MUP 23 - Do You Like Movies About Gladiators?

[Dr. Gerard]

I jumped to the Invictus part (gigle gigle) . I will be able to share my opinion on the rest of the show once I finish it.

I am so glad you are discussing Invictus, I hope this is not the last show on the topic and that it will be covered during several shows. In my experience, at the very beginning I was a bit stressed by my lack of knowledge on the daily life of the common roman. The Rome book for BRP actually provided a good insight expanding on what was detailed in the Invictus book. There are things that I usually let pass or ignore just to be able to play the game more smoothly, I tend not to abuse of the classes clash for instance. The mentioned shows like Rome and Spartacus give you a better idea as well, they are a must for any keeper wanting to run Invictus. For those keepers out there that fear to jump into the setting, I say fear not. The good Legacy of Arrius Lurco is so well researched and has so many information in it to immerse the players in so much era detail that by running that campaign you will learn about the setting and about the daily life of a roman. I recommend this campaign for any new keeper new to Invictus.

Can you guys discuss Invictus rules in following shows? In general terms, character creation and other rules are pretty much the same as your standard CoC, but things like combat changes a lot, plus we got armor, and things like that might be confusing for the first time Invictus keepers (it was for me). It would be great if you guys can save the trouble to new comers.

I would also really like to cover this again. I noticed that we talked a lot about the flavor of the era and how to get inspired, but didn't get into the actual game details very much. There are all kinds of new skills and new classes and other differences that you mentioned above. To help us out, since you've actually dug into this as a game setting more than any of us, what would be the key things you would tell newcomers about the setting? What differences would you want to have us mention about the combat mechanics? From the Keeper side, what has been the hardest thing about running the game? What part of the setting is the most fun for you to run?

Just started listening to your AP. Excellent job.

[Gladius]

One of the challenges for me has been that the players want to have armor - often lots of it. So there are a lot of combats where an NPC will hit a player (with a sword, for example) but do no damage. So combats (with normal human opponents, at least) tend to be more drawn out, when you add in Parry and Dodge in addition to the armor.

There's a nice bit of law though where it's illegal for anyone to carry real weapons around the streets of Rome itself - inside the square mile at least - during certain periods of time, so that can keep it down to knives and clubs.

[WiseWolf]

Thanks, Chad.

Here is the list:

-Combat, the use of dodge and parry during one round.
-Large melee weapons. There are special rules that provide the users of spears and long swords with an advantage/penalty during combat.
-Armor, what armor was allowed in different locations and what role it plays on combat
-Poisons

Challenges that I've found during play:
-Lack of general knowledge on daily tasks, like food preparation, common types of food depending on the social class. Details make a difference.
-Slaves. Slavery is not an issue, but having characters as slaves is. I did it for the Scion of Vulcan and is not working that well. It removes independence and spotlight for the slaves in the party, specially when they have no social skills.
-Exchange. I left the coin issue out of the picture all together since I still don't grasp the value of money versus services (for instance). How much do you pay for a meal and place at an Inn?
-Classes clash. This has been hard for me to role-play, specially coming from a culture where this is almost non-existent.

This is what I can think of right now. I will add more as I give it more thought. The setting is just awesome, to be allowed to visit a time in history where things were so different is extremely fun. Take for instance the sexual liberty of the time, it is fun to hear the players take on this subject without the social inhibitions of the 20s.

[WiseWolf]

There's a nice bit of law though where it's illegal for anyone to carry real weapons around the streets of Rome itself - inside the square mile at least - during certain periods of time, so that can keep it down to knives and clubs.

I need to check that piece. Hum...

[Dr. Gerard]

Thanks, Chad.

Here is the list:

-Combat, the use of dodge and parry during one round.
-Large melee weapons. There are special rules that provide the users of spears and long swords with an advantage/penalty during combat.
-Armor, what armor was allowed in different locations and what role it plays on combat
-Poisons

Challenges that I've found during play:
-Lack of general knowledge on daily tasks, like food preparation, common types of food depending on the social class. Details make a difference.
-Slaves. Slavery is not an issue, but having characters as slaves is. I did it for the Scion of Vulcan and is not working that well. It removes independence and spotlight for the slaves in the party, specially when they have no social skills.
-Exchange. I left the coin issue out of the picture all together since I still don't grasp the value of money versus services (for instance). How much do you pay for a meal and place at an Inn?
-Classes clash. This has been hard for me to role-play, specially coming from a culture where this is almost non-existent.

