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Author Topic: The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!  (Read 52513 times)

RPGPundit

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #75 on: October 17, 2013, 05:29:18 PM »
Quote from: Evermasterx;699951
Thank you RPGpundit, it's great to have the author clarifying his intentions. Now I understand the spirit of both rules better.


You're very welcome! That's what the Q&A is for.
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Evermasterx

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #76 on: January 24, 2014, 04:05:54 AM »
Dear RPGPundit,
in the description of Scrying you wrote:
"This power allows a character to see glimpses of unknown, distant places or the hidden fabric of the universe that reveals secrets about the present, past, or future."
It's seems from what follows in the book that one can only scry the present and the future (divination). Can you say more about scrying the past?
Or do you mean that you can discover something about the past only through what remains of it in the present?
"All my demons cast a spell
The souls of dusk rising from the ashes
So the book of shadows tell
The weak will always obey the master"

Kamelot, The Spell
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RPGPundit

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #77 on: January 26, 2014, 04:07:31 PM »
Quote from: Evermasterx;726062
Dear RPGPundit,
in the description of Scrying you wrote:
"This power allows a character to see glimpses of unknown, distant places or the hidden fabric of the universe that reveals secrets about the present, past, or future."
It's seems from what follows in the book that one can only scry the present and the future (divination). Can you say more about scrying the past?
Or do you mean that you can discover something about the past only through what remains of it in the present?


A: Wow, thank you for pointing this out! I think maybe its one of the most glaring problems someone has detected yet.
The fact is, somehow this escaped me.  It had been my intention, originally, to include details on how scrying could express details about the past. Obviously, somewhere in between the planning stages and the execution, I plumb forgot.  That's all on me.

So let's look at how, within the context of the system as it is, someone with Scrying to could use it to get glimpses of the past.

Scrying Places, people, and things: Scrying can be used to observe the Present moment in distant places.  I think it would also make a lot of sense that Scrying could be used to obtain glimpses of the past of places, people, and things.  However, the big limitation I would put on this is that unlike scrying the present, in order to make enough of a psychic link to be able to observe the past, the Scryer must actually be physically present at the place in question, or have the person or thing in physical contact with them.  So you can get a vision of a subject's past through that connection at the same level (based on Ego Class) as you would scrying the future.  
So again, someone with Olympian Class or higher Ego  will be able to get a clear and detailed vision; though of course it is entirely possible that the particular context of the vision may not be immediately clear.

I would suggest as a guideline to GMs that they should try to consider whatever is the most significant event, which left the most intense impact, on the past of the person, place or thing in question.  Thus, this may or may not be useful; it may not be directly relevant to what the PC wishes to know about; on the other hand, it may provide the PC with some kind of important information that they hadn't expected, perhaps on a subject that might be of some use in any case, or in the future.

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Evermasterx

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #78 on: January 27, 2014, 01:34:21 AM »
Thanks! I like this solution, because the constrains of physical presence and major event limit this power adequately.
In other games (i.e. Artesia RPG) this power can be a problem for the GM.
I'm starting my first LoL campaign, so if I find more material to adjust for the second edition, I'll let you know! :)
"All my demons cast a spell
The souls of dusk rising from the ashes
So the book of shadows tell
The weak will always obey the master"

Kamelot, The Spell
--------
http://evermasterx.altervista.org/blog/tag/lords-of-olympus/

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #79 on: January 29, 2014, 04:21:08 AM »
Quote from: Evermasterx;726865
Thanks! I like this solution, because the constrains of physical presence and major event limit this power adequately.
In other games (i.e. Artesia RPG) this power can be a problem for the GM.
I'm starting my first LoL campaign, so if I find more material to adjust for the second edition, I'll let you know! :)


Please let us know how your game goes, in general.
LION & DRAGON: Medieval-Authentic OSR Roleplaying is available now! You only THINK you've played 'medieval fantasy' until you play L&D.


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Also, now with the CULTS OF CHAOS cult-generation sourcebook

ARROWS OF INDRA
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Evermasterx

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #80 on: January 29, 2014, 05:20:10 AM »
For now I can say that the place is London, 1938.

