Showing posts with label doing it wrong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doing it wrong. Show all posts

Monday, 11 February 2013

Let's Read Mythus Interlude 2

After a hiatus entirely too long, fraught, and full of fractal fail for my own comfort the ill-considered dissection of Dangerous Journeys: Mythus returns, a mere eight months later than expected (in RPG Kickstarter circles this is known as 'business as usual').

This week I have elected to inflict upon the world the long overdue Art of Chapter 12 post; a light amuse bouche of a thing wherein your humble host dons polo-neck and beret, and attempts to channel art critic mojo into his tiny monkey brain.

Those playing along at home may wish to note the following modifications to the customary rules:
  • When a piece of art has no relation to the content: take a drink.
  • When a piece of art would have been better in good, honest black-and-white: take 1 drink.
  • When a piece of art is just downright bad: take 2 drinks.
  • When the writer loses it and lapses into foaming, windmilling "No moron! Do it like this! THIS!!!" mode = drain your glass.
There's a lot of art in the expanses of Mythus chapter 12: incidental art in black-and-white and full-page colour plates.

B+W Lineart

p216 - Ellisa Mitchell - tree, sword + runestones.
Tree has semi-anthropomorphic bole, tree-impaling sword is obviously perilous (in the Arthurian sense), runes may or may not be a bilingual bonus that translates as "Please do not stab the trees". Lightning in the background echoes the anguished twisting of the branches - nice touch; portentious. Fine use of negative space and directional cues. Content is semi-related to text (Heka-based attacks).

Tres folklorique, non?

p229 - Ellisa Mitchell - stylised griffon.
Excellent composition draws your eye to the mad, starey bird eye of the griffon. Consistent penwork(?) across the furred and feathered parts of the beast give it a coherence of form lacked by many monster pics while retaining the heraldic essence of the beast.  A fine balance, nicely struck.  Whoever sculpted the recent GW Empire Griffon model (aka: the Warturkey) should look at this picture and cry in shame.
Picture has no relation to content. Seemingly a space filler. Shame, it deserves better. *gluk*

p232 - Tony Szczudlo - Bad-ass fantasy African warrior standing in a cave mouth.
Once you get past the 'Mbongo McSkullhat of the K'lishe tribe' first impression this picture is kinda cool in a Savage Sword of Conan or Imaro way. The picture is well-executed: good composition, fine detailing, clever use of negative space and shading. The few fantastic elements (the skull helm, the odd pick-mace weapon) convey the idea of a fantasy Earth subtly and well.
Shame it's stuck in the midst of the awful, forgettable, multi-page example of play section. *gluk*

p234 - Ellisa Mitchell - eyes+snakes glowhenge.
A pretty generic henge-as-portal image. Lidless eye and winged serpent motifs add a little weird to an otherwise unremarkable image. Well composed and executed, although some of the linework on the trilithons makes them look a bit wooden.
Seems a bit out of place in the combat chapter. *gluk*

p240 - Ellisa Mitchell - weapons crossed over a shield.
Well drawn in a 70s comic art way; clever use of linework and blocking to convey a sense of shine and reflection, but sadly a bit "yawn" in the subject matter. At least the picture makes sense in context (the endless pages of weapon descriptions), although it would have worked just as well smaller and without a frame, breaking up one of the interminable columns of text.

p243 - David Miller - generic mitteleuropan watchman mit polearm in generic mitteleuropan townscape.
Adequately drawn, but nothing that would dare show its face in, say, a WFRP book. Again, "yawn". *gluk, gluk*

p245 - ??? (no visible credit) - conquistador being loomed over by two giant skeevy balds.
A nice little piece of doomed pathos in 90s fantasy art, this is the antithesis of the flavourless genericrap that infested the contemporary AD&D2E rulebooks. Good composition and line use; a sense of captured movement; my simple brain and untutored tastes actually like. This belongs somewhere better than in the midst of weapon descriptions. *gluk*

Insert your own "You're boned!" caption

p251 - Dave Miller - conquistador on a ship, Grecian temples in background
Presumably supposed to represent Mythus' default anachronistic hotch-potch setting of Aerth, this is ok. Good composition and use of space, workmanlike rendering of content. The problem it that it's the sort of picture the eye would skip over without pausing were it in a comic. No wow! factor; just another day in the life... *gluk, gluk*
I suppose the conquistador's armour is semi-relevant to the surrounding text (armour types).

p274 - ??? (no legible credit) - Sven Beardsson, knotwork chiseller, poses before his latest work
A burly viking type wearing Greco-Roman armour, presumably an intentional anachronism. The linework is fine, but the composition is a little odd, with the central figure off-centre. The background (Norse knotwork and Bayeux Tapestry-style human figures) is so-so.
No idea what the picture has to do with healing (the related text). *gluk*

p275 - Ellisa Mitchell - Angrycorn is angry! GRRRR!
Although the content - an angry charging unicorn in close-up - is unexpected, the technical execution of this picture is very good. Fine flow of lines, excellent less-is-more crosshatching. Another picture where Mitchell uses directing lines and shading to draw your attention to the beast's eye.
Not sure what a unicorn has to do with healing rules though. *gluk*

Colour Plates

After the "Mythus art not terrible! shock of the preceding pictures the full-page, full-colour, gloss paper-printed "Behold our magnificence!" images that follow are generally disappointing given what they might have been. As a general rule what art there is is spread over a larger area than it probably merits...

p257 - Midgette and Meyer - Armwrestling in the tavern
Another scene from the rich and exotic world of Aerth, in this case renaissance arm-wrestling. The composition is cluttered, the background a featureless wash, the facial proportions and eyelines of the score of onlooking characters are fuxxored, the central drama is uninteresting.
I'm really not keen on this picture, and can't imagine why it would merit inclusion, let alone an entire page. *gluk gluk*

p260-261 - Midgette and Meyer - knights brawling in the road
Let me start by saying that 3/4 of this two page spread is worthless space-filler. No, seriously. Look:

Are you f-ing kidding me?!

That's the image as it appears in my Dangerous Journeys: Mythus soft cover. 11" x 17" of next-to-nothing. It may seem unremarkable to you, but I find this picture profoundly offensive. It's no more than a piss-poor knock-off of a Prince Valiant comic panel, but it has adopted in my mind an almost totemic status. This picture can stand as a microcosm of the entire Mythus experience: needless bloody boring bloat overwhelming what should be interesting and exciting.

Watch this:

20% of the space: 100% of the action

Even after trimming to its essentials the piece is unremarkable; even a bit dull. Can you imagine if, for example, a Games Workshop artist circa 198X had the temerity to turn this in as a completed piece? John Blanche (GW Art Director and sensei of blanchitsu) would have had his head!

This should be a black-and-white incidental piece breaking up text somewhere; it lacks sufficient clout for its canvas.

*pause*

I think that was a 'drain your glass' moment there.


p264-265 - Allen Nunis - lizardmen hunt a giant wombat in a mesascape with pteradons.
Now this is more like it! Attention-getting subject matter, good composition and an interesting use of colour palette; almost cartoonish, but in a good way. Although blown up rather larger than it probably merits (another glossy paper double-page spread where a single page would suffice), this picture is pulp as owt! I especially like the slightly bewildered look on mega-wombat's face. Bollocks to Aerth! I want to know more about the world in this picture please.

p268-269 - Allen Nunis - the Zulus (+ their cheerleader) haet little red goblins!
Another characterful piece, the sort of thing that would have worked as a comics book 'pin up' picture back in the day. The content is a little odd, but may be the film "Zulu" as told from the AmaZulu perspective. Although a little comic book in framing and execution for some tastes, the sheer liveliness of the composition, and interesting use of negative space and stylisation to represent a fantastic, dreamlike quality, make for an interesting whole.
Not sure why its in the diseases section though... *gluk*

p272 - Midgette + Lamont - "Gercha!"

