FunGuyFromYuggoth

they could of easly added a few giant size robots distroying some cities. Don't you think?

Now you're talking!

Seriously, they were dealing with waaay too much in that movie. What could've been a nice set-up for an update to the Phoenix saga turned into this mutant "cure" movie and something crucial about a little girl that I never really quite got or cared about.

Yes, I think Chaosium never really has an idea if its monographs would sell at any given time. If they knew upfront, the usual business school response would be an ability to cement the relationship with customers, push the BRP brand out as being ultra versatile that anybody can pick up and run, allow them to drop the prices of the monographs (especially if PDFed), create an immediate ability to give feedback on monographs ("It's great" or "Omigosh that was awful, what's the matter with you"). Keeps the customers happy and Chaosium on their toes and doing what they should be doing: publishing games and making money and promoting pen & paper games to survive the storm by inviting gamer driven content.

Think of as a gamer driven creative partnership with Chaosium using BRP as the toolbox (and driving sales of the core product BRP rulebook, Call of Cthulhu next edition, etc.).

Or I could just be totally wrong. Been before... :ohwell:

This is an excellent observation Nightshade. I haven't had a chance to roll up a superhero character yet and if your observations are correct about the unintended consquences of refining the powers in the new BRP, then the simplest solution is as you implied: double the pool and encourage that this be factored into the Errata.

(Sees a dhole. "We're going to need more dice...")

I'd like to make a suggestion on this open forum to Chaosium, which I also e-mailed to Dustin, but present here in more detail and invite your feedback. Call it Chaosium Prime or Chaosiumflix. Here it is in larvael form. Be gentle, it's a youngin'.

A subscription based or fee based model for Chaosium to help with cashflow and to assure BRP products continue to arrive: A subscription based alternative (not substitution) to the usual transaction online or at the FLGS. Or think of it a a cross between Amazon.com and the "monograph of the month" (deliverable by PDF or mail).

The benefits of such a model:

Chaosium provides free shipping domestically. Free or deep discount shipping internationally. A guarantee new monograph every month or a discount/first in line priority for new publications by Chaosium or a partner.

To my way of thinking:

This helps to promote BRP by getting the product out to the public on a regular basis with less complaints to Dustin (every month he ships the same thing to everyone on the list)

Assists Chaosium with their cash flow problem

Creates a steady stream of revenue that Chaosium can use as an add-on to their licensing agreements with other BRP publishers

Incentivizes Chaosium to tap into their deep library of products from the past 30 years to share with gamers who want to try BRP in a variety of genres

Supports monographs that may otherwise get overlooked

Hopefully let's Dustin hire an assistant

So how about it Chaosium?

Hmm, looks like the RQIII errata paragraph didn't get pulled across.

It's there Nick. Page 184 under "Required Skill Training Time." Organization-wise, it probably should have been front-loaded to an earlier chapter near...oh I don't know..."Skills" instead of being cribbed after "Terrain and Weather Modifiers" and before "Combat."

This always runs into a bit of a logic problem (that happens with the current BRP characteristic training too, and perhaps is worse); if you can only get such things from training, how did it get established in the first place?

Nightshade, see page 49 allows (at GM's decision) an untrained 00% attempt, especially if you use the Category Bonus option (which I do). The Wild Chance option or the Wits and Talent option are there if you feel generous. I suspect that in RL that is how skills are developed. You take related disciplines and drill into it with other disciplines. It doesn't happen often that you invent something that's actually a "teachable" skill, but that's how dads throughout the ages seem to pass off Parenting to their spawn as if it were first nature, so there is RL precedence. Also, on a more serious note see "Parkour" and see how that wild combination of acrobatics, running, and climbing are clabbered together by somebody with related skills just trying something new and inventing a new discipline (doubtless hurting themselves a lot in the process).

There is also the Complementary Skills option on page 50 if the skill you are looking to improve is somehow related (a grey area subject to different interpretations). If the GM has "Call of Cthulhu" in their repertoire (as I know you do Nightshade), then at the GM's call, you invoke the Brainstorming option from page 202 of the Keeper's Companion Volume 1. No skill checks there, sorry.

Brainstorming, An Earnest Option Rule (paraphrased)

If baffled by a problem, or need a skill not present among team members, the GM may suggest they brainstorm to pool a solution appropriate for the problem.