This is what I can think of right now. I will add more as I give it more thought. The setting is just awesome, to be allowed to visit a time in history where things were so different is extremely fun. Take for instance the sexual liberty of the time, it is fun to hear the players take on this subject without the social inhibitions of the 20s.

Awesome post, Randall. All of this would totally help me if I tried to run an Invictus game. Having a little background on cooking and daily life would add a lot of great color, and I might not have thought of that.

It's interesting how adding armor and polearms makes combat longer and more epic than in gunfire eras. I guess this fits the genre of sword and sandals. Gladius, did you find that the epic style of combat was still fun? You seem to feel it was drawn out -- does that mean less interesting? Did you do anything to compensate for the higher likelihood of more rounds without damage?

MUP crew, we practically have an outline for a second Invictus show already!

[Dr. Gerard]

Oh, good. There's been the thought that you guys were too polite to tell us to shut up about it already.
Should I assume it would be NDA-breaking to use some of these as house rules that are released on the podcast feed? We've been wondering about that in a game I'm currently running. Push and Bonus/Penalty dies in particular. Maybe the chase rules if it comes up in play.

err - difficult to advise, so best to err on the side of caution and say give pushing a try (the rule is pretty common knowledge) - just make sure the players have to justify the pushed roll (no free second goes!) and I guess a bonus/penalty die probably falls in to the same scope - so should be no issues there either.

I'd refrain from using the chase rules as these are being revised and probably the rules you have will be far out of date.

Mike

Funny you should mention chase rules -- we were going to cover that in our next show, and then probably stop the whole 7E series. Anything we should know? I don't think we wanted to get too far into the nuts and bolts, but we wanted to talk about the idea of chase mechanics, the encouragement to change chase environments, being creative with skill checks, etc. I know you can't show your cards at this point, but could you frame for us in broad strokes how the chase rules have evolved?

[Gladius]

It's interesting how adding armor and polearms makes combat longer and more epic than in gunfire eras. I guess this fits the genre of sword and sandals. Gladius, did you find that the epic style of combat was still fun? You seem to feel it was drawn out -- does that mean less interesting? Did you do anything to compensate for the higher likelihood of more rounds without damage?

There is a lot of swing-miss-swing-parry-swing-armor-swing-parry...I'd certainly encourage you and your players to describe their attacks, it makes the combat more interesting. The episode where one of my players was in a fist fight with another brawler is a good example of this.

One thing I've done to counter this/spice things up is give certain enemies or types of attacks do armor-independent damage (falling, poison, a grappling zombie that does crushing damage, etc.) to break this up a bit.

One thing I really don't like is that you can Parry at the same % as your attack skill. I think that's a rule from the basic CoC rules, not specific to Invictus, but it doesn't come up much in a 1920s campaign. Here it happens every round. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it also makes shields wonky because there is a shield skill that is essentially a parry but why would you put points in it when you'd be better off putting points into the weapon itself? I ended up houseruling shields to add additional armor instead of acting as a parry.

[Gladius]

There's a nice bit of law though where it's illegal for anyone to carry real weapons around the streets of Rome itself - inside the square mile at least - during certain periods of time, so that can keep it down to knives and clubs.

I need to check that piece. Hum...

Here's where I read about it:
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/archive/inde ... df6466b82d

[MikeM]

Funny you should mention chase rules -- we were going to cover that in our next show, and then probably stop the whole 7E series. Anything we should know? I don't think we wanted to get too far into the nuts and bolts, but we wanted to talk about the idea of chase mechanics, the encouragement to change chase environments, being creative with skill checks, etc. I know you can't show your cards at this point, but could you frame for us in broad strokes how the chase rules have evolved?

Difficult to advise as Paul is busy working on this at the moment. If you want to talk chases in the next show, I think its best to simply talk about the fact there will be new rules and then discuss how to use chases in games (adding in the concept of evolving the chase environment, things players could do etc).

[1d4cast_James]

Great show!

I love Roman History and Mythology. Took 4 years of Latin in high school (oh so many years ago) just for the history and mythology stuff. It would be really easy to have a cult, secret or public, that worships Cthulhu mythos. Also, who is to say that some of historical roman/greek mythology does have any ties to the Cthulhu Mythos

The only other game that I can think of, at the moment, that has any real Rome supplement is The World of Darkness, mostly for its Vampire line.