My favourite piece of colour art so far: "Rhino HAET street dance!" Yes, I know it's supposed to be a rhino hunt gone wrong somewhere generically East Indian, but I prefer to view it as a dramatic illustration of a lost Just So Story in which rhino and elephant, rajah and archers unite to cleanse the land of verminous infestations of street dance troupes. Yes, the dancers may have disguised themselves in the traditional Indian man-nappy (pron. dhoti) but Rhino knows those synchronised flailers for what they truly are.

Joking aside, the picture share a similar comic book stylised realism of form and colour style with the other colour art in this section. Although there's nothing inherently 'fantastic' about the subject matter, the composition is interesting, the subject matter non-boring, and the only weak point is a background which seems more tree-lined boulevard than wild Indian jungle.

-----

Sadly for the self-styled "...quantum leap in roleplaying games..." there is no quantum leap beyond the 90s gaming industry standard in the use or quality of art. Difficult to believe that Mythus was published only a year before Mayfair Games showed the industry what could be done with the full-colour-and-graphics-on-every-page Underground RPG. A pall composed of deadline fever and vague client definitions seem to loom large over many of the pictures in DJ:Mythus, a confluence of circumstances which prevents "...this game far beyond any others" from even matching the achievements of earlier games like Dragon Warriors in creating a coherent game world with its art.

Not that a unified art style is the be-all-and-end-all of a game. The two biggest names in the transatlantic fantasy gaming industry (TSR, GW) used whole stables of artists - each with their own tastes and styles - to excellent effect. I'd love to know what went wrong here...

Next Time: We peruse, critique and mudlark Chapter 13: Heka and Magick. A chapter in which teeth are ground, heads are scratched, and salient similarities are noted.

Supplemental Mythus Madness: For those truly sick of mind, here is the full text of TSR's "Waaaaah! My toys!" lawsuit designed to strangle DJ:M in the cradle. The sheer effrontery of beating someone with a stick he invented has to be seen to be believed.

Pic Source: the DJ:Mythus rulebook, Double K webcomic, Thrilling Tales' pulp-o-mizer cover generator

Monday, 16 July 2012

Lets Read Mythus pt 21

Week five covering the Combat chapter, and - after our educational detour through Uncle Gary’s Bumper Glossary of Armaments - we return to the matter of Combat game mechanics. Exactly why the weapons and armour info wasn’t either hived off to the existing Heroic Persona Resources (Equipment) section of the Chargen chapter, or put at the very end of this chapter, eludes me.

The usual rules apply. More confident/experienced readers may wish to institute the Typical English Summer variation (empty the contents of a garbage bin into a paddling pool, then sit in same while someone sprays you with a garden hose).

Note: much as I was tempted I won’t be instituting a new Drinking Game rule:
"drink every time the reason for doing a particular thing in ‘this’ fashion rather than ‘that’ more intuitive/logical/user-friendly manner escapes me." 
That way lies booze-fuelled madness on a scale fit to make even noted scholar-poet Ollie Reed say "steady on!"

Suffice it to say, my face this week:



The section under examination today is entitled:

More on Damage to Personas


and it opens with a solitary orphaned paragraph of introductory matter at the base of page 255.

Layout 101: this goes at the TOP of the page.

Separating this clump of actually useful page references from the related material is all sorts of bad formatting practise, and the people responsible should feel ashamed of themselves. Gentlemen charge your glasses; I feel we may have regular recourse to them this week.

After a double page spread devoted to the Simplified Armour Tables + a picture our newest field of exploration resumes on page 258. The bulk of the More on Damage material extends across pages 258-275 and is broken up substantially by incidental pictures and several full-page spreads of, well, let's abide by the existing cultural convention and call it 'art', shall we?

I’m sure there was a perfectly logical layout reason for 11 pages of information being strewn across 20 pages, but it's a subtle, esoteric rationale to which I am not privy. Perhaps colour plates could only be inserted into particular signatures. Whatever the reason there’s a lot of art here: some good, some adequate.

Dazing


Take more than your Wound Level (75% of Physique) or Effect Level (80% of Mental or Spirit) in damage, or get reduced to a zombified state by an Attack to Control, and you count as being dazed. Dazing is all sorts of not good for your HP, as evinced by this handy list of penalties:


Yes, all of these. "F**ked are you. Crap are you doing." -- Yoda

Dazing is an all-or-nothing effect (there's no 'half-dazed' or 'double dazed') and it lasts until you are back below your EL, or have recovered to 90% of your maximum Physique. So basically being dazed in Advanced Mythus is a 'you lose' effect.

The Mythus Dazed status is a marked departure from classic games like AD&D or RQ, where you fight at full effect right up until you fall over dead, or from specific wounds systems like WFRP and RoleMaster. In fact, it appears to have more in common with the 'death spiral' mechanics of such 90s-style games as Shadowrun, Vampire, etc. Whether you like that type of thing is a matter of private conscience.

Permanent Damage

Take more than your Critical Level (CL) in Physique damage and there's a chance you come away from the whole unpleasant experience with some form of lasting agony souvenir. Critical Level? 90% of Physique damage (not that the multi-page Appendix K: Glossary section sees fit to remind us - bad form!). Be your candy ass more than 90% dead? Roll d% on the Permanent Damage table, deducting 10 per Joss spent.


Enjoy your pain and disfigurement.

Lost Physique Attribute points can be restored by magick, but seemingly as a one-time-only event (the rules are hazy in their wording). A healer can use Alchemy to mitigate Permanent Damage, -10 to the d% roll per 40 STEEP. We are warned that "...when the magickal restoration is finished, no further Heka use will affect the persona’s wounds/scars, and the remaining scars are permanent." As an additional kicker: if any Attribute is still below 6 after healing the HP must be retired.

*meh* Dull. RoleMaster and WFRP handle character mutilation with more panache.

Shock


An HP who takes take their WL or more in Physical damage must be treated within PMCap Battle Turns or roll on the Shock Table. Ditto anyone who requires daily medical treatment and doesn’t get it. (Here would have been a good place for an actual numbered page reference to the healing rules on pp274-275, but no.)

It is nice to see thick, rich, dense lashings of jargon slathered across the page like gravy on a Sunday lunch: I’d almost forgotten what game I was reading for a second. (*gluk gluk*)

How you check for shock? Roll d% +/- HP’s PMCap and other modifiers, compare to table:


We’re warned that any Attribute dropping to 0 = death, which is an old friend of a rule by now. The reader is also reminded (again) that any character with less than 6 in any Attribute should be retired as "...that persona will be useless as an HP." Really? Reading these words from the man who pioneered ‘3d6 in order’ is rather sad-making.

Doubly irritating is this little throwaway line:


No! Unacceptable! See also: any and all previous Lets Read Mythus rants on incomplete rules in a 400-page rulebook.