Allow each character to contribute skill percentiles toward the common goal. No one contributes more than one skill and no none contributes more than 25%. The group chooses a leader for the operation and her player rolls D100. None of the players receive skill checks for the roll, regardless of success/failure.

My only happy moment at X3 was watchng the CGI "youngify" Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian. Aside from that, I thought it was a dreadful mess. Hoping they do better with the Wolverine movies.

I'm thinking perhaps a better way to go would be to give them some kind of unusual special result; that way the basic damage isn't godawful, but they're ugly with a solid hit. Zap and you're gone still might be excessive, though, but perhaps something more severe than your usual impale or the like.

Don't call it a Special or an Impale. Call it a "Red Shirt" and hopefully your players will have a sense of humor. Now that's a proper phaser...I mean "disintegrator"...

They are admittedly a bit underpowered, mostly because the outright disintegration of a target is often a serious game balance problem. If the numbers are problematic, I'd suggest altering the dice to pistol (3d8+1) and rifle (3d12+2). That's crazy-high, but might be more to your liking.

I like the suggestion to ratchet up the damage to a more acceptable amount. I mean, if you're gonna call a "disintegrator" you are already accepting that it is the most powerful firearm in the game. As powerful as they are, I imagine that in some SF universes (time frame 5:02) they are not desirable from the over-kill standpoint.

A Certain Sith Lord: There will be a substantial reward for the one who finds the Millennium Falcon. You are free to use any methods necessary, but I want them alive. No disintegrations.

A Certain Bounty Hunter: As you wish.

First off I wanted to thank the founder of this board (aka Trifletraxor or "Mr. T"), Jason, and everybody else here for contributing to the board. This is a terrific resource.

As BRP slowly grows, I was wondering if there was a thought about the evolution of this forum to include genre specific sub-forums and similar forums that deal with mechanics (Combat, Movement, Skills, etc.)?

I'm sure, though, that none of the cast were too sorry to see him gone for the third installment. It's always going to be one of those big question marks... if Superman Returns had been excellent, people would assume that X3 would have been equally incredible. Instead, Superman Returns wasn't the film it should have been, and now there's an even bigger question mark...

Honestly I was more heartbroken after seeing Superman Returns. I wanted to see something like Superman 2--an iconic film of my childhood. I must've seen Superman 2 twenty times that summer of 1980 and dozens more when it came to video. Then Richard Pryor showed up in Superman 3 in full retrograde/harmless mode (not the Richard Pryor anybody wanted to see) and that was it.

For Superman Returns, somebody must've been thinking, "We need a great director with a track record in this "superhero thing" to do it right." What a bummer. I wanted to see Supes do more than just move an iceberg and deflect a bullet with his eye.

The addition of Super Kid was just...baffling...

And no chemistry at all with the actress who played Lois...

Loved Spacey's Luthor though, though others didn't.

The fiasco regarding X-Men 3 was far more complicated than that.

When Tom Rothman, a head at Fox, kept dragging his heels about X3 and wouldn't commit to making it, Brian Singer packed up and took his team with him to go make Superman Returns. t.

It's always more complicated and when directors leave, both sides turn out the spin machines. "Wouldn't commit" is usually a euphemism for, "You're not paying me enough of a cut for what I want to do or won't fund us enough to do what I want to do it with."

In essence I've given the Marvel and the Fox side, and you gave the Singer side, but I give the studio more credibility because during production of X2, the cast had already started their feud with Singer and were ready to walk. Singer was exhausted by the end of X2 (remember how he barely finished production on X1 weeks before it went to the theaters--the man is brilliant but infamously demanding even by Hollywood standards). Berry even said she wouldn't do it.

I know story is important, but the sad truth is that it's all about the money. The other sad truth is a corollary: studios don't give a rat's brown behind about story. They're happy to do another "Love Guru" or "Meet Dave" movie if it stood a chance of making money. This is product. For this reason, Marvel got fed up with it and built their own club house. They have to, its their franchise and if they screw the pooch with weak story and sloppy directing, they lose their bread and butter.

Topic? I think that was gone a while ago man. :-P

Of course, I agree with you on that point, but my point was never that the director is the only thing you need to get a movie, but you need something more than an eager producer and a studio willing to sign on. That's the SCI-FI CHANNEL. :shocked: You said:

Actually it's the studios and the producers who make the decisions on what is made or not.

