Enpeze

As I have already said, maybe you are right, but I am more on the minimalistic side now. And crappy BRP OGL products made some nerds seems like raping my favorite system. Regarding your example of Sceaptune material which is said to be of higher quality than those of Mongoose. Well I am not surprised to hear this, because this is easy and I am rather wondering that not more 3rd party companies have this reputation.

IMO, having d20 instead of d100 is not that big problem. I always thought that RQ2 could use d20 easily. I have been "grown up" with Midgard (till 1988) a german roleplaying game which used d20 as its main dice. If RQ and BRP had been designed using d20 instead of d100 and we got accustomed to this over the years, I dont think that our overall experience and way to play BRP would suffering. Pendragon as a spin off of BRP shows that our wonderful system can be played with other dice too. Really? If you look at the OGL d20 flood the past years where 99% of the material is crap, I am not sure if OGL is a good thing. Its good from a commercial POV maybe to proliferate the system, but for gamers (like me) which prefer qualtity over quantity its often difficult to find out the ones I like. Reviews from third parties are not everything. Often they dont reflect my taste and are biased. So I would rather like to have a 3-4 books with BRP-adventures per year from a reliable high quality source (like Chaosium or Pegasus Press) than dozens of books where the most are dreck. But maybe I am wrong in this aspect, I dont know. Maybe most of the ludicrous d20 crap books are just made by immature d20 fanboys and the guys which are going to release BRP OGL material are different.

I think conan has an excellent guardian angel with REH.

Yes, thats it should be. I dont see the necessity to hardwire the power of magic to the rules, especially to generic rules. Its a waste of valuable energy to balance things out, just because some say that "everybody should have fun". Fun? Please come on. My players and I dont have fun because magicians are well balanced in respect to fighters. They have fun because we play good adventures in a plausible world. And a good magical theory is one of the pillars of a plausible fantasy world. Thus each GM should first begin with the theoretical aspects of magic in this setting and not caring about the rules. Second are the implications of magic on the culture and the last should be some thoughts about rule mechanics. Or does anybody think that a good game which is powered by the S&S spirit of Hyborea does need balanced magics? No. It needs dark magic as it is described in the Conan books for example. (which is everything else than balanced)

another example how MRQ sucks: if a duck STR 8 is arm-wrestling a troll with STR 22 the duck wins most time if it has a higher athletics skill. This because attributes have only a marginal effect in MRQ. They killed the resistance table and attribute rolls and replaced it with their own crappy unbalanced skill comparision "system". In short MRQ is a mediocre home-brewn chimera between D&D and RQ. It was made by (former) D&D players which didnt value and understand the elegance of many BRP mechanics and who overestimated their own ability as game designer.

Well if one sees magic like in a D&D setting as technical tool to achieve the groups goals then balancing may be necessary. But if at all, its only for D&D fans or such groups which play a D&Doid game just with a different rule set I prefer the other way. First comes the theory behind magic, then how the people see magic and only finally (the least important part in magic creation) comes the spells or whatever the magic looks like in this particular setting. Thus I can avoid unlogical inconsistencies like "balancing" in my games. I think stormbringer1st ed. is an excellent example how to present magic: -the theory behind magic is that chaos enables it -every anti-chaos force therefore should shun magic -only an elite can use it - 32 POW+INT is really difficult to roll for humans -if you are one out of 100 PCs who rolls this and who is pro-chaos then you can use it. The problem is that you have to practice it in secret in most YK nations or maybe hide it to other (lawful) PCs and in the end you will have lost your soul to the chaos gods. the above example is if the GM wants to use the rules as they are written in SB1. These rules let sorcerers be very rare in SB and while more powerful than other players there are serious inherent trade offs and its not clear if a PC wants to that magic power at all, even if he fullfills the other requirements.

