Michael Hopcroft

PS - that would be a "fricken" magic-missile generator in the head.

Yes, I could put on a magic-missile generator. But getting it to frick will be the real challenge.

I got to visit the Yahoogroup today and managed to get my hands on the Creatures List it links to, download its contents into Excel, and voila! Critters galore!

I tried something right away, using copy-and-paste. There's a Dire Shark, and I wanted to see what I had to do to turn it into a Flying Shark. I added a Fly movement type so not it flies as fast as it can swim. And although I'm pretty happy with that idea (no points to worry about, at least not yet) I am bothered by Hit Locations for it -- because obviously it will be taking a lot of Called Shots to the wings.

I resisted the temptation to put a Magic Missile generator on its head.

In terms of D20/DnD conversions Sladsthesnipers comment is the prevailing attitude "This singular reduction from a pool of hundreds of hit points to usually less than 20 hit points remakes D20 characters from powerhouses into merely competent." However in play with highly skilled characters I didn't find this to be the case. In original DnD hit points were supposed to be a mixture of combat prowess, luck, experience and parry; all mixed up to signify that heroes survive more punishment and can have longer combats than lowbies. In BRP I found that a high parry skill had the same effect as high hit points, and good quality armour was the equivalent of good ac. Of course if you add DnD levels of magic items then it all breaks.

Moral of the story seems to be bulk up on Parry and Dodge when doing a character conversion.

There are tons of d20 spalls, with more and more coming along as the OGL boom expanded, that strike me as being very difficult to pull off in BRP. At least if you want to make them do exactly what they do in d20 -- and how often do you really want to do that? BRP is its own animal. I imagine you could graft on Vancian magic if you really wanted to but it would be very odd. The big question in my mind is how anyone ever accumulates enough MP to power a truly awesome single spell, much less fight a sustained magic duel.

Last year I ran a couple of hangout games using Roll20 in other systems. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes there were issues. I'd like to take part in an online BRP game sometime, possibly as the GM. That's true for a lot of systems, actually -- between not having money to travel and not having good transportation for a local game it's starting to develop some appeal.

Now there's an official "set" for BRP available for Fantasy grounds, one of the leading virtual tabletops. The problem is the expense; the Full GM license for FGII and the BRP module will set me back almost $60 if I get them both at the same time. I don't know that I can make that investment unless there's a reasonably certainty I'd get to use it. By contrast, the monthly fee for Roll20 does not contain any game system material, but does let me use the various play and GM functions. Although I have a learning curve there too.

So how hard is it to learn and use Fantasy Grounds? Is the BRP support any good?

And it begs the question, if most of your opponents are mere mortals like yourselves, how much firepower do you actually need to defend yourself? Star Trek foes tend to be either humanoids (Klingons, Romulans, etc.) or nigh indestructible phenomena (alien space probes, giant space amoebas, planet slayers, intangible entities). Against the latter, phasers are pretty much useless anyway, so you might as well stick with the pop-guns for the enemies you can handle and invest the money and effort into faster ships that can outrun the critters you can't beat.

Some of the best Trek episodes placed Kirk, and later Picard, in situations where running away, while the prudent thing to do, would make the situation worse down the road. Getting out of the way of the planet-eating robot ship so that you could warn the rest of the fleet of its approach would have been a perfectly sensible course of action, and was something they would have attempted had the half-mad-with-grief Decker not gotten in the way. But could Starfleet have beaten it, and how many billions of lives would have been lost had they failed? When the option of running was taken away, Kirk had to reach down into his gut for an answer.

But it explains the practices that gradually were revealed in the various Star Trek movies. Crewmen didn't casually wear weapons on board ship. These were kept locked up and were issued only when absolutely needed.

Another thought. Some space operas have crewmen regularly sporting sidearms while on duty. And in Star Trek TOS, an armed security team seemed always on hand. But those of you who've actually served in the military -- do shipboard personnel really carry sidearms when there is no imminent threat? And how many guards/MPs do you really need to maintain order on a military vessel? After all, crew members were carefully screened before being admitted to service and have been thoroughly trained. They're presumably disciplined, stable, obedient types, not inclined to criminality.

SPs/MPs do a lot of things where weapons are not required. Especially when alcohol is involved.... And in TOS alcohol is involved quite a lot, from the oddly-colored elixirs McCoy kept dishing out (presumable "for medicinal purposes") to that glorious shore-leave brawl with the Klingons. Tobacco may well have been obsolete, but alcohol was everywhere and in a bewildering variety of forms.

