2/11/2023 0 Comments Weapons on barsoom![]() ![]() Green Martian: The towering green barabrians of Barsoom start out with a free point in Physical, but canot have any points in Technical. Red Martian: This will be the default species of the setting. Here’s my initial thoughts on how they’d be handled: I’ll probably give each character 3 individual Hero Points to start out with Races of Marsīurroughs’ Mars has all manner of intelligent races. In Quantum, it’s normally 5, but I wanted Blades of Barsoom characters to be a little larger-than-life. The character will get 6 points to distribute amongst the skills.I considered adding Survival or possibly Pilot (for Barsoomian airships), but for now I want to keep it simple, so I’ll just use the core six.Ĭharacter creation will probably be as follows Other games, using the Quantum Engine as their core, add stats like Sorcery or Survival. The base version of the Quantum Engine has 6 stats – Combat, Technical, Knowledge, Physical, Social, and Stealth. So that leaves me with the Quantum Engine, the light SRD from Stellagama Publishing. People on Barsoom mostly seem to either have knowledge, or the ability to fight – not much else. Barsoomian characters don’t really have deep backgrounds they’re pulp archetypes who spring into existence ready for action.Īlso, a list of skills also seems a little unnecessary. I’m also thinking the complex, lifepath character generation in the SRD and Deluxe is a little too detailed for this setting. I’m thinking the heavy rules of the SRD are a bit much. First, I’ll have to decide which one I want to use.īarsoom is a high romance, high adventure sort of world. Which Cepheus?Īs I covered in my second post, there are multiple versions of Cepheus one could use as the basis for a game. Note that all of this is very much a work-in-progress. The image is from Midjourney, but if I actually finish this, I’ll hire a real human artist. The prolific Michael Brown put out a Cepheus setting called Blades of Tyri that covers similar Sword & Planet ground, but I’d like to see something more explicitly Barsoomian. Conveniently, the first few John Carter books are all in the public domain, so I’m free to use them for source material. ![]() My idea is to make my own Mars adventure game using the Cepheus Engine. It was a big influence on early D&D, and there have been multiple Barsoom-set roleplaying games in the last few decades. Burroughs certainly didn’t invent these ideas, but he packages them beautifully, and one can still trace their influence through the maze of popular culture to the present day.īurroughs’ Mars is a wonderful adventure setting – swordplay, derring-do, and monsters galore. The dying Mars setting of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter series of novels.Įven if you’ve never read the books (you should, they’re fun), you know all the tropes: A lone Earthman trapped on an alien world, exotic races on a dying planet, and a beautiful princess to rescue. The Basic Idea – Blades of Barsoomīarsoom. ![]() Third, I listed a collection of resources for designing Cepheus settings.įor this post, I’ve decided to put put my money where my mouth is, and actually use the tools I’ve posted about above to design a setting. Second, I explored the various versions of Cepheus, and how they might be used as the base for new games. The idea is that the Cepheus Engine (basically old-school Traveller) should be a lot better known, and would make an excellent core for a OSR-style community of players and developers.įirst, I explained a bit about the Cepheus Engine, and why it’d work as a new OSR community. I’ve been posting a bit recently on the “Cepheus Engine as the New OSR” notion I’ve been playing around with.
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