lets you leap huge distances or run really fast. What I am going for is a "weird martial arts/Celtic battle magic" feeling: so it's OK for people to have astounding physical abilities, but not so much to have things so that onlookers go "Ooh! Magic!" At the moment, I have simply said that magic users can buy their powers straight. With -2 1/2 in required limitations, that means that most spells will cost between 1/3 to 1/4 or real cost. It has the advantage that you can buy one spell, with no other investment. It also has the advantage that active points are no limit. If you want one butt-kicking Gift with 120 active points, that would be OK (assuming I OK it: though I'm more concerned with "feel" than actual power levels). My only concern is that it's TOO limited - that nobody will ever buy more than one or two gifts (that might be OK: I'm pondering here). One possibility I am pondering is to keep the "buy spells straight" approach but require people to sacrifice some of their life-force - ie: they buy the spells with the independant (-2) limitation - and tie that to a sacred mark or Geas. For example Grimm the Black Hound could buy Mystical Dangersense, add independant (bringing the real cost down further) but take a geas "Cannot Ambush" (that's part of the limitation on the spell so it qualifies as independant - not necessarily a psych. Lim). If he ever breaks the Geas, the power and the points spent on it go away permanently unless he can atone for it somehow. Or Atlach the Strong has a spell that allows him to double his STR, which is tied to the bull tattoos on his arm: If they are destroyed, his power goes buh-bye (for good). In this setting it might be possible to "steal" someone else's powers, which is an intriguing thought, though I am undecided as whether to allow this... Anyway, any suggestions for a magic system that fits this pattern: easy to buy a few spells, hard to buy a lot. Can buy one or two powerful spells, but can't buy lots of powerful spells? cheers, Mark

Re: Runequest Spirit Magic to Hero System You could do that too - but it seems like a lot of work to simulate something which is mostly a meta-effect with the game system. Still, if you like that idea - go for it. Rather than make players pay for it, I'd be inclined to write it in as a game mechanic, that anyone can tap by spending POW. cheers, Mark

Re: Folding, Spindling and Mutliating Settings Of course - I always assumed this was standard operating procedure! At the moment, I am busily whacking chunks out of the classic Pavis Runequest setting to fit into my game. Instead of being a ruined city in the middle of the desert, it's become a coastal city destroyed by a wizardly earthquake. Half of it's slipped into the bay, the other half partially buried by landslides. The fortified towns inside the ruins in the original setting become islands. Instead of walking through the dry and dusty ruins and burrowing underground under the hot sun, the payers will have to scull about between fog-wreath'd, algae-dripping ruins in little boats over half the terrain and dig - literally - into the hillside in search of the good stuff buried during the landslides on the other half. In the meantime, the people who live there attempt to stop the wholesale looting of their ancestral home and organise some sort of resistance against the recently arrived Samadrian army, which is attempting to hold down their new possession, pacify the hnterlands, loot the vaulable stuff themselves and tax anyone they can catch to pay for all of this. The basic atmosphere has changed from Bronze age to late medieval/Gothic mixed with a bit of Clark Ashton Smith and the major goal from reassembling a magical council to reviving a long-dead godling. Even so there's a powerful lot I can reuse without much effort: but it's changed enough that even if players know the original setting, odds are good they won't recognise it. cheers, Mark

