Enpeze

It isn't that BRP is too deadly to be historically accurate, it is that BRP is killing people too quickly to be historically accurate.

Sorry my fault. I meant exactly this. I used just the wrong words which gave the opposite impression. Maybe I should better proofread my posts before sending.

In BRP once a wound has been inflicted, damage rolled, and the effects applied that particular "injury" is over. The player doesn't have to worry about it coming back to haunt him. There is little chance for a delayed fatality. Basically in BRP if you can get someone to a Doctor, the wound wasn't lethal in the first place. There is a bunch of info on terminal wound ballistics and it all points to dispelling the myth that guns usually kill right away.

This is correct. But I see BRP rather as skeleton and not as "world simulator" capable to simulate every situation. (like IMO the makers of Gurps see their 500p rulemonster)

No, BRP provides the rule tools to simulate many situations but it does not prevent the players from time to time to use common sense for solving a problem and making house rules or adhoc rules. And I think that problems like "haunting injuries", gangrene etc. are falling in this cathegory. Only because they are not adressed yet in the BRP rules, this means not that they should not be part of a BRP game, especially a non-cinematic.

I liked always both methods. Call me a fanboy

Without modifiers if I am in a lazy mood and with modifiers if I am not. I like even the RQ2 modifiers of 5% steps.

I cannot see the problem, some people have with the stats and the "unusefulness" in their eyes. In my games we have the following extremely important uses for stats:

-description of the character varies, so its a BIG difference if I play a APP9 character or a APP14 character

-reaction rolls of NPCs according to APP, INT etc. checks of a character

-damage bonus/STR - I dont know many games where STR is that important for additional melee damage than in BRP

-STR/DEX melee weapon requirements - not many games have such harsh restrictions on wielding certain weapons

-Luck rolls. I use them the whole time - at least 5 times per session

-idea rolls. The same as above.

-DEX initiative, each point counts and decide between life and death

-CON checks if one players looses half his HP. Additional used for general health and endurance checks all the time...VERY important

-etc, etc.

So I would really like to know how those who say that they have not much use for stats, play their games? I dont really understand this. For our games the stats have the same important place than skills and attribute skill modifiers and sometimes are even more used.

I can get along easily without one of those +7% attribute bonus in a skill group, which are nice to have but not really essential for gaming. but I can never get along without using stats. NO WAY.

I also think that the reason why BRP has such a bad reputation is the fact that the GMs/players dont get much support from the rulebook HOW to use the BRP tools (ATT rolls, resistance table etc.) during their games.

The tools are genius if properly used and not broken. But there a too few examples in the handbook how to use them and GMs and players are left alone to find it out for themselves. I hope the new BRP book helps to eliminate this problem.

My question is this: Does the magic system more resemble CoC/Stormbringer, or is each spell a skill, like in Magic World or Runequest?

Jason said that he used the magic system from WoW where each spell is a skill AND a second system with the sorcery from SB5 (not the demon summoning from SB5, just the spells)

Yup. That's why I was in the "hit locations make BRP Less deadly" camp. Even if someone is "gonna die" they usually have a few rounds where they can be saved through First Aid.

Of course Major Wounds will do the same sort of thing for BRP.

But my argumentation is based on the assumption that in order to play a cinematic western game you probably only need to double the amount of hitpoints for PCs to achieve the effect you want and not to introduce fate points while letting the hitpoints as they are.

Your argument was that lethality rate in wild west was historically not so high (indirectly saying the BRP is too deadly to be historically accurate) and that fate points would correct this problem. Which led me make the comment that this true but only because there have been not many duels in history and that the "western games" which your improvement suggestion is adressed to, are purely pulp and cinematic and thus not much historical. (indirectly saying that I think your assumption that a "western game" should be historically accurate by reducing the lethality of BRP is not right)

D&D and other mainstream roleplaying incorporated the work of many classic fantasy authors. Maybe we can say that Moorcock had alot of influence with his concept of law, balance and chaos on our hobby. And he redefined the role of the wizard in Fantasy literature and roleplaying by introducing a fighter-mage as the readers main identification figure.

