Witigis

Hmm, not sure if I understand you right, but that remembers me of the system Harnmaster used, which, as far as I remember, said every percentage roll equal to multiple of 5s was either a critical success (if below skill), or a critical failure (if above skill). That gave a higher skill a much higher possibility to obtain special results and fewer critical failures. But that would not solve the problem with opposed rolls, just change the propabilities?! I personally would still use the opposed skill rolls, but interpret them as necessary, depending on the situation - there have been quite a few good examples for this in this discussion. The situation becomes even more difficult, if the rolls are NOT at the same time. for example, a character camouflages a position and the camouflages effect will be questioned, say hours later, by an enemy patrol. If the character succeeded normally in the camouflage, but the spotter succeeded better, this would de facto be like a failure on the side of the camouflaging character when using opposed rolls. The main problem is that it is IMHO impossible to come up with a set of rules covering each and every situation. It remains in the GMs responsibility in cooperation with the rest of the gamers to find the right solution for any given situation. The system for opposed rolls is just one of them. As well you could handle the case of several spotters (guards) against a stealth attempt with a cooperative skill roll - and, in the case of several stealthy sneakers, let the one with the worst skill roll....

I cannot say that I have read everything of Lovecraft, but he is definitely my among my favorites concerning horror. But I personally play CoC quite different from lovecrafts stories. With that I do not talk about the setting, but about the survival of the players. While Lovecrafts stories almost always end tragically for his heroes, I like my players to survive (though some of them die trying:7). I have played modern and clasic era (well, mostly classic era) and would love to try the 1880s. What I like most (and now I am speaking as a GM with not as much spare time as I would like to have) about the setting are the multitude of well developed adventures. We spend quite a lot of sessions with purely detective style playing and very few needs forv rules. I can thus only recommend it... About Ravenloft: I cannot say much about the developed setting, but I very well remember playing the original Castle Ravenloft adventure - definitely one of the coolest Vampire Castle dungeon crawl I have eyperienced in my roleplaying time (well, there was also Temple of Elemental Evil). That was good old AD&Ding then (and one of the first question in the first Ravenloft session was about the recommended player level, which I think was 6-8th level of experience: "Is that BEFORE or AFTER the adventure??"). Neverheless we lost the fight against Strahd, and managed to escape (thanks to a mistake of our GM, who simply forgot that there was no easy escape...

I wholeheartedly agree with that. I played a lot of Roleplaying games during the last, oh, thirty years, and became stuck with GURPS for a long time, because it allowed me and my players to use different settings with one set of rules. The same is definitely true for BRP AND it is easier to use with certain settings. At least, our group back then quickly got the opinion, that GURPS best fitted settings centered around humans or humanoids, while some of the stock fantasy monsters (like, lets say, dragons) did not fit as well with the game system. I have not played a fantasy setting with BRP yet, but the system seems to bridge that gap better. I also found, that it is easier to adapt to other worlds and settings because of the percentage-based system. After GURPS I have long sought for a game system, allowing me to change settings fairly easy, but keeping the game system. Right now I guess, I have found it with BRP. Savage Worlds, which you mentioned, simply seems not able to provide me with the right mixture between playability and reality (I cannot get into these exploding dice business...).

Okay, first I´d like to thank you all for your contributions - they provide me with a lot of ideas and new options to think about. At this moment, I recognize three different issues: a) BRP Game Mechanics: After the Legend system has been mentioned, I simply purchased it on DriveThru (ONE dollar!!). As far as I can recognize, it would require a major reworking of my setting to adjust it to Legend (and there would probably still be some BRP in it). Depending on Chaosiums point of view, the easiest thing for me is to leave some parts of the game mechanics out of my core rules (like the chapter on the game system, or the skills which I did not change frome the BRP Core rules). This would make my game only playable with the BRP Core Rules, and I guess that would work out fine. I would not like to leave out all the combat the rules and options I took from BRP, because this would be almost as much a major rearrangement as rewriting the whole stuff for a different, albeit similar OGL system. Twilight 2000: There are still parts in my core rules which are similar in appearance to old GDWs Twilight: 2000, but as the underlying game mechanics have changed almost completely, I , for my part, do not think these would cause any problems - especially because the license is AFAIK now with Games Studio. They published Twilight 2013, an entirely new game which I did not use (though I own it). c) Artwork and pictures: In fact, this may be the greatest issue, because the pictures of weapons and vehicles are mostly artwork, which I found on the Internet. I cannot simply use them, and it will in some cases most likely difficult to obtain permission. For this, I see two possible solutions, first, to publish the material as text only, this would mean that I would leave the layout of my pdfs as it is, but making the art unrecognizable. Every one using the books would have to organize the necessary pictures on its own (I could provide a lot of links, though). On the other hand, I might opt to change the appearance and quality of the art so much, that the artists may see no reason to object (I guess I would still need their permission). I am thinking of uploading some examples of my work (only small parts hopefully not causing one of the above issues), so you can get a better idea of what it looks like.

I wholeheartedly agree with you, but then I did not mention, that I softed BRP up a bit. First, I use the optional hit point location system throughout my books. Then, a character being reduced to 0 hit points dies after 10 combat turns, instead of one. Combined with the rule for double hit points, this means, a average man will have 10 hit points chest, 8 head legs, and abdomen, and 6 arms (fractions rounded up). If I take the average damage value of a rifle (2D6+4, thus 11), he will be down on an average chest hit (and out of the fight), but not dead (yet, I added an optional rule, by which a chest or head hit may be resolved on the resistance table with the damage as active factor against the characters CON as passive factor, to determine if such a hit is immediately fatal, not to be used against player characters, mind). Oh, and again: By publishing, I do not mean SELLING it. I would be happy just to make it available to anyone interested. Thing is, as I am not considéring to compete on the rpg market (I am earning my money quite conventionally), I also do not want to run into trouble with anyone or a company relying on selling their products. (But, well, IF someone is offering me money for it, I wont object, too).

