Enpeze

Real life is also unbalanced. Its really hard even for a martial artist to take out muscular, trained guys and this finds not enough reflection in the BRP rules. And to counter this I came up with this idea. Its not a real armor protection. I would rather call it absorption, because its only against unarmed combat and similar damage and not against normal weapon damage. With subtracting the targets damage bonus from your unarmed damage roll I think it is dealing with the problem. It can also be applied if you like to hit an animal with your hands or feet. Eg you kick a bear in BRP (Cthulhu now rules) and martial arts. You are trained and have +1d4 damage bonus. So you have 2d6+1d4 damage, an average of 9,5, The hide of a bear absorbs just 2 points I guess) This means in average a damage of 7,5 goes through. And this is totally unrealistic, because one slightly above the average kick in the stomach will take out the bear and two will maybe kill him. Not so, if you subtract the damage bonus of the bear (2d6) from your kick damage only an average of 2,5 goes through, which seems much more plausible to me. Applying such a rule means also that only a strong person (or martial artist with double damage skill) will in average be able to damage another strong person with unarmed combat. Criticals brawl rolls are an exception, because like as always "armor" will be passed by. Another reason for this simple little homerule was that you can make brawling less lethal in many situations without having to introduce many other rules.

well sadly the most progs in this direction are windose-only. I am mac fan and I hate to boot the "other side" of my mac up just in order to use the windose progs. I think I will use parallels again for this in the future. At least I dont have to reboot my beloved OSX the whole time with this tool. What a shame.

Excellent idea. the only prob is if in play reality the FP amount is not too much for bookkeeping. But I like it and I think I will try this rule in one of my next games. How does FP regenerate in your rule? How do you like the idea that you subtract the targets STR bonus (eg. 1d4, 1d6) from the damage you do with non-lethal weapons or brawl? Would simulate the "tough" and trained guys are more difficult to damage in hand-to-hand combat.

Yep you are right. This would be an ideal, but in reality its not practicized. At least I dont know any groups which play today a gritty, harsh game and tomorrow a carebear game for flashy heroes. Either they think this type of game is fun or the prefer the other. Not both. Maybe sometimes there might be a change in playing style over the years, but but its rather a developement and not a matter of free choice which style you use.

Well the definition of a "good time" varies from group to group, I guess. My group associate "having a good time" with having intense experiences, choices, good acting and an immersive rather "realistic" world. (if you can say roleplaying and realism in one sentence) This implies death of unlucky or careless PCs too. Otherwise it would be unreal and would feel artificial. During the last 20 years I played sometimes such "carebear" games as player where our GM didnt let die the players because they were friends, husbands etc. or claiming that we "all want to have a good time (blablah)..." and they were not fun at all for me. (I had no good time with such games) They were not believeable, lack in authenticity and I always had the feeling that they were just shallow caricatures.

So we can really hope that BRP will not change its design philosophy and try to please everybody.

I played several years ago a similar CoC game. (without much mythos, but much spanish flair)

Well you want to create "realistic" firearm rules and then apply them to cinematic and heroic environments? What sense has this? That you can play invincible-80HP-Neo-Bruce-Willis-dogde-the-bullet but your poor enemies will be subject to realistic damage?

Yep. Most CoC players I know and deal with have the same indirect style. If you play action and combat oriented your PCs end will come soon. (maybe in the first session)

You mean the lighter fire weapons? Maybe they dont deal half HP always but in reality those weapons lack stopping power too, no? Well you are right. My players learned it the hard way to stay away from frightening things. (tommy guns included) Play the rules as they are, dont fudge dice is my motto. I dont differentiate between PCs and NPCs. Every entity gets a POWx1 luck roll as "intuition-save" shortly prior to the assassination attempt. If it succeeds, the assassination becomes just a normal attack. There are one or two additional rules too, but this would lead too far. In this I fear we have to disagree. Maybe we have different conceptions was realism is? Well I didnt play one of these games. I read Corps and harnmaster. So I had not the impression that one of it is much more realistic than BRP. Maybe harnmaster is on par with BRP but at the expense of more complex rules and a higher learning curve, but corps? Well if I play official modules then only those from Pegasus Press in Germany. And these are absolutely great. There are some with emphasis on combat too, but often they are offering multiple path to success and you can often solve the thing without much combat. Using the BRP system of CoC (modified) for other settings is not a big deal for me. I do it the whole time. Its simple. Everyone in our group knows the rules (at least they pretend ). We love the intuition behind rolling everything with d100, the grittyness of the system, and we all dont like traditional level based systems or dice pools at all. So BRP serves our needs perfectly. Many years ago I played a JB game. It was not my liking (too cinematic). For modern warfare you may be right.

I never claimed this. This theoretical idea about average is not really useful. Especially if you dont define in forefront of the discussion which parameter your "average" includes. Well then lets agree that we not agree. Reading the postings back the more the more I feel that its a trench war, which neither side will win. Has not much sense for me. I bail out.