So far, so Mythus: a bunch of present, but hardly correct, rules that manage to combine prescriptive with vague in the usual ‘crap sandwich sprinkled with extra jargons’ fashion. For example, the reader is explicitly cautioned in the Permanent Damage description to roll for such damage _before_ checking for Shock. I’ve no idea why this should be the case, given that any character in Shock is going to be unconscious anyway. Seeing as both Dazing and Shock are dependent upon WL, while Permanent Damage is dependent upon (more severe) CL it would make more procedural sense to order things thus:
Dazing > Shock > Permanent Damage

Why bother checking for limb loss immediately if your pretendy pet person is going to be in a coma for anything up to 1d6 months? It may be something to do with healing procedures, or with the in which Attribute losses are multiplied together, but the text is gnomically silent on this.

Damage from Other Physical Injury

Dazing, crippling and shock trauma are dispatched in less than a page, leaving most of pp259-274 (minus art) to cover rules for other sources of physical injury.  To whit:

  • Acids and Alkalies (sic)
  • Cold & Exposure
  • Disease
  • Electricity & Lightning
  • Fire & Flame
  • Heka-Engendered (Other)
  • Motion Damage
  • Poisons and Antidotes
  • Starvation & Dehydration
  • Insanity & Madness
  • Other Susceptibilities

Some of these get a paragraph, others a couple of pages. Some, like asphyxiation/drowning, are omitted entirely, even though the garotte makes an appearance in the weapon lists. I’m not entirely sure why some of these rules are in a Combat chapter, rather than a more general adventuring/survival rules chapter, but I find myself coming to the position that rules for offensive starvation, combat diseases and/or martial dementia are sadly under-explored facets of fantasy adventure gaming.

Another layout gripe: the heading hierarchy is b0rked. All the sub-headings in this section are boldfaced only, with a tendency to blur into one long undifferentiated textwall. Even the page-long rules for Poison & Disease suffer from boldface-only headers. By contrast individual poison/disease descriptions are called out with big, fat "h2" headings. Poor formatting choice, one that I will now proceed to improve upon.

Acids and Alkalis
Concentrated acid and/or war salts inflict the Chemical damage type. All such substances have a Damage Rating and a Burn Duration, mechanical conceits which should look more than a little familiar to flask rogues* and old school burning oil fans. A typical flask of caustic joy will cause 4d6 damage (multiplied by Exposure roll) to a single target and retain its potency for 2 AT (about 10 minutes Earth time, 1 turn D&D time). Some corrosives have an open-ended Burn Duration, for extra hilarity potential.**

* Gamer Jargon: flask rogue - a D&D3E exploit which used a combination of demijons of acid/alchemists fire + the reduce object spell + sneak attack damage to cause hideous damage per round.
** Fancy burning a tunnel to the Inner Aerth using the power of vitriol? Talk to an alchemist buddy...

Cold & Exposure
Chillification or sauna damage. Very hard science-based. Well, there are some very specific numbers. Does that count as scientific?


Anyone outside the ‘ideal’ temperature range for their state has to make a "Moderate" (x2) DR roll versus their PM Category or become Dazed until they warn up/cool down. Outside the ‘tolerable’ temperature range that DR changes to "Hard" (x1). Immersion in water at the lower end of the temp scale increases DRs by +2. Fear ice water: it lusts for the death of your blubberless monkey ass.

On top of that outside the ‘tolerable’ range takes 1 point of Physical damage per AT (5 minutes) of exposure. Cold can also inflict Permanent (limb-stealing) Damage (as above). Enjoy your frostbite.

These are rules of LotFP-ian brütality that will make your characters fixate on the warm/cold weather gear section of the kit list and demand the invention of the barometer (or the pixie sparkle pseudo-science Aerthish equivalent) as soon as possible. If killing characters one extremity at a time is your thing, the heat/cold rules in AD&D Dark Sun or in the d20 SRD were less fiddly and prescriptive.

Disease
Two pages of rules for contracting coughs, agues, murrains and fevers? This pleases Father Nurgle. It pleases me rather less; there's plenty of necrotising wordybloat here that could be jettisoned to no loss. (*gluk gluk*)

As will probably be no surprise to man nor beast by now diseases in Hatpants Gibblets come complete with their own stat blocks and rules. Vide:



What do all those headings mean?

CON-R (given as CON-T in the example diseases above): this is the Contagiousness Rating of the disease, a measure of how infectious it is if exposed. This is usually around 50-60 for something powerful and nasty like Typhus or the Black Plague, higher for real horrorshow ailments like AIDS (cited as an example of such in the original text) or Ebola. CON-R is opposed to the higher of the HP’s Physical Categories* in an opposed K/S-vs.-K/S contest.
Disease wins = Persona contracts the lurgy in all its manflu-riffic glory
Tie = Persona becomes a carrier
Persona wins = effects shrugged off

The DR of the contested roll can be modified one way or the other by degree of exposure and state of health.

* By the rules you can fight off a disease using your manual dexterity and reflexes, which seems... unusual. Maybe you're adept at dodging sneezes, I dunno.

Incubation Period: how long you wander around coughing on people before your world explodes in 'orrible gooeyness. If you’re a carrier the disease can remain active in your system for up to 10 times the incubation period.

Strength and Short Term Effects: Each disease has a Strength Rating, which is used to buy effects according to the table below:


"I’ll take a grande madness with six Spirit damage per week and extra Dazing, space for pustules."

Long Term Effects: effects that persist after the disease is reduced to Str 0. Insanity and Permanent Damage are the two examples given.

Additional titbits extracted from the mess of texwall:
  • Herbalists can treat diseases, with a successful roll reducing Strength Rating by 10% of their skill level (20% for a Crit). As the disease’s Strength is reduced so are the effects.
  • Fighting off a disease with bed rest and whisky uses the normal healing rules (see p274), but instead buys off poison Strength Rating rather than fixing damage. Herbalism and/or Oriental Medicine skills can accelerate this recovery.
  • Damage inflicted on TRAITS is removed from whichever Attributes the player elects.
  • Physical damage afflicted by a disease can cause Shock and Permanent Damage.

Although mechanically logical the Advanced Mythus disease rules are a step backwards in breadth and usefulness from those found in the Disease and Parasitic Infestation rules on pp13-14 of the One True DMG. I’m sure the two would mesh together more than adequately though.


Electricity & Lightning
Crackling, arcing, fusing and charring: all the good stuff. Damage is inflicted per the table below:




The rules for current electricity are downright nasty! If you grab something electrified, you can’t let go and will continue to take damage. Anyone who grabs you also becomes part of the circuit. If an electrical current hits water anything within d% yards of the source suffers this electrocution shock effect.

Are stunlocking electrical effects and bloodtrocution relevant to the interests of Old School GMs? Who can say? But I suspect you could power the world if you managed to harness the energy of all the Evil GM Hand-Rubbing.

Fire & Flame
In the words of one of America's most erudite and influential cultural critics: "Heeheeeheeheeeheheee. Fire! Fire! Hee hee. Fire’s cool." (pause for extended twiddly guitar solo/beer break) Everyone's favourite exothermic reaction does damage per round + chance of igniting. What’s not to love?


Extinguishing your crispy self through the magic of stop, drop and roll (screaming in agony and flailing optional but recommended) is a DR "Moderate" roll vs. PM Category.

No rules for smoke inhalation though? Oh Gary, your completism-fu is weak today.

Heka-Engendered (Other)
A one paragraph placeholder noting that many Heka-induced forms of pain use the surrounding rules unless otherwise stated. Nice to know, but a waste of a para.