Uuurgh, I really dislike the keyboard of my notebook, sorry for the typing errors...

That is a point I have been thinking of the last few days, because, as far as I understand copyright law (which in some parts seems to be very similar in Germany and the U.S.), may work is more or less derivative, i.e. I used a great part of BRP, but I also invented a lot of content myself. It is difficult to summarize this in a single post, but it may be outlined as follows: Setting Background: I provided two different backgrouns, one purely historicol, the second an alternative background by my own. Character Creation: This section is almost completely BRP, although I changed some skills, added some skills and game mechanics (for example, how to determine rank on military characters). I also reworked the list of occupations, taking some ideas from BRP or CoC, but adding a good deal of my own (such as extensive lists of military occupations, or civilian occupations like Hitler Youth or Partisan). General Game System: This is BRP again. Combat System: Here there are the most differences: While the melee combat is essential the same as in BRP, I nevertheless changed or modified some of the rules, especially some of BRPs spot rules. The rules for missile combat, on the other hand have been heavily modified, especially so for handling explosions or using indirect fire weapons - here there is the older Twilight 2000 legacy still recognizable, albeit more in form and topics, than in game mechanics. This is even more true for the vehicle combat system, which has almost nothing to do with BRP and is my own by, lets say, 95%. I also added other setting-related rules, like flamethrowers, mines, or using demolitions, and changed the armor point system (this one only slightly, to better fit in some historical damage values without changing weapon damage to much). Several chapters after that are not to be found in BRP, they are again a legacy of Twilight 2000, such as the rules of maintenance for vehicles and overall survival of the characters (my alternative time line opens the setting to some sort of post-apocalyptic WWII gaming, while it is possible without any change to play anytime in the historical context (BTW, my game is called 1946-A Shattered World). I also included (small scale) mass combat rules, to give a GM the possibility to fit the characters story within the fate of a larger unit, if he or she wants so. I developed spotting rules, for encounters as well as a lot of optional rules throughout the game (giving it the modular character I like on BRP), and some other things more. Than I added a quite large general equipment chapter, but without any firearms, as I added these as a weapon supplement, detailing 339 (exactly) small arms, from pistols to AT rifles, and also 134 heavy weapons, from mortars to AT mines and hand grenades (including such niceties as the 80 cm railroad gun Schwerer Gustav (thats more for fun than for actual game use, I admit). The same is true of literally hundreds of vehicles. Every weapon and vehicle is coming with complete game stats and pictures (yep, this is another possible copyright issue, but of that I can take care with some more time by doing the drawings myself). Well, now this is And that is why I did all the above mentioned changes and additions...

Well, I am used to long time waiting in roleplaying (I played Harnmaster once...), so this isn´t much of a problem. To your questions: As I originally didn´t even think about publishing, I haven´t done any market research as such, but before I started to write my own subsystem, I did look for WWII roleplaying games on the market. There is the GURPS 3rd edition WWII roleplaying series, which I find absolutely great and well done, and I used GURPS as a system for WWII even before they brought out this series. Unfortunately, GURPS is really deadly in combat (much more so than BRP, if you play with the double hit points rule, IMHO), the vehicle-building could be really annoying, and, most importantly, the series is dead (they lost me with GURPS 4th). Other than that, I recall WWII for D20 rules, which I found lacking in several aspects (can´t remember the name right now, think it was Weird War II). Well, then there is Achtung Cthulhu, already mentioned above, and that is all I know. Oh, no, I forgot Savage Worlds, which succeeded the D20 system in many aspects - but frankly, I am playing Savage Worlds currently as a player and I do not really like it. I am not too much of the story-telling roleplaying type, y´know

Hmmm, I do not know the Runequest II system (though I still have the first Runequest system somewhere). Fact is, I rewrote some rules, or even invented them, like the vehicle combat rules. I have had a look at the Achtung Cthulhu system last week and bought some of their supplements to have a look at them, and while they share the setting, their focus is totally different. mine is on military roleplaying , theirs is (as far as I understand) stiull playing Cthulhu. But, I admit, it really, really looks interesting (well, I am playing CoC as well)...

Thanks Gollum, I just wrote an email to Dustin@chaosium.com Well, I will see how they react. I never thought of publishing something before. All the work was just intended for my personal use, but I guess my friends are right, it would be a shame not to share - and if there is some money in it, well, why not - though this not mandatory

Well, so far I managed to enter the forum - first step done (hopefully). Now, I did that, because I have some sort of a problem: For some time (years probably), I have put work in adapting rpg systems to a World War II setting. I first started by reworking GDWs old Twilight 2000, but then I came upon BRP. Well, to keep it short: I have just finished adapting BRP to my World War II setting (or, if you would like to put it like that, the other wy round). Now, what does that mean? I have consolidated a core rule book (320 pages) and altogether 12 supplements detailing weapons and vehicles (ground vehicles and aircraft, the German vehicle book alone has more than 150 pages, one page for each vehicle). Im currently working on adapting these supplements to the core rules. I am playing this system with friends of mine (you can see one of them explaining a bit about the old version on youtube ). Now, my problem: I would really like to share my work with anyone interested, but it is way to much to simply put it on any web page AND I do not want to receive some nicely written message with something about copyright in it... how can I proceed? I would be really glad for tips and comments. If you are interested, I can easily give more details... Thomas Engbarth (Witigis) PS: As you may have already discerned, I am not an native English speaker (I am German), but all the rules are in English language (well, there are surly some faults and errors in there... O:)