The Venomous Pao

I never actually played SB (or Elric!) in any edition. But I do feel very strongly that the BRP rules were best presented in Elric! - at least for the way I want to play the game. I've tracked down most of the Elric!/SB5 books and I'm delighted to have them. I also dig the Corum supplement quite a bit. And these books will continue to fuel my usage of BRP.

All that said, as much as I love Moorcock, I don't think I could ever run (or play in) a game set in any of his worlds. I'm just not the kind of guy who likes to play in a pre-defined setting. I never have been. A great chunk of the joy of RPGs for me for the past 30 years has been in creating my own settings and worlds.

Still, Elric!/SB5 are some damned fine rules. I can't speak to earlier editions, since I don't think I've ever even seen one in person. But I hear they have their high points as well.

That is the first thing I thought of, but didn't know if it was intentional. Did no one pick up on my witty typo in my original post?

I was trying to be subtle.

I did

And I'm a proud member of the 420 club, as you can see in the sig. Elitism be damned

I'd like to add my voice to the choruses of "Happy Birthday!" and "Thanks for giving us a place to play!"

That gave me a cool idea to review BRP products, as well as other games...

Critical (5 out of 5)

Special (4 out of 5)

Success (3 out of 5)

Failure (2 out of 5)

Fumble (1 out of 5)

Rod

Very nice! I like it.

Very weird. Anyone else having this problem? I've tested replies in different modes without being able to reproduce that problem. What kind of browser do you use?

It happens using Camino (a native Cocoa version of Firefox) on Mac OS X 10.6.2, but not on Firefox or Safari (which I must sheepishly admit that I hadn't tested with yet, since Camino is my main browser for non-work things). So it definitely seems to be browser-specific. Odd.

And, oddly enough, my own post above appears blank except for the sig as well.

I think it *may* have something to do with whether the reply was made using the "Reply To Thread" button (my first post, which is blank) or just the "Reply" link tied to an individual message.

FYI, I'm still getting a whole bunch of posts where I can't see the content. If I go to thread tools and view the printable version, though, all of the content shows up. Weird.

As an example, the post directly above this one (Thalaba, #10) is blank except for the signature.

I'm an '81 child of Moldvay & Cook/Marsh D&D, but I grew up pretty fast into 1st Ed. AD&D and then TFT and Traveller. Despite having a copy of 2nd Ed. Runequest, the box of Superworld and the delightful 16-page BRP I managed not to play a game using this fabulous system (other than one brief con game of RQ in '85) until this very year. Weird.

Oddly, the City Of Prague Philharmonic does a whole lot of albums of film music, and emusic stocks most of them.

Their albums range from composer-specific (like Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone) to genre-specific (westerns, Hammer horror, scifi, etc.) and other thematically-related compilations (like Music from the Films of Johnny Depp).

Do note that in some cases the same version of a song appears on more than one of their compilations (for example, the "Once Upon A Time In The West" bits appear separately on one album but combined into a single track on another) so pay attention if you're mixing and matching.

I used a whole bunch of their stuff for the background music for a western I ran last weekend and it really helped make the night one to remember. It's good stuff, and emusic is a fairly cost-efficient way of acquiring their works.

It is from Warren Zevon, a musician, He worte several interesting pieces. Werewolves of London, Excitable Boy. I tied these pieces together for a weird campaign.

Nice work on old Roland there, amigo. That's probably one of my all-time favorite Zevon songs and it's nice to see him statted up for BRP.

Your campaign sounds like it would have been a blast!

I'll second/third/twentieth the huzzahs. I can't wait to get my hands on this!

WOW! Thanks for pointing that one out. I totally missed that one too! Certainly reinforces the importance of INT for Magic.

SDLeary

Glad to help. Believe me, my player was more than a little tweaked when he pointed that out to me

If you wanted more INT influence, you could put Magic Spells in the Mental Skills category, though this might be considered a bit of double dipping.

Actually, as written they already are considered mental skills if you're using skill bonuses. See p. 89, last sentence before "Costs of Magic" setting. As a side note, the same is true for psychic powers (p. 111, last sentence before "Gaining New Psychic Abilities").

I had completely missed these tidbits my first two or three times through the book and screwed over a player in the process. Of course, once could easily decide not to grant the bonuses to suppress the the perceived double dip. But it's worth it to know that they're there by default.

Trifletraxor:

Thanks, that would help. Thanks to all who have expressed support for Arrrgh Pirates!

What I am looking for inplaytesting is less of a group of people playing the game, but more of some floks who would be interested in rolling up some characters using the optional rules and running through some naval battles to make sure I've got all the bugs worked out of the mechanics.