Motion Damage
The joy of crashing, banging or falling into things. HPs suffer 1d6 damage per 10’ fallen/dropped (déjà vu!) or per 5mph the object was moving. This is multiplied by an Exposure roll (x1d6) to establish exactly how inelegant and wince inducing the impact was, for a grand total of 1-36 damage per 10' fallen. Light objects may do 1d3 damage per 10’, large and heavy ones more. Remember that armour is usually not much good against Impact damage.

Do you have falling rules? This is probably of little interest.


Dragon Warriors - still the best falling damage illustration

Poisons and Antidotes
Another skinny little chunk of rules disguising itself in the customary Mythus textual fat suit (*gluk gluk*). This time the subject matter is fun with toxins.

Any resemblance of Fink Angel to your humble author is purely coincidental.

Advanced Mythus poisons have a statblock similar to that of diseases, thus:

Ah, so that’s where D&D 3E cribbed its ideas.

STR is the Strength Rating of the poison ("Gorsh, yu don't say?"). This is 1-100 for mundane poisons, with <20 being weak, and >60 being very powerful.
Longevity Rating: shelf life after creation, plain and simple.
Effect Rate: time to onset.
Physical Form: Six types, although the distinction between liguid and oil is rather too subtle for my simple brain.



Purpose: Injure or Incapacitate. All poisons are one or the other. I've no idea if 'both' is an option.
  • Injury poisons do Physical damage equal to their STR at periods = Effect Rate x1 and x2, with a last little fillip of 50% of STR at Effect Rate x3. Instantaneous poisons do the whole STR x2.5 at Effect Rate x1. (That make sense?)
  • Incapacitating Poisons cause sleep or paralysis for hours = STR.
Poison can cause Shock and Permanent Damage, with a ‘severed’ organ being damaged by the poison. Only rare poisons cause loss of Attractiveness.

Fortunately there are ways of preventing the old "More entirely cyanide-free tea vicar?" routine from getting out of hand.
  • Antidotes are treated as being functionally similarly to poisons, although they take effect instantaneously. Antidotes oppose their STR to that of the poison. Treat any positive remainder as the poison's Strength Rating.
  • The First Aid skill can reduce poison by STR = first aider’s STEEP.
Because this is Gary’s game, and EGG is no moralistic pussy when it comes to the heroes daubing their blades in venom, you can merrily brew your own poisons (and antidotes) with the Toxicology skill. Herbalism, Botany and Chemistry may also be helpful.

Heka-Engendered Poisons
Because Advanced Mythus is an unabashed caster fap game (with several citations for public indecency in this regard) magic-slingers can make their own poisons, which are just plain better than those available to dirty muggles. Yes, wizardy types can totally whip up potions of gagging, choking and throat clutching as a function of their broader skill base. The reader is directed to Mythus Magick for the full skinny, but its nice that the subject gets at least some attention in the core rulebook.

Strength Rating: can be up to 99 for natural and Preternatural poisons, up to 199 for Supernatural poisons. I think the latter are demon venom and suchlike. I think...
Longevity Rating: Depends on Heka expended.
Effect Rate: Buy with Heka.



Purpose: Injury or Incapacitate.
Physical Form: As well as the mundane methods Heka-Engendered poisons can also be administered by:
  1. Gaze
  2. Glyph
  3. Ray (field)
  4. Touch

These 'magic poisons only' physical forms kind of rock IMO. The idea of a basilisk poisoning you with a Paddingtonian hard stare, or Heroic Personas going down to poisonous blasts of radiation, or some poor sap carefully deciphering the words "Caution: these runes toxic if read. Oh." fill my cold black heart with wicked glee.

Although there’s definitely room for a bit of simplification I quite like the Mythus poison rules. The division of poisons by effect, rather than by method of administration as in One True DMG implies that the two games' poison rules might be used in a complimentary manner. Whether this was deliberate and intentional on the part of EGG is debatable, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Starvation & Dehydration
Dying from lack of food and water. Slow, ignominious, unglamorous: I’m sure readers of Let’s Read Mythus can empathise.
Starvin': 3 days + PMCap hours, then Dazed. For every day over 5 take 1d6 Physical damage.
Thirstin': 1 day + PMCap hours, then Dazed. Every 4 hours without water take 1d6 Physical damage.

Physical damage inflicted by starvation or dehydration cannot be healed unless and until the character first satisfies their hunger or thirst.

Not bad, but LotFP already does similar for the "save vs." crowd. And I can think of another 'debilitating deficiency in an essential of life' that was tragically overlooked here. *cough, cough*

Insanity & Madness
Another big chunk, the substance of which The Man Himself had already dispatched faster and better back in the day. The rules spread across two full pages, but only a column or so is actual rules. The rest of the textblock is descriptions and potted rules for handling the various insanities.

Mythus uses a pretty orthodox Sanity Check mechanic, with rolls triggered by one of six criteria:
  1. Character takes Spiritual EL in damage (DR Hard)
  2. Character takes Mental EL in damage (DR Moderate)
  3. Witness death of a loved one, or happen upon their mutilated body (DR Moderate)
  4. Subject to prolonged torture (DR Difficult to Extreme)
  5. Confronted by extremely powerful monster/supernatural being (DR Hard)
  6. Effect induced by magic item or spell.
Two separate rolls are made against the characters MR and SM Categories (trans. Int + Wis), with each failure inflicting an additional 1d3 damage in that TRAIT for each level of DR (Moderate = 2d3, Hard = 3d3, etc). If _both_ rolls are failed the character gains one or more mental aberrations, with the total damage inflicted being used to purchase eccentricities from the table below.

On the menu today...

Insanities gained are supposed to be kept secret by the player and role-played as appropriate. All the other players are expected to work out what has happened to their increasingly erratic friend.

Mental Aberrations are usually permanent, at least until diagnosed and healed by skilled care or magick. Insanities induced by poisons, drugs or Attacks to Derange are not, and generally last only as long as the effect that induced them. Of course, if an induced insanity pushes the HP over his effect level there's a good chance a 'death spiral' of mental degeneration will kick in. Clever that.

These are OK rules, but nothing that Call of Cthulhu and AD&D didn’t already do just as well. One thing that does bug me is the terminology: why are ‘madness’ and ‘insanity’ deemed two different things in this particular Gygaxian schema? Any mental health professionals out there have a handle on the logic?


Other Susceptibilities
"Physical, Mental and/or Spiritual Damage can be inflicted by certain kinds of things being ingested, touched, proximate, or perceived (seen, heard, and/or smelled)." You can be excused a slight flicker of déjà vu there in that the preceding sentence looks more than a little familiar to someone who read the earlier section on Susceptibilities (back on page 230). We’re informed that *these* Susceptibilities are distinct from the ones discussed earlier. Why? No idea. Gary says so. Shut the hell up!

Because the preceding list of stuff to be violently, dangerously allergic to wasn’t thorough enough we are given an even more big-ass list:


Just as in our world anything is someone's fetish, so in Mythusworld everything is someone's bane.

[froth mode engaged]
The organisation of the (actually very simple) rules in this section is a topic-hopping word salad with a definite ‘deadline panic’ reek about it. You think I’m overstating the case? Ok, take a look at this and then tell me that it’s a model of brevity and clarity:

 
The above was not from some kid’s mimeographed joke game from the early 80s. That was an actual piece of published rules writing. Written by supposed professionals. In 1992.

Does this impress me?

Nope.

