Arion Games Forums

Our dm in the 80's regularly used one or two assistants to role-play the monsters. One adventure was over in less than five minutes when 8 goblins and a dead ogre (for distraction) netted a level 4-6 party in the entry hall, clubbed them senseless, stripped them naked and dumped them in the cesspit.

That reminds me of the Strontium Dog rpg I co-wrote for GW in 1986, which didn't get published. We had a list of combination moves like Dive & Roll, Jump & Strike (to get a head hit on a large creature). Critical fails included weapon failures and shooting yourself in the foot. Sometimes a scene was...

I like your idea of limited use spell-like powers and abilities, which could be adapted to enchanted items or weapons against a particular monster type, for example. Grateful clients might make part payment in services, particularly useful if they are senior guild members, skilled metal workers, eng...

Oops, the tabs don't work.

Here's my latest idea for the map terrains but it's still all very speculative and untried. It adds terrains to the list in BtP and re-organises them for each continent and takes climate into account, which is where the re-map project started 3 years ago. Regional profiles can provide more detailed ...

This seems a reasonable list to me, although I'd be inclined to say Grassland rather than Plains. I'd be tempted to add further specialisations for particular regions, e.g. someone could have Forest Lore 1 (+1 in NW Allansia) or something like that. Everyone starts with regional lore from where the...

My approach to this is to consider these as locally made versions using different ingredients which are unique to the area in which the adventure is set. I give it a name like Granny Wossname's Special Concoction and make it available only in small quantities. Chances are it is not for sale and must...

Thanks for that, Torus :o) If there is anything you want to see on these new regional maps please let me know. I can't be more precise yet but the map area shows about 800 miles east to west. There will be other drawings to go with it, including more detailed maps and building plans. The maps aim to...

There is a useful example in the intro adventure on p15. Customising the names and descriptions for the location is usually enough for most situations. In Blacksand (p38) it suggests that foreign coins are not worth face value in other places. I guess its Trading Mods and Bargaining skills time...

Of course, there is a cunning plan behind all this...

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/video-au ... e&limit=20

Mr Nibbs has some new maps to show and starts an investigation into the Skies of Titan. Do the constellations really match the continents or is his eyesight wonky? The star charts will be getting some applied tricknology... Desert of Skulls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE9YPoFq-I0 Caarth Astronom...

[quote="darksoul"]The thing about initiative is that it's mostly an RPG thing. It's supposed to represent who goes first in combat, but you get some weird things. Take your example of the wizard and fighter. If there was a distance of 15 feet. between them and the enemies won initiative, then they r...

My players love shopping for reasons I know not. Anytime they have an excuse to go to town and do some shopping that's my cue to close my books and let them get on with it. We have had many a session just shopping which has prompted me to run small impromtu adventures to add some spice to it (such ...

It would be useful to have the basic stats and a brief description of the character on the relevant page, the rest could go into an appendix at the back. The special skills and extra stats suggest themselves and I just assume the npc's have the skills they need and give them one or two points.

Well, you don't actually need any of it to play the game, so a lot of it probably is fluff ;o) Having a birthplace and a birthday is useful for character development, perhaps related to luck or magic points? From a design PoV this is like Escher and different geometries - start with the real world a...