assault

Mesoamerica also had a cool sequence of civilizations succeeding each other.

"Lost" cities, abandoned temples, forgotten gods. (Or gods assimilated into other cults in a subordinate role, because there was a lot of cultural continuity.)

24 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Right, that's what I mean, I think the limitations on technology and development that bronze puts on culture necessarily creates these kind of ancient, more alien settings

I like the early Iron Age for this. The Greek Dark Age is a good example. We simply don't know much about this period, due to the loss of literacy, depopulation and abandonment of cities. Until relatively recently, it was also largely overlooked by archeologists.

And no, early iron wasn't superior to bronze. That didn't really start happening until iron working methods improved, leading into the introduction of steel.

Nothing in this implies any particularly fancy advances in technology.

"Bronze" also included alloys that didn't include tin. Arsenic was a particularly common substitute. Horribly toxic to work, unless done with the right techniques, but producing a nice shiny silvery appearance. Brass (copper/zinc) was another alternative, although much rarer given that its exact nature wasn't understood.

And for the record, classical Greece was an Iron Age society, as was the Hellenistic Era that followed it. The Roman conquest of Hellenistic Greece wasn't a case of an Iron Age society conquering a Bronze Age one.

To get a bit philosophical: how can you create a better world if you can't imagine one?

Something I've used is an Iron Age after a Bronze Age collapse.

That gives you Ancient Lost Cities, including ones Of Evil.

That's not strictly necessary, since you can have a Bronze Age that's gone on for a really long time.

As you know, the main advantage of early Iron was that it was cheaper (more available) than Bronze. That compensated for the thousands of years of experience people had with working Bronze. But again, there's the benefit of needing to travel to get Tin... Of course that assumes that the "Bronze" you are using is a Tin alloy - there were other alloys that get called "Bronze" for these purposes. And that you want PCs possibly leaving your main campaign area and zooming off to "Cornwall".

Having said that, after some unfortunate scenarios over the decades, I would probably want to play an Army character who has Air/Raft skill (Grav Vehicle, if you insist) and can maybe lift the ship off the ground, and hopefully fly it into orbit.

Then the characters who can't shoot can hopefully deal with it.

Thinking back, in classic Traveller, a Marine might have a better chance of getting Air/Raft, but they've got that stupid Cutlass skill.

Then again, if you're in a dive on planet Woop Woop*, maybe a Cutlass might make sense.
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* Woop Woop: Australian equivalent of Podunk, or a general backwater. The "oo" is pronounced like that in look, rather than loop. That will make no sense if they are pronounced the same way in your accent. Meh.

Sonny Rhodes The Ballad of Serenity with Lyrics (Firefly Opening Theme Song) - Bing video

Just for fun: 1e included conversion notes for MERP and Runequest (3rd edition). The RQ conversion was written by Steve Perrin, naturally.

So... FH Glorantha anyone?

In theory the notes could also be used to convert other games as well. 4e FH had conversion notes for Rolemaster, GURPS and AD&D.

I could see myself using a Runequest inspired Spirit Magic system alongside a Sorcery system for upper class, literate ("civilised") Wizards.

Another useful source for 1e: Lands of Mystery. (Not coincidentally, also by Aaron Allston.)

While intended for Justice Inc., it works for Fantasy Hero as well. Just drop the adventurers from the 20s-30s aspect. Or perhaps not, if they don't have fancy gear.

Add a bit more magic if you want, but it's not strictly necessary.

Of course you can just run it with JI, adding armour and weapons from FH as required.

Don't forget that Aaron Allston's Mythic Greece game used 1e FH.
 

You can do a whole lot with 1e.

The question is: why do you hang around with the other PCs?

Given the choice between talking to a Goblin or an edgelord, my characters would rather hang out with their friends, and the less weird bar staff.

Check out Pendragon.

The game was new. Arnesen was the only precursor. There was no need to overthink.

Maybe that's what you need to do. Not overthink.

Recently l have been considering building an old school Dungeon. The best I have come up with is to base it on Barsoom. Go under an old Burroughsian city.

And if anyone describes their character as a "Rouge", you know exactly what they mean. 

It may not be what they meant, but who cares.

As I mentioned upthread, Horatio had two friends with him, so he wasn't covering the whole width by himself, until the bridge had been damaged enough that it was on the brink of collapse. Then his friends left, leaving him to cover the presumably narrower remnant.

It seems he fell/jumped into the Tiber and died, since his two companions were later elected as Consuls, and he wasn't. Of course, none of these accounts are reliable.

That doesn't cover the general case, but raises the obvious question: is there a general case that's worth dealing with, especially when the "solutions" are powers/talents that characters presumably need to choose from a myriad such constructs.

There were a lot of interesting precursors to RPGs. Some could even be considered RPGs, at least in the sense that original D&D was.

I'm currently mucking about with these wargames rules: 

The Old West Skirmish Wargames: Wargaming Western Gunfights

In particular, it has an interesting suggestion for playing on the Anglo-Scottish border in the 16th century.