When parsed for sense it turns out there are two paragraphs of rules plus example regarding Contact Susceptibility. Then a column of nested bullet points about Allergic Reactions, of which there are seemingly two types: Severe Reaction and plain old Allergy. Finally we get a bunch of guff about Proximity Susceptibilities, along with a table of degrees of Susceptibility on page 274, which probably should have been front-and-centre.

It would make much more sense to define Contact and Proximity, and only then talk about the mechanics of Allergic reactions. That is simple procedural logic: define area of effect first. In fact it’s so simple, logical and intuitive that’s the order I’m going to look at the section. It might not be correct in terms of the order the Blessed Gary wrote things, but I refuse to be complicit in such obvious wrong.

Watch this: 
Contact: Take damage per round if you are touched with, are proximate to, or perceive the inimical substance/stimulus. Amount of damage varies, as does whether you take Mental, Physical or Spiritual damage, or more than one type.

How far is sensory range for the purposes of Contact? That’s covered under Allergic Reaction, sub-type B, sub-sub-heading 2 (once again, not kidding). Sound = 150’, visual perception = 30’, smoke = 20’, odour = 10’.

Proximity: Take damage if you’re within a set distance of the thing you’re allergic to, aware or not.


Allergic Reaction: remain in contact with your bane for a certain period of time; take damage (up to 1 per CT). If exposed for a prolonged period suffer side effects, for example "...a lowering of one of its Attributes, its movement capacity, or some other ability such as Perception, combat, etc."
Severe Allergic Reaction: As Allergic Reaction + suffer Dazing (q.v.).

And that’s the second set of Advanced Mythus Susceptibility rules, reduced to 155 words + 1 table and translated into a form comprehensible to busy GMs. That definitely counts as a page of wordswordswords reduced to one simple rule in my book.
[froth mode disengaged]

Could you make use of these rules? Well, that depends. Most classic gamers will disregard this Susceptibilities section as needless pixel-bitching that they can handle with their own common sense; new schoolers will despise these rules as written for a lack of clarity and completeness. If you're going to re-write them so that they make sense, you might as well just institute your own Fatal Weakness rules.

Sadly, that conclusion on the subjectomabob of Susceptibilities, ver2 is also my general conclusion on the More on Damage to Personas section as a whole. There are a couple of half-decent rules hidden in the undergrowth of this particular ruined temple of blahblah, but whether hacking them out of the morass of surrounding material is worth it is an open question. The poisons rules are okay, and the idea of contesting a disease with opposed rolls has the germ of a fun medical mini-game in there somewhere, and the electrocution rules are nicely bloodthirsty, but apart from that there’s not much to write home about.

Three good ideas in 9 pages or so? I’ll happily drink to them, but as a final total it’s pretty sad; definitely not up to Zak’s One Good Idea per Page, Minimum rule. This part of Batman's Slippers has lots of fuss over nothing busywork, and plenty of ‘done better elsewhere’.

-----

Healing


The Combat chapter ends with two pages of healing rules (pp274-275). Yeah, healing rules. I know, I know:


Mr Sleepy Office Bunny: he speaks for us all.

Healing rules are a necessary element of an RPG, but no one actually raves about them. I mean, when was the last time you indulged in wild-eyed, zealous fanboyish frothing about a game because of its healing rules? Nope, me neither. (braces for answers in the comments, yer smart-alecs)

Normal Physical Healing
This is pretty standard. You heal n damage/day, more with medical treatment ("Prime Rate"), none if exerting oneself. Nothing you haven’t seen a thousand times before then. For once in /AM/ history the brawny-but-dumb catch a break in that the more beefcake you are the faster you heal:


"Prime Rate: +1/2 per day": I just saved you a whole column.

Note that anyone with less than an average of 6 in the three Attributes in their PM Category cannot heal damage naturally at all. This gives a bit of context to the earlier admonition that characters with stats lower than 6 should be retired, but also means that the physically puny in Mythusworld are entirely unable to recover from injuries. (Probably their own fault for not being outside the pure blooded Aryan Heka-slinger master race.)

We also get a last couple of name checks to our new friends Dazed and Shock, one of which (paraphrase: "Your Shocked checkbox is unticked after 24 hours of bed rest") might have been an actual useful footnote 16 pages ago.



Normal Mental and Spiritual Healing
Use the above Healing Rates table, but swap in the MR or SM Categories for PM (*gluk gluk*) and replace "per 24 hours" with "per 12 hours". Prime Rate is obtained through the ministrations of an Oriental Medic or Yogi.

Heka-Assisted Healing
This is basically a placeholder paragraph reminding the reader that various "...Heka-Generating K/S Areas, such as Priestcraeft, Religion, Mysticism, Alchemy, Herbalism, and Yoga..." are the place to go for healing magic.  Good to know.


Regeneration
You can grow favourite lopped off bits back either through the power of certain 1337 skills, or by resorting to magick. Again, good to know.


Rejuvenation
The restoration of Attribute points lost to age or Permanent Damage is a rejuvenating magick exclusive. Who knows, maybe in Mythusworld all those stupidly expensive snake oil cosmetics actually do work.

Life Restoration by Casting
Two paragraphs which repeat the point that a resurrection attempt is a one-time-only deal twice. Jeez! We get it EGG: there’s no D&D-style ‘revolving door of death’ in Mythus.

So two pages of 'dull but necessary' then. Much as expected. We pass on without regret or backward glance.

-----

Next Time: a "Lazy McBastardson phones it in" post of art criticism for chapter 12 before we fearfully lift the lid off the sepulchre of chapter 13: Heka and Magick*. You know, I’m growing to loathe and despise that particular mis-spelling. On the bright side though, it has given me a possible nerd rap pseudonym: Extraneous K.

* Thankfully no relation to the pewter molesting kitschmongers at Myth & Magic

Pic Sources: Dangerous Journeys: Mythus rulebook, Dragon Warriors book 1, Jollyjack's Spider & Scorpion, teh lectrowubz

Edited 17/07/2012 (to add correct healing table and some extra snide.)

Monday, 9 July 2012

Lets Read Mythus pt20

Ah me, where does the time go? It seems like only yesterday that I first jokingly broached the idea of a Lets Read of Dangerous Journeys: Mythus (and for the life of me I can’t remember why that ever seemed like a good idea). Now here we are, 20-odd weeks later, still deep in the Combat chapter, facing yet another wodge of text, tables and wonky formatting.

Today we exhume the Advanced Mythus rules on Weapons and Armour, which sprawl across pages 235-256 in a bloated abandon reminiscent of an orgied-out Roman emperor. Those last few hardened, dead-eyed souls still playing along at home may wish to charge their glasses with something nice and paint-stripping now.

Weapons and Armour Information and Tables



The section opens with a couple of paragraphs of introductory busywork. In brief: "here are tables of stats for war gear, uses them." (a paraphrase, not the original gygaxian prose) The customary intro is followed by a column of text explaining what all the abbreviations in the forthcoming tables mean.


These abbreviations.

Sub-Area -- what weapon skill sub-area you use to bash people.
WP -- Weapon Points. How much the weapon adds to your skill.
C -- Composition; what your thwackenstick is made from. (M for metal, W for wood, C for combination)
S -- Speed Factor. Not ‘SF’? I’ve no idea why not.
DT -- damage type (P for piercing, C for cutting, S for stunning, B for blunt, etc.)
Dam -- base weapon damage
Reach -- striking range (in yards)
Price -- price in Mythusbucks.

