Enpeze

Well...

I rather view it as an artifact of the system. DEX is a combination of agility and manual dexterity. SIZ is a combination of height and weight.

If you're a big guy or gal, you're going to control the movement options in your immediate area. If you're dealing with an extended movement contest, you're going to have to deal with CON checks. I view 'fatman' as a character with a high SIZ and a low CON. I also think Aragorn (who is tall and healthy) can cover more ground than Frodo (who is short and healthy). Hence, the houserule.

After POW, SIZ is the strongest stat in BRP. It affects both damage bonus and hit points. Anyone who wants to 'game' the system is goning to put points in SIZ, and not for a high MOV stat.

I think STR is the most important ATT for fast sprints and CON for longer joggings. Eg. its fascinating that very strong trained guys in real life are also excellent sprinters, even without a sprint training.

I dont think that DEX has much to do with running, at least not how I interprete this stat. SIZ could improve MOV but only if it is just limb lenght (like many of these marathon joggers from Africa have long limbs) and not body fat. But the interpretation may vary from GM to GM. (or even character to character)

Regarding SIZ which affects HP and damage. I think the official interpretation is clear going into direction body mass and not limb lengh/height. OTOH the RQ strike ranks is going in direction limb lenght and height. A contradiction.

There was a children's TV series in the UK years and years ago called Tucker's Luck, a spin off from Grange Hill, and the main character was invitied to play a game of AD&D. He rolled up a warrior and the DM asked him whar he wanted to do against a foe. Tucker said he wanted to "Nut him" and they all recoiled in horror and said "You can't do that" so he quit the game.

All us RQ fans watching said "He could have nutted him in RQ doing 1D6 + DB damage".

So, don't belittle the Head Butt attack!

Ok, but at least after a head butt the involved parties should suffer from reduced INT rolls for some minutes and from an extra orientation roll.

THis one is for those with a copy of the game.

What are the MOVE rates in BRO, and how does that relate to the distance a character can cover in a melee round?

I read that Humans have MOVE 10, Horse MOVE 12, but do they give a MOve rate for a vehicle?

Just wondering so I can get the vehicle Move rate in line with the character rates.

Interesting question. Its time for a handy linear speed/Move table. In Gurps there is one such table and cleverly its combined with minus modifiers on shooting. (shooting at moving targets with different speed and shooting if the shooter is moving itsself with a certain speed)

If no one answers before I get home from work I'll pull out the book and give you an answer.

As a side note, I never liked how Move was assigned a number. I houseruled that Move=(Dex + Siz)/2. It works well.

SIZ? then maybe some people would like to play fatman in your game.

Yeah. But I don't think BRP is going to lean towards pulp. If I wanted to do a pulpy western, I'd probably go with Spirit of the Century.

I totally agree with you .

Can we pull the Wild West stuff from this thread into another thread? It's interesting but hasn't got a lot to do with Fate Points.

:focus:

I think the wild west stuff has to do with the question Fate Points or not. The genre Western in its heroic and pulpy mask is not that different from other typical roleplaying genres like sword and sorcery or space opera. The approach of the story is similar, also the typical distribution of character roles etc. So if conan frees his imprisioned princess (farmers daughter) or if barbarian bran mak morn kills the evil sorcerer (or the evil rancher) at the end of every story, it does not make much difference. But the question for me is, if BRP is suited for this type of action or not. I dont think so, but other BRP fans surely do. So if I am wrong (I think I am not, but lets this assume for the discussion) it remains the question how the very essence of such a pulp hero (western, eastern, space oper or S&S) should be portrayed. Double+ PC hitpoints like I suggested or a Fate point model ala WFRP.

Another question which is important is how cinematic gaming and pulp gaming is dependent and influencing each other. Are cinematic games automatically pulp games? Are they even the same? If yes, then the BRP without Fate Points or double PC hitpoints is probably not usable for cinematic roleplaying games. (see above) the logical consequence is to use another rule system for such type games. (maybe SotC or Savage World)

Indeed. And the poblem with variables is that they vary.

Personally, I'm getting fond of pdfs with clear plastic covers and a plastic spiral binding. It is durable, water resistant when closed, and can be laid down flat.

another great advantage of pdf is that you can print out only the needed parts of the book and then give it to your players.

I can't remember when exactly I ordered mine. I think it was the Thursday before free shipping expired.

My book shipped USPS Media Mail and was shipped on the 19th. I received it on the 22nd. It is number 30. It arrived in perfect condition.

I thought I read somewhere that they had trouble with there ordering system before they got things straitened out. So it sounds like those who put their orders in first had to wait while they fixed things while those that placed their order later had everything go smoothly and therefore quicker.

How do you like it?

Quick question. What is SotC?

Shadows of the Century I guess. (one of those new rule systems)

Depends on how puply you want to make it. Plus there is the fact that most wild animals are no real threat. In an RPG you can only have the hero run out of ammo, drop his gun down a crevass, and such a handful of times before the players have had enough.