Unfortunately, this republication is of a later edition. The original version was published in 1970. The later editions added lots of extra stuff, so it's possible that some of this was influenced by D&D.

Gary Gygax was aware of these rules.

Probably trivia more than anything useful: apparently, Greyhawk, in Gygax's home game was originally based on the geography of North America (especially the USA).

The Darlene map, published in 1980, changed that. Initially, he kept using his original maps, but moved his game onto the published map under pressure from his players. (Source: posts on dragonsfoot.org. There's an interesting subforum on Gygax's version of Greyhawk.)

The Darlene map is what Duke Bushido referred to as the '79 booklet. The copyright dates could well say '79 if it was published in '80.

The "Great Kingdom" map of the Castle and Crusade Society was another influence. (This map was, I think, by Gygax and/or Rob Kuntz, and was intended for use in a play by mail campaign.) Both Greyhawk and Dave Arnesen's Blackmoor were originally placed on this map.

Greyhawk initially was a city, dungeon and neighbouring area, rather than an entire continent, and was expanded as required.

I may have mis-remembered some of this. Tracking down all the references is too much effort at the moment. The Dragonsfoot forum is a good start, as of course is Google and Wikipedia.

My theory is that Rouges are French-Barsoomians.

Looks like a mixture of 5e and 6e. Is that intentional?

What you should do is bring a couple of friends with you, like Horatio did. He only started soloing when the bridge was on the verge of collapse, when it presumably wasn't possible to go around him.

More broadly, though, should there be options for what amount to Zones of Control or Attacks of Opportunity? I suppose, maybe.

What I wouldn't like to see are Talents or Powers simulating these.

Skill playing the game is skill.

You can buy lots of powers, skills and talents to simulate you being an Awesome Leader, or there is the alternative.

The interesting thing about these is that they always inspire me to create things that are entirely unrelated.

I'll try to catch up soon. I might have to make up to five picks at a time, just to catch up. Sorry.

Hero System Almanac I

On 3/12/2023 at 11:44 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

A nice thought exercise, but the current norms are far too ingrained.  It didn't take long for those 1e starting characters with 8 - 10d6 attacks, 15 - 20 defenses and 20 - 23 DEX/4 - 5 SPD average to be replaced with 12d6, 25 - 30 defense, 23 - 30 DEX, 5-6 SPD villains.

The sample characters in 1e were in the 4-7 SPD range. Ogre was 4, Green Dragon was 7. Everyone else was 5 or 6.

The character build examples were: Crusader, a trained normal, SPD 6, Starburst, a guy with real powers, SPD 5, and Ogre, SPD 4.

The first two were intended as PC build examples.

There was never a 4/5 average. It was always 5/6. This seems to have been an intentional design decision, made explicit in 2e/3e.

Not coincidentally, buying SPD in that range was affordable, and sound budgeting.

I don't see any play benefit to shifting that range. It feels like theorycrafting to me.

Comparisons to characters in other genres, or abstract "NPCs are like this" statements don't seem relevant. If you actually need an NPC who is an Olympic level gymnast, you give them stats that make them seem plausible in the game, instead of dogmatically relying on throw away statements.

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

Thanks.  What I remember most from those comics was th art, though.  It was just gorgeous.  It managed to have a flawless simplicity that drove home the xomplexity of the skill that went into it, and yet all the while looked so absolutely _attainable_.

 

I couldn"t tell you one single story from,any of them, though.

 

 

There was another one whise name escapes, seems,like it was somethtinf he shared with us later- the blue demon?  Doeos that eing any bells?  Costume was kind of,an,ebarrasment (mankini with shoulder pads, of all things), but the art was _great_.

 

Eh- doesnt mayter now, I guess.

 

 

 

 

 

You remember who I am, right?   

 

 

 

 

 

 

The artists were George Perez and Romeo Tanghal.

The plot that mattered was the Judas Contact, which you probably never read. Google it.

It sounds like you are half-remembering Blue Devil, who was one of the many characters who never took off, but was fun.

As for who you are are... you can still build characters based on 1,2,3e baselines that can punch a lot of face by 6e standards. (That's something you can't really do with current D&D.)

Oh, but one modification: 5e and 6e characters can throw and soak slightly bigger attacks. You need to adjust your old school characters for that.

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 Starfire (I think that is right; google gave me the correct picture) fought-- attacked and dodged, hit and for hit-- at the same rate as Cyborg and the girl,in the red leotard (sorry; name,is lost to me) who was superpowers for real, and all of then we're _slower_ that Robin, who was a trained normal.  The yellow Flash xharcater was faster than Robin (duh).

The girl in the red leotard was Wonder Girl. Related to Wonder Woman, although she's one of the classic examples of botched continuity.

More importantly, series like the New Teen Titans were direct influences on Champions. To an extent it was a simulation of them.

It wasn't a simulation of "reality".

The economics of Champions points reflect this. That's why you have to work so hard to make low Spd/Dex characters work. Yes, even in 6e.

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

So we never really got into the DEX SPD escalations that apparently everyone else had to endure.

If you stayed within the guidelines given in 2e and 3e, things were pretty good. They still are.