MatteoN

Maybe nonhumans might be unable to improve indefinitely the skills that aren't traditionally developed by members of their cultures.

No, they were called background points, which could be spent on various things during character generation, like stat bonuses, extra skill points, extra starting funds, gear, some talent-like things, etc.

 

Yes, I'm familiar with MERP/RM. I was referring to BRP's optional use of Power Points as Fate Points (BRP p.176). Different races might have different limitations to the use of FPs. Tolkien elves might be unable to use FPs - although in this case "Freedom Points" might be a more fitting name   .

Fate points?

I may just have to go out of my way to make new racial stats for the player races in my games, so that they're on closer to a level playing field, and just do a better job leveling them than I have in the past, rather than looking at how the existing races work and copying them.

That's probably the best solution. You'd only have to alter the stats of the races you allow as PCs.

Yes, but I don't like that solution. It makes fantasy races feel less... fantastic. It makes more sense to me that elves (or better, Tolkien elves), for example, do have on average higher stats (and often higher skills) than humans, but in a group of PCs a particular elf's superior talent and potential is counterbalanced by the humans' greater actual experience.

In general you might try deriving an attribute's rating from an opposed attribute, in order to have something approaching a balanced random chargen.

For example, for human characters you might have

INT =20-(DEX*2)/3

SIZ =20-(POW*2)/3

This means that you would only have to roll the ratings of APP, CON, DEX, POW, and STR. You might then also use [21-(APP+CON+STR)/3]*10 instead of INT*10 to calculate a character's personal point pool. 

Now, these formulas don't work for nonhumans, that have different averages. Therefore, if you need to balance out characters belonging to different species you might want to consider other aspects. For example, if elves and dwarves have much longer lifespan than men, one might expect them to reach maturity at an older age (like hobbits), and also to acquire experience at a slower pace. So elf and dwarf characters might start the game with lower skills (e.g. as "normal" characters whereas humans start as "heroic" characters) and/or gain fewer (e.g. 1D2, 1D3 or 1D4) skill points when they make a successful experience roll. But you better don't be obsessed with balance if you want to enjoy BRP! 

Well, for starters, the two would be unlikely to cross paths.

Hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo

I see (and sigh). Thanks!

Thanks!

Will the Design Mechanism guys be at the next edition of Essen SPIEL? I might ask a friend to get me RQ6 (at last).

Sorry, Atgxtg, you had already explained the basic workings of the system clearly, and it's very cool. The part where I don't follow you are the actual differences between the alternative logarithmic scales.

I've been for a long time firmly against the traditional difference between stats/attributes and skills, because it's a clear-cut difference that is meant to represent in-game what in reality is a very elusive difference between inborn and acquired capacities; and because I don't see the point in differentiating mechanically in an RPG between someone's genes' and personal history's contributions to their ability to use a computer or run a marathon or forge a document; of course there is a difference and it may be relevant to the description and background of the character, but not necessarily to a game's resolution system. So, in principle I agree with you that doing without stats/attributes and having just advantages and disadvantages solves a problem (reducing bookkeeping) without any shortcomings. However, lately I've become quite fond of games with random character creation, so I've also become tolerant of randomly created stats (and I've had some ideas for random methods to roll up balanced characters  ).

Feel free to threadjack, I find your ideas - especially regarding the LOG-based system - very interesting, but without some concrete examples I think soon I won't be able to continue following your thoughts - my maths is only at a subsistence level. 

Yes, the LOG system is cool. I think the compressed scale and the "generosity to the underdog" flaws actually aren't flaws if you use such a system for what it is expected to excel at: superheroes, kitchen sink settings etc. Probably it's not the right tool to build a gritty, realistic RPG... unless one had a scale that is linear at one end (or in the middle), and becomes increasingly logarithmic at the other end (or at the extremities). Is such a variable scale actually a (possible) thing? Am I wrong, or some versions of the Size scale for BRP function like that?

Very cool!

You haven't quite got it. 

 

The EFFECT die is the 10s digit.

The LOCATION die is the one's digit.

 

So there is only a 1/10th chance of the defender rolling the same location as the attack, but a reasonably good chance of bumping a parry over to the right location.

 

Going with your example, let's say the attacker rolled a 50. That would mean a 5 EFFECT hit to location 10 (the head). Now if the defender rolled a 68 parry (6 EFFECT, location 8) he could burn two points of effect to shift the parry to location 10. Since he would only have 4 effect left to block with, the defender would end up taking  1 point hit, or a partial parry. 

I  hadn't reread the previous posts and misremembered what you wrote in them. Thanks.