Additional notations for missile weapons:

T -- thrown weapon? Y/N distinction.
Price -- given in a ###/## format. The number before the slash is weapon price, after is price per shot
ROF -- rate of fire per round (before modification for skill level)

Not sure if any of these are worth toasting as OMJ (Original Mythus Jargon - gateway to liver damage since Feb 2012); with the exception of 'WP' and 'SF' they’re all pretty standard RPG jargon.

Weapon Tables

Remember the weapons tables back in the AD&D PHB; the ones that sprawled across a page or so, and which were so lovingly parodied in Hackmaster? Well, the Advanced Mythus weapon tables cover four pages: pp236-240, the whole of pages 236-240. That's two pages for listings of melee weapons, one page for missile weapons, and then another page of missile weapon ranges, of which there are five: Point Blank, Short, Medium, Long, Extreme. Why five? Because three range brackets would just be soooooo unrealistic, of course.

In total the tables give stats for:

Melee Weapons -- 18 swords, 9 shields, 59 others -- total 86
Missile Weapons -- 8 bows, 9 xbows, 23 others -- 40 total

Almost all the special rules and footnotes from EGG's iconic AD&D weapon tables are in there, along with a few new ones. There are 13 special weapon abilities all told, and it looks like this is where all the special attack stuff I was lamenting the lack of last week has been hanging out. Want to unhorse/disarm/entangle? See here:


Yeah, lotsa combat options, all hidden away in the footnotes.

Its nice to see some familiar old friends (hold at bay, prod off horse, etc.) poking out of the sanity-devouring accretion of Zalchisian proportions that is the Advanced Mythus rule set. But - and isn’t there always a ‘but’ - I do have one small niggle with these super secret esoteric rules of doubleplusobscurity. Namely, that the half-written rule problem which so often plagues Advanced Mythus rears its ugly head again. For example:


Ok, great. But what DR are you supposed to test against? A straight DR "Hard"(x1) roll? A DR derived from the relative weapon skills of the participants (in the manner of a contested K/S vs. K/S roll)? Does the guy you’re trying to do stuff to get an Avoidance roll? Are we told? Are we hell.

The footnotes to the missile weapon tables are much simpler, with only one special rule and a couple of notes on ammunition cost. But then what else did you expect regarding a series of variations on a theme of string and twigs? It's not like anyone armed with a bow was ever instrumental in winning a battle; no, not like Gary's beloved pole-arms.

Wassat? "Gunpowder weapons?" Wash your filthy mouth out!

A couple of other takeaways from the Advanced Mythus weapon tables:

  • Pike, Mancatcher and (Bill-)Guisarme(-Voulge) are slow as owt at SF 10. Enjoy your going last.
  • Rapier, Scimitar, Mancatcher and Lance practically do your fighting for you, adding 10 WP to your skill (12 if you pick up a heavy lance). Sure, coz lancing is super-easy and takes no practise at all...
  • Daggers are able to unhorse opponents. Nope, it says so right there on page one of the grand unified melee weapon table.
  • Long bows and crossbows negate the first 5 Armour whenever they hit. Some melee weapons (particularly the Renaissance-era ones: halberd, 2H sword, morningstar, pick, pike) ignore even more; anything up to 2x their inherent WP!
  • Some weapons are officially useless against armour, either doubling armour values per hit, or causing 0 damage.
  • Throwing a rock at someone? That's Hand Weapon, Missile (sub-area: darts). ¿Que?

Weapon Descriptions


As well as the four pages of tables for 120+ types of weapon, we’re also offered no less than eight pages of text defining those weapons. The weapon lists are pretty much what you'd expect of a Cold War-era militaria nerd's knowledge base: the majority of stabbinators are European or Japanese, with a scattering of notorious weapons (bolas, blowgun, shaolin shovel, cho-ko-nu, tulwar) from other cultures. I spotted no African, Amerindian, or Polynesian weapons, and very few Indian and SEAsian ones, so all you maquahuitl, tlinga, katar or chakram fans are SOL.

But fret not knife-on-a-stick fetishists! All the classic Gygaxian pole-arms are there. All. Of. Them. Because a game without glaive-guisarmes and six alternative names for the ranseur(!) is no game at all.




Each and every killtoy gets one paragraph of potted description covering such germane information as:
  • general appearance,
  • cultural origin,
  • use in combat, and
  • minimum strength requirement to wield.
The minimum strength requirements are, to put it mildly, problematic. For one thing I've no idea why this particular rules wrinkle wasn’t defined earlier and integrated into the weapon tables: it’s not like a there’s a lack of space. For another thing more than a few of the requirements seem rather over-inflated. Min PMPow (Str) of 13 to use a katana? Min Str 15-16 to use a pole-arm? In a game where normal humans have Str 10? That seems steep to someone used to RQ's 'Min Str 7/9' requirements. To cap it all there's no mention of any penalty for using a weapon that's too heavy for you, just a blanket ‘you must be this high to ride’ number. PMPow 15 and you want to use a PMPow 16 weapon? RULES SAYS NO!

Dear oh dear. That is no way to run a whelk stall...

A couple of weapons from the tables ('chopper', 'generic shield') are missing text descriptions, and there are a few other odd Easter eggs hidden among all the wordswordswords:
  • Pig feathers (a metal version of the classic sharpened stake) don’t even belong on this table; they’re an emplaced battlefield obstacle, not a weapon.
  • Manopele? An armoured sword-breaking gauntlet covered in blades and spikes. METAL as all hell.
  • A Foot Bow (Long) - or possibly a Foot (Long) Bow - is basically a giant crossbow that uses you as the body. See that wacky scene in Hero [link].
  • Get your bow wet and you lose *at least* 50% range and any bonus damage. Get your compound bow wet and its 75% likely to come unglued. Bow users: enjoy your 'hostage to a dick GM' status.

Finally we come to the all-important question of utility. Is this section useful?

Arguably not. If you've read the AD&D weapon rules you've had most of the benefit of this section, and the writing herein is the worst sort of completist, minutiae-obsessed game writing. I’m not going to take EGG to task for failing to anticipate the later prominence of Google and Wikipedia, but I know for a fact that handbooks of medieval warfare and weapons (produced either by game designers or by general interest publishers) were readily available in the 1990s. Eight pages spent defining a spear, katana or pike is naught but just needless busywork and completism.

And then there’s this particular weapon description:



Argh! the obvious! I'm blind! I’m completely blind!!!

Is that subtle self-parody, or just complete loss of proportion? I don't even know any more.

Advanced Mythus: Chaos plot?


Armour Tables and Descriptions



Just when you thought it couldn't get any fiddlier and pixel-bitchy, we finally come face-to-face with the Advanced Mythus armour rules in all their infernal glory. They're only six pages in toto*, and include rules for natural (monster) armour, for humanoid (suit) armour, for barding (animal) armour, and no less than three variations on the theme of  simplified Advanced Mythus armour. Yes, you read that right. Mythus even manages to make a meal of simplifying thing.

* Wait, did I really just write 'only six pages of armour rules'? What is this game doing to my head?! More worryingly, why are the armour rules lodged in some poor little Scottie dog?

The crux of the Mythus armour system is the Armour Categories table:


Because a dozen armour locations makes sense in a game with four hit locations.

You can only have one piece of armour per Category, but each piece of armour grants its protective bonus to all the listed Hit Location Areas. Does that make an oz of sense to you? Thankfully there are a couple of paragraphs of worked examples and rationales for the hopelessly confused. The self-awareness test is again failed with a helpful suggestion that "...it would be a good idea to create an armour sheet to help you keep track of it all."

