Susimetsa

Any chance of a new errata thread for the 1.03 edition? On page 123, left column: "Those with high DEX ranks make their statements of intent [...] those with low DEX ranks."

Missing word indicated. Most likely 'before'

On 5/10/2023 at 3:13 PM, Jakob said:

I'm not that keen on Urban Fantasy, but taking my first look at the system, I really like where they took it!

I must say that I had hardly given urban fantasy a look before Chaosium announced their Rivers of London game. But then I read the novels and found a couple of other series to read as well and I find myself liking the genre. 🙂

It is based on a pretty short short story. It also took away some of the tension, knowing the story beforehand, although the authors had added a couple of twists to it to increase the amount of dice rolling.

Never mind. Found them.

I definitely prefer D100. My first true RPGs (RPGs that we played for more than a few sessions) were Runequest and MERP, so I am perhaps indoctrinated to D100...

I don't see BRP games switching away from D100. What would be the point?

Addendum: people learn to crawl before they learn to walk. That doesn't mean that we design our spaces primarily for those who crawl. In short, learning D100 is not difficult.

Forum glitch...

On 9/15/2022 at 1:46 AM, Butters said:

I think the Harrods catalogue from 1912 has been scanned and is a crazy good resource for items that are around from guns to fire extinguisher grenades. 

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61985/61985-h/61985-h.htm

 

The Gutenberg was slow to load for me but it seems to be available on other sites.

One wonders about the statement "Well made. Shoots accurately." below S&W .22... Does that mean that all the others are badly made and shoot "in the general direction"? 😕

15 years since this poll! If I had responded at the time, I'd have been 35... Not so any longer... 😛

I'm not designing pure BRP, but I do this in my system. The basic idea is that the different hit locations do not have their own HP - they merely receive wound levels based on the seriousness of damage (and receive penalties accordingly - a total of -100% to an individual limb (combining forearm and upper arm, for example, makes that arm completely useless). The HP damage is deducted from the general HP.

Not play-tested yet, however. I fear that the need to track wound locations and their seriousness may prove too cumbersome.

The episodes were fun and entertaining, but unfortunately the audio was all over the place throughout the series. One moment you have to turn up the volume to hear someone speaking further away from the microphone only to have your eardrums split the very next moment when someone laughs close to their mic. Also, the players should really have familiarised themselves with how flintlocks work before using them in game... 😛

Osprey produces some decent sourcebooks for various time periods (the make mistakes, but - in general - they provide good info):

https://ospreypublishing.com/us/osprey-publishing/series/men-at-arms/?Periods=16ba4ab9-90a8-4fd0-ac9d-08dab214fe7a&Page=1

16 hours ago, g33k said:

But let's admit we all have fond memories of our first few gaming-systems, but they still have their warts &c.  BRP-family games are prone to skill-list issues... sometimes too-many skills, some skills can be over-broad or too-narrow, "Professions" can be ill-represented, etc etc etc.  EVERYTHING that inherited Grandpa-D&D's "CHA" has problems (we know this is so for BRP, since we cannot settle down to CHA vs APP, and "social conflict" is a perennial weak-spot).

True, the older game systems do have their limitations and it seems to me that my grumbling simply reflects my preferences. But the playbooks etc. really make it difficult to me to see the roleplay in modern games. They do seem to focus more on the tactics and even GM vs players approach (Dune allows the players to "give threat" to the GM for certain benefits and the GM can then use that threat to make some future situations harder for the players). Much of the gameplay seems to regress to negotiations of difficulty levels and how many dice players can roll etc. Perhaps it is an attempt to give the players "agency", but I much prefer to see that agency in roleplay than negotiating about mechanics.

Argh! I regressed to ranting again! Sorry! 😄

I've played RPGs since late 80's or so (getting harder to remember each year) and enjoyed Runequest, MERP, Rolemaster, Twilight 2000, Star Wars and several other games. My impression of a good RPG game is therefore somewhat settled in the way these games introduced it to me. Perhaps that is the reason why some of the more modern RPGs rub me the wrong way. I've listened to several podcasts / actual plays of games such as Daggers in the Dark, the new edition D&D and Modiphius' Dune etc. (not meaning to single these games out, just giving examples) and they seem to treat RPGs more like tabletop games or card games (Magic the Gathering) than traditional roleplaying.

D&D seems to introduce level-based abilities or feats in a way that seems similar to someone kitting out their Magic the Gathering deck and then the gameplay reminds me of a tactical combat game rather than shared storytelling. Daggers in the Dark and Dune both seem to have very strict phases with strict actions that you can and cannot do (move boldly or move silently etc.) and these seem like something you get in German-style boardgames.