So increasing the difficulty reduced your chance of success but boosted your potential EFFECT. But at the same time, the EFFECT value wasn't used to buy just additional effects, right? I mean, if I roll under my parry skill, but then my EFFECT doesn't let me cover the area that's targeted by the attack, my parry fails nonetheless? In that case, if say my opponent's attack succeeds and their EFFECT value of 10 lets the attack target my head (or possibly another location if they decide to spend some EFFECT on other... effects?), I better try some hard acrobatic defensive maneuver to try to defend instead of a standard parry/dodge. It seems quite cost effective as a choice: if I attempted a standard defensive maneuver my defensive skill would be reduced to 1/10 of its value (because only an EFFECT of 10 lets me cover the area that's targeted by the attack), but if I attempted a hard defensive maneuver (difficulty 2) I would need an effect of 5+ to be able to protect my head, so my defensive skill would be reduced to 3/10 of its value. It seems your system would potentially have allowed for a more cinematic play style compared to standard BRP.

Were you trying to design a universal (non-logarithmic?) scale for EFFECT along the lines of the AP scale in DC Heroes? That's one of the games I regret the most never having played, 

Interesting. Option 2 and 3 were mutually exclusive? In the past I've wondered if it would be possible to expand on Pendragon's system (which sadly I never played, but know a few things about it), so that who has the upper hand can choose between a series of options, for example a successful reckless attack that lets them deal much damage but but also lets the defender deal them a few damage, a successful defensive maneuver that prevent them from receiving any damage, but leaves also the opponent unscathed, etc.

The actual game play I don't recall ever having a problem with, it was pretty much all chargen.

Chargen can be sped up, but this requires knowing the process by heart and either always sticking by the same professions, skills, and spell lists, or knowing all the options very well; so basically it takes having spent a lot of time playing the game. I know because I've played it for several years with a group of people that have been playing RM since the early '90s. When their characters die at mid-session, they have new (even high level) characters ready in half a hour; when my character dies at mid-session, I spend the rest of evening making a new one!

Characters in RM are very well-rounded and the skill system implements diminishing returns in an elegant way; however this detail is burdensome when your character risks death on your first session. RM imho would benefit either of a very simplified chargen, or of some form of Fate points.

LOL!

Hardly streamlined. It was so cumbersome that they made several attempts to try and streamline it. 

 

Arms Law was kinda neat, but the full RM system is anything but streamlined. And there were so many alternate and variant rules that the BGB looks simple in comparison. The MERP version was more streamlined, but in odd ways, since the Arms Law stuff wasn't hard to run (just swapping out tables). 

Attack rolls, static maneuvers, moving maneuvers: at his heart RM has very few rules (=/= charts) and I stand by my opinion that is quite streamlined. The companions were ridden with options, often hardly compatible (so I'm told), but you can easily play RM without ever having to read more than a few pages of Character Law (so I've done for years as a player, except for the professions in the companions and the spell lists).

Uh, sorry, I misunderstood your previous post, for some reason I thought you weren't ok with that aspect of the system. I wasn't criticizing it it - in fact, it seems very interesting! I'd like to know more about it.

Yes that was the game. It was a painful, awful system for character creation. One of the players put together a spreadsheet character sheet that calculated everything. My character wasn't very effective at the start of the game, but each time he updated the spreadsheet program my character would become more competent.

At heart, it's a very streamlined system that still holds its own today. Basically the authors tried to "automatize" most of the things that in other games require spot rules and special subsystems by using charts, so that the system is "chart heavy" but almost "rules light". It's biggest flaw is the complex and very time consuming chargen process, that is quite at odds with the high lethality of the game (that has both escalating HPs representing a character's ability to "stay in the fight", and critical hits that guarantee that a fight always remains a dangerous proposition for any character), but it's a process that one can speed up playing the game. RM certainly is a game that has a learning curve (especially for the GM) and rewards long-term playing. You might be interested in a Rolemaster-inspired d20 RPG called Blood, Guts & Glory.

Ditto.

Having a lowered chance of success compensate an increased level of effect is a traditional game design from the days when "realism" was paramaount in RPGs. With its combat system, however, MRQII/Legend/RQ6 recently showed us that there's no need for such a compensation...

Interesting. Has any rule or subsystem made its way from Ringworld to the BRP Gold Book?

Yup. But then I wasn't trying to completely change the way BRP works. 

 

Frankly, I'm not fond of your variant for several reasons:

 

 

1] It makes attributes too important. A beginner with high attribute scores will give a master with poor attribute scores a pasting. That just isn't right for most skills.

 

2] It would need to be extended to handle characters with attributes higher than 18, and will causes problems with handling big tough creatures  due to their higher attribute scores.  

 

3] Some character cannot ever fail (or do poorly) if they have high attributes. For instance, someone with a 18 INT is going to be fairly good at speaking French, even if he never heard it before (skill 0).  

 Your points made me realize I could (just for fun) combine this idea with another one I had recently. The result however would be quite far from BRP (even though both ideas stemmed from BRP), so I'm going to post about it