Natural Armour

Monster armour in Advanced Mythus is weird and a bit irritating in that completely negates the benefits of multiplied damage from hit location rolls. No, seriously. Read this:


So, according to this, rolling for Hit Location on a monster is nothing but busywork.

The above conclusion is not just me interpolating meaning for dramatic effect. This textual WTFery is entirely supported by the example gratis offered as elaboration and clarification. Consider the armour schema of a Mythus monster:


Because a unified 'All Others' column would never work.

Argh! That's just stupid! A single row of 'Normal' armour and note to the effect of "deduct this from damage before multiplying for Area hit" would cut that whole over-elaborate table down one value, two modifiers, and a footnote, and all in a grand total of three lines. Watch:

Stone Golem
Armour, Non-Vital 20* (Electricity 10, Blunt 5)
* deduct from damage taken /before/ multiplying for hit location

Natural Armour? Nothing natural about it! Kill it with fire, salt the earth, and start from scratch!

Human(oid) Armour


Rules for artificial armour. Cost for bigger suits scales in a linear fashion (+100% for each +3' of height above human norm), while protective value scales not at all. So a 12' tall giant's suit of armour costs three times the human norm (no, not eight times) and blocks exactly the same damage that a human size suit does. I'll just leave that bizarre little nugget o’ Mythuslore there to enrage anyone who understands cube-square mathematics, shall I?

The introductory paragraph of madness is followed by another para' explaining the abbreviations used in the tables on the following pages (a bunch of damage types, "AP Cat" = Armour Protection Category, "SF Pen" = Speed Factor Penalty). This is delicious jargon, and we drink to it. (*gluk gluk*)

After the decompression of OMJ terms into English we're then given something that, at least in a bad light, looks a little like an armour encumbrance rule:

Running: -1 yd/BT per -1 SF penalty.
Walking: -1 yd/AT per -1 SF penalty.
Dodging: impossible in armour with SF 5+. Why SF 5 or more? Because phuque, that's why!

Whether you’ll care enough to remember something as fiddly as this in play is up to the conscience of the reader. I wouldn’t give it a second look myself.

Armour Tables


Cover pp248-249. Listings of all the information you could ever want or need for both individual items and for full suits of armour. Annoyingly there's no 'bespoke' vs. 'off the peg' organisation, everything is all mixed in together in alphabetical order. Could have been handled better IMO.


Page 2 of 2, page 1 is just more of the same.

There are several footnotes at the base of the second page, and the old Mythus crime of using both bullet points (·) and askterisks (*) in a font where there is almost nothing to distinguish them rears its head again. "Bad editing staff! No cookie for you!"

All those different numbers by damage type probably relate, in some subtle way, to the Weapon-vs.-AC tables of AD&D fame, but I'm blowed if I can tease out any correlation beyond the most obvious.

Astute observers will note that shields make a reappearance, this time giving their defensive stats rather than Speed Factor damage. A rational mind (as opposed to the mercilessly Martian logical one that actually laid out Advanced Mythus) would probably have hied the shields off into a single unified table all of their own.

Armour Descriptions


Pages 250-253 are a primer on the art of armour, from the evolution in styles of full plate right down to the subtle delights of Cuissarts, Demi-Jambarts and Tuilles. (Nope, me neither without checking) One paragraph per suit or piece of oddly shaped metal. The Speed Factor penalties from the armour tables are reproduced in the description. My cursory flick-through turned up no text/table conflicts.

Barding Descriptions


Armour for animals. Warhorses (+elephants +monsters) only. Work and riding horses are unable to wear barding. Why is not explained, they just can't. Barding of a particular type always protects per the table. I assume the listed price is to bard a horse rather than a war-elephant or something equally rock-and-roll. Nothing is said about the price of armouring other creatures. Presumably it's an "If sir has to ask, sir cannot afford" situation...


The table is pretty self-explanatory to anyone familiar with the human(oid) armour tables.

  • "SF Pen" percentage is actually a penalty to the mount's speed.
  • Chamfron and Front Plates are additional 'bolt-on' armour. Everything else is a big coat of horse reinforcement.
A textual note that creatures of Phaeree cannot wear any ferrous-metal barding (iron, steel, adamantine) and must wear bronze reveals that the latter metal offers only 70% of the protection of steel. This implies a whole other level of detail regarding non-iron weapons and armour, a world of which we (perhaps mercifully) know nothing.

Useful? Depends on how fiddly you like your tinned horse rules...

Cost of Weapons and Armour


Price of stabbers and tinbitz varies by quality.


Quality in turn affects only the amount of damage your shiny toy can take in parries. Spending 10x the normal amount on a weapon of "Unsurpassed" quality modifies its innate Weapon Points, Speed Factor penalty or encumbrance effect by precisely 0. You want a better weapon? Go kow-tow to the Heka-slinger: they have the monopoly on improving weapons.
"Silly muggle! All mundane quality is equally worthless; only magick has mechanical benefits in Mythusworld."
Price variations with no useful purpose in-game? *pffft* Seen better. Heck, written better.

Damage To And Repair Of Armour


An opening plaint on the complexity of modelling wear and tear on armour before we're informed that if a piece of armour takes maximum damage 10 times (ie: blocks damage, but some still gets through to you) it falls to bits. That drops to "5 penetrating hits = crumple" if its a buckler. Again, no variations for quality.

We do find the limits of Advanced Mythus armour fiddliness though:


Note Gary's polite use of the word 'purist'.

Averaged Armour


Most of pages 255-256 is spent in tacit admission that the default armour system of Advanced Mythus is overcomplicated to the point of absurdity. The reader who might actually want to play a game of Mythus some time before the heat death of the universe is offered three alternate system of simplified armour calculation.

The first alternative system is Average Armour, and it offers three levels of coverage (half, 3/4, full) in six remarkably familiar types.

Half armour = byrnie (coat) only
three-quarter = byrnie + greaves and gauntlets
full = the above + helm, shield, brassarts

The armour types are (stop me if you've heard this one before):


Hello old friends. What are you doing in a dump like this?

Want simpler? Pick an off-the-peg Averaged Armour, Simplified suit: all the joy of damage types with none of the number-juggling of pick'n'mix armour.

Want simpler even than that? Choose Averaged Armour, Unified Damage Types, which is basically the Mythus Prime armour system.

The numbers are run for you in one last page-spanning table:


Start simple, get more complex? Such is not the Mythus way!

-----

And that's the skinny on arms and armour in Advanced Mythus. Wasn't it both fun and infinitely useful for your nice, simple, rules-light Classic game?

...

...

"Pwa-hahahahahaha!!!"

Sorry, no. Couldn't keep a straight face there.

Seriously, some stuff here might be of interest to AD&D players, or to RuneQuesters who want a bit more mechanical fiddliness to their arms and armour rules. Almost anyone else should probably take these weapons and armour rules as a cautionary example of the dangers of excess.

I think I’m going to go and read classic super simple Brit-gamer RPG AFF: Dungeoneer until my desire to hunt down the surviving members of GDW’s editing department and make them eat pages of Dangerous Journeys: Mythus while screaming "You! You let this happen!" abates. I may be some time...

Next Time: Dazing, Permanent Damage, Shock and more. And that's just what's going on inside my head...

Pic source: Dangerous Journeys: Mythus rulebook, teh netlowubz

Monday, 4 June 2012

Lets Read Mythus pt16

[note: His Nibs is away. This posted through the dubious magic of Blogger's scheduled post facility.]