But sadly the concept of an complex antihero was and is still not well received by the majority of the roleplaying audience. (which shows that most roleplayers are simple escapists not even trying to enrich their hobby with something "different")

So, I'm the only one here to play Rolemaster and SpaceMaster?

Well I tried to play ICE Cyberspace - the dystopian version of spacemaster - some years ago, but after several games I gave up on the complex rules and converted the setting to BRP. It was much better thereafter and we were able to continue to play in the formiable setting for another 2 years.

So if you want to play "how it really was" then you need to reduce the instant kill rates.

Well if playing with hitlocations, instant kills are not that often. Except you hit a vital location, you dont die with one pistol shot. And if you hit a vital location there is a good chance that you dont die and only be out of action.

Another story is if play it without locations of course.

Not really. Even with a low amount of gunfighting, the results don't change, just the frequency. Sooner or later weapons will be used, at least somewhat. Once that happens it is simply a case of mathematics. With no armor to speak of an no parry, and limited dodging, the casualty rate will be high. Much higher than it was historically.

You are right. The casuality rate was not high. But rather because there have not been many situations with duellists and gunfighting in high noon. The whole bloodthirsty genre is an invention of cheesy pulp mags and some clever Italians. So if you play a "western game" then you just copy cheap movies and comics but not how it really was to live in the 19th wild west.

I think it also has to do with the setting you are gaming in. For instance, some of us have been discussing using BRP for an Old West game. Problem is, weapon damagfes are high (actually too high) and there is no armor. So most fights will endup with someone dying after the second of third shot, with little in the way the can do for defense (Dodge is both low and limited).

A Hero Point option is one way around that. Otherwise the setting really isn't playable. You will simply end up loosing too many PCs.

I think BRP is not the right system for a Western game if you play it out of the box. At least not if this western game should be along the lines of some unrealistic genre movies. For such games I would suggest to double hitpoints for PCs. Should improve their survival rate. (not that I would be ever interested to play in such a heresy )

Ah. Yeah, we pretty much decided to dump impales as such, but will probably have a special success chart or benefit of some type. Basically the double damage on impales made the condensed damage vales a nightmare. TO make something proof against a 5.56 round, I'd need 32 points of armor, putting it beyond the ability of a .60 cal to penetrate without an impale.

good idea. Especially the special success chart. (but also some extra work)

Me too. by BRP seems to follow a quadruple the thickness, double the AP rule. If 2" of steel plate has 19AP in CoC, then I can't have 1.5 inches of aluminum with a higher AP value. Oh, if it helps, I was thinking that modern firearms would punch through most medieval armors, so roughly count the APs as half, or subtract 5 or so. I can't see medieval plate stopping a 9mm or .357 round. So 8 point plate was only worth 4 or 5 points would the APC look better?

Yes of course. But in this case, you should consider to introduce "tech levels" like Gurps and splitting the equipment to different "eras". So a modern era 8 AP armor would be effectively 16 AP vs. lower techs like medieval era crossbows. And vice versa a medieval armor has only half value against modern weapons.

As far as I can reverse engineer, the formula for APs in BRP is

Armor Value: Square root of thickness (in millimeters) x type factor

Type Factor

Metal (steel) 2.7

Concrete 0.75

Hardwood 0.50

It is the condensed curve the BRP uses that keeps the AP low. Realistically the APC would have about 50 times the AP of medieval plate armor for 400 AP, but BRP doesn't use a linear scale for damage so it has to compress the damage values for weapons to keep them in line. Actually I think it was done the other way around. That is, in order to keep the weapon damages in the ranges that they wanted, the had to scale down the APs to match.

