clarence

Yes, I have decided to set up all PDF deliveries and updates through DTRPG. If all goes well, you will be notified that a new version is available. I'm not sure though if it's automatic, but I think it is. 

For those who got the PDF for free with the purchase of a book, I will send an email tomorrow with a download link (also DTRPG). 

On 2017-03-31 at 9:04 PM, g33k said:

Offhand, I am thinking of a pt.1 / pt.2 adventure:  a small diplomatic mission (social conflicts, extended conflicts) that attempts to get a few isolated forces to unite in mutual defense; then a "downtime" where players get to advance their characters; followed by the starship-combat (and maybe vacc-suit and/or planetary combat) scenes, as the coalition then has to use their alliance to keep the Bad Guys (tm) from doing all sorts of Bad Stuff(tm). 

This could be kept tight and lean; but if desired, it could easily stretch into a rather-large amount of gaming...

Pt.1 could include all manner of pre-existing factions, the Bad Guys(tm) might have diplomats of their own; or assassins, assigned to frame people & thus disrupt things, or other Covert Ops missions.  Kidnappings, politico-economics, etc etc etc.  Pt.2 could become a complex multi-battle mini-war across multiple theatres of operation -- "Forest Moon of Endor" scenes, cat-and-mouse games within asteroid-fields, inferior forces trying to deflect/delay/entrap/whatever a Superdreadnaught, vacc-suit combat, etc...

@g33k I re-read your scenario idea and it has a nice Star Wars feeling. Any chance you will write it down?

Will do. 

The scenario sounds very good - but a tad long for a quickstart perhaps? As for me, I always find it difficult to write short scenarios, as the plot often takes on a life of its own, with layers upon layers upon layers - until I have an entire campaign. 

Using one single location tends to be a good starting point for me to keep a scenario reasonably short. The challenge lies in creating something interesting out of the few pieces available, for example with different factions competing for the same goal or a puzzle requiring out-of-the-box thinking. 

Yes, that's perfect. Quickstart rules building on top of quickstart rules - quite a novel concept actually. 

And you're right, Extended Conflicts should probably be included too. 

I just wish I knew someone with a good eye for scenario writing Matt ; )

Interesting idea. I haven't even thought about that.

So, at 30 or so pages, what would it take to make it functional? Short description of starship stats and combat? Some equipment? A two-page scenario? Anything else?

Yes, this is a supplement, not a quickstart. Pre-gens will be available for download next week.

You could probably run this with Mythras Imperative. You would have to improvise a starship fight and a couple of Extended Conflicts, but otherwise it's quite straightforward. Adding in the M-SPACE preview will not help much I think. Maybe to give a hint about what starship combat and Extended Conflicts can be.

The Constellate never fell. It faded.

The year is Y3260. The Ocath subsector is free, after many years under The Constellate’s brutal rule.

Free, but in turmoil.

This scenario for M-SPACE introduces The Weaver setting, telling an epic story about a dying empire, collapsing under a baroque cornucopia of empty gestures and brutality.

A starship fleeing from The Constellate’s armed forces disappeared 170 years ago. Now the characters must go to the Qioria system to search for it. But time is short. The planet is on a slow course for destruction and the hell holes of ignited gas grow every day.

Their only hope seems to emanate from the long forgotten teachings of the Weavers.

REFLUX will be released on April 4. 

Contents Include:

- Scenario with investigative elements, social conflicts, puzzles and action

- The rules for Extended Conflicts are used at focus points in the story to increase tension without having to resort to violence

- Background on The Weaver setting, describing the major forces

- Several alien species and their cultures

- Stats and deckplans for a PC starship

- Map of the Ocath subsector

- Planetary maps of Anobe and Qioria

- Town maps of Anobe City and Yllm

- Location layouts: Cantina, Security Forces HQ and the Bone Caves

- New rules on communications, FTL travel and three new careers

- New equipment

- Organisation stats

- Suggestions on how to vary the difficulty level of the scenario

- 106 pages, 10 in colour

The main rulebook for M-SPACE is required to get the most out of this book, but the scenario is useful with any BRP-based game.

M-SPACE 1.1 will be released on April 4 as well. As I’m sure some of you have seen already, this update is mainly about colour printing and a sturdier binding. The content is slightly updated but the new sections will be available for free on our website.

As long as you have sent me your Lulu receipt (or bought the PDF from DriveThruRPG) you will get a free PDF update : )

After some inquiries, I believe the 'discount links' DTRPG can generate will be the way to go.

The paper will not be thicker, but to me it has a nicer quality to it - both to handle and to look at. 

Yes, the PDF will be updated too. However, I'm not sure yet how to handle the actual downloads - I'll be back with more information on that. 

As some of you may have seen, the scenario REFLUX will be released in about 10 days - but that is not all! At the same time, we will release a 1.1 update to M-SPACE. 

The big thing here is not in the content however. Only a few small changes and additions have been made. The main feature is colour printing and a more durable binding. These are two of the most requested features among our players. 

And the good thing is, the price will not be much higher than for black and white. To pull this off, we had to track down a talented print-on-demand publisher here in Sweden. They offer something Lulu cannot do: print just a selection of pages in colour. With Lulu, it's either or, which means much higher prices. 

Just as for REFLUX, this will result in higher shipping costs for some of you. And that's why we have kept down the price of the book. The total cost will be very competitive. 

But we will still offer a black and white version through Lulu. And of course a PDF at DriveThruRPG. 

I'm very proud of this version. The print quality is amazing. Matthias Utomo's artwork really shines and the sturdier binding feels great. 

I hope you will enjoy it too. 

Changes in content:
- Two appendixes: updated starship design walkthrough and starship combat examples. Both will be available as free downloads from our website. 
- Keeping track of ammunition. Covering the most frequent question I've got since the release. 

