In the early days of RPGs in Japan, some nerds translated D&D and did a replay of it in a computer programming magazine (you can read it in English here!). Then it turned into a really, really good looking anime. But the replay could not be monetized further, for the rules were (c) some TSR dudes. Thus, Lodoss Companion rules were made. And they aren't bad. I translated them for you to read. I've still got like 40 monsters to get through some day, but still, it's a playable RPG--free until AI gets to the point where it can read Google Docs and terminate you--and I translated most of the adventures for it too.
Me and the boys, we played through it for about a year and a half, and I've got thoughts on how I would run it now, for while it was a fine system, it wasn't as fast as I'd like.
Since you have to roll a % die at or under your chance to hit minus the enemy's defense number, which is a bit of a pause to calculate, I think these days, as simple lizard brain likes adding more, I'd rather go,
GM: What's your roll?
PL: 43 under [the] 60 [I need to hit] for 5 dmg [cuz all good players roll damage at the same time].
GM: Sees that the monster has a Defense of 10, and 53 is not gonna go over 60. Your blow connects.
Simple. And the defense number of the monster stays secret. I think it will still work when FS or DE scores go beyond 100. The tricky part will be tempering player's expectations to crit on rolling 10% or less sometimes (if your chance to hit would be 0, you can still roll and a 10 or less on the die is a hit, and a 1 is a crit).
Armor has soak in Lodoss C, which can be a bit slower to deal with, but at this point I'm used to it from years of LC, FAGE RPG, and another game I translated for you, Double Moon. If I get sick of it though, I will probably just change the soak rule to a bonus hit points rule instead.
I hate keeping track of the Lodoss buff spells that last 10 rounds. So instead I'm thinking that each round the caster wants to maintain the buff, they have to pay 1MP, and the initial casting can be cheaper.
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2 comments:
Thank you very much.
I have the PDFs from last time Lodoss was released into the netz. I see no problem with the stats, magic types, or armor soak. The fiddly percentile resolution could just be simplified to D20 or D10. I think the island world guide would need translation to interest a non-otaku audience.
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