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1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

A direct hit is pretty much the end of the character (maybe a generous GM might give a PC a POWx1% chance to get thrown clear of the blast). There is a story about a tank that was unlucky enough tp suffer a direct hit from a naval shell. Not good. And that was a tank.

I suppose I'm getting into Mech and Godzilla territory now. 

27 minutes ago, g33k said:

I have no problem envisioning a future weapon which could target an individual porthole... if someone were stupid enough to put such a thing on their combat starship.

How far away can they target a plot device from? 🤣

On 12/19/2023 at 11:31 PM, Gundamentalist said:

Adding to the conversation - weapon conversion is a fraught subject and I wish you the best of luck. I've learnt you have to eyeball the results and tweak the results that don't feel right. Luckily I have Hans on my team as well.

Thanks of the input. I don;t have the confidence to eye-ball weapons yet (lol) but after this thread I'm certainly getting there. My issue is that I want it to be scaled with the characters while having a more futeristic feel. More deadly but also not. Perhaps weapons effects might be the way to go. Armour penetrating, heat effects and other things I haven't thought of yet.

Generally as well, how does this all scale to starship sized weapons? I've seen hit points used as normal and weapon damage being similar. But what happens if the starship fires on a character? I think it is traveller (could be wrong) where they say it does 10x damage

56 minutes ago, g33k said:

Yeah, it's technically legal to own a (de-militarized, i.e. no working weapons, no classified comms/etc systems) tank in the USA... I believe even a modern one like an M1 Abrams!  You just have to nerf it.  Obviously, even a "nerfed" main battle tank is an intimidating road-warrior!

Most places require modifications (headlights, turn signals, rubber cleats, etc) if you actually want to drive them on the roads... and most tanks don't actually fit into normal traffic lanes, so there's that issue for "street legality" too.

The insurance on it is going to be high though 🤣

11 minutes ago, soltakss said:

In that case, I would suggest having minor modifications to standard weapons, so you could have a larger battery for a blaster, or stabilisers, or even give brand little benefits, for example + 10 to hit, or no recoil.

Not a bad idea. I've been reading through your document the last few days and it's certainly very thorough! Which version of RQ is it based on? I was also toying with the idea of having different strike rank modifiers dependent on weapon type like RQ3 (slightly unrelated). In Mutant chronicles I think there is a difference how likely the weapon is to jam e.g. reliability. Which seems like it would still be an issue in a hostile, retro(gaffa-taped)-future

10 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Silly question, but have you looked at River of Heaven? A bit more along the line to Traveller than Expanse, but already has a lot of the legwork done. The is (was) also Cthulhu Rising. Both of these are by John Ossoway. The former is much easier to find, and much easier on the wallet.

SDLeary

Nope, I've got a couple of the BRP/Mythras scifi settings but the gear selection is minimal. Thanks for the suggestions I'll check them out!

15 hours ago, Ian_W said:

This is true in the real world as well. There are plenty of people with the money to buy, say, a French main battle tank with the good optics and whatnot. But they can't buy such a thing with mere money.

But I'm sure with enough money, one could buy a tank. Again, I'm fairly sure that arms traders don't care where you get the money from. You'd probably have to store it somewhere where laws are a bit more lax (or just do a 'Falling Down' like michael douglas 🙂)

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Sounds like what you want is the system from The One Ring . There you got a Standard Of Living/Wealth Level, that determined what sort of gear you could have, but you also earned Treasure would could be saved up to raise your standard of living, or used up to get things that were above your Standard. So a rich merchant could start off with a horse, while a poor woodman would have to use treasure to get one.

Yes, something like that would work for me. TBH if I'd thought about it properly I probably could've worked that one out lol

Also, usage die from 'The black Hack' work really well - you get a die (say d10) for something (say water) and when you consume it, you roll. On a 1 you go down a die type until you roll a 1 on a d4 and that means you have run out. Different things have different die types. I would love to figure out a way to extrapolate that system so that it could be used for large monetary sums. Maybe things cost a die step or something. Costly items cost 2-3 steps. And jobs pay an amount of die of a certain type.

