Michael Hopcroft

I'd say the weapons are pretty deadly -- after all, these weapons take down big, tough monsters with single shots, and these monsters are no pushovers. It's just that the PCs are so incredibly tough that they can survive what they dish out. Ruby Rose's scythe is plenty lethal when used on monsters, but can also be used in non-lethal tournament fights (both as the rifle and as the scythe) because the people she is fighting with them have a reasonable chance of surviving because they're less vulnerable. Much is made about certain characters' shock when the find the tactics they use in tournament fights suddenly show off their lethality. I'll have to go through the monster books to see if there are things approaching Beowolfs in them. (Beowulfs are the grunts among the monstrous Grimm -- they're all over the place, and more than capable of tearing apart non-combatants and untrained fighters.)

It is right about now that my dependency on PC-based tools to model and format character sheets can be a real burden. I'm thinking of seeing if I can try my hand at modeling a few characters to see how they work out, and I'm having trouble wrapping my head around them. One thing is that even bad guys can be hard to kill. Take Roman Torchwick. Torchwick is a bad guy with a sense of style, but don't let his foppish exterior cause you to underestimate him -- because you won't be making too many more such mistakes if you do. He is very cunning, his cunning matched only by his enormous ego. His cane is a gun, which is pretty much standard for that type of gun except that he can carry it everywhere without it calling attention to its nature. (Of course he likes being noticed everywhere he goes, because he thinks he's that cool.) He's very good at organizing armed robberies in particular, also trying his hand at smuggling and swindling. His ego turned out to be his downfall, as he would spent so much time rubbing his enemies' noses in their defeat that he doesn't necessarily notice what's coming up behind him.

Whether the rifle uses standard ammunition depends on what you consider "standard". Ruby's ammunition, and a lot of other weapons (Yang's wrist guns and the ranged attacks Weiss makes with her sword are other examples), is powered with a pseudo-magical mineral substance known as "Dust", which has a variety of applications. Theoretically Ruby can, with training and the right ammo, do various tricks with her rifle. She is still young and inexperienced, though. With time what she can do will become more versatile.

Semblances would be a function of Powers. Things like Phyrra's "polarity" manipulation is a prime example. While not at the level of, say, Magneto, she is able to do interesting magnetism tricks (including one that went a LOT farther than she had intended). Other people have semblances that defy definition. (One example is Velvet, from the experienced "Team CFVY", who built a camera that enables her to duplicate the appearance and effect of any weapon or set of weapons she manages to get a "picture" of, even if it was hidden or not in use when she took the image.) for Senechal's question, it may take a while. If someone had a spreadsheet for making Superworld characters that can be modified somewhat, that would help a lot.

I'm curious about something. I have been hooked on the web animation RWBY for a while now, to the point that I'm wondering what a Superworld/BRP game in that setting would look like. The main challenge is that characters in RWBY are almost impossible to kill. Not totally impossible (some heroes do die), but most of the time they can absorb terrific amounts of damage and shrug it off. Deadly weapons, when used against the sort of characters who might be used as PCs, are frequently inadequate to the task. In one season-ending episode, the main viewpoint character takes two bullets to the gut and several hard blows to the head, and not only does she survive but she is barely if at all impaired -- remaining fully conscious while the person inflicitng all the damage continues to kick her in the head and taunt her about how he is a natural survivor (before being swallowed by a monster in one gulp). This is a sixteen-year-old girl. On the other hand, another character in the same episode is shot through the heart with an arrow and manages to force out some last words before being cremated alive by her assailant, And one of the heroines does in fact lost her right forearm in combat. Still, people bull through things they should have no business surviving at all. That's why I put it in this section as opposed to, say, standard BRP's section. Without a familiarity with superpowers or a means of controlling lethality, the setting breaks down pretty quickly. And it would be a shame if it did, because it's a wonderfully colorful setting that combined over-the-top action, intriguing opportunities for roleplaying and character development, and a well-defined mythology that provides a lot of freedom of action for player-characters. There is also opportunity for comedy as well. RWBY Chibi, a comedic spin-off of about three-minute collections of sketches, is one of my favorite anti-depressants. I's hard to be mad at the world when watching ruby rose (the character who took all that harm in my example) struggle to bake cookies, finally succeed against all odds, and find she made them too big to dunk in milk.... So the question remains: how do you make PCs capable of withstanding the punishment this setting dishes out when generic NPCs and monster can't? (Significant NPCs, of course, are just as durable as player-characters).

I'm curious about the sword in the Fenix Papers cover, which is curved at the tip. There have been many curved sword types over the centuries, but I haven't seen one curved at the tip as opposed to a more central position (even the maligned-but-brutally-deadly kopesh has its curve in the upper center). Would a sword like that behave differently than those other blades? How durable is it? Does it have a different balance? In short, does it work differently enough to be worth using in a game?

I also have a lot of what is in that bundle, missing just the adventures and the MB Companion (and possibly the MR maps). Since DTRPG really has no way to gift something from it (they are added directly to your library), it's an awkward situation. It might be cheaper (and cheaper is good these days) to purchase the individual titles I'm missing.

