Suppose you were creating a setting based on mediaeval Europe. (Reluctantly or otherwise.)

Where and when would you base your main area on?

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

 

Hex grids are just square grids with every other row offset by half a square.

And both are special cases of area maps, which in turn are mathematically equivalent to node and edge maps.

Also, the new queen is from Tasmania.

Quite likely a charioteer, where his limited mobility would be less of a problem. Hopefully he would have followers if he had to fight on foot.

3 hours ago, HeroGM said:

 

Depends on the working relationship too. The overall guild MAY just be watching but you have that one guy who's always out to cause problems for the crew. Go back and look at Snape in Harry Potter. The person may be out to cause real trouble or it just may be that he doesn't trust the characters.

A good excuse for a Rivalry as well.

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

Never even heard of dangerous journeys.

What was that?

 

 

The fantasy RPG Gary Gygax tried to produce after being kicked out of TSR.

2 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Which Bad Things? That book has a lot of them.

The ones starting with Q that I can't spell without looking it up.

A Terrible Thought: what if there were Cthulhu-oid horrors called the Young Ones? Could you deal with the horror of Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike? (Spelling according to Wikipedia.)

I'm on a bus so I can't look up how to spell the word describing the Bad Things from Demon, Servants of Darkness.

Anyway, the Upside Down Man would fit in quite nicely there. At a certain point, horror becomes weird.

If you want to see what the BRP system can do, check out Stormbringer and its spinoffs. The earlier versions weren't balanced, but that was intentional. In a word: Elric.

For SF, check out Ringworld. Unfortunately it's focused on those specific books, but you could probably run a Known Space game with it. It's a bit more complex than I prefer though.

And of course there is Call of Cthulhu. There have been various supplements that could form the basis of an interesting Pulp fantasy game. Clark Ashton Smith? Even Lord Dunsany if you try. C L Moore"s Jirel of Joiry stories would probably work too.

To me the main interest of Superworld is its half developed point system. I'd use it as spare parts rather than trying to play it.

BRP has one advantage over Hero. The rules can be summarized briefly.

The Worlds of Wonder version had the core rules in 16 pages, plus another 16 each for Magic World, Superworld and Future World. While each of the latter three beg expansion (and Superworld was expanded), having such a concise format is obviously a benefit when it comes to learning how to play it.

At times I've considered using Superworld as the basis for a fully point based version of it.

Nobody would want to play a game where everyone were human fighters, would they?

But that would be the ideal way to play Swords and Sorcery in 5e D&D.

I might need to read more Clark Ashton Smith.

The pain, the pain.

Building viable builds is stunningly easy in Hero. Building suboptimal builds requires effort.

So yes, the latter is dumb.

The Gaean Reach RPG has a cool setup. Everyone has a reason to want revenge on a particular guy. It's up to the players why in their specific character's case, and it's up to the GM who the guy is. (And obviously "the guy's" gender etc.)

It doesn't involve a lot of needless backstory - just a description of the world they are on and place they are in.

It still takes a bit of effort getting them in one place and getting them to know each other, but they have a common goal.

Shame about the rest of the game.

It's worth reading Catherine Lucille Moore's Jirel of Joiry stories.

Contemporary with Howard, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, (as in, the same issues of Weird Tales), the Jirel stories were mostly about her dealing with supernatural threats. Her actual butt kicking scenes were minimal, or happened before the proper stories began.

So to build her, you would include lots of Ego, OMCV, DMCV and so on. And, yes, she can ride at the head of her soldiers cutting her way through mooks in a perfectly Conan-ish manner.

Despite Margaret Brundage's covers, she wore perfectly functional armour too.

I've been bingeing a lot of Swords and Sorcery recently, and keep running into a lot of other worldy/dream/weird sequences. Even Conan isn't immune (see The Frost Giant's Daughter, The Vale of Lost Women, and others I can't be bothered thinking of).

The obvious question is: how would you run this in a game?

It's quite a different tone from more "realistic" situations, yet it is so commonly present that it begs to be included. I can see a lot of players and GMs not wanting to do it, but for those who do: how would you handle it?

On a different topic, I've been looking at 5e D&D.

I think that there's a half decent Sword and Sorcery game in there.

The relatively high survivability works with how S&A protagonists work, without cluttering up the place with specialist healers. In most S&S priests are shady characters that you wouldn't want to have in your party. There are exceptions - John Jakes' Brak is one - but they aren't as common as having a specialist Cleric class would imply.

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Inigo and Westley versus Legolas: Who wins?

Does Gimli count as his True Love?

If not, Westley wins.

15 hours ago, Cygnia said:

 

 

Shane MacGowan, Pogues songwriter and Irish music legend, dies aged 65

Currently on my way to the pub to have a drink in his honour.

I'm not sure about the night vision stuff.

The Goodberry spell text just mentions healing.

I wouldn't be shocked if there wasn't some weird extension to it somewhere.

The figurine origin is well documented.

It also includes the Bulette and the Rust Monster.

17 hours ago, steriaca said:

Everybody forgets the most powerful pet.

Scooby Doo?

35 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I just wanted to add that the cultists' worship typically included human sacrifice, invariably someone young and attractive (usually an existing or potential love interest for the protagonist). Always female in the source material, but there's no reason you can't bend their gender if your campaign is more sexually egalitarian.

I was tempted to raise the Kull story "Black Abyss" as a counter-example, but the story was "completed" by Lin Carter from a fragment by Howard.
 

Still, if it counts, the sacrifice in the story was male, and wasn't saved.

While pawsplay can speak for himself, there was a simplicity in picking a character's Dex, Con and Sod, taking the resulting figureds and then moving on to powers (including Str and defenses) that was lost. Int, Pre and Com would be handled at the same time as skills. A simple three part process giving a playable first draft 

Anything else was fine tuning.

Plus Disads/Complications obviously.

You can start with her not being washed ashore. Being stuck in the middle of the ocean knowing you are going to die allows for a lot of plots.