Does anyone know if there is a way to test one's webcam? Ever since I upgraded my OS I haven't seen the light on top of my webcam come on. I have no idea whether it actually works.

Skype seems to think it works, though. I just need to figure out my next move. FG Con looks interesting -- I liked my virtual con last year -- but I don't know how much of a money and time investment Fantasy Grounds would be. I do have a Roll20 account but the looking-for-groups page only accepts a limited selection of games and I don't see any d100 games getting native support.

I'm curious to see how some of the D&D 3/3.5 conversions came out myself. That high-level Hexblade NPC has a certain appeal.

I wonder what got converted. Monsters seem obvious, but it will be curious to see which monsters are good choices for BRP opposition and which are so overwhelming that putting them in the game is just asking for a TPK.

It occurs to me that disintegration weapons are in many ways impractical because they give you only one option: irrevocably destroy the target. You can't merely wound and/or incapacitate and capture an opponent to question him (or make peace with him). You also can't search his person for cool gear and hidden information. If you're low on food in an area with wild game, too bad. You just vaporized your potential source of meat. It's a technology that works too well.

Re: combat. You'd be sneaking around and listening a lot, posting multiple observers (in case one or more vanish). Whoever got the drop on their opponent and sniped first would win since enemies could be eliminated instantly before they realized they were in danger.

I'm wondering just how few circumstances there are when reducing the target to a spray of subatomic particles is actually useful. To be honest, the only time that would come up is a circumstance where you have to kill someone in such a way that nobody will ever, ever find a body.

Like when you are going to impersonate a local political or cultural leader and want to make really sure nobody finds evidence that you aren't really him. But even then that will probably not be enough to carry on the ruse given how ubiquitous genetic tests are at that level of technology. You may look, sound or even act like him, but unless you go to an extraordinary amount of trouble the first DNA test (or device that requires a genetic match to work) will give you away.

Or when you're infiltrating an enemy base and need to get rid of any guard who encounters you without leaving a trail of corpses in your wake.

Or dealing with a Wolverine-like alien that regenerates its wounds or grows back lost limbs nearly instantly -- a full disintegration may be the only way to get rid of him for good.

The moral? Instant disintegration has too many downsides to make it your only option. But multiple options in a single weapon that can be swapped out by flipping a switch or setting a dial gives players the sort of power that is highly likely to go to their heads.

Also, if a traditional laser is silent and the pulse is invisible (it's coherent light and moves at full c) lasers become the ultimate assassination tool. Not only can a sniper with a laser rifle kill someone swiftly and silently, but nobody will know where the "shot" came from -- making living to kill another day much, much easier. It's the sort of thing governments will definitely want to keep out of the hands of private citizens, particularly professional criminals.

"So that's your Disintegrating Pistol. What does it do?"

"I don't know. Every time I pull the trigger, it disintegrates."

If you know your opponent's weapon can reduce you instantly to your component subatomic particles, how does that change your plans?

Phasers are interesting. If you're hit with a phaser set to kill or disintegrate, you're toast. Stun will almost always KO just about anyone (but I can't imagine it not doing more serious harm if done repeatedly or to the wrong person). Makes combat different. Phaser duels are quick and brutal, especially given that they are also pretty accurate for handguns. Literal point-and-slay.

Dragonewts' tendency to be bizarre in terms of their behavior, to the point that humans think they're mad, would make them interesting as space aliens. They might not have a real empire, but they do have talents that make their services in many areas in demand. Nobody who isn't a Dragonewt has ever been to their homeworld (assuming it even exists) so they're still a complete mystery.

Dragonewts are already very alien in Glorantha. Put them in space and they become really alien.

Today I saw an RPGNet inquiry on how "epic space opera" can work in BRP. A very general inquiry, and while I am interested in the subject I fear I might have been very little help. The only thought I had was adapting some of the rules material in BRP Mecha to fighting space vehicles.

Even that would probably only work on the scale of small ships -- something like the Millennium Falcon would probably be the top end of the scale. The roleplaying paradigm breaks down a bit the bigger the ships and crews get. If you're playing Honor Harrington and commanding a ship or a fleet, the GM has to find stuff for the other players to do. And the Enterprise-D, with a crew of more than a thousand, would have very little for most of them to do in a big fight. (Mind you, there are many, many types of adventures you can have on an exploration/war ship, but if you want to be important in a big starship battle there are only a few things you can be.)

But some things in the genre are still doable as well. A lot of characters in the d100 multiverse are alien -- many of them very alien -- so it shouldn't be too hard to populate a universe with weird and wonderful critters. Or even move some around a bit (Dragonewts in space, anyone?).