The three players are:
* a Baron, member of the House of Lords and owner of a whisky distillery, male.
* a jazz singer, working in a club at night, female.
* a Scotland Yard detective, female.

A secret is preserved in those families, of powers not to be shown.
 
Incipit Tragoedia...
"All my demons cast a spell
The souls of dusk rising from the ashes
So the book of shadows tell
The weak will always obey the master"

Kamelot, The Spell
--------
http://evermasterx.altervista.org/blog/tag/lords-of-olympus/

RPGPundit

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #81 on: January 29, 2014, 08:05:47 PM »
Quote from: Evermasterx;727813
For now I can say that the place is London, 1938.

The three players are:
* a Baron, member of the House of Lords and owner of a whisky distillery, male.
* a jazz singer, working in a club at night, female.
* a Scotland Yard detective, female.

A secret is preserved in those families, of powers not to be shown.
 
Incipit Tragoedia...


Sounds like an awesome approach!
LION & DRAGON: Medieval-Authentic OSR Roleplaying is available now! You only THINK you've played 'medieval fantasy' until you play L&D.


My Blog:  http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/
The most famous uruguayan gaming blog on the planet!

NEW!
Check out my short OSR supplements series; The RPGPundit Presents!


Dark Albion: The Rose War! The OSR fantasy setting of the history that inspired Shakespeare and Martin alike.
Also available in Variant Cover form!
Also, now with the CULTS OF CHAOS cult-generation sourcebook

ARROWS OF INDRA
Arrows of Indra: The Old-School Epic Indian RPG!
NOW AVAILABLE: AoI in print form

LORDS OF OLYMPUS
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Evermasterx

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Glamour Wards
« Reply #82 on: March 03, 2014, 11:28:51 AM »
I need some clarification: the duration of the ward is the duration of the illusion once triggered or the duration of the ward itself as a waiting spell?
"All my demons cast a spell
The souls of dusk rising from the ashes
So the book of shadows tell
The weak will always obey the master"

Kamelot, The Spell
--------
http://evermasterx.altervista.org/blog/tag/lords-of-olympus/

RPGPundit

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #83 on: March 07, 2014, 09:02:10 PM »
Quote from: Evermasterx;734259
I need some clarification: the duration of the ward is the duration of the illusion once triggered or the duration of the ward itself as a waiting spell?


Answer:  Its for how long the illusion will last.  The ward will stay in place awaiting its trigger, for however long it takes, and then activate and be spent when the duration is done after activation.  Barring any outside interference (the alteration of that universe's magical laws, some greater power annulling the ward, etc.) the ward can last indefinitely if it is not triggered.
LION & DRAGON: Medieval-Authentic OSR Roleplaying is available now! You only THINK you've played 'medieval fantasy' until you play L&D.


My Blog:  http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/
The most famous uruguayan gaming blog on the planet!

NEW!
Check out my short OSR supplements series; The RPGPundit Presents!


Dark Albion: The Rose War! The OSR fantasy setting of the history that inspired Shakespeare and Martin alike.
Also available in Variant Cover form!
Also, now with the CULTS OF CHAOS cult-generation sourcebook

ARROWS OF INDRA
Arrows of Indra: The Old-School Epic Indian RPG!
NOW AVAILABLE: AoI in print form

LORDS OF OLYMPUS
The new Diceless RPG of multiversal power, adventure and intrigue, now available.

xiombarg

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #84 on: May 01, 2014, 02:47:54 AM »
So, I'm pretty impressed with LoO. I particularly like that it has a lot more hard detail on the powers and their interaction with different attribute levels, unlike, say, the original Amber Diceless RPG. Also, the Momus entry is hilarious.  ;)

My question is a bit more trivial, however. How are language barriers supposed to be handled?

In Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, being a Warden gives you a translation ability. In Amber, it's clear that language barriers exist, but fast-time Shadows make it easy to nip off and learn a language, not to mention the strong implication that a lot of languages are just a variant of Thari. It doesn't seem quite that easy in LoO.