My point addressed that point above, which made my eyebrows rise. Yes, in the 1970s, but not today. Unless a good director is in place, you don't get name talent, without talent, you get no movie. They won't sign on with the producer's nephew directing anymore. Those days are gone.

Even in those days, directors were flexing. I'll take your Spielberg example and turn on the Wayback Machine: When Spielberg was a young director 20th Century Fox took a pass at a certain film involving a 1930s hero with a whip and a fedora. He said, "Fine, I'm going to Paramount." He did and the rest is history. The power of the name director who (at the time) was just another up and comer (1981).

The studios know that the fans are also more educated (thanks to the fanbase online) and demand directors with promising credentials. When McG was signed to do "Superman" fans groaned worldwide. These $100 million days you also need a bankable director at the helm. Brett Ratner, as much as I loathe him, has a great track record with making the studios happy, but the man is even now more hated by fanboys (which is important to studios after how poorly X3 was received since DVD sales are important). The skinny is that he wouldn't clash with the talent (actors) so much because the fallout from X2 and the pre-production on X3 would have had Patrick Stewart, Halle Berry, etc. walking off and complaining to the execs. The trade of Singer for Ratner was not a good one for the franchise, but they had no time to find a better one who wasn't already committed. Of course, great directors don't always make great superhero movies (see Singer's "Superman" or Lee's "Hulk" which dissapointed a lot of people).

Leterier, while well known for action, was new enough and flexible enough to (barely) handle Ed Norton's "co-direction" of "The Incredible Hulk." Still they clashed. Looking forward to the 70 minutes of additional completed work in the Blu-ray. (Almost an entire movie in the Extras! Wow.)

Failing that, you get the fiasco of LXG where the director famously clashed with Sean Connery and almost got the Alan Smithee...almost... :ohwell:

Actually my friend is near the apex of the production food chain in a certain wall-crawling superhero trilogy, so I got the feed and was sworn to secrecy during production. I was offered a tour but declined. I'm a fan, yes, but I really don't like seeing how they do this and that until after I see the movie. I love studying the business aspect of it, but I want the illusion to exist just for a little while. Anyway, it was fascinating for an outsider like me to hear how such big machines work. Truly collaborative work, but so much has to happen right to make things happen. The old days of studio plus producer are gone baby gone.

Hey it's nice to know another Angeleno is here! Send me an e-mail mrk!

Actually it's the studios and the producers who make the decisions on what is made or not.

I agree partially with your point and certainly don't disagree that studios and producers are the driving force, but I have to disabuse you of that notion that they are free to go to production without the right director at the helm. Look at the Harry Potter films as an example of very canny staging of directors with pedigrees to fit the tone of each film. Studios simply won't fund $100 million CGI projects without a capable director to lens it. As upstart Marvel Studios have proven, the traditional insider producers have been elbowed offstage by Avi Arad and Marvel with "Iron Man." They couldn't have done it without J. Favreau and they wouldn't dare doing IM2 without him (see the controversy on that onine).

Studios can certainly greenlight films all they want, but they can wallow in pre-production for years with directors flitting in and out of availability (see the attempt to revive "Superman" and further back the abortive efforts to get "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" launched. Or worse, when they greenlight with a complete idiot behinds the lens--X-Men 3) I know this b/c of long-term acquaintances who helped in the three Spider-man films who gave me blow by blows on how a film like that comes to fruition. Sam Raimi held those films together in a way someone like Brett Ratner could never do because the studios had faith that he and Laura Ziskin's production company were on it. Even the "Incredible Hulk"'s reboot owes as much to the director/actor team of Leterier/Norton to make it work. There is no way they would have taken that big a chance without some confidence that this time it would really deliver the goods (though the Ang Lee "Hulk" was a moderate success and not as big a failure as some make it out to be--financially at least). Big gambles each one and the ones that worked were the ones that just didn't have studios passively greenlighting projects, but the ones they carefully selected directors for it. See the controversy over Peter Jackson's ugly split with New Line. Fans were ready to boycott "The Hobbit" before it even went into production. The compromise of Jackson as producer and Del Toro as director made the deal happen. Yes, you need the hammer, but you can't do it without the nail.

If you want heroic characters, you can always use the option of total HP = SIZ plus CON.

