Quote from: RPGPunditI've explained Mate in one of my early Blog entries:



RPGPundit

Oh, OK. I knew this sounded familiar. I think that William S. Burroughs wrote some about Mate.

Lace & Steel. At least originally Australian.

Two by Frenchmen:

Wuthering Heights Roleplay by Phillip Tromeur - I ran this at a con once and it was an absolute hoot. Overwrought period meoldrama is pretty much the polar opposite of the kind of games I normally run, but Mssr. Tromeur's design makes it a fun change of pace.

Mazes & Minotaurs by Olivier Legrand - This game is basically a re-imagining of original Dungeons & Dragons with two key differences: the setting is mythical Bronze Age Greece and the mechanics actually make sense.

One by a Finlander:

Powergame by Mikko Kauppinen - Finally, one you all can actually download! Powergame is a supers game that takes the basic lighthanded approach of the old Marvel FASERIP game and ditches the big percentile chart in favor of small d6 dicepools. Nothing mechanically revolutionary here, just a solid design that gone through a lot of playtesting and rewriting. Years of chasing the mechanically perfect superhero simulator have left me jaded, but Powergame is one of the few supers games I still give a crap about these days.

Aquellare and Captain Alatriste have already been described.

Lex Arcana is a Roman Empire x-files game, the party is a special branch of the Imperial Guard that roam the Empire finding occult threats and dealing with them, interesting stuff.

There are tons of great French rpgs, though the settings and atmosphere tend to be better than the mechanics.

Quote from: RPGPunditCapitan Alatriste is a spectacular Spanish game, based on GURPs (roughly).

There's also Aquelarre, one of the best medieval RPGs out there for emulation of the era, vastly superior to Cthulhu dark ages, and based roughly on the BRP system (the Call of Cthulhu/Runequest system).

RPGPundit

I agree fully with the Pundit on Aquelarre. But stay away from Alatriste. Is a crock of shit. The author (the same as Aquelarre) tries to make a ripoff of GURPS without understanding GURPS. The duel ruels make baby Jesus cry. You are better playing Aquelarre with the extension Villa y Corte if you're interested in playing in Spain in the XVII century.

What's Villa y Corte?

Houses and Courts?

Quote from: ImperatorI agree fully with the Pundit on Aquelarre. But stay away from Alatriste. Is a crock of shit. The author (the same as Aquelarre) tries to make a ripoff of GURPS without understanding GURPS. The duel ruels make baby Jesus cry. You are better playing Aquelarre with the extension Villa y Corte if you're interested in playing in Spain in the XVII century.

Dude, that's pretty strange; I found Alatriste to be great, the dueling rules to work very well, and ran a very successful campaign with it.  You're probably the first person I ran into who didn't think that the rules for sword-duels were fantastic.

RPGPundit

I was looking at Aquellare last night, one thing I think I would want to change is that damage for weapons looks kind of low, a dagger thrust can't kill in one blow if I read correctly which I dislike.  Any suggestions on how to best address that?

Oooh, neat fencing rules? Please elaborate

Quote from: RPGPunditDude, that's pretty strange; I found Alatriste to be great, the dueling rules to work very well, and ran a very successful campaign with it.  You're probably the first person I ran into who didn't think that the rules for sword-duels were fantastic.

RPGPundit

Well, I could say almost the same from your case I know of three groups of people who started running it, and changed the system to full - GURPS or Aquelarre because the system produced absurd outcomes. And I read the duel system and couldn't make neither heads nor tails from it. Actually, in the mailing list of the game the most frequent question is 'How the fuck do the duelling rules work?' followed by 'Man, the duelling system is über-broken because...'

It seems that a later book about fencing schools only made things worst, but I can't really say.

Balbinus, Villa y Corte is the nickname of Madrid in that time, alluding to the King having his residence and court in what was an small and unimportant village at the time. The most accurate translation I can think of is 'Small Town & Court."

Said that, Villa y Corte was an Aquelarre book that provided rules for playing in the XVII century instead of the Middle Ages, and described the city of Madrid in full, adding a metric fuckton of adventure seeds, plus a jargon of the time to add color, and a lot of other goodnesses, all of that packed in a sleek book of about 120 pages. An excellent guide with a very good duelling system, which makes Alatriste look even worse by comparison.

On the damage system: damage in Aquelarre is brutal. Bear in mind that the amount of damage is doubled if you hit in the head, and halved if you hit the limbs. But you just need to make half the initial Stamina in damage to cause a severe wound, which means that you need to do just 5 damage points to put your foe at heavy risk. Daggers made 2D3 + bonus damage, and any PC will have at least 1D4 bonus damage. Add to that the close combat rules (which give you a +50% to your Dagger skill, increasing enormously your chances of doing a crit), and you'll see that combat is a world of pain.

Actually, we came to the conclusion that the most dangerous character was my girlfriends jongleur (bard), who was armed with 2 daggers and a 75% at that.

Quote from: ImperatorOn the damage system: damage in Aquelarre is brutal. Bear in mind that the amount of damage is doubled if you hit in the head, and halved if you hit the limbs. But you just need to make half the initial Stamina in damage to cause a severe wound, which means that you need to do just 5 damage points to put your foe at heavy risk. Daggers made 2D3 + bonus damage, and any PC will have at least 1D4 bonus damage. Add to that the close combat rules (which give you a +50% to your Dagger skill, increasing enormously your chances of doing a crit), and you'll see that combat is a world of pain.

Actually, we came to the conclusion that the most dangerous character was my girlfriends jongleur (bard), who was armed with 2 daggers and a 75% at that.

I'll take another look.

What changed in the later editions by the way?

Awesome magic system incidentally, very evocative.

Quote from: BalbinusI'll take another look.

What changed in the later editions by the way?

Awesome magic system incidentally, very evocative.

Not much. Mostly, later editions are just a rewriting and editing of the old ones including the new professions, spells, bestiary and such that apeared over several books. Almost nothing changed rules-wise, it just came in one book instead of being scattered through several guides.

The magic system of Aquelarre is the best part of it along with the great work of bringing the setting to life. IMO, it beats AM system in regard to authenticity any day of the weak.

Is there an English translation of Aquelarre?

Not as far as I know. Actually, there was a review of it in Dragon magazine in an article of games that would never make it in the US market. Mainly because the game was too realistic and gritty, and because in some of the illos (in the original edition the artist tried to emulate medieval art) there is some nudity.