I don’t know very much about them, but here are a few more details:

Coriolis

This is a sci-fi game from the makers of Mutant: Year Zero, with rules being very similar. The main idea is something like One Thousand and One Nights in space. This is version 2, available in both English and Swedish. Quite good, I believe.

Drakar och Demoner

This is a reprint of the BRP classic from 1984 and the game that dominated the Swedish RPG scene for decades. Essentially it’s the fantasy part of Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder with a few additions here and there. Unfortunately not available in English. The closest you can get is Trudvang Chronicles, the latest version of Drakar ooh Demoner with a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign last autumn. The artwork is amazing. Gritty Nordic feel to it. 

Western

The fourth version of a very popular western RPG, from the makers of Fenix RPG magazine. An English translation is planned for later this year. For a thorough presentation, see this thread at RPG.net: https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?799029-Western-the-RPG

Hjältarnas Tid
A distant relative to BRP, targeted at new/young players. Written by one of Sweden’s most well-known RPG writers, Krister Sundelin. The game is quite similar to his Järn RPG that he released a couple of years ago; I did an interview with Krister here at BRP Central some time ago about Järn.

Fantasy!
A slim game with a dice pool mechanic that’s quite popular here. One of the first games here in Sweden to pick up the old school gaming concept, I believe. It’s also the only contemporary RPG to be released in a pocket book version (reminding me of my old Dragon Warriors books…). English translation in the works.

Oktoberlandet
My favourite at the moment. A FATE-based steampunk game taking place in Russia. No translation available, but I think it really deserves a bigger audience. Character sheets look a lot like the cover artwork - I love it, but some claim they get severe headaches from it. 

Symbaroum
Beautiful and conceptually rich fantasy RPG that I know very little about, but it’s one of the big games here. Very successful. The makers are former BRP post-apocalypse writers. Available in English. 

Polaris and Rotsystem
I wish I knew more about these two. Very ambitious indie games. Both are on my reading list.

Thanks : ) 

Thanks Lawrence!

If anyone else wishes to vote; make sure you also vote for Pete Nash - his contributions to Fenix are nominated too. 

Fenix, the big RPG magazine here in Scandinavia, runs a poll every year to celebrate the best Swedish RPG products. For 2016, M-SPACE is nominated in several classes, for example Best Cover, Best Illustrator (Jadrien Cousens) and Best Rules! The winners are announced at GothCon, the largest convention here, on April 9. 

The poll is in Swedish, but if you want to vote anyway, here's the link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSejYdZhDYi4v4CyhhYIa5bDlSs0uRnXUs9plcZV6VS_hpQgow/viewform

I can make a quick translation if you need. Just let me know. 

The Swedish RPG business is experiencing something of a golden age at the moment. Several games has become international bestsellers (Mutant: Year zero, Tales from the Loop and Trudvang, just to mention a few), and there are a handful of small companies doing very fine products. But there's also a rich undergrowth of indie writers making excellent games, and the poll has a very impressive line-up. 

Gorgeous artwork : ) Very much looking forward to this. How long do we have to wait?

And here's the cover, if you missed it earlier. It shows the skeletal remains of an ipeoln, a now extinct species of massive size on the planet Qioria, playing a significant part in the search for a long lost starship. Drawing by Matthias Utomo.

I'm also happy to announce that the print version of REFLUX comes both in colour and B&W. The colour printing is done here in Sweden, which means some of you will get quite high shipping costs. 

But as we think the colour version looks so good, we have decided to keep the price as low as possible. Even with the shipping costs included, the total price will be very good compared to many other RPG products. 

The new scenario REFLUX is almost ready! Just a few small details to fix here and there before it's off to the printer. It ended up being 105 pages, 10 in colour. Print and PDF will be released in the first few days of April.

I uploaded a preview to our webpage, to give you an idea of what it looks like: 

http://www.frostbytebooks.com/blog/scenario-preview-reflux

I hope you enjoy it.

Let's just hope Fred wasn't out of Luck Points that day...

I put together some quick stats for Serenity in a thread at RPG.net recently:

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?799151-BRP-Space-M-SPACE/page2&highlight=m-space

Not sure how correct they are, but reasonably close I think.

All you need is a big ship with big cannons. Check out the rules for weapon upgrades to increase damage for a canon. Very simplified, the more Modules a canon has, the more damage it can do.

There are no rules for construction weaknesses though (like vents, where tiny starfighters can fire one missile to destroy the whole ship). Those are left to the art of storytelling. 

Ok, here's the Millennium Falcon, straight from the rules:

I use skills to portray 'narrow' AI (specialised for just a few tasks) but for self-conscious systems full stats work better. Telling the two types apart may not always be easy though. I believe most sci-fi settings can harbour narrow AIs but that fully consious computers only suit some campaigns. 

As heathd666 mentioned, Apps in starships are expert systems with limited intelligence. They could as well have been defined as skills, but I'm always wary of making objects too PC-like (and I never enjoyed the way HERO system builds starships). 

For the modular droid rules I'm working on, skills are used though. A skill Module (called microModule) is added and contains 3-5 skills. For example, Language is needed for them to communicate with humans and Psychology if they are meant to socialise. The other slots can be filled with whatever's needed. 

I find it very fascinating how early RPGs struggeled to get computers and computer use right. The way Traveller handled it feels very dated. But sometimes, especially when reading tech news on robotics and AI, I feel today we might be underestimating what technology will bring in the coming century. I mean, landing a rocket autonomously on a small barge out on the ocean - that should be impossible in my view and we can already do that. And AIs spotting cancer that human doctors can't see; where will that type of functionality take us?