It's going to be hard prying directors away from comic book films now. Alot of the ones with promising credentials are already tied to film adaptations of superhero films and their sequels. LOTR didn not spawn the fantasy renaissance some were hoping for. JK Rowlings gets credit for spawning the young adult fantasy films, but as far as sword and sorcery goes, Conan never got revived, and Elric is looking more distant. Though I'd be happy to be wrong. (I still can't get the foul taste of "The Scorpion King" out of my mouth.)

Mine arrived in the mail today! :thumb::party:

Ditto in re-The Black Seal. A marvelous and consistently excellent magazine.

So it's summertime and in some places quite warm in the Northern Hemisphere. Do you find yourselves gaming outdoors in the evening or do you have a pleasantly cool room to host your games?

In lieu of dice, I say we tie players who arrive late to a spinning bullseye target (available at your local supervillain shop) and throw sharp things at them to resolve this issue! :deadhorse:

Possibly Perry Rhodan type stuff makes for a better and more easily accessed game, but I'd be interested to see game material derived from (off the top of my head) Peter Hamilton, Cordwainer Smith, Larry Niven, Stephen Baxter.

I'm curious about this too and would welcome it if something came down the pipe. Actually, long ago, I read alot of "1970s" science-fiction that actually addressed many of the issues you described. I think the difference is "space opera" versus "high science fiction" (is there such a thing like "high fantasy" versus "swords and sorcery")? I would agree that accessibility would be an issue. GURPS seems to have gone after these topics somewhat (have they missed any? they were going after everything in the 1990s), but I never much cared for the GURPS or other systems like RIFTS.

Unfortunately, there is also a missile hit location table, and other humanoids who could be using this kind of armor and do not have the same even distribution of area between the lower and upper parts of their limbs. Having been using this sort of armor for the last fifteen years or so, don't you think I had thought of such a solution myself? Nice idea, but things are not so simple.

Well I am sorry it was't helpful to you and there's no reason to be patronizing about it. I thought you had a very good question that wasn't addressed anywhere else and I was trying to respond with what had worked for me. Analysis-paralysis is not helpful if a simple solution is shared. Certainly you could make it more complicated for yourself by giving mooks patchwork armor, but why?

If players like customizing armor (like they do in MMORPGs and RQ3), let them have the option or not, but if they do, then my suggestion was that you let them track the distribution of numbers for missile and melee hit locations on their character sheets. Just call out the D20 roll and let them figure out where the hit happened. I'm guessing that once they figure out that they cutting themselves out of extra AP, they will reconsider their choices.

(I don't have my copy of first edition yet, which could include additional rules on hit locations.)

And since you bring it up, please know that I've been playing BRP based games with hit locations for the past 25 years and this is the solution that worked for me. YMMV. It was offered as a suggestion and with good intentions.

I'm dusting off my full Almuric battle dress as we speak (basically studded tiara, awesome bracers, radium gun holster and little else. I'll probably add the chainmail bikini for modesty's sake - damn, don't those girls ever get COLD? :eek:).

I figure the distraction alone is worth some kind of defensive bonus to offset the lack of (cough) "coverage."

I figured he'd love this one. :thumb:

A shame about "The Golden Compass." I caught it as a rental and rather liked it, but thought the ending was a bit abrupt. I also saw and enjoin everyone here to catch "Hellboy 2" for the visuals.

Yes, Jason, if you could post the BPRD stats that would be great. Howabout a "BRP for BPRD" section? ;-)

Of course you have a problem there, because the hit location system does not allw you to determine if you have hit, say, the leg or the thigh, you do not know whether the target is protected by mail or by leather. Not wanting to make an additional roll, in this case I use the average system suggested above, for a total protection of 3 on limbs instead of 5 (would be 5 instead of 7 in BRP which has higher armor values).

In such a case, I'd like to offer an alternative suggestion that doesn't add an additional roll in those special cases where the player wants to be a fashion victim! As GM, you roll the D20 as per usual, and ask the player to keep track of it on his/her character sheet.

Hit Location Table modified parts only:

1-4 Right Leg (1-2 Below the Right Knee, 3-4 Above the Right Knee) - Rationale is that in melee legs are equally exposed above and below the knees.

5-8 Left Leg (5-6 is Below the Left Knee, 7-8 is Above the Left Knee)

13-15 Right Arm (13-14 is Below the Right Elbow, 15 is Above the Right Elbow) - Rationale is that in melee, you expose the forward (above the elbow) part of your arms farther than the part below the elbow

16-18 Left Arm (16-17 is Below the Right Elbow, 18 is Above the Right Elbow)