The problem with double SIZ as hit points it that we have tanks with 180 hit pints, behind 70 point armor in a game where a 120mm AP round is doing around 20D6 damage. Since most of the mass IS the armor, then I think the APs should be higher than the HP, otherwise you are counting the Armor twice.

For instance if a M1A2 tank masses 65 tons, but 40tons of that is armor, thenit is really a 20 ton (SIZ77) vehicle with 70 APs or armor (more against HEAT). So AP70/HP45 looked good.

This would be definately the way to go. In this case I agree to your construction and will use it in my games. (if you allow )

Maybe +1 point of damage per 10 or 20 points in the skill? That would be cool in my book!

I dont think this is the best way to go. A better skill does already improve your ability to place aimed shots in lethal zones like head or chest. So a high skilled shooter is already deadlier when he use the spot rules for "aimed shots". Enhancing it further would make not much sense, IMO.

Does anyone know where you can find a website that has generic stats for NPCs and what not? Such as police officers, librarians, soldiers, scientists and others.

SB5 has generic stats for fantasy NPCs included. I dont know a source about contemporary NPCs. The CoC adventure books are at best a mixed bag because it seems to portray more the individual preferences of the authors than a common standard, so I would not use it as valid reference. OTOH you can maybe use those books for inspiration.

In my games I use the following skill levels

green: 0-40

standard: 40-60

veteran: 60-80

elite: 80+

I just want to add 3 reasons why IMO you should really buy SB5. (maybe as cheap PDF)

1. Because of the demon/elemental summoning rules. They are great IMO and fully compatible with the new DBRP. Additional you should buy the bronze grimoire because of the rune magic rules and a lot of other SB5 compatible spells.

DBRP provide just the simple sorcery rule part from SB5, but only the SB5 core rule book has the full system. Maybe there is a magic book with summoning rules for DBRP coming out in the next years but we dont know this for sure.

2. Additionally the chargen of SB5 should be compatible with DBRP and is centered on creating fantasy characters while DBRP seems generic. Maybe you get some ideas and inspiration for your fantasy games out of it.

3. A third reason is that I really like the artwork. Its the best of all SB books up to now.

Where did you get the 4d8 for the assault rifle?

2d8 doubled for impale.

As for the impale chance, it had been decided to drop them against vehicles.

Basically with the way the weapon damages are compressed in CoC if we allow impales then there is no way to make something vulnerable to .50 cal round without making it susceptible to rifle rounds.

aha....ok. Nonetheless I think that an 10t APC with only a few AP more than the max protection of a medieval plate armor is odd.

As for the low HP, that was because I used SIZ/2 as the base, to match up with CoC values (the only book that gives vehicle HP for BPR that I know of). The I used the HP per location mulitpliers from RQ3 when I did the hit locations.

.

Maybe for a civilian car from 1920 SIZ/2 probably would fit, (and I think that the CoC values had such cars in mind) but a modern military vehicle should have a different basic formula than SIZ/2. Eg. for modern military vehicles I would assume double SIZ as HP, for modern civilian vehicles normal SIZ and only for ancient vehicles like 1920 cars or horse coaches SIZ/2.

I believe this dates from an abstraction used in the early GDW boardgames which more or less preceded Traveller (Imperium springs to mind - I can't remember what it's very first incarnation was called), when simple tabletop gameplay was the goal. Unfortunately the whole Jump Number system is pretty tied in to space remaining 2d, so it's more difficult to fix than you might think (believe me, I've tried...).

It was Imperium. There has not been a "first incarnation". It was planned as trilogy. Only 2 parts appeared. Imperium and Dark Nebula. And you are absolutely right that the 2D maps are coming from this game. Maybe they found these maps easy to use and fun enough for the roleplaying game. This shows that our hobby has its roots in wargaming. Eg. the Braunstein games in the 60ties of G. Gygax gaming group where the participants played whole countries on a ping-pong table sized map.