In RQ6 (which is what I happened to have a hardcopy of in front of me), Literacy is a learned skill that certain careers pretty much require. You can learn to read, and a failed roll will mean that either you can't decipher the script at all or you misconstrue it *how badly garbled it turns out depends on how badly you blew the roll). I personally would only call for a roll on script that is exceptionally difficult or dramatically important -- for insignificant scripts, you can either read it or not without a roll. I haven't looked at it yet to determine how the system treats foreign languages to the PCs. To take a historical example, a Byzantine trader who has ventured to China might be literate in alphabetic languages to a degree (he can at least make out what the text says phonetically), but until he puts forth the effort to learn it he would not be able to read China's pictographic script at all. The Chinese trader in Byzantium would have the same problems until he puts the effort into learning to read Greek. I'm wondering how to model this process to create characters who understand multiple means of writing that are markedly different from each other.

And let no puppy go unkicked! I am liking these ideas. I can't but think of these guys as the ones leading armies to attack the Civilized Kingdoms(tm) in pursuit of their own glory. The ones who offer to Protect the King and then throw him off the parapets first chance they get. I see the Classic Fantasy equivalent of Starscream. He'll be obedient to an obvious superior up to a point, but is always out for himself first and foremost. Or you could make him passionately loyal to the point of utter fanaticism, which doesn't change the abilities and makes him just as hard for the PCs to manage.

Would a long spear be much use for an adventurer in a small party? IIRC, they were meant to be used in mass, tightly-bunched formations is skewer any cavalry foolish enough to charge into them. I imagine y0u can thrust with them to poke things, but wouldn't they be inefficient at the task and very difficult to handle?

I remember an article in an old Dragon (forget which one) describing a class referred to as Anti-Paladin, intended to be used by NPCs. He's meant to be the stereotypical moustache-twirling melodrama villain of AD&D, capable of all kinds of nastiness but who tends to flee anything like a fair fight. This wouldn't be much fun in a game based on anything like normal Mythras, but would that work in CF? Should a GM in CF (who wants to run a game typical of the spirit of the old AD&D) embrace this sort of cliche, or reject it?

I'm not using leveling, or pretty much any d20-specific stuff at all from the BESM SRD. The Attribute/Defect system, which works very similarly in both versions of BESM, is what I will be borrowing. The d20 version just happens to be Open Content, while Tri-Stat is not. What I am doing is eliminating die rolling from character creation. Characteristics, Skills, and Attributes are all purchased from the same pool of character points. This is different from even 2e Tri-Stat BESM. which used separate point pools for Skills and everything else. Since Characteristic scores count against Character Points anyway, there's no need for a die roll. My ability to explain things seems to be limited this morning.

One thing is that it hasn't been done yet as far as I know, And I liked the Attribute/Power system in BESM a lot. I'm looking to write something with a combination of crunch and flexibility. The Superworld/Superpowers rules that come bundled into BRP are ones I've never quite grokked, though I've tried. g33k, you are correct that the Attributes and Defects are the core of the project. The classes and races I will not be using at all. They solve some of the issues with superpowers in BRP (and probably create their own problems, but that's what a game designer does) and offers great flexibility in character creation. At the same time, it breaks the creation of things like starships and mecha into their functional characteristics as opposed to their technical details (I loved BRP Mecha but it's not for everyone). I think these could indeed be two great tastes that go great together, And this is intended to be a minorly commercial/professional project, mainly to get my feet wet and get myself started again. I don't know that anyone would actually buy it unless I can build other things with it. I expect a lot of skepticism -- one of the people in the industry for whom I have great respect told me it was a terrible idea.

This was the only section I could think of for a general design question. If there's a better place for it to be, I don't mind it being moved. Anyway, one of my favorite RPGs for decades is the anime-style game Big Eyes, Small Mouth published by Guardians of Order back in the day. Guardians are long gone, but before the company folded they released the SRD for the d20-based version of the system. This kept the core of the game, in terms of Attributes and Defects, in particular, adapting them to the then-ubiquitous version of D20. Especially with superheroes as a challenge in d100, it's occurred to me several times that merging that subsystem with BRP/D100 might be a solution to the issue of how to build a supers game in D100 in a somewhat more intuitive way. And since d100 also has several open-content flavors, there's a base from which to start. Of course, it's going to be a lot of work, and I have design decisions to make still. The one I made first was to completely get rid of die rolls in character creation. Characteristics are purchased from the same pool of Character Points as everything else, at the rate of two Characteristic Points for one Character Point. Character Points are a single pool used for those, Attributes (powers, essentially), skill purchase and leveling, and so on. How many characters start out with depends on the level of the campaign, which can range from starting characters with modest powers to full-fledged superheroes. I'm curious what other challenges I am likely to face in the design, which will include some substantial work of my own in addition to borrowing open content. (Relying solely on open content strikes me as a lazy way to do it, of course, I can make decisions of my own if they're good ones,). I'd rather get a lot of it written before I even begin to contemp[late how it will be published.