I always thought, pulp is non-simulationistic. Its hero-centric and the story is bended around the hero. (to enable another story with the same hero in the next magazine) He has to survive or the reader (or player) is not satisfied. Even in not-so-pulpy westerns like tombstone there are scenes where the villain is able to fire at least 20 shots with 2 pistols without reloading. In italian pulp westerns the hero (or villain) is able to kill 1 person per second with one shot. How do one want to play such impossibilities out in the BRP rules? (I dont really understand why some people want to play these pulpy hero things, thus the question of "how" is only a theoretical one)

So the solution (also for the sake of a good roleplaying game) for this dilemma is to play a mix of pulp and simulation - as you seem to suggest in your post. For me the answer is clear. 80% simulation, 20% pulp. For others it may be the reverse.

Relaoding most weapons was a slow, time consuming process.

Now run one of those "band of injuns attack the settlers" type western stories and see how the characterstics of the firearms would make a big difference.

Prior to the 1870s or so the settlers are going to have a hard time keeping enough weapons loaded to fend off those "injuns".

I am not against detailed weapon data, especially if they are researched for a scenario which is focusing on those differences in ammo etc. (and having the right ammo at the right place is a matter of live and death) But I just do not see the necessity of detailed weapon data in a typical pulpy western scenario, where it is clear that the hero kills 6 black hats in 6 seconds with head shots. (right ammo or not...)

Custer probably wound have won at Little Bighorn if he had waited for his gatling guns.

If Custer has been a pulp hero he would surely have won Little Bighorn - just with his bare fists.

In many ways the guns stuff is far more important story wise than the "critters' stuff. About 95% of the critters in the Old West, as anywhere else, have enough sense to stay clear of humans, and only attack when threated. I've got stats in the works for coyote's and bobcats, but they probably won't be needed much. More along the lines of sneaking onto the ranch after chickens or sheep.

Why? If you play a pulp western game, there should be hungry wolves, snakes and bears behind every second corner. No need to hide them.

I mean

preambel: riding through the town

scene 1: duel with 6 black hats (needless to say - hero wins),

interim: riding through the desert

scene 2: ambush of 6 hungry kojotes (of course hero kills them),

interim: riding to the ranch

scene 3: final shootout on the evil villains ranch (hero wins again killing 6 black hats, 1 bear hiding behind the corner plus 1 evil villain - but unfortunately hero receives a small wound from the evil villains Colt .45 Peacemaker MkIV/D7A superspecial - just to have a use for all the carefully researched gun data)

scene 4: rescue of the farmers daughter (of course she falls in love with hero)

interim: riding with girl into the sunset

Personally, I've only ever had a few minor issues with the BRP represented in Call of Cthulhu (not enough for me to stop considering it as my favourite game, though!). However:

- I didn't see the need for Characteristic SAN (you already have POW).

- I felt that the Characteristic values needed to be integrated with skills better, and to have more definable worth.

- I felt that the skills listed needed formatting better.

Looking through the photos, it very much looks like all these issues have been emphatically resolved. And there's even what looks like some sort of personality profiling too, which is a pleasant bonus! Definitely, a case of getting back to Basic!

My biggest rule gripe (beside the idiotic skills "head butt" and "kick" with 1d6 damage) about CoC has been that a character has only a parry OR an attack per turn, but not both. (exception swords and -oids AFAIR) This sounded very "un-BRP" and I never used it.

I would prefer a hardback too, even at increased costs.

(Sorry I missed this comment eariler..l.).

Actually, most people did. While the image of the Old West has Cowboys and Gunfighters packing six-guns, history is different. Not everyone carried a revolver. Just about everybody carried a knife. For every gunfight, we had dozens of knife fights.

If we wanted to be completely true to history, we should probably drop gunfighters and cowboys from the profession tables. Just too rare. It seems that at their heyday there were less than 40,000 Coybows in the Old West. That is about 1 person per 1000, at best.

This is one of the reasons why I never liked the Western genre. (too artificial, immature and hero-centric )

Looking at my copy, I am concerned about the Control spell. Am I reading this right?

One level cost one Power Point and allows you to take control of one person with a POW vs. POW roll. If successful "This control is total - the target cannot speak or perform any voluntary action other than those specified by your character."

It says nothing about actions that the character might be violently opposed to, such as drawing his own dagger and slitting his own throat, or forcing a mother to toss her baby in front of a speeding carriage. This seems pretty harsh for just one power point!

Add more levels and it just gets worse! 5 power points and you can have 5 people commit suicide simultaneously! :eek:

In the hands of a villain with a high POW this can be a total party kill in one round.

Is this being changed in the final draft? I was thinking maybe the spell could only effect one person and each level of the spell allowed you to effect 3 POW. So in order to effect a person with 14 POW you would need to put 5 points into the spell AND overcome his POW with a resistance test.