In James Bond RolePlaying Game, the reputation was a disadvantage: "Hey, guys, this man is James Bond and not the lawyer he pretends to be..." Then, the reputation bonus, either positive or negative, could be the chance of being recognized. Famous criminal hunter +20%/-20%, 20% chance to be recognized by someone in the crowd... And that chance could be modified as any other skill, depending on who exactly makes the roll: 20% to be recognized in his state, but 40% chance to be recognized in the town where he did his exploits and only 10% to be recognized in another country.

Maintaining a cover identity, even temporarily, is an essential espionage skill that Bond (at least in the movies, when he's made his reputation) seems to have difficulty with -- when he even attempts it. Being well-known makes traditional espionage work virtually impossible. Which means that by the time you're a 00 you're mainly going to be doing the sort of troubleshooting where a high profile is less of a disadvantage. Just about anyone who knows anything about the espionage world will sweat profusely at the notion that James Bond is after them.

Being recognizable at all, though, is overall a major disadvantage for a spy, con artist, or anyone else whose success depends on winning (and then exploiting) the trust of your enemies.

Hmm, if we ignore most of the other factors, and just stick to mass, terminal velocity is proportional to the square root of mass, and the impact is velocity times mass, so impact damage would be tied to 1.5 times SIZ.

So if a cat falls on you it hurts a bit.

I imagine if a cow falls on you, it hurts a lot.

On the Hero boards, I once posited a spell called "Rain of Cows". This spell caused a downpour of (temporarily) live cattle over the area of its effect -- you're basically dropping cows on your enemies.

I describe the effect of having one land on you as "the same as had a cow fallen on top of you from several thousand feet in the air under normal circumstances". Now I'm wondering what that would be.

The only defense I can think of is getting out of the way when you hear that panicked mooing from the sky....

"Of course, the most subversive thing about Slayers from a gaming perspective is that the creator of their universe wasn't benevolent but, for the most part, bored -- she made gods and devils, put humans in the middle, and set them in motion and contention essentially so she would be amused by their antics. If that's not a game master's calling, I don't know what is."

Heh. Record of Lodoss War is how high fantasy is supposed to be role-played. The Slayers is how it is actually played.

Slayers is one of the few media properties that really worked in d20. PCs would generally be at such high level, even from the start of the campaign, that they can do a lot of really fun things.

Slayers in BRP, where PCs are much more fragile, could have issues. Especially since the typical adventuring sorcerer knows literally dozens of "the big and little spells", ranging from the somewhat useful Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy to sorcerous tacnukes. It's hard for even a very experienced BRP character to know that many.

Is there the possibility of adapting Status into a Reputation skill with even more variables? Like Status in CoC (or possibly as a subclass of Status), it would also affect the way people react to you -- but because of what they think you can or will do as opposed to who you are. If you have a Reputation for Ferocity or Having a Temper and the power or skill to be dangerous, those who know about it might well go out of their way not to tick you off -- for fear of what will happen to them if they do. If you can level a small town with one spell and are known for a short fuse, interactions with you get "interesting" in a hurry.

There will be times, of course, when you will not want a high Reputation skill (or whatever Reputation mechanic your campaign adopts) because the wrong kind can make things harder. A reputation for being generally untrustworthy can be a career-killer for an adventurer who is dependent upon patronage and doing "jobs" for important people.

The RQ Encounter Generator looks like a really good tool. So far I've had a lot of fun just building encounters. Now I'm wondering about templates. A few of the obvious questions, which have probably been asked many times before, come to mind:

1. Can anyone who has an account (I just made one) create a template?

2. Are those templates automatically available to everyone else?

3. I haven't tried to make one yet, so I'm wondering how doing so works?

4. Is there any sort of vetting or commenting process, and does anyone have the authority to delete a template they consider inappropriate for the site (such as a trademark infringement, intentional or no)?

5. How do tags work?

Many Chinese dragons could assume human form, I think, often appearing as mandarins or sages.

Filia (the dragon in Slayers) might be an example (or counter-example) of this. She's a very young dragon -- late adolescent actually. Her "mission", so to speak, was to get the protagonists into contact with her superiors in the priestly order she was an initiate in, presumably because they thought she would be easier for them to deal with. Her lack of experience tripped her up on many occasions, though. She was easily flustered, lacked tact, and would sometimes do unwise things in fits of pique. She may have been on her way to sage status, but she wasn't there yet -- and, as it turned out, wasn't going to get there as her people were eventually almost exterminated. Much of the story is about her learning to deal with humans, discovering their good traits as well as their bad, and eventually discovering she had as much in common with them as with her own kind.