Getting back to the original question about BRPs destiny, the ones who decide this question will, of course, be the folks at Chaosiun. Abd that depends on the market. Outside of OGL/OSRs, I am seeing fewer and fewer generic games lately. People are building games around their subjects more than they were even five years ago (for example, you would never use The One Ring anywhere but in Middle-Earth). There are still a ton of generic games in many systems, but publishing new ones seems to have fallen out of favor. What does this mean for support for the new, smaller BRP core rules? And of course, even "dead" games like Magic World and Superworld still have a lease on life in PDF. It costs Chaosium very little to keep the e-books in circulation (but probably doesn;t make them much either, so it's a trade-off/) Which brings me to ask whether the Monograph lines are no more as far as new titles are concerned.

Panthfinder? I wonder where the Panthers are -- ah! There's one now!" "Roll for Initiative...." Or Pantsfinder? "Honey where's my pants?" "Here! Here are your pants!" (I need to buy a copy of The LEGO Movie....) If it can be discussed, I have always wondered how Chaosium and Mongoose came up with the arrangement that enabled D100 ti to be released under the OGL and thus allowed the floodgates to open? This was several years after D&D 3.0, so Chaosium must have had some inkling what would happen. And admittedly it took a few years before the floodgates did in fact open.

Would that even work? BRP may be too crunchy to work with aspects and compulsions of same. "I dive behind the oil drums nobody saw before that just now happened to be in the middle of the desert because it would be convenient to not die!" EDIT: I stand somewhat corrected with the post above. OpenQuest is admittedly a little less crunchy than something like Mythras or BGB BRP, but it does, in fact, seem to be a better fit than I thought it would be. I would be interested to see how Aspects can be incorporated into d100 character creation. Also, do you need to compel or create aspects before dice are rolled, or can you do something to modify the effect of the die roll that just happened?

If anything defines the Law of Unintended Consequences in the game industry, it's the OGL. The original intent was to make writing for D&D so easy and profitable that people would abandon making their own systems. The result was not what Wizards intended. Which is why it surprised me when MRQ came out with an Open License, As far as the future of the BGB, opening some more of the system to third parties would enable publishers so inclined to do things with it that they currently can;t do in the open version fo D100. On the other hand, newly-invented subsystems are possible for D100 with proper playtesting, which is why the niche market for this system is gaining ever more games with unique features. The principal advantage Chaosium will have with Runequest is that it is a highly recognizable name with a great history. The question is what about that history will matter to the next generation of RPG players. In other situations, of course, that can be a curse -- the fourth edition of D&D would have been hailed as an exciting and groundbreaking design had it been released under any other name.

This would explain how everyone and anyone is currently getting away with producing the near-overkill plethora of Cthulhu games for a multitude of systems. By contrast, R.E. Howard's Conan stories are still in copyright (and will probably be forever as they fall past the Disney Line that will be the eternal limit of the public domain) so there is only one Conan game out at a time.

With the announcement that the new Runequest will be [retty much exclusively Glorantha, I imagine that even with it out of print the BGB will be the standard for a while as far as official BRP material. Makes me wonder whether the BGB will live on as a POD book (assuming Chaosium hasn't kept any copies).

Dare we make any assumptions whatsoever about the motives of these "curators"? If they alter evolutionary processes, they probably have a purpose for doing so, even if only for their own amusement. They may have an idea of what a curated sapience might want to do and be, but they might not care. If they visit rarely (once every 3,000 years or so), every so often they will come back to see smoking craters where the world they wanted to visit used to be. A less pleasant alternative is beings who fear other sapiences and visit planets every so often in a futile attempt to prevent them from evolving into something that could conceivably threaten them. These would be the "bad guys" on an alien invasion-style campaign -- peoples who commit genocide because it's the only means of self-preservation that they know.

I imagine this is the sort of campaign where punks rarely have cause to feel lucky. Is that ammo in the clip or ammo on your person? The system you're describing would work for weapons with batteries or large clips )say 30-50 rounds). In theory, any competent pistoled will always know how many bullets he has -- but combat is stressful, people will squeeze off three or four shots when one will suffice, etc. It's worse on "full auto", where you can burn through an entire clip in a matter of seconds. Perhaps every so often (not necessarily at some arbitrary number of shots, but perhaps based on time) PCs can do a check against whatever Characteristic is most relevant to determine whether their ammo status. A failed roll means you must reload or recharge the weapon. On a fumble, you have nothing to reload it with (or you could simply state that PCs don't usually carry extra ammunition around unless they are in a situation where they know in advance they'll be engaged in prolonged combat -- in that case, once you've exhausted your clip or battery that's a lovely club or blackjack you've got there).

I am skilled in Excel but rusty. I might give it a go once I have my print book.

Is there a spreadsheet out there in the wild designed specifically for character creation in M-Space? I'm trying to figure out a particular format that would be nice for both character and ship stat blocks and I am also hoping to streamline the math a bit (even though the characters I'm creating for the book are veteran, experienced characters built on significantly more skill points than starting PCs).

It's not all that relevant to what I'm outlining now, which features neither magic nor psionics and thus has no need for expendable POW.