 I ask this in part because I'm considering a campaign where all the PCs start on Modern Earth, not knowing their heritage.  Chances are that not all of them will know Greek, which obviously is the language their god-parents would prefer. Or should I simply assume the gods know all mortal languages, even if the PCs don't?
 

brettmb

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #85 on: May 01, 2014, 03:20:01 AM »
I'll wait for Pundit's official answer, but I assume that the character's Ego can be used to determine this. A high Ego means that thoughts can be read with full understanding. Likewise, high Ego is likely to understand all languages, while lower classes may know only a few, probably common ones.

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #86 on: May 05, 2014, 03:51:25 AM »
Quote from: xiombarg;746123
So, I'm pretty impressed with LoO. I particularly like that it has a lot more hard detail on the powers and their interaction with different attribute levels, unlike, say, the original Amber Diceless RPG. Also, the Momus entry is hilarious.  ;)

My question is a bit more trivial, however. How are language barriers supposed to be handled?

In Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, being a Warden gives you a translation ability. In Amber, it's clear that language barriers exist, but fast-time Shadows make it easy to nip off and learn a language, not to mention the strong implication that a lot of languages are just a variant of Thari. It doesn't seem quite that easy in LoO.

 I ask this in part because I'm considering a campaign where all the PCs start on Modern Earth, not knowing their heritage.  Chances are that not all of them will know Greek, which obviously is the language their god-parents would prefer. Or should I simply assume the gods know all mortal languages, even if the PCs don't?


Welcome to theRPGsite! I hope you'll post more about LoO as you go along, and about other RPGs for that matter.

A:  I think this is the kind of thing you can handle in different ways in different campaigns.  Some GMs might want to save themselves the trouble and just make all languages understandable quickly. For others, of course, this might seem too cheap and easy.

I think a key to this answer is Ego Class, and mental power.  If your character has a decent Ego level, he should be able to learn the native language quite easily using a mental contact with a local. This could obviously also be done by something like Scrying, and possibly even Advanced Metamorphosis.  Of course, there's also the old fashioned possibility of taking time to learn; since most characters have Immortality, but in some campaigns that may not be an option.

Also, for something like this do not underestimate the potential of "local powers" in a World.  The local magic would in some worlds allow a character to learn a language.  In some advanced worlds, technology might do the same.

Finally, there's some of the more hardcore options: you can always dedicate points to control a realm, or to get a daemon that has a power to comprehend languages (or in theory an artefact of some other kind).  And of course, if you have Advanced Primordial Magic, you could always just change all the rules so that everyone is speaking what you speak.  You'll never have to read a language book again.
LION & DRAGON: Medieval-Authentic OSR Roleplaying is available now! You only THINK you've played 'medieval fantasy' until you play L&D.


My Blog:  http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/
The most famous uruguayan gaming blog on the planet!

NEW!
Check out my short OSR supplements series; The RPGPundit Presents!


Dark Albion: The Rose War! The OSR fantasy setting of the history that inspired Shakespeare and Martin alike.
Also available in Variant Cover form!
Also, now with the CULTS OF CHAOS cult-generation sourcebook

ARROWS OF INDRA
Arrows of Indra: The Old-School Epic Indian RPG!
NOW AVAILABLE: AoI in print form

LORDS OF OLYMPUS
The new Diceless RPG of multiversal power, adventure and intrigue, now available.

Evermasterx

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #87 on: April 17, 2015, 08:21:19 AM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;728011
Sounds like an awesome approach!
My LoO campaign is going on very well.
Now I have 5 player (before they were 3). And 3 of them are females. In Italy this hobby is not an exclusively male thing.

The 3 original players eventually arrived on classic Earth, Olympia, the day before the beginning of the 66th Olympic Games.
The male player, Patroklos, decided to take part in the games, in wrestling as a starter. One of the new players impersonated Milo of Croton, a real ancient athlete (look for him on Wikipedia). The other girl impersonated an Olympian inhabitant.
During the games, an ancient spaceship buried under the Temple of Hera, released 5 terrible monsters on Olympia and our heroes defeated them.
A 6th monster emerged (awakened by Apollo), and they couldn't defeat him, but luckily he was a bounty hunter, retrieving the heads of the killed monsters to collect the reward after leaving the earth with his spaceship.

Olympia's people, saved from destruction, praised the heros and offered the throne to Milo and Patroklos: the two Kings of Olympia. A lot of problems with the senate coming...
Sorry for the female characters, but in classical Greece, power was often reserved to men. And this injustice is a reason of friction between the players and their characters (and it's alright!).