K/S Usage for Economic Gain
This terminal section of the Core Game Systems chapter was co-written by EGG and his son Ernest, and is probably the only example of father/son tag-team game writing I’ve ever seen. It comprises seven pages on accumulating filthy lucre by standard boring capitalist methods (i.e. not glorious merry theft or looting). The rules presented are rather abstract, involving lots of basic sums and die rolling and not much actual adventure.

There are three methods of multiplying money by money in Advanced Mythus:
  1. Ownership of Real Property
  2. Consultation Services
  3. Professional Investment
Three big-ass tables showing which skills governed by which TRAITS are good for which kind of moneymaking. AFAICT without checking thoroughly every skill in the game is mentioned in one or other of the three. Say what you like about Gygax pere et fils, them boys are Swiss in their thoroughness. Thus:


Completist, prescriptive, dubious utility: must be Mythus.

WAKE UP! If I have to be awake while I flense some sense out of this, so do you.At least we have sweet, sweet booze to help us.

Ownership of Real Property
Making money from owning physical stuff and exploiting its use value.

1. Invest up to 5,000BUCs x STEEP in something related to a chosen skill (farmland and tools for Agriculture; a forge and tools for Smithing/Welding; presses, ink and paper for Printing, etc.). This investment is tied up for a minimum period of one game year.
2. Determine start-up period: 4d3 months -1 month per 10 STEEP
3. DM determines Difficulty Class and modifiers to base chance of success. No help here, not even a page reference. I quote: "This is left strictly to the GM."
4. Add 10% of any other relevant skill to base skill, then divide by DR.
5. At the end of the game year, roll d% to determine profit/loss.
  • Pass/Fail = Each percentage point under/over the target number = 1% profit/loss.
  • Crit = As Pass, plus you get an additional d% profit and 1-3 points added to the skill used to make the roll. In future you can squander invest 2d3x5,000BUCs per skill point in this field.
  • Auto-Fail = Break even, but investment money is tied up unproductively for an entire game year. ("Eh?")
  • Fumble = As Fail, plus an additional d% roll loss. Yes, you can end up losing more than you originally invested.

5. Adjust value of investment:
  • Crit = +20% of initial investment
  • Pass = +10%
  • Fail = -10%
  • Auto-Fail = -20%
  • Fumble = you've probably already lost your shirt...

At the end of the year you can either maintain the investment, rolling again for income year after year, or just sell it off. There are no rules for market variations or anything like that: you get back what's left. 

The worked example is a half-a-page or so about farming.

*Phew* Who knew that attempting to own stuff could be such a hassle.

Consultation Services
Making money through the pretence you are a reliable and trustworthy authority on something.

1. Spot/create need for your skilled services in Law, Linguistics, Seamanship, Occultism, etc.
2. Contact potential clients
3. Pitch potential clients
4. Set price and negotiate payment
5. DO STUFF (I think this is where the skill roll happens)
6. Collect payment, or at least try to.
7. Determine reactions of customers and others affected by your interventions. A big deal is made of the complications of trying to get money out of people who owe it to you. It all gets a little Hackmasterish in the sheer level of adversarial GM-ery:


Screw them over. Gotcha.

8. Determine effect on SEC, income, net worth, etc.
9. Determine effect on future uses of that skill.

The worked example has almost nothing to do with the rules presented above, instead being the story of an apprentice wizard consulting a scholar about translating an obscure text. They end up eaten by a demon. And the reader ends up none the wiser.

Do I liketh this?

No, I liketh it not. Not at all. That page could have been used for something! (*gluk gluk*)

Professional Investment
Judging from the list of skills that can exploit this option (Buffoonery, Thespianism, Influence, etc), this would appear to be something of a ‘impresario’ mechanic. Printing and Chemistry are also mentioned as possibilities. I’m not entirely sure why: are roving bands of chemists-for-hire a thing in Mythus-world?

1. Study the market for one week, uninterrupted.
2. Gather resources. Spend up to 2,000 BUCs per STEEP in selected skill.
3. Have an action plan. One which takes into account such things as:


Look! Indenting! Actual, real honest-to-goodness indenting.

4. Have a clear idea of the goal.
5. Invest time: 4d6 - 1/10 STEEP in weeks.
6. Roll skill check, add 10% of any other relevant skills involved the multiply by DR (usually "Hard"). The worked example specifies that you can bring in outside help for either a set fee or percentage of the gross.
  • Pass/Fail = Each percentage point under/over the target number = 1% profit/loss
  • Crit = As Pass, plus you get an additional d% profit and 1-3 points added to the skill used to make the roll. In future you can invest 2d10 x 2,000BUCs per skill point in this field.
  • Auto-Fail = Break even. (Once again. "Eh?")
  • Fumble = As Fail, plus additional 2d% loss.
On a Fail or Auto-Fail you’re out 10-30% of investment on top of your other losses, but you have the option to plough in more money to re-work the plan (and gain a re-roll to the skill check). The cost of this re-working is to top up the lost 10-30% of the initial investment, then spend +50% more money and time.

The worked example for Professional investment (Rodney the Reformed Thief attempts to set up a troupe of acrobats and jugglers) takes up a larger word count than the rules.

Worked Examples
The section ends with one last page of examples showing how you can use three sample skills - Agriculture, Apotropaism, Architecture (Really? The first three on the list. You were really reaching there, weren't you lads...) - to make money.

I'm not keen on this particular part of the Advanced Mythus system. Seven pages of dense text and poorly formatted rules in investments, and the outcome is decidedly sub-optimal IMO.

Section #1 (Real Property) is basically a skill roll, and #3 (Professional Investment) is #1 tinkered with to explicitly include the existing Combined Effort rules (see p124). I'm not sure the two actually differ enough to justify entirely separate rules; a couple of notes to one block of rules would do the trick. #2 (Consultation Services), well, that’s so vague as to be a waste of paper. You might as well just refer to the Core Mechanics section.

It’s a shame really. The whole K/S Usage for Economic Gain mess could have been rejigged into something short-and-sweet - and a sight more flavourful - with a bit of effort. One investment mechanic, one 'hire yourself out for pay' mechanic, plus a big old random table or two of complications to your clever moneymaking scheme (e.g. 75: Your investment is infested with Gnomes, deal with it or lose d% of value). And change the title to something catchier, like "Getting Rich Without Having to Die Trying" or "What Are We To Do With All This Lovely Money?".

In conclusion: skip this bit. Traveller and WFRP (or, more recently, ACKS) did trading/earning a living better. Heck, K.A.Pendragon does return on annual investments with more character in an appendix, and that's a game where money can be handwaved entirely.

Just goes to show: if your problem is runaway Gygaxian acturialisms, the solution probably isn’t to add more Gygaxes (Gygaxii?).

Art of the Section
The best thing in this entire section is this pic of Sir Beardknight de Beard and a dragon having a shouting match about something.



Now where have I seen that before?

Oh yeah:


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And that is the end of Dangerous Journeys: Mythus Chapter 11. Let joy be unconfined and frolicking in the park be the order of the day, at least until next we board the Mythus party bus (NSFW).

Next Time: Our first toe-tip into the piranha-infested river of wordswordswords that is the Combat chapter. Early highlights include: the dark arts of surprise and avoidance; enough information on Speed Classes to make the cold black heart of your average AD&D player flicker into life again; and giving those you disapprove of the explodo in the head and soul.

Pic Source: Dangerous Journeys: Mythus rulebook, the intarwubz
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