This could be a model for a PC dragon character. Filia's raw power was impressive: her human form was at least STR 25. Her dragon form (in which she spent less and less time as the story went on the more time she spent among people) wasn't that impressive by dragon standards but could still lay waste to a large human fleet.

I would give them a specific character trait that outweighs all others. So, one could be wise, cheerful, cheeky, angry, lustful, greedy, devious or whatever. Over the course of a conversation, that trait would manifest itself in some way. Although hyper-intelligent, they would be easy tricked by taking advantage of that particular character trait.

Filia's "Specific Trait" was her mostly-unfounded pride. Dragons are wonderful. She didn't understand why humans were needed for the task at hand. Mazoku are horrible. Their very presence is humiliating. The universe took great pleasure in putting Filia into embarrassing positions.

Also, give them certain traits of appearance, so they wear clothes of a certain colour or style, wear they hair in a certain way, use particular weapons and so on. Maybe there are different tribes of dragons that have different styles.

Filia wore the all-concealing robes of her order all the time. Although they were presumably real cloth, they went away and came back when she transformed. Presumably she could make other clothing if she wanted to, but that was her preference. She had a large and ridiculously heavy spiked mace strapped to her leg, concealed by her robes, which she could whip out and attack with effortlessly.

Finally, each dragon should have something about them that doesn't transform quite right. One might have long fingernails, sibilant speech, slightly coloured skin, hidden scales, cast a draconic shadow/reflection or whatever.

Filia's transformation usually worked pretty well. You couldn't tell she was a dragon with a casual glance. When she got flustered, though, her tail would appear (with a pink ribbon tied around it), which is one of the reasons her robes went almost to the floor. Her human form would have a very high APP score, though she didn't flaunt her appearance or try to use it to her advantage much (and if someone were to hit on her she tended to hit on them -- with the mace....)

Thanks. Looking at the Dragon listing in the BGB (Page 341 for those playing at home) I noticed that the raw ability scores give it a steady-state INT of 10. That's about average human. I think that for my purposes an improvement is in order.

3d6+6 would give an average of 16-17. That would be a genius-level human, but not so overwhelmingly intelligent that it is completely beyond mortal affairs. The book suggests 4D6, which also provides a maximum of 24, but ironically probably produces a lower average (and you can always roll four ones, resulting in an alarmingly stupid but powerful dragon!).

I think for this purpose I would use roll dragon stats (he wouldn't need to be in dragon form very often), make new human stats keeping the INT and POW, and then figure out the skills and magic. The dragon form and the human form both have the same skills; he knows all the stuff he knows in both forms, though he can't use every skill in both forms (most things that require human hands, for example, simply don't work with dragon claws). The draconic merchant banker, for example, knows all about finance whether he's a dragon or a man, but if he's trying to renegotiate your contract while being a dragon you'd probably better do what he asks!

Another pop cultural instance is the independent comic book Southern Knights, in which one of the superheroes is actually a dragon who somehow forgot who he really was while in human form. The Slayers, Southern Knights, and D&D aside, dragons assuming human form is common in Eastern mythology. Like fairies in Western mythology who have palaces underground or in a grove of trees, it isn't uncommon for dragons to have a sumptuous palace beneath a sacred lake or among the clouds, where they assume human form and occasionally entertain respectful human guests in high style.

We already have other werebeasts in the rules. Doing a dragon would follow similar guidelines, with the dragon form being the "real" one. Human-form dragons would be long-lived like elves but not necessarily invulnerable. They'd tend to be richly dressed aristocratic sorts with fine manners, highly developed skills (from centuries of experience), not trying to hide anything but perfectly comfortable in either guise.

Given that Slayers is Japanese that shouldn't be too surprising. Although it's clearly meant to be a spoof/riff on D&D (I remember someone joking that the heroine actually has an alignment -- "homicidal kelptomanic" -- in common with most D&D player characters....) there are Eastern elements too (Gourry comes from a long tradition of "sword-saints", his lack of intelligence concerning just about everything else turning the trope on its ear). The insertion of the Golden Dragons was a surprise, but in a way it made perfect sense, along with their backstory as semi-angelic figures who had fought (and mostly lost) a thousand-year war with a race of demons called the Mazoku.

Of course, the most subversive thing about Slayers from a gaming perspective is that the creator of their universe wasn't benevolent but, for the most part, bored -- she made gods and devils, put humans in the middle, and set them in motion and contention essentially so she would be amused by their antics. If that's not a gamemaster's calling, I don't know what is.

