darkheart

It's the toss up between point buy mini maxing vs random stats. I've used a few diferent ideas in the past. This last time I gave characters extra points for low rolls that they could distribute where ever they wanted. This ended up with people with still crap rolls but with DEX of 16-18. I like this idea. I like it I does. I reckon I shall impliment it in the current game. Pretty much every RPG says the same thing. Getting back into RQ though after a few years off I wanted to just go straight from the book. I'm hoping the new BRP has some decent new idea to pull from to counter some of the issues.

You kinda of want to be careful of what version of BRP you are running. While I am a great fan of Runequest 2nd ed I am seeing a number of flaws in it now that I am running it for a new group. This new group consists of One RQ veteren who was pushing for me to run the game. One rpg veteren who believe you can't beat AD&D 2nd ed rules compedium. One rpg beginner who has watched games more than played And lastly one 'whats the rpg thing' newbie. The most 'observatioins' have come from the complete newbie and the D&D player. RQ faults as we have been finding them Character creation - randomly rolled stats, narrow focused and unballanced previous experinece system, little to be done to tweek the character with quirks/abilities etc. Cults and Skills - I never noticed before how limited the number of non cult skills were available. This can limit people as much if not more than D&D classes. Learning through experience - While this is still one of the better skill reward systems out there, it is still a bit limited that using a skill succesfully once within a week is the same as using the skill 100 times within the week. The best response to the game has come from the two least experienced players. Probably because every gamers has their prefered system. I know i complain that i can learn how to climb ropes by beating a monster over the head with my sword when playing D&D.

APV is a value of armour that it ignores. This is a fixed value and is sperate from damage. E.g. if a person with 4pts Armour is shot with a round that does 2d6 damage and has 6pts of APV then 6 out of the 4 pts of armour is ignored (all in this case) and they take just 2d6 damage.NOT 2d6+2. The extra armour penetration is wasted. The same weapon (2d6 +APV(6) ) against the person in 10pts of battle armour, 6 out of the 10 pts of armour is ignored leaving the person with 4pts armour which helps against the ramaining 2d6 damage. Cthulhu rising has hit locations so damaged is dialed down slightly on weapons. Although it doesn't specify it in any rules I would suggest that if a round has to go though two sets of armour, such as a person in body armour standing behind a wooden wall, the round keeps its remaining APV ONLY if it uses less than half penetrating the first armour, otherwise the APV drops to zero. This would fromt he round sheading velocity and starting to tumble when it encounters enough resistance.

Eh gads. You sound like a manager Rust. All problems no solutions

I would second using Cthulhu Rising. [ CTHULHU RISING: HORROR ROLEPLAYING IN A DARK FUTURE ] I've used it in it's own setting and will be using it for the continuation of my star wars campaign with some minor tweeking.

Just jumping in here at the tail end of the thread. What about the armour penitration of the weapon/projectile? Cthulhu Rising (Futuristic CoC in an 'Aliens' like setting) give most of it's firearms an armour penitration value as well as damage. APV is the amount of armour that the wepon ignores before rolling for damage I am not sure if Zero edition has anything like this in it but works really well. Using some of the previous examples you could give your .50 cal AP round 20 points of armour penitration. At base range this will happily sail though your 21 points of 1" steel. You can use the range incriment system to reduce APV over range much the same way as you do chance to hit which I think is something like 1/2 at double base range and 1/4 at longer.

It very interesting reading peoples different ideas and systems for dealing with wounds. It does seem to be that whatever system people use is going to be a compromise between simplicity and realisim. With a cross genre system also makes it kinda difficult. How do you compare an arrow with a quarrel with a musket ball with a modern bullet with a blaster bolt? A kevlar vest may protect very well against a soft nosed bullet but do very little against a long bladed knife. Does the bullet do less damage than the knife? Do you make armour work diferently against diferent weapons? You want Han Solo to put down an armoured stormtrooper with a single shot while shirt wearing Leia gets a nasty burn on her arm but can still use it to gun down two troopers. Is that a diference between the way mooks and heros take damage? All questions and no answers. Just to keep the fuel of the thread going >:->

I think I like that idea. Keeping track of individual hp on locations can be messy paper work but I like the degrading body system. This seems to limit the paper work and still give wounds which take people out of the fight without killing or knocking them out. Although I dislike random armour. If the idea was to represent a blow landing in a non protected area...isn't that what critical hits and specials are for? I guess if hit locations are optional than armour is indicated for the whole body rather than each loction? If that is the case then is a system similar to MERP or Rolemaster going to be used? In that system the 'base' armour detracts from damage while optionaly added limb and head armour only comes into play during a critical (or in BRPs case, major) would is taken.

The basic character sheet doesn't seem to have hit locations on it. Hit locations and strike ranks are the two things that I found gave RQ a better simulation feel that any other game. Does anyone know if these are going to be in there?