In this respect the little house rule of Trifle does work well, IMO. Those soldiers which are are coming back stressed just didnt manage their POWx5 roll. The CoC sanity model is quite good in simulating the specific horrors of the lovecraftian (or any similar) setting. But I dont think its an universally usable BRP mechanic.

which kind of ships do the travellers use? a kind of "sailship in space" (solar sails) or a more modern inspired vessel (eg. rocket) Is travelling between the shards common? Or are the PCs the only ones? Is the setting mixed with gothic or steampunk elements? (eg the robots minions powered by steam or hawkmoonish techno/magic crystals)

Sounds interesting. Does humanity still exists? If yes, how did they manage this? And how does the inhabitants of the "earth-shards" survive from a technical point of view? I mean if earth breaks apart then having such junks with survivors on it would be not very plausible. At least not without high tech support. I would be pleased to learn more about it. Thanks.

I really like your 1d10+10 rule and the shift rule. Both are very simple, one dont have to roll once more and they give some interesting results. I will try them out in our next game.

While you right in saying that there are vulnerable spots which reduce the effectiveness of protection, I think that you overestimate the ability to "aim" every hit in an active way. Having been a martial artist (jiu jutsu) for several years I know that there is often not much time to choose actively the spots where you want to hit. Then you have to react to mistakes and attacks of your sparring partner (or enemy) or to react to tactical situation. Then you do use techniques rather instinctively. So the way BRP presents combat with rolling the hitlocation may not be the most realistic, but is fully acceptable in an gaming environment, especially in combination with aimed blow spot rules.

Car chase or star chase? I dont think it matters that much. Just tweaking the rules a little bit. The cars do have HP and APs, (so should the starships too) and instead of investigators firing at fleeing cultistomobiles, you have gunners firing futuristic weapons firing at each others vessel or at space monsters or so.

I think you could create adequate space combat rules if you have first a look at the vehicle combat rules of CoC. Instead of cars, use some smaller space ship designs instead. Throw in space weapon systems, shields, sensors and additional crew skills. (every member of a crew - PCs - should be occupied in space combat with some tasks). Just an idea...

I think you are right. But one thing you forgot IMO: sensors. To "see" another ship or not is a matter of life and death in some space opera settings. This could be modelled like spot hidden skill or on the resistance table. (eg. sensor power 23 vs. ECM 20 or so)

Very good news, Jason. Congrats.:thumb:

In gaming reality most gamers play a lot more games with magic or psi included and not spaceship combat. So in theory you are right that magic is in the same class of "subsystem" as spaceship combat but in practice magic/psi is much more used. So I think it has more rights to be in the core rule book.

yes. The new Gurps Spaceships is quite good and I really like it. I bought it 2 weeks ago and i played a little bit around and constructed some traveller ships. You can construct nearly every type of space ship with them by attaching different "modules" to the hull. Gurps fans say its rather light in complexity but for me as rule minimalist its of considerable complexity. I am not so fond of the space combat chapter which seem unnecessary complex. But OTOH it has nice ideas how to give every player on a typical PC trader ship a specific role during combat. Maybe I should read it once more. It uses miles per second as speed and weapon range unit, but also cm for gun caliber.

Is fixed armor better or variable armor? This is not a question I care. I like both because both are pure BRP concepts and it depends on my mood and the specific setting which of the two armor variants I include for the module. Hey buddy, of course you will buy it, like us all. Where in the world do you get a collection of all great BRP rules in one single book? No more tedious searching in piles of old mould-infested elfquest booklets "damned where is this...hmm..mutation rule?"

Yes. Starship construction rules or starship combat really dont belong to a core rule book. Rather to a specific BRP space-opera expansion.

Very good. Maybe this good list should be made sticky.

many thanx for the info. I will try it out.

would be interesting. Unfortunately CCP (the Eve company) bought some months ago White Wolf. If ever a rpg with eve background comes out then I fear this will be with a clone of the idiotic dice pool system of WW. I am not sure about other MMORPGs (because I dont know them) BTW great remark about Blizzard and coffee. I take the liberty to integrate it into my collection if you dont mind.

No problem with me. In my post I just wanted to point out that "having good time" means different things for people.

Ok. I if I am ever over there I will visit you surely. (and your cats too ) I have been in the states one time, but only on the east coast (NY etc.) not in Seattle. Although in my youth a had friend coming from Seattle who was exchange pupil and lived in our house for several month. A nice guy.

Yeah. Several years ago I GMed a Landsknecht game (of course in BRP) and during recherche I learned this fact about the Doppelsöldner too. But eventually the tactic to chop spears is older and the was used from the antique on against a wall of spears.