The D&D website has pictures of all the figs from the next D&D miniatures expansion, Deathknell. I can't wait to get a Beholder. Now, if they would just make a Gelatinous Cube and a Rust Monster, I could have one of each of my favorite weird monsters from D&D.
Drive-thru RPGs has PDF downloads for sale of many out of print RPG books (including Stormbringer, Villians and Vigilante, Changeling: The Dreaming and Cyberpunk 2020) as well as some new ones (including Buffy and World of Darkness). I'm kind of tempted to buy some of the old Elric supplements.
I like rolling for initiative. I like when a player does not know if the bad guy he is fighting will be able to shoot/punch him first in the next round and when sometimes faster characters may get multiple attacks....but never predict when.
However, it's a real pain as a GM to keep track of what everyones rolls are each turn and who should be going next.
Savage Worlds has a system for initiative that uses cards and I've found it very useful in the past and figured it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a similiar system for Buffy and whipped one together for this weekend's game. It seemed to work well and I think I will be using it from now one. I am making one change ot the system from this weekend's game as I have never liked how Unisystem does multiple actions. (Although, when I was rereading the Angel RPG rulebook, I realized that I had been handling the extra actions wrong before.)
The Card Initiative System- (My house rules for Unisystem):
NOTE TO GILLIAN PLAYERS: This is changed a bit from the version we used this weekend.
Dealing the CardsAt the beginning of each round, the GM deals one card to each character or group of characters. Characters act in order of card ranks (Ace to Deuce). In the case of a tie (such as two characters getting a Queen), the actions are done in order of suit (Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs).
Multiple Actions- Any character with a three or higher Dex has a chance of getting to act more than once in a round. If a character is dealt a card with a number (and only a number) lower than their dexterity, they will be dealt another card. They can act on each of the cards. If the additional card is also less than their dexterity, they may be able to draw additional cards (and take even more actions, depending on their dexterity). For the maximum number of actions a character can have in a round, consult this table:
Dex Actions
1-2 1
3-6 2
7-10 3
11+ 4
The Jokers- There are two Jokers in the deck. A player dealt the Joker may go whenever he or she wishes, even interrupting another characters actions (after the action is announced). Also, the player dealt the Joker gets +5 to allactions taken that turn. After any round where the second joker in the deck has been dealt, shuffle the cards for the next round. (It helps to have another deck already shuffled and ready for this.
Defenses- Characters defend for free (it does not count as an action), but for each time they need to defend between their turns (cards) after the first, they get a cumulative -2 penalty to their defense rolls. Example: Buffy acts on an Ace and a 4. A vamp takes a swing at her on the Jack of Spades. She defends with no penalty. Another vamp then takes a swing at her on the Jack of Clubs. She defends against it with a -2 penalty. Then, a third vamp tries to kick her on 8. She defends against the kick with a -4 penalty.
Defensive Action- On their turn, a character may take a "Defensive Action" as their action. It has to be the only action taken on that turn (see multiple actions on the same turn, below). The next defense roll made, is made at +4. The second defense roll is made at no penalty and additional defense actions will start accumulating penalties after that.
Multiple Actions on the Same Turn- Characters may want to do more than one thing in a turn. For example, Faith may want to leap over an open grave to the vamp on the other side and punch the vampire there. For each additional action past the first, a -4 penalty is applied to all the actions. So, Faith could leap across the grave and hit the vamp but both her Dex+Acrobatics roll and her Dex+Kung Fu roll would be at -4.
Free ActionsSome actions are so simple that they do not end up adding the multiple action penalty seen above. Normal examples would be talking, pulling something out of your pocket or moving a short distance. These are considered "Free Actions."
Drama Points- Regardless of the number of actions that a character has in a round, he may only spend one drama point per round.
I Think I'm OK- When using a Drama Point to reduce the amount of wounds by half, the character must do this on one of his actions. It is considered a free action, but may not be done in the same turn as an offensive action (such as punching someone). It may be on the same round as an offensive action if the character has multiple turns this round.
Fast Reaction Time- After card have been dealt, a character with fast reaction times may choose to replace one of their action cards with the card on the top of the deck. The replaced card can not result in additional actions, regardless of the number on the card, but can result in the character acting sooner in the turn for that action. If the card is lower than the old card, the player must keep that new turn.
I found this while looking to see if anyone had come up with an adaptions for running Stormbringer using the Savage Worlds. I didn't find a Stormbringer conversion but I found this unofficial Firefly conversion that looks like, regardless of the sytem should be good for anyone looking to roleplay in the Firefly setting.
Living in filth for the sake of Russia....
Lately, I've had the urge to come up with a historical RPG scenario with no science fiction, fantasy or anything unreal......just a drama....set in the past.
The obvious choice for historical games is to set them in times of war and the PCs are soldiers. Hence, the GURPS: WWII and Recon RPGs have had a decent amount of success. Feudal Japan is another setting that has many warriors and lots of action and is pretty well covered in GURPS: Japan.
The problem is, I don't want to do a war story. I want to a dramatic story, but not one where most of the characters are soldiers/samurai/warriors/etc..
One idea I keep thinking about is playing America's Founding Fathers at one of the historical meetings, but that leads to players having preconceived notions that may throw off their arguments. For example, can a modern player effectively play someone who argues that slavery is not evil? It would take a lot of research on the player's part to even understand the arguments that the people of the time used.
So, the idea came to me this morning to set a game in Stalinist Russia. The PCs are members of an underground paper or something similiar. They could either be people upset about how Stalin perverted the ideas of the revolution and trying to remind people what the revolution was for or people who want something more like the west, but it would deal with them trying to determine the message in their paper and trying not to get caught by the KGB as they prepare, print and distribute the paper. (I've also toyed with the idea that it could be an underground comic instead and the PCs are trying to put out comics about a "superhero" who fights for the ideals of the revolution like Octobriana)
One of my pet-peeves about Amber is seeing how often GMs try to use it, as-is, for other settings. The four attributes that are in Amber almost make sense for the types of stories that Zelazny told. It does not make sense to use those same attributes for other settings.
For example, in a setting without mental powers, is Psyche a needed attribute? For some settings, I could see it being used to rate how intelligent a person is, but if the stories you plan to tell aren't about out-smarting the competition, then even that does not seem to be needed.
A GM should tailor the attributes to fit the type of story they are telling and make sure that these attributes are actually things that should come up in the course of the game. There are few things worse than spending a bunch of points on an attribute like Endurance and never having that endurance tested.
I think the best way to plan system changes to Amber for a setting other than Amber is to take a small number of important skill-sets/physical traits that would be important in the story you are about to tell. For example, I am preparing to run a game based on Battlestar Galactica at ACUS. In Battlestar Galactica, most fights will either be quick and brutal gunfights or dog-fights fought from the cockpit of a ship. So, Strength and Endurance are very unlikely to be used in the course of a game. However, how good a pilot a character is becomes extremely important. So, rather than having your piloting determined by the same attribute as a character's fighting skill, I am replacing Warfare with two attributes: Piloting and Fighting. Piloting will be for...well... piloting. Fighting represents both hand to hand and using pistols.
My other two attributes are tech (which represents scientific skills, building and repairing stuff and using things like electronic counter-measures) and Strategy.
Then I'm adding certain abilities that can be bought and use the attributes as a guide to how good you are with them (just as things like Pattern and Sorcery use Pysche in Amber). For example, Viper Training will give that character knowledge of how to fly a Viper-class spaceship as well as its technical details. (Obviously, this would use the Piloting and Tech attributes.) Electronic-Countermeasures training will allow a character to use electronic devices that jam communications, confuse enemy radars etc..