Re: How can you feed this many people? Also to answer the original question, here's a couple of suggestions: 1. Andy's pretty much covered the mundane aspects. That would give you a small strip of cultivated land around the city, and perhaps small clearings in the woods around the city, each with a small village. One thing that was not mentioned was the common ancient/medieval habit of "semi-domestic" animals. You can breed (for example) pigs and release them into the woods, where they get fat and happy over summer and autumn, more or less without supervision. Then you hunt them. Some you capture and keep for breeding - the rest you eat. The ones you don't catch escape to supplement the herds and grow old and wily to make future hunts more fun/dangerous. Last of all think about crops or conditions that are higher-yielding than European grains - the cities of the fertile crescent and the nile valley seem to have actually gotten away with higher population densities relative to cropland simply because the soil was highly fertile (although it may have also been because of lower standards of living). The same is true of medieval asia as well, due to the fecundity of rice. The introduction of the potato to Europe caused a decease in the amount of arable land needed to feed a family. So you can massage the numbers a bit (based on the potato thing, double or triple would be conservative: it's been estimated that in Ireland, grain required 4-6 times as much land as potatoes to feed an equivalent number of people). Also root vegetables - unlike grain - do well in untilled soil, so you don't need to spend as much time on tillage: plant em, mulch 'em and come back at harvest time (OK, that's not quite true, but you get the idea). 2. You can boost the hunting (and thus decrease space/manpower need for agriculture in several ways) with magic without having to rely on "Poof! There's food!". Carve a big ol' stone with the rune of calling and animal pictures, so that wild animals are called into the area around it: thus hunting is always too good to be true. Drop another one into the harbour or in the nearby bay, so that the fishing is also always supernaturally good. Another runestone to make the climate permanently bountiful - rain and sun in perfect measure, no killing frosts, etc - or one to scare pests away (that has the advantage - no mosquitos on summer evenings!) and you could probably double the amount of available food quite easily. The locals might have to renew the rituals every year, or the stones could have been sitting there for a thousand years, pretty much forgotten and taken for granted, depending on the feel you want. cheers, Mark

Re: How can you feed this many people?

Re: Occult Powers Difficult to Stat in Hero Also, one possibilty would be to use a VPP - a skillpool. Normally I frown upon such things, but since the description says that the user needs to concentrate on a tattoo to recall the memories, that would work. The reason I suggest it depends on how you see it working. If the characters are faced with a clay tablet covered in obscure heiroglyphs and tattooed guy once lived in Uruk he can either say: "Hey - I recognise those - that's Sumerian!" (KS: Sumerian) or: Hey - I recognise those - that's Sumerian! It says olefertangfertangbiscuit barrel..." (Lang: Sumerian) In other words do you want the recipient to KNOW about stuff or do you want him to DO stuff. 10 points should buy you a pool sufficient for 1 or two skills (depending on how you choose to format it) that the character can change at will: sort of super-cramming. cheers, Mark

Re: An idea on making the system a bit more dangerous I tend to run heroic games with a high degree of lethality, but rather than changing the rules, which introduces other problems (balancing STR against other effects, for example) my approach is: 1. No caps. If players want to build big, bad attacks, they can. In Heroic games where the equipment is free, the response is to buy lots of levels,martial arts or both, so you can reliably target the squishy bits, since you can't easily increase the damage of the weapon itself. 2. Control defences. Again, applies mostly to heroic games, but in fantasy type games I enforce "realistic" limits on armour and limit magical defences. A 2d6 HKA is plenty scary if all you have is 3 rPD combat luck and a nice shirt. I limit access to body armour in modern settings. A SWAT-style flak jacket actually gives pretty good protection, but you'll draw some attention if you try and enter most large buildings wearing one. That kind of thing Depends on how lethal you want things to be and why you want them to be lethal. In real life, stabbings (admittedly most of which are with light weapons) have about a 3% chance of causing immediate or rapid death, while shootings (again, most of which are with relatively low-powered weapons) have a fatality rate of about 16% - falling to less than 10% if some kind of body armour is used. Those numbers would be a lot higher if the victim is left untreated of course - but these are the numbers for how many people make it through the "golden hour" ie how many survive the first hour after shooting/stabbing. The current hero rules are in this general ballpark. If you want heroes to simply stand out against normals, then all you need to do is increase the points heroes start with and keep normals at a lower level. cheers, Mark

Re: Help with Vehicle Combat (Ships)

Re: Another take on fantasy campaigns That works. Fitz - who posts to these boards - ran a post-apoc fantasy game in which the survivors of the holocaust lived in little enclaves of high tech and were like unto gods to all the grubby folk who lived outside. If you went this route, perhaps the monsters that are roaming about were engineered and released for sport or experimentation ("I bet you two tubes of Zlunch my new improved dragon EATS those guys this time!") cheers, Mark

Re: Firearms granularity

Re: Runequest Spirit Magic to Hero System

Re: Runequest Spirit Magic to Hero System