It has been a joy to listen to podcasts of older game systems, such as CoC, where the mechanics are in the background and the GM decides when and if dice rolls are needed. Everyone can do what they think their characters would do instead of simply choosing from available options, or collecting feats of special moves that they can then deal out.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. I guess what I mean to say is that I love the more old-fashioned games where storytelling is in the foreground and mechanics are simply a support structure.

I always find it interesting to see which skills certain RPGs generalise and which skills get special nitpicky treatment. Very often, the focus is on weapon skills, sometimes on social skills etc. depending on the focus of the game. I think BRP leaves a lot of it to the GM to decide: if you plan a medieval setting, you can choose to subdivide Ride and Drive skills as you deem necessary (e.g. horse-like animals in one category, camels and elephants in theirs). But if you play in a futuristic setting where vehicles may be AI assisted, one skill might cover them all.

4 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Could you post a link please?

On 6/28/2023 at 6:56 PM, SDLeary said:

Take a look HERE, in the downloads section of this site. You might want to expand your search a bit further, it appears that only about half the files were there. At one point they were taken down, IIRC because of imagery.

SDLeary

I believe that is the link to the remaining files. I have not been able to track down any online source for the missing ones.

8 minutes ago, Mugen said:

Also, what do you dislike so much in MERP ?

I come from a bit of a different angle to this, but I just think it is worth noting that MERP and BRP are not so dissimiliar in the end. BRP is a more pure skill-based system, while MERP handles some facets of the system based on character levels. BRP's strength is the levelless, down-to-earth design which I also think would be a perfect fit of a Middle-Earth setting. Rather than a direct translation of spell lists, I would pick and choose what BRP/Runequest etc. already offer and work them into separate sets for ranger type characters and animist type characters etc. Perhaps also adapt some iconic MERP spells to BRP. It would require a relatively big reimagination of the published campaigns and adventures, though... 😕

3 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

In recent years I've heard some GMs actually handed out the different tables to players, so that everyone handled something during combat. Pure genius if you ask me. Of course, back in the day when the GM was the all powerful Demiurge, giving players access to the secret tome of knowledge would have been anathema, like breaking the fourth wall or something.

This is what we did with MERP and Rolemaster in the days of yore. Players had copies of their own attack and critical tables. Still, I don't think MERP had an overabundande of such tables - it was Rolemaster that was the main culprit in that regard.

I loved MERP back in the day and I still have it and several of its supplements on my bookshelf. Still, I'd base my Middle-Earth game more on the BRP system and merely reimagine certain spells from the MERP spell lists in the BRP system as needed. It would also give a good opportunity to remove some of the more outlandish spells from the selection (MERP was/is a fun system, but, IMHO, somewhat too magic-heavy for the Middle-Earth setting).

I'd perhaps try to make shields more useful by allowing them to provide an automatic defense bonus (penalty to attacker's attack skill). However, that doesn't really work that well with the "roll under" system, since the players would need to recalculate their critical success thresholds etc. on the fly for each enemy they encounter. 🤔

5 minutes ago, Mugen said:

SIZ influences Damage Bonus and Hit Points, whereas STR and CON only affect one of those stats each.

Sure, SIZ is never actively used in a roll, and it reduces some bonuses (only in games where this optional rule is used), but I wouldn't give it more weight (;)) nonetheless.

I tend to agree. Size is a problematic stat for many fantasy species - especially dwarves. Rules such as these seem to make Tolkienesque dwarves even more unlikely... At least, I'd assume that they'd need to have pretty good damage bonus and the importance of SIZ seems to counter that... 😕

I get the sense that someone expected to be able to buy just one rulebook to play all Chaosium titles...

6 hours ago, Nakana said:

Personally I’m glad that they didn’t use that cover. Artwork has too much of a 70s vibe and the title looks like it is written with ketchup. 

I certainly agree. It is whimsical, for sure, but I like the Vitruvian person much more. 🙂

That's certainly a fun illustration, even if the characters look like giants in comparison to the other elements. 🙂

15 hours ago, stadi said:

No, that's not true. These were comments discussing the same thing I was mentioning here and there. That the marketing texts makes it looks like it takes Coc and RoL into account, even though it doesn't.

Perhaps there were already enough such comments there? I noticed one person bringing it up multiple times. I, for one, did not get a wrong impression from the marketing statements. CoC etc. are based on BRP, but BRP doesn't claim - to my eye - to include everything that exists in those other titles.

There's a Report Content Error function in my Kindle Paperwhite. I'm not paid for the work I do if I report errors in the novels I read, nor do I expect to be paid. I do it because I want to improve the product for readers who come after me. According to the logic of the OP, Amazon should be paying me since they set up a system for me to use...?

ATTN: I've actually stopped using this function, because it seems that it is causing problems for smaller publishers (Amazon may apparently remove the product from the store until it is fixed and the fixes may necessitate a lot of labour from the publisher in the form of lay-out etc.). I've not dug deeper into these complaints and I do not know anything more about what's happening.