Search results

Well yes, but if you limit the hit points to say, the Constitution score, and give high-energy missile weapons like Longbows, Arbalests etc. an armor -piercing bonus, and make Critical Hits a little more lethal, then you have that covered pretty simply. We also have an optional rule in the...

Wow! that sounds like a pretty scary bunch! You might want to also do some research on the Sikhs, they were kind of like the Swiss in many ways (political organization for example, they had that 'warrior democracy' thing like the Swiss, and like the Swiss they were organized into a Confederacy...

This was how the Swiss were in real life, they never surrendered and wouldn't change sides, but they refused to fight other Swiss and the second you ran out of money, they turned around and marched home. The French had a saying "Pas de Argent, Pas de Suisse!" (no silver / no swiss) Which...

I'm sure there are, quite afew of us were in the military as well ;) People forget how many gamers are in the Armed Forces. (That reminds me gotta go find that donate game books to soldiers thread, I've got a few to send...) But actually it works essentially the same with ranged weapons. If...

Thats a good point about the issue of Time focus or bullet time ala "The Matrix", this is another thing you can play with in a combat system. If you ever watched a Kirasawa Samurai flick, most of the (very realistic) fights are resolved extremely quickly, but a lot is actually happening there...

I think hit points are ok as long as you don't have too many of them. Damage tracking, hit location wound effects etc can end up becoming a lot of arithmetic, though there are good systems which deal with that on a fairly high level of abstraction. What gets to be a problem to me is when...

Interesting post Shark. Looks like a comperehensive system for generating Mercenaries with a lot of detail. To really make them come alive I reccommend tying your Mercs in with some of their historical counterparts. I blogged a little on this in my History Mythology thread, specifically about...

Is there a method to bypass armor? It's funny, I just re-read two collections of the early Conan stories, and he seemed to wear armor in most of the fights, somewhat to my surprise. In fact they seemed a lot more realistic than most of the modern fantasy I've read. I thought maybe the sword...

No, you are wrong, it allows the PC (NPC etc.) to influence where the randomness impacts the fight, rather than muffling it in general so that it only has a marginal incremental effect. They decide where they put their dice, on offense, defense, counterattacks, disarms, multiple attacks, more...

There is more than one way to skin this particular cat. We use the Martial Pool "roll many / keep one" system to shape the odds. So rather than giving the players, (high level NPCs or major Monsters etc.) ridiculous amounts of hit points that stretch fights out into endless, boring attrition...

A lot of people really like Savage Worlds, I've heard good things about it. Can you describe how the combat works briefly? If you are going to go outside of DnD I know a lot of people really like Burning wheel as well. I've never played it but I have the books and it's a very appealing...

So I guess from your review (that was you right?) I gather you liked it. Let me know how the playtest goes this weekend. G.

Sorry to dissapoint you Mark... I can enjoy that kind of hack-slash-take type game well enough, I'm a pretty hard core gamer like most people here, and I've played my fair share of Icewind Dale and Diablo etc. But over the 25 years I've played RPGs on and off I've noticed three things: 1)...

I'm a database programmer professionally, and for about 20 years I've been compiling a database of information about various pre-industrial historical cultures: material culture, art, weapons, economic and military structure, folklore, religion, military structure (including specific types of...

If you PM me your email, and agree to do a little informal review (a paragraph or so) I'll be glad to send you a comp copy of the Codex to take a look at. I think it does exactly what you are looking for, at least for combat. To quote one of our reviews: "...if ordinary d20 combat is boring...

Obviously that is a subjective concept, but for me: I think dynamic and unpredictable qualities in a fight that heighten drama, and unusual events that can occur within the fight, either randomly or through player choice, which make for a good story afterword. The routine back and forth of a...

Yeah I agree i don't like that at all, I prefer my spellcasters to have a lot of relatively low power spells, especially indirect kind that require thinking to employ, there are lots of good ideas for really cool cantrips and low level spells in Ars Magica. Maybe not a perfect fit with Conan...

Yes that is pretty much what I meant, active defense feels a little more cinematic / dramatic in general IMO if you can handle it well, as does various randomly triggered events like weapons getting stuck in people or breaking etc. So long as you can execute it fast. That said I'm not a huge...

I just use it as a source for cool spells, not the whole system. I haven't found it too difficult to adapt them. G.

I'll keep this short since my long reply was eaten. Damn it is dangerous trying to write something on this site. Got to remember to write it offline and then paste it in when it's done. i agree that gameplay should be to a large extent organic, you have to follow what the players want to do to...