Oh, also I was thinking of allowing a resistance roll every round to break out. Plus another one if you wanted to force someone to do something really horrible. So it would take three rolls to get someone to commit suicide. First roll to get him under control, then next round he would try to break free (subconsciously of course) then you would command him to kill himself. He would make a final resistance roll, if he failed that, he's dead.

Well that spell sounds "overpowered". But with your multiple resistance rolls, I think you found a good solution to counter this.

Cthulhu Rising yes. Gamed my first CR scenario yesterday.

SGL.

and? How was it?

I would like source books as pdf. Core book dead wood of course (and pdf)

But I would be surprised if Chaosium has the will/skill to do this. It seems they still live in the 80ties of the past century. (see Chaosiums obvious problems of handling email) Well at least they make good games. Thats what really counts.

CR? What is CR?

Cthulhu Rising I guess.

Reading the threads can be a bit of a chore (specially as they are derailed multiple times). Simply check the Q&A summary in the wiki (clic here). It will save you a lot of time.

Yep. I forgot. The wiki is even better than the raw threads.

I haven't seen any kind of thread summing up what we can expect in the new BRP.

I'm hoping:

No hit locations.

Generic fantasy magic system. (with new systems easily tacked on).

A good bestiary.

Look at the 2 threads Q&A with Jason Dural to learn more about the new DBRP.

I see some purpose for the Luck roll, but to tell the truth I'm hard pressed to see any conceptual space for Idea rolls that isn't better served by some skill or another; in cases where no such skill that seems appropriate exists, I usually see that just as a sign that it _should_.

I, and other BRP GMs I know, use idea and luck rolls quite often. Of course it depends on your playing style as GM. If you have never used them in the past years, you probable have substituted these rolls by other mechanics. Or maybe you prefer to play games in which such situations dont come up.

In CoC adventures you can find many examples how idea and luck rolls are used.

Of course, I fully understand how people can think of them as cheating in some way, as you are rerolling dice or affecting what actually happened. But, quite a lot of the time the same people that dislike Fate/Hero Points have no problems with rolling dice secretly or fudging dice rolls. But, that's not cheating!!!

I have problems with fudging. I am against it. And I am against cheating. The gods of destiny will crush those who betrays them. (and take their stuff)

Maybe Chaosium are hoping one set of options will emerge as generally accepted, so they'll get a "generic, universal" system to build on...

I am sure this is one of reasons they want to release this book. Another nice reason is to have the best of the different versions reprinted and again available for everybody.

I mean the younger generation of gamers often dont have an idea what ringworld is and if you mention WoW they probably think "...wtf has World of Warcraft ^roflmao^ to do with those old farts with the dragon logo? °lol° 111! lfg ".

atg,

so it comes down again to the point of "playing style". Your style is to replace the use of ATT rolls by skill rolls. My style is to use both ATT and skill rolls. Up to this I dont have any problem. Everybody should use the style he likes most.

But in your previous post, you seem to explicitely make a statement (see below) which implies that there is something broken with the system because ATT are not important. And this generalizing statement I think is wrong. As I see it now after reading your answer, ATTs are only not important if someone plays BRP according to your playing style.

"atgxtg - One thing I don't like about CoC and most of Chaosium stuff based off of it is that except for hit points and damage bonus, you stats are meaningless. The statx5% rolls rarely came up, as there was usually a skill that replaced the stat roll. So if a character had a 13 or 17 Strength tended to make little difference. "

The problem is that solution creates its own problems, and doesn't address the fact that even in a _non_ cinematic game there's problems here; almost any Western game is going to expect a shootout a time or two unless its completely noncombat oriented, and as I've noted in the past, BRP either is overly forgiving or unforgiving; there's not a lot of middle ground. Without either hit locations or some type of major wound system, its overly forgiving to single strikes/shots, which are often simply incapable of killing someone; with them, a single bit of bad luck and you're done. The lack of armor and paranormal healing in a setting inflates the latter enormously.

Forgiving without hitlocations? Do you mean that its not easy to kill a person with a single shot? Hm. its a little bit more difficult I agree (not regarding impales which are often deadly), but isnt this like in reality, where the most victims of pistol shootings survive a single hit ?(only to die of gangrene) Another story is a rifle, of course. But rifles seem also in BRP very deadly. Eg. 2d8 assault rifle are often enough capable to kill with a single hit a 12 HP person. I am not a wound specialist, but this seems not unplausible.

So unless people are really prepared for sudden death any time a combat starts with firearms (in fact, unless they expect it) this is going to be a problem even in avowedly non-cinematic games.

For cinematic games I agree - never seen Bruce Willis dying suddenly during a fire combat. (only John Travolta but this another story) So I assume not do die in such a miserable way belongs to a real cinematic game.

But why should sudden death be a problem in non-cinematic environments (aka reality)? Or do you want to introduce a third type of game called "reality without sudden PC death"?