clarence

I enjoy Hero system quite a lot and have used it extensively through the years, though it's been a while now. The flexibility and consistency of the system is elegant, but it takes too much time and effort for me at the moment : )

I tried constructing something like a Boba Fett suit with my improvised gear-design rules. While it worked out just fine, I felt it was a bit… pointless? (Not the right word, but something like that). Why not put the same gear together from an equipment list and just pay Credits for it? A modular system will of course set a physical limit to the amount of things/functions that can be added - that's good.

(Armored Suit: 13 µModules. AC 12, 6 µModules. JetPack 4 µModules (Speed 4, Handling 4). Mini missiles (4), 2 µModules (heat seeking, 1d8, range 50 m). Line & hook (6 m), 1 µModule).

Hmm, gear-design rules... At first sight it does appear a bit weird, but on second thought it might be just perfect. Perhaps not for standard equipment, but for those special innovative pieces of gear characters want to come up with.

And the step from building augmentations/cybernetics with modules, to building equipment is not that big. What is equipment but implants that are not implanted? (I guess miniaturization is taken a bit longer with implants, and the connection with the neural system is of course unique (but needn't be)). At the moment I'm using what I call µModules to build augmentations - raising STR in the right arm and adding a pop-out needle gun, either with wetware/biotech or hardware/robotics, is very straightforward with this system. How the module sizes and weights should relate to each other between implants and gear needs a bit of thought though.

This could be fun!

Edit: I just hope we don't end up in Hero System-ism, where I think flexibility bogs down the rules a bit too much.

More equipment should't prove too difficult. I'm not much of a gear type though, so any wishes, or even better short write-ups, of everyone's favorite equipment is more than welcome!

1. Sorry, that was an unnecessary generalization. Many fantasy worlds are of course well constructed. About the "sci" part I'm not so sure though. Giant sand worms living on a barren desert planet - eating what? Not to mention Star Wars. Many times I find that "sci" is a thin veil covering a (hopefully) good story, telling us something about ourselves. And to me, that is not a devaluation of science fiction.

Hmm, I think I could work up a really easy method of placing planets and determining a star's habitable zone using the SIZ table.

 

 

Well, this is an offer I just can't refuse : )

 

Regarding planets and star systems the rules are deliberately on the light side. I never understood why we create medieval/fantasy worlds without a trace of scientific groundwork, but as soon as we move our stories into space we follow rigorous rules adhering to the latest discoveries in astronomy. And the irony is that we know a lot more about medieval society than we know about exoplanets.

 

But rules for planetary systems using your SIZ table sounds a lot fun. And if you have something about biospheres it would be interesting too! Looking forward to these.

 

Are you sure a setting is needed? I might be old-fashioned, but a crunchy rules book is just so lovely. I'd rather see settings released as stand-alone docs/books. 

 

I think River of Heaven is doing a good job with this - perhaps not in a near future, but definitely transhumanism.

And about publishing now or waiting for more stuff to be finished, I think Chaosium is really giving the answers here. As long as I don't hear from them, we just can't publish anything else than a free pdf. And I still haven't heard anything from them, despite a handful of emails. It could be an option to just drop the references to BRP and make it a more generic d100 sourcebook, but for the moment I believe it's worth waiting a bit more for an answer. I think though that it once again raises the question whether there should be a more open "family name" for BRP games, to make it easier to go for self-publishing and community-based projects without worrying about trademarks and licensing. Looking at the market for fiction and the music business, this is no doubt a sizable part of the future for publishing.

This is what the cover would look like if renamed to BRP Space:

@nezeray: A good description of my thinking : )

Regarding settings, I have a bunch of notes for two quite different sci-fi settings (or rather two bunches of notes), but they are at the moment very far from the depth I would like them to have. And getting there will take considerable time.

Regarding rules additions I have a bit more coming: Vehicle design, psionics and modular augmentations are all at the drawing table. Nothing is finished but the basics are sorted out. These rules, I'm thinking, could go either into the next version after this, or in a separate supplement. Including them in BRP Space 2.0 (or what it will be called) would make the book a bit more complete and justify the name even more.

Aha, that might be a good idea. Ten years ago I thought someone ought to write BRP Space. I really had no plan when I started this, but it might be that BRP Space is a better name for it now.

Though I also think the title BRP Starships together with a blurb describing the book as a general sci-fi add-on is probably clear enough to avoid buyers feeling disappointed. Anyone else got an opinion on this?

I agree that more material equals more fun. At the moment there is no more material unfortunately. I hope to have some more in the coming months though, and it can either be included in BRP Starships 3.0 or in a separate Companion (the classic Chaosium way).