One of the things I always wondered about traveller is that it makes extensive use of totally non-science parts like 2D maps incorporating the cosmic law of "1 main planet every 2 parsecs". Traveller also uses cheesy alien species (dogmen, catmen and horsemen in space) which seem to come out of a pulp mag of the 50ties. Additionally there seems to be almost no scientific progression the last few thousand years despite having myriards of scientists working in the Imperium. Even the cheesy alien races dont have any remarkable innovative and unique technologies.

OTOH the traveller fans pretend that the setting is mostly "hard SF". I find this laughable. Its not more hard SF than Buck Rogers. Its only created 40 years later and with more stuff available.

Real hard SF settings are 2300aD, Transhuman Space and Blue Planet. (although even these settings needs some handwavium)

APC looks good, but the AP seem a little bit too low for such a war machine. Especially if you see that a full medieval plate armor in SB can absorb 1d10+2 HP going up to 12. So to assign an APC 14-20 seems too low. Additional an assault rifle can do up to 4d8 damage (average 18) with 1/5 impale chance. This would mean that alot of shots would penetrate an M113s armor in case of a firefight. I guess they designed the machine in a way that it pentrations by small arms fire is not that often. (but I am no military expert, of course)

I would give it more APs (average of 22-30) and to compensate this I would give special armor piercing ammo the ability to half this armor number.

Also as Shaira already mentioned the HP number of 25 seems rather low. An average crocodile of 4m has 22-23 HP.

I find your new avatar strangely disturbing btw.

Sorry for this, but you know its one of the 1000 masks of my master. >:->

I've always considered SIZ to be lean mass, rather than gross mass.

For me its just mass measured in pounds/kg as in the SB rulebook mentioned. Maybe in RQ its a little bit different, because high SIZ is also length and improves the SR.

I would consider anything over 24 in the superhuman range. STR, CON, and SIZ for humans have a maximum of 18, but DEX and APP (or CHA) can be trained up to a human maximum of 27. The maximum POW for humans is 21. SIZ and INT can only be improved through magical means.

Well all these ATT ranges are just rough recommendations for a human standard. Even in our world there are exceptions to this standard. Eg. a 800 pound fat man has surely more than SIZ 18. And strong men which can deadlift up to 1000 pound are surely stronger than STR 18.

So the term "superhuman" is just for convenience but I would not take it literally. I would rather use data from the BRP bestiary to have an idea which attributes a Talislanta beast/race can have.

I'm confused...

Nothing new I realise, but will the soon-to-be-released BRP rules have a full suite of rules to tackle far future games, a bit like Traveller? So, in addition to weapons and spaceships will it have star system creation rules? I am looking to start a Traveller-like game in the new year and I'm trying to decide which system to use - BRP or the Mongoose Traveller. I fear the new version of Traveller will make my potential players recoil in horror. They are used to CoC rules and other systems are not viewed favourably.

Cheers

Depends on what you mean with "full suite". It will have some futuristic equipment and weapons, but I am sure not with traveller in mind. OTOH it should be no problem to modify the BRP/CoC rules for traveller. I did this several years ago and we really loved it.

I don't think it is either. I'm sure lots of companies get submissions from fans and don't have the time or staff to answer all of them. It is probably something like, run the company or answer fan mail.

I never experienced this. I always got replies if I wrote to one of the hobby companies out there.

I think there should be always one minute to give a short email answer to one of your customers. This is called customer relation and Chaosium seem to lack this basic service concept. Having no time is no excuse. I also have to manage my time in my job but I would never ever dare not to answer a business email.

Well, maybe we should then call the thread

"worst well known fantasy books ever written".

Hm. I vote for the Shannara books from Terry ...ähem...whatever

Its a strange and impolite behaviour to not answer a mail from a fan. I mean Chaosium lifes from their fans and not vice versa.

:ohwell:

BRP Fading Suns would be sweet indeed

r

Yes. Maybe someone with alot of time and money could adapt it for us.