[Rq-rules] Re: Slave Skills - Social RolePlay Experiment

[Simon Phipp]

Nick Middleton:
   
  > I'll be reading a friends copy quite carefully and if by some miracle the
> mess that was 1.4 has been transformed in to something that is a
> substantive improvement on RQIII/Stormbringer 5 (or is at least "number
> compatible") I'll consider buying it. But my scepticism has grown rather
> than diminished in the last couple of months.
   
  But, surely V1.4 was almost finished and there were no clear consensus on what was wrong with it. That's the official line at the moment, from what I can tell.
   
  Our group consensus was that it's a pile of crap, except for the Experience and some of the ideas about magic.
   
  >>Come to think of it, what are the worst RQ supplements out there? I can think of a few.
>>
>>Trolls and Trollkin
>>Militia and Mercenaries (if that's what it's called)
>
>Ah, but in the days when most of us DIDN'T have computers pregenerated
>stats were a god send. Certainly, the most useful part of my RQII boxed set
>was Fangs, and I'd still love to see a software tool that would allow me to
>rapidly populate a leader and follower sheet with randomly generated
>NPC's...

  Fangs is only good when you want a laugh and look at some of the stats created. I'm not sure if there was someone with 0HP, but I know there were people who walked around unconscious (1-2HP), for instance.
   
  We sometimes used them back in the RQ2 days, but after a while they were no good as they were too weak. Runemasters was better. We liked to make our own stats, anyway, with identikit trollkin and guards. The chaos beasties were alwasy good to roll up yourself, but you always got the situation where you carefully placed 20 assorted broos, ogres and scorpionmen on the board, then looked at your diagram, frowned and took 3 off them off. Sorta gives away the Invisible Until Attacks chaos feature.
   
  Tony Den:
  >>Hell Pits of Night Fang (although I ran it in Pavis and it worked OK)
> Don't think I have that, although I have picked up some of the other Judges
> Guild stuff (Broken Tree Inn, Lei Tabor) and they are pretty dire: if
> nothing else, the atrociously low production values make it hard to judge
> the content fairly...

  Broken Tree Inn could be run very easily as a Dryad needs help scenario. There's a place in Sartar that has a burned forest near a village, can't remember where, and it fits right in. Lei Tabor wasn't great, but had the Lightning spell for RQ2 and would have fitted a RQ Cathay campaign.
   
  > I also have Lei Tabor. What surprised me was that Jusges Guild could
> arrange decent covers for their magazines (Dungeoneer, Dungeoneers
> journal etc) but issues such sh1te covers for their suppliments. Kinda
> put me off eBaying Duck tower or Hellpits
   
  Now, Duck Tower and Duck Pond are quite good. Duck Tower is a nice little explore and destroy session, Duck Pond is a bit more than that. They are worth buying.

> The postulation is that of a party of 15 years olds (or there abouts). The characters are all slaves and have 
  > either been born into slavery, or have just been slaves for a long time. Depending on whom their master(s) are 
  > and how they are treated, they could come with a whole bunch of pre determined issues. EG: They were 
  > humans taken slave by orcs when they were around 5 years old. Some may remember being small and free, 
  > some not. Some may hate their masters, others may have "become orcs" through conditioning and abuse.
   
  Interesting background. The hardest part of any new campaign is finding the reason for everyone to be in a party together. Escaped slaves would work really well.
   
  > Anyway, to get to my point, if I ever run an adventure like this, what are the general skills a slave is likely to 
  > have acquired. Unless they were lucky/unlucky enough to have been chucked into a fighting pit like in the 
  > Conan The Barbarian movie, they would likely have zero weapon skills. However they may be very good 
  > brawlers (Head but, fist, kick, grapple) from fighting for food. Having lived so long, perhaps their stats could be 
  > juiced a bit, STR and CON (and perhaps INT) come to mind. They may have also taken a beating, so APP and 
  > maybe DEX (broken bones) could also have been negatively affected. A few skills may have been learned by 
  > the type of slaves they were, whether they were put to work farming barley for ale, or building a road in a 
  > civilised land. But what other skills may they have gained - on the assumption they were not afforded much 
  > freedom/were kept chained. Agility skills would be low, Communication, hmm, so so (is there a follow 
  > instructions skill:) Knowledge would prob be low, bar any crafts/lores they may have picked up. Manipulation I
  >  think could be good, depending. Perception and Stealth I would think would have been researched/experienced 
  > well enough t be pretty good. Magic, reckon zero there.
   
  Well, slaves are kept for one reason, and one reason only, to be productive. So, all slaves, even as children, would have some kind of profession and some tasks to perform. If not, then they would have been sold or killed long ago. You can support a lazy freeman, you won't support a lazy slave.
   
  So, they would all have professions and can get previous experience for those professions. Give them 1D6 years experience, if they were child slaves.
   
  They would have a different set of starting skills to normal folk, because of their background. Orcs are very physical, so they would have a high Endurance, perhaps a new skill might be in order. They would have the Run skill, perhaps Climb and Jump. They probably wouldn't have Ride skills. They would be able to speak their own languages and Orcish and whatever other languages Orcs speak in the world you are using. 
   
  Don't forget that different people will have different skills. Someone naturally attractive would have higher Communication skills to someone who is quick with his tongue, as Orcs would use the first as a concubine and the second as a trader or bargainer.
   
  You can't really generalise too much. I suppose the bnest thing would be to make a new background of Orc Slave and then build professions into that, as you would any other background.
   
  See Ya
  
Simon
   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.thinbits.net/pipermail/rq-rules/attachments/20060227/01206c3c/attachment-0002.html