Ahoy then. I can definitely take a look at making some characters, if you still need help. gweeze-at–yongi-dot-org is the address, cap'n.

I'll join in the chorus of "Hey, this sounds cool! I'd love to help you playtest, but..."

And in my case it boils down to not being able to get my group together to play the things we're already committed to playing, let alone to playtest something on relatively short notice. Oy

Still, it sounds great and I'll be sure to pick up a copy once it's available, me hearty.

This is some strange and beautiful work, my man. I've only skimmed what you've posted so far, but it's delightfully alien and yet compelling. I look forward to reading more.

Simple oversight.

I thought they were in there.

Alas and alack, amigo. With any luck, though, having it present in Classic Fantasy and Interplanetary (and maybe other genre books/supplements down the road) will get them out there for all to see.

Ok, after discussing it with my playtesters, I have decided to continue with using the Riposte rules for Classic Fantasy.

<snip>

Obviously, everyone will continue to use the rules they have been using regardless of what I choose for Classic Fantasy, and thats whats great about BRP in the first place, but if I have choose one method, I'm going with the riposte rules.

This makes the most sense to me. I'm an inveterate "dual wielding" kind of guy but it's always problematic. I do believe this solves it nicely for the reasons you outlined above.

I just wish that the riposte rules had been included in the lovely new BRP (and I wonder why they weren't). It's a shame that folks who don't have access to Elric! or another source of that rule. Granted, it's an easy rule to implement once you know about it, but those folks quite likely won't ever know about it. At least until the badassness that will be Classic Fantasy comes out

For layout I'd recommend Scribus. It's almost the equal of InDesign, but it's free, open source, and runs on Macs and Linux, which basically means it spanks MS Publisher in every category

There may be a bit of a learning curve - I can't say for sure, since I've always been fortunate enough to have InDesign proper at hand and have never really done a big project even with that.

Speaking of such things, there's not very much (timewise and skillwise) I can really offer to the layout for BRP: CF, but feel free to drop me a line if you have questions or need someone to look at something. I'm a looooong way from being a real layout guy, but I fake it at my day job enough that I occasionally know a thing or two.

I am sooooo jonesing for this, Mr. Leary! I'm glad to hear things are proceeding well.

Well, I got my big chunky BRP book today. Now to start reading.

Dig in and enjoy! It's quite a feast, really.

Jason has (I believe) stated that the 1% version is the correct one.

link

Aha! I didn't see it in the errata and if I ever saw that thread before I certainly forgot it existed. Many thanks for sharing the link.

Hey there. I'm just looking for a little clarification. The description for Defense (BRP p. 151) lists the benefit as a 5% reduction in chance to be hit per level, but the summary in the super power list (BRP p. 147 & p. 390) says that reduction is 1% per level.

I suspect this disconnect came about because the original listing for Defense in SuperWorld (SW PDF p. 43) has the benefit at the 1%/level rate while the SuperWorld Companion (SWC PDF p. 7) indicates a change to the 5%/level rate.

Either one works, of course, so long as everyone in the game knows which version is being used (and possibly why), but I was curious which Jason (or the long-lost Sam, or anyone else for that matter) intended to be "official."

Mostly, though, I thought it might be worth having this in the errata for folks who might be confused and don't happen to have the Superworld books handy to help them work out just why there's a discrepancy in the rules.

Higher isn't always better. You want a low interest rate on loans. You want low cholesterol. You want low taxes. You want low utility bills. Lower is sometimes quite a bit better than higher.

Now, to the point at hand...

It sounds to me like the problem/disconnect comes from wanting to roll high at one point (during character creation) but wanting to roll low at other times (combat, etc.). I suggest not rolling for stats at all. Use the point-buy option (BRP p. 19) instead. Then you take the roll out of it and you're set.

For what it's worth there are a number of other games that go this route, notably Hero and GURPS. You want high stats, but when you roll for task resolution you want to roll low. The difference is that those two games moved away from rolling (high) for stats. Take my suggestion above and you're in the same situation as those two games.

Then you can "buy high, roll low" and be done with it.

I hope that helped.

Not, as I read, that you need to be encouraged to buy, but maybe to reaffirm your already wise decision: I run my campaign fairly BRP RAW...messy rolls and all ...and have used that particular Elric!/SB supplement the absolute most--a lot of water travel happens in my games.

Cheers,

Sunwolfe

Very good to hear. The nagging buyer's remorse (as much as one can feel for $5 plus shipping) was just thinking about kicking in. So now I can put that to rest and look forward to some sea action in my game. Yay!

Thanks, Sunwolfe!