Recent content by pemerton

I GMed my first session of Mythic Bastionland yesterday: Mythic Bastionland actual play The players knew nothing about the game or the setting except what I explained to them in introducing the game, working through PC build, etc. But they started caring about the setting information straight...

I think the militant saints and the miracle-working knights/kings are all pretty closely tied together, particularly when filtered through the lens of game design many centuries later than the culture that conceived of them. So I agree with you about how they tie into Clerics; but see the...

Right. The archetype that clerics and paladins draw from is the mediaeval idea of the rightful knight/king who can heal with a touch, and perhaps perform other miracles; and is wrathful and warlike against the enemies of the divinity. D&D obviously sources some of the miracles from the Bible...

That was going to be my answer. My understanding (from hearsay - I've never read a Drizzt novel) is that Drizzt fought with two weapons because that was a Drow ability; and had a Figurine of Wondrous Power. But then these got turned into ranger abilities. Although there is a (modest) overlap...

My experience is the opposite of this. I've had no trouble GMing Marvel Heroic RP, and I don't find settings without FR/WoD-style metaplot to be "nicely painted facades".

Can you elaborate a bit more on this? I think that the "no hard failure" idea sometimes gets mixed up with some other things: * Not grinding the adventure to a halt - but this notion only has purchase if there is a "the adventure" which has a pre-determined trajectory, and so shouldn't really...

Cats; peacocks; monks; shepherds; Mountain.

This relates to some of what I posted in the other thread: what determines if there is a risk? Eg in a social situation, what creates a risk that the PC might be embarrassed or disheartened? I tend to default to Burning Wheel norms - if the situation is putting something the PC is invested in...

I think the players enjoyed the session. Certainly enough to agree that our next session (i) should be soon, and (ii) should be Mythic Bastionland. Some of my concerns I posted in my previous thread, about uncertainty around framing, were borne out. There were points where I felt I had to work...

Here is a summary of their travel: Day 1, morning: they entered the first river hex. I rolled a 1 on the Wilderness Roll, and the random Myth was The Troll. They encountered its severed arm in a marshy part of the river bank, crawling north-west (ie towards the lake). The Hive Knight approached...

The players knew that their Knights had been knighted by Seers - though we did not pay any attention to the canonical knighting Seers set out in the rulebook - and that the Seers know secrets of the Myths. So in the tavern, they asked about Seers. Given the game is meant to be procedural, at...

I GMed a session of Mythic Bastionland this afternoon, with my regular group. I introduced it to them as a game of weird questing knights. We started with rolling PCs, young knights-errant. We had 6 players roll PCs, although only 5 actually started play - one of us had to leave before play...

Sure. But it's not as if that book was produced ex nihilo, in a cultural and historical vacuum.

And I would add to this, analysed/explained quite obscurely in many RPG discussions.

I think that D&D clerics and paladins, as originally presented, are two mechanical variants on the one idea: a heavily armed and armoured worker of miracles (heal with a touch, dispel evil spirits, etc). The miracle-working knight (or king) is something that is found in mediaeval legend. D&D...