What do you think what a character in BRP does if he looses half of his HP? Making a CON roll or fall down. This is enough to simulate "stopping power". Additionally creating one or two additional rules should be solve the problem for those who like it more complex. And suppression comes automatically if you fire fast shots against a target, provided it is sane enough to duck and cover immediately. Not in my games. Maybe this is because I dont normally use CoC monster extensively. (rather humans as opponents) Additionally there is not much combat in my CoC games. Players tend to avoid combat because they know it could be very nasty and deadly to them. Its more an investigate the secrets of supernatural, dark mood game. Yeah in this I agree with you. I resolved this problem with a small house rule (a skill called "assassination (05%)". No. CoC is much more realistic than d20. Alone to have such thoughts is a crime. Beware of the BRP-police. Obviously you think that realism comes only with rule complexity. But as far as I know this is in only one exceptional case true. And this exception is Gurps. It seems Gurps is the system of choice for the atgxtg in you who likes complex games. You said above that it all depends on playing style, no? So why do you think that everybody employs a playing style of "surviving long enough to go insane"? This is too "gun-nerdy" for me. In my other modern games I didnt even distinguish between the different calibers. Only light and heavy pistols. Worked perfectly for our group.

I didnt read the whole thread back, but there is no doubt that you are favoritizing the sword. Maybe its more my poor wording in english, because I am not so adept in your native tongue. Sorry for this, I am trying to improve. I think as long there is no definition about what this discussion is really about we cannot come to a conclusion. IMO the sword has many advantages and and spear also. So its a draw and which of the weapons is better depend on circumstances like -fighting against cavalry or from horseback -cost of the weapon -which techlevel has the weaponsmith? which material is it? -weight (how many miles do the soldier have to carry it before battle?) -unit tactics -against which enemies is it used? -flexibility in different terrains -learning curve in weapon training So each weapon has its time for use. It cannot just be a rough generalization: this or that weapon is superior. It depends on the specific situation.

And this leads us to the multifunctional usability of a short sword like the gladius, no? its realtively cheap for mass producing, offers a reliable perfomance in different environments (woods, plains and others), has not much ENC, and makes a perfect weapon for advanced roman tactics. I didnt read the whole discussion, so may I ask if somebody already had defined if we speak about secondary effects (like those mentioned above) too in the comparision between the effectiveness of sword or spear?

I am sure you will get used to check the other forums too. BTW: I think the idea to open a forum (or more of them) for BRP fans only is absolutely phantastomatic! Thanks alot Trifle for this wonderful place for discussion and chilling out.

I think they want to circumvent bigger setting books (and bigger production risk and cost) at first, which I find a good idea. Also its easier to check which setting the customers are liking if you compare just the selling numbers of the different booklets. If more than one setting is in one single book/box its difficult to learn which the customers prefer. "Customers feedback" per wallet and not per poll.

Great! And which setting will it be?

I differentiate between detail in the rules and a detailed setting. While I dont like the first, the second I welcome.

I guess Gygax was once in Austria or another European country and visited one of our medieval military collections (like the Zeughaus in Graz which has one of the largest medieval weapon collections of the world) There you can see hundreds of those polearms weapons Gygax was so fond of. His weapon list in AD&D was so ridicolous like the rest of this rule system.

Well, the romans used their pilum for throwing so soften up their enemies from distance. After throwing the pilum, they draw the gladius and fought with it. (but I am sure they used the pilum from time to time in close combat too...) Its interesting that the roman infantry as one of the most successful armies in history didnt use the spear or a lance. Instead they used gladius and spatha combined with shield as their main armament. (The cavallery and the cohors equitatae has been the exception to this. They used a medium spear - the hasta - in close combat from horseback) The romans has been surely experts in fighting techniques (and tactics as well) so I think they knew why they did issue a sword and not a spear as main weapon to their legionaires.

Yep. This would be a modern solution.

I like Time Cop too. (despite Claude van Damme) It has some interesting ideas. A brilliant (but not well known) movie about time manipulation is the "Butterfly Effect".

Aha. Just producing some nice teasers and then looking what the customers are interested in. And those settings will be supported with additional material. Looks like a good idea. Maybe they made a successful economics check and added 6% to their original skill of 20%. The only difficulty could be to find good writers for this. How about you Jason? Ahem...what are you planning in the next 10 years? (OMG I hope these teasers will not be monographs, :eek:)

I dont like monographs. I am working in the print business and it hurts my eyes if I see one of these booklets. 25years ago I made fanzines which looked better.

How about Blue Planet? Quite hard SF but with interesting creative twists and profundly researched in its scientific background. As far as I know, its in the hands of Fantasy Flight Games at the moment. Its original rule system is not that bad and rather gritty. (but no BRP of course) So a conversion should be easy.