Also I think the 40k stuff works well for 40k, (At least in dark heresy) as you are part of a service which has access to anything it might need. It does seem like they missed a few rules out though, like how often one can roll (unless I missed that somewhere) I think these things are probably at the GM discretion, my problem is I mainly play with me and my brother these days, I play one player character and do the GM stuff usiing as much random chance and generative rolls as possible, so obviously I want to make it so I can't just have access to anything and on the other hand don't have access to enough

1 hour ago, Ian_W said:

It is how money works when you're from somewhere - like 40k - where it is more important who you know than how much cash you have.

 

This is true in the real world as well. There are plenty of people with the money to buy, say, a French main battle tank with the good optics and whatnot. But they can't buy such a thing with mere money.

What I mean is, it works for that as it isn't actually about the money per se, but wouldn't work for my setting where it's all megacorps and money is king. Also it's a bit loose how you would arbitrate it. And mostly, if I go into a shop, something costs an amount, I can by it. If the shop doesn't have it or I don't have the money, I can't. They don't ask for my hierarchy or background, and I think that would extrapolate to a corporation run future where life is cheap and only the rich thrive.
 

17 minutes ago, Ian_W said:

By the way, the military versions of these were called 'anti-tank rifles' for a while, but have been renamed 'anti-material rifles' because tank armor got too thick for them.

 

As a GM you need to think about the weapons vs armor dynamic - if there isn't a lot of armor around, then weapons that fire lots of small bullets will be well liked. If there is a lot of armor around, people will start using things that fire fewer, smaller bullets.

So, although elephant guns got invented fifty years and more earlier, militaries after WW2 went for less high powered 'intermediate' cartridges that could fire a lot of bullets quickly and accurately.

 

Today, good body armor is becoming cheaper and more accessible, so armies are thinking of adopting bigger, harder hitting bullets,.

 

My recommendation would be to make up some weapons, and have them issued to your players - PPsK had the contract for equipping the Nostromo, so theres some PPsK carbines, shotguns and a heavy blast rifle, each with their own quirks and whatnot.

I think armour will be a part of the setting definitely. Probably using variable AV. It's a scifi space horror, a cross between the expanse and alien with some body horror thrown in for good measure

24 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

In what way? I've seen a few different approaches.

 

I'd like somewhere between traveller type system where you get paid for jobs and speculated trade, and rolling against a money stat. I like the idea of having it abstracted but then how do you ever get better gear and what's the limit if you say the players can have something more rare/expensive.

In the BGB for instance it's stat to roll against. But what if I just completed a big job? What criteria for getting different gear? Why count some of the costs and not others. The only way I can see it properly working is to just count everything.

I like the idea of 'usage' dice for somethings; like food and water, but not more expensive items?

Equipment in 40k for instance,  you just roll against a stat taking rarity into account. So I can have anything as long as the dice are in my favour and get nothing if they aren't.  That's not how money works 🤷‍♂️. And how many shops are there? Can characters just spend al their days looking for shops and rolling until they hit the jackpot?

1 minute ago, Ian_W said:

Your players will HATE  you for this ... but different manufacturers require different power packs and ammo for fundamentally the same weapons.

So the Delforth Gauss Rifle's power pack is incompatible with the JnR Blaster's power pack. The PPsK and the Brelforth are the same basic clip-fed highly controllable zero-g carbine, but they use different lengths of .22.

Or make all the charging cables different and they tend to break when you carry them with you too often🤣

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Sorry, you're probably wrong on that. 

Probably, I'm in the UK so most of my gun knowledge comes from mid-nineties rap music and Full Metal Jacket lol

This is all very useful stuff. At the moment I think I'm going to have a look at stuff! for BTRC (another system I hope I dont get into lol) These days I spend more time readiing rule books than playing. I fairly enjoy the differences and how each system tries to represent different aspects. I still haven't found a way to handle money I like though

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

In fact, at one time, one of the RPG magazines used to run a regular column where somebody would point out several such flaws each issue. 

I'm pretty familiar with shadowrun 2nd edition, so I consider them to be features 🤣

14 hours ago, soltakss said:

Personally, I am a big fan of a shotgun being a shotgun, with them all being the same. The alternative is to have numerous tiny variants for no real reason other than to show off the author's knowledge of real-life firearms. That approach just bores me.

For SciFi, I tend to go for different categories, so Blaster, Plasma Gun and so on.

Have a look at my RQSciFi