Then they discovered they are progeny of Apollo (or at least that is what Febo said to them...). Unfortunately, Milo killed a Hera's worshipper next to her temple...
So, when Apollo said that Hera was coming to Olympia for revenge, you shoud have seen the face of Milo's player! Priceless moment!
Apollo succedeed into commuting a death penalty in a quest decided by an angry Hera. And she ruled, and Zeus approved, that the players must retrieve the dreaded Black Goblet of Oblivion, located somewhere in Erebus. Oh my Gods!

Now something about the system.
The new female player has no experience about tabletop rpg. None. Nada. Niente. But she identified easily herself with her character, named Xenia, and because the rules are so light, in a couple of session she was in.

As I experienced before with Amber, after a while nobody looks at his/her character sheet, and act thinking about the story 99% of the times.

We have a private mediawiki site where we share images, rules ad characters' logs (only two of them keep a diary).
We have a blog where I post a fast summary of the last session and where they comment, often with challenging tones and rivalry, as it should be.
And finally we have a WhatsApp group named Lords of Olympus to keep in touch between two sessions.

You should be proud, RPGPundit.
"All my demons cast a spell
The souls of dusk rising from the ashes
So the book of shadows tell
The weak will always obey the master"

Kamelot, The Spell
--------
http://evermasterx.altervista.org/blog/tag/lords-of-olympus/

RPGPundit

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The NEW Lords of Olympus Q&A Thread!
« Reply #88 on: April 18, 2015, 01:04:55 AM »
Thank you! Your campaign sounds fucking awesome!


With regard to 'female players', I have always had women in my games (at least, very very regularly over the past 20 years or so, and pretty much constantly in the last 12).  But Amber was always a game where I tended to have far more than usual.  The last demo game of LoO I ran had more women than men in it.

I think that here in Uruguay there's probably proportionately quite a few more women gamers than there are in other countries too; North America is probably where there are the least, proportionately speaking, for historical reasons; not so much, I think, because women were intentionally 'excluded' from the hobby but rather because sometime after the mid-80s RPGs started being thought of as a very "Nerdy" thing to do, and for a long time "nerdy" was thought of as being more for boys than for girls.  Even though now geek culture has gone mainstream, it's still overcoming that prejudice, a prejudice that was as much due to girls and women self-excluding from something they didn't think of as 'for them' as it was from any 'no girls allowed' mentality on the part of guys (though some of that certainly existed too).

For example, when I was a teenage gamer, my two sisters (both slightly younger than me) would never have been caught dead playing RPGs because it was a 'nerd' thing.  Now, one of them has a teenage daughter, and to my surprise only a couple of weeks ago I found her writing about D&D on her facebook.  She was pretty damn surprised to find out her uncle's degree of involvement in the hobby.

Come to think of it, I should see if Brett would be willing to send her a copy of LoO...
LION & DRAGON: Medieval-Authentic OSR Roleplaying is available now! You only THINK you've played 'medieval fantasy' until you play L&D.


My Blog:  http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/
The most famous uruguayan gaming blog on the planet!

NEW!
Check out my short OSR supplements series; The RPGPundit Presents!


Dark Albion: The Rose War! The OSR fantasy setting of the history that inspired Shakespeare and Martin alike.
Also available in Variant Cover form!
Also, now with the CULTS OF CHAOS cult-generation sourcebook

ARROWS OF INDRA
Arrows of Indra: The Old-School Epic Indian RPG!
NOW AVAILABLE: AoI in print form

LORDS OF OLYMPUS
The new Diceless RPG of multiversal power, adventure and intrigue, now available.

Evermasterx

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Dark Albion
« Reply #89 on: August 13, 2015, 06:37:57 AM »
A question from here, Arcadia, sorry, Rome:
what about using Dark Albion for a LoO campaign in an alternate earth?
"All my demons cast a spell
The souls of dusk rising from the ashes
So the book of shadows tell
The weak will always obey the master"

Kamelot, The Spell
--------
http://evermasterx.altervista.org/blog/tag/lords-of-olympus/