Paul_Va

I love the BRP system, and I've run several games using it, but one thing that always somewhat bothers me is the base skills for the skills of perception; I always feel the base skills are too low. An Insight skill of 5% seems like something only someone with some kind of handicap or penalty should have, not something someone should have on account of just not adding any additional skill points to it, granted I'm assuming one is not using the optional rule that allows characteristics to influence skills. Does this bother anyone else? Obviously, I could just house rule it, and in the future, I'll probably just borrow the RQ rule for deriving the skill from characteristics.

Thank you, Soltakss, that helps a lot. I also run CoC, so the Cthulhu data in Mythic Iceland might be useful elsewhere as well. I also like that it provides a starting scenario; that is sometimes helpful.

I'm thinking about running a viking game on Roll20.net, but I'm wondering which of these would be the better source book. By better, I'd like to find something that is reasonably accurate historically. A few pre-made campaign adventures would be a plus as well. I'm familiar with both BRP and RuneQuest. If I get Vikings of Legend, I'll probably run it with the RQ6 rules whereas if I get Mythic Iceland I'll most likely use BRP (Or maybe this game has its own setting; it's hard to tell from the description.). At any rate, does anyone have experience with these two books? Any advice would be appreciated.

My players are all married professional types with little extra time for making characters.

Excellent. Thank you, Seneschal. This looks like a great resource.

I haven't discussed the characters with the players because my players specifically told me they like to be surprised. However, I also noticed that the BRP point-buy generates very mediocre characters. In fact, the CoC core rulebook pregens are made quite a bit more robust than that which can be created with the point-buy system. I like your idea about just rolling a number of sets, etc.

My players like to use pregens, so I always struggle whether I should, as a keeper, roll the stats as usual for pregen characters or use the point-buy method in order to sculpt them a little more. I'm curious how other keepers handle this.

I'm getting ready to run Masks of Nyarlathotep for my gaming group, and I noticed in the campaign it recommends you play with no fewer than 6 investigators. I'm assuming this is due to the lethality of the scenario. However, I only have 4 players, so I'm wondering if anyone else has ever run it with 4, and if so, did you need to make any adjustments. Of course, I could always have two players run two characters, but it would be a little awkward for only two players to get to, or have to, run two characters and not the others, etc.

Thanks for that NClarke. I'm curious whether or not the grapple actions can be applied in the first round, on only after the second. What do you think?

OK, that clears things up a bit. Am I correct though that in the current incarnation of BRP, the defender does not need to roll Parry/Dodge if the attacker fails?

No, Queen, because my question is regarding the fumble table on which one would roll after the attack. Also, as I commented on that download, there are errors on that chart regarding when one rolls "full" damage vs rolled damage. That chart shows full damage for critical attacks that are opposed by Special and Successful parries and full damage by Special attacks that are opposed by failed and fumbled parries.

The Melee weapon Parry Fumble Table on p. 194 of the Basic Roleplaying core book says that with a D100 roll of 76-93 you are wide open, and you receive an automatic normal/special/critical hit. It seems that this is meaningless; however, since a defender only rolls Parry/Dodge if the attacker succeeded on his roll. Moreover, if you the defender fumbled, he's already received the attack/damage. I can see how it might be possible that the attacker's roll could be upgraded to a Special or Critical attack with a Fumble table roll of 86-93, but it seems that 76-85 will still be meaningless. Does anyone have any insight into the intention of these entries on the chart?

Yeah, I do actually have BRP Rome, and I agree; some of the professions, etc. in Rome seem a little more thought out.

I'm running my first session of Cthulhu Invictus tomorrow night. I'm running the scenario in the book, but since the setting incorporates many elements from the full BRP rules set, I'm just going to use the full BRP system to run it. Does anyone else have experience running CoC with the BGB rules?

Well, you lost me there. I'm as liberal as one can get; I consider myself a narrativist; and I hate players who whine about game balance, grittiness, etc. Moreover, most of the players I've known who do so are conservatives who egocentrically expect the universe to revolve around them a la Ender's Game.

You're preaching to the choir here. From my experience, the only way to get good players these days is to cherry pick the best and then retrain them with a good system, like BRP or RuneQuest. A good example of the attitude to which you refer, I've noticed, is in regard to interactions with civil authorities in games. I have found that many young RPGers feel entitled to having the GM hand wave consequences with authorities; something I never do.

While we're on the subject of PDFs, if any of you talk to the people at Chaosium, you might also mention their improving the quality of the PDFs in general, particularly breaking large books into multiple PDFs. It's very difficult to use Chaosium PDFs on tablets, netbooks, etc. because Google Drive can't preview them as they are too large. It would also be nice to have hot links in the index, etc.

No, I meant the game you were talking about.

A friend of mine is a DragonQuest player, and I'm interested in inviting him to my BRP games. Therefore, I'm wondering how similar DragonQuest is to other D100 games? Is it a derivation of BRP? I know it is based on D100 rolls.

I think this might be the best explanation I've seen of the benefits of BRP, although the one exception I'd take is that I think Call of Cthulhu shows that BRP is just about the best narrativist system there is.

No problem, nclarke. Maybe some other time.

Ah, sorry Slade. So you did. Well, now the point has been emphasized. Paul

I'm posting to let everyone know that I've created a new Meetup group in Los Angeles, California for anything and everything Lovecraftian. Initially, I wanted to start a group to organize Call of Cthulhu games, but I want to leave the participation open to any Lovecraftian events (e.g. movies, readings, social gatherings, etc.). You can view the Meetup here. Our first get-together is December 22nd at the Federal Bar in North Hollywood. I hope to get to meet some of you there.

Something no one else has mentioned is that BRP is also really good at preventing "munchkin"-style players from "gaming" the system. Since there are no feats/advantages/edges, players can't stack bonuses in order to engineer a character that breaks the game or requires the GM to implement power inflation. This also contributes to the flow and pace of the actual game since there are fewer times the game has to stop to look up rules. Most of book digging that happens in other systems is the result of feats/advantages/edges, etc.

Hmm, well that explains the part that says to divide the percentage. I notice the example didn't subtract 20% first though. Perhaps the new rule is to subtract the 20% first, then divide the remaining percentage into the number of melee participants, and if you role equal to or under the lowest, you hit your target?