Splitting up the material doesn't feel right to me. Having as much as possible relating to space in the same document just seems more practical.

With proofreading almost done, we're just waiting for an answer from Chaosium about trademark issues. With my emails not being answered, I'm not sure how to make this happen with any speed. If anyone got a "hot-line" to Chaosium, it might be a good time to use it now : )

That would be very good! Let me just check with Atgxtg how many pages he's done. I know Tired Librarian has about 20 pages to go, so I'm sure there will be at least something for you.

Thanks for offering your help. Very appreciated.

Yeah, I know : ) But I liked it.

If you used 1d2 damage,you'd get exactly 8 rounds for an average human. 

 

Since the 90 seconds is a rough estimate, you could also go with a simple CONx1% roll each round to avoid the damage. Once a character fails the roll he take the damage automatically (like with drowning). That could vary the time a bit, giving heroic characters an extra couple of rounds to get rescued.

 

Yes, that's good. I will edit my post above to reflect this.

Thank you g33k for your kind words! I'm happy you like it.

Re exposure to vacuum, you are absolutely right about sight being affected. A character will be quite dead before losing sight. The rule is taken from BGB, and now that I'm looking into it a bit more, I think there might be a better way to handle it.

"A rough estimate is that a human will have about 90 seconds to be recompressed, after which death may be unavoidable.^[2][3] Unconsciousness is likely to occur within 14 seconds, primarily due to the much lower pressure outside the body causing rapid de-oxygenation of the blood (hypoxia)". Quote from Wikipedia links above.

How about this then:

Damage due to decompression speed. Explosive: 1d6+2, Abrupt: Emergency exhale or 1d6+2

Being a bit generous, characters should be able to stay conscious for about two rounds, 24 seconds. The first round you need a successful CONx5 to stay conscious, and the second round a CONx4 roll. For true heroic games, continue with CONx3, CONx2 the following rounds. Otherwise unconsciousness is automatic the third round.

Surviving for 8 rounds (96 seconds) means loosing 1-2.5 hit points per round. Loose 1d2 HP every round, unless a CONx1 roll is made.

I think the motive should be to keep most characters conscious for at least one round, to give them a chance to save themselves. With high CON and a bit of luck, a heroic deed can be squeezed in too. (HP loss at the rate of 1,2,4,8,16 is actually a bit steep if even the most hardy characters are to survive for 90 seconds.)

Does this make sense?

Just a quick update: Proofreading is going very well (many thanks to Atgxtg and Tired Librarian!) and I have contacted Charlie Krank a few days before Christmas about using "BRP" in the book.

Edit: Just got a positive response from artist David Sladek to make a few more pieces of interior art!

BTW, I love proofreading the art. Much easier than the text. 

 

 

I wish more jobs were like that.

And please continue with the suggestions. "Flavor" (or "some character" as Tired Librarian called it…) might be good in small doses, but not too much I think.

Thank you Dennis! I'm very grateful.

@Atgxtg: The free Acrobat Reader has a quite good annotation function you can access through the View menu. Give it a try if you want to, or we'll find some other way. Tired librarian is starting from page 1 - how about you start at page 50 (even though you wrote some of the text yourself…)?

I skimmed this a few days ago and it seems very good. Looking forward to more!

Excellent! Are you comfortable with annotating a pdf or do you want some other file format?

Thanks for the link. Interesting read.

Ok, thanks! Time is always too short to squeeze in everything… I appreciate your support.

While many Swedes speak reasonably good English, it's surprisingly difficult to find people here knowing it good enough for proofreading.

Anyone else interested?

As BRP Starships hopefully is making the transit to print-on-demand soon, most of the text needs proofreading. I would like to do this myself, but as my Read/Write (English) is not good enough, I just can't. I need help.

I think this sounds very promising! Keep up the good work.

Very good read so far! And Reunion looks like a fine scenario...

Just to be clear: The pdf is 120x120 millimeters. That's very close to 8.5x8.5 inches. Printing on A4 and 8.5x11" should be quite similar, with only a few millimeters difference.

What I do when printing at home, is that I print to A4, and as the printer puts everything on the top of the page, I just leave it as it is. It might not be very pretty, but at least I have a lot of space at the bottom of the page to take notes on. Alternatively I will take the finished A4s to a print shop or paper shop and have them cut all pages at once. Where I live it costs about a dollar. I haven't tried binding though, but I think they can use A4 binding and just cut away the surplus length if you decide to go with the pages cut to square format.