Can anyone give me a page reference for werebeasts in the BRP core rules, or are those rules world-specific and found in supplements?

This would be interesting for sure. I would think you'd have to house-rule a spell or natural ability that allows dragons to do so. Maybe make a specific kind of dragon that is capable of such transformations while others are not.

Perhaps the hyper-intelligent variety of dragon (in Slayers dragons, depending on species, can by hyper-intelligent near-angels or animalistic beasts -- the beasts are wild animals who generally don't collect treasure but are sometimes used to guard it -- they're still powerful, can make a lot of trouble, and need to be slain every so often) has their own style of magic. In such cases, many things associated with dragons (like breathing fire) are actually spells -- albeit spells that could be innate to an extent that they might as well be inherent. They might be able to teach especially favored humans a few of their spells, including how to breathe fire to a limited extent, but their most potent magics they reserve for themselves.

And in some campaigns that type of dragon might indeed have an inherent link to the divine (or the infernal) -- even being the source of certain types of human magic.

One of the tropes of some of the fantasy I've read or watched is intelligent (sometimes hyper-intelligent) is dragons who can, through learned magic or innate ability, assume human form and live a good portion of their lives that way. The Golden and Ancient Dragons of the anime series Slayers are an example: a Golden Dragon is a major character in the third series and when interacting with the other characters usually does it as human (although sometimes her tail sticks out of her skirt when she's upset, she otherwise looks very human). Taking a human form does make dealing with humans easier (if nothing else they aren't as likely to flee in terror or attack at first sight of you) and enables many activities that dragons who are only dragon-formed would find more difficult (like using their hoard for investment banking -- sooner or later everyone important will owe you money and/or favors, and woe to the King or merchant prince who tries to default!).

What would such a character look like in BRP? And is there a way to build a somewhat less experienced one (like the dragon mentioned above, who was young, inexperienced and naive to a fault) as a player-character (an older one would probably overwhelm the rest of the party in terms of spotlight time, and is better as an NPC adversary or patron)?

Exactly why I love BRP. I love my players and have gamed with them for almost 20 years, but D&D and its scaling hit points really did change how people think in combat (even subconsciously). With BRP, all it takes is one good hit from a giant's club to squish Mr. Fighter. That's why Mr. Fighter's Dodge skill (or Parry skill, if he carries a nigh-unbreakable weapon/shield or just carries THAT many of them) should be up to par. Also, BRP does reward those who bother with high stats and/or skills; the way Area Effect spells are handled is awesome with the use of armor to take some damage, Agility rolls for half damage or Dodge rolls for no damage. No more of that "only rogues and monks can get truly avoid AoE blasts; all others are S-O-L."

D&D's influence on video games is so profound that even before 4e's open Warcraft emulation it played like one a lot of the time.The BRP mindset is different, especially with hit locations, because every blow you take has potential consequences. You can't use the fighter as a "meat shield" to protect the spellcasters anymore. The clerics and healers will have to ration their POW carefully -- which means that in a big fight PCs may have to endure reduced effectiveness because of their injuries for quite some time. IF you take one hit in the arm, even a relatively minor one, you sure don't want to get hit in that arm again....

Speaking of dragonbreath: my players are about to have a skirmish with an old black dragon who just woke from a century-long nap due to plot. They're not ready for it yet, so they'll have a few escape options, but it's going to be interesting to see how confident they might get...

I wonder if roleplaying, depending on how intelligent the dragon is, will do the job. Any way they can somehow convince the dragon not to go along with whatever the bad guys are up to? Bargain with him by offering him something he might want?

The hoary cliche (probably being encouraged by the current Hobbit movie) of going out to hunt a dragon simply to kill it somehow and steal all its goodies becomes difficult to pull off in BRP. If you have to deal with a dragon it becomes much more difficult when simply slaying it and looting the hoard ceases to be the best option. To kill a dragon might well be beyond a party of adventurers -- it could well take an army, possibly a large one, that is willing to take heavy losses in the attempt.

Quick other question: what's a rational way to create a higher-level party for when you want to start with a more challenging set of adventures (and won't have time for them to build up their skill set naturally). The only thing I can think of is to build the starting character and then add appropriate experience awards (one at each D&D level break) to improve the character.

But the fundamental differences between the two systems ought to come into play too. No BRP character, however talented or experienced, can survive being hit full-on by dragon breath, while a D&D character of high enough level theoretically could. This alters adventure planning -- dragon-slaying becomes a much more challenging endeavor, and a group of 5-6 superior PCs is not going to be able to stare down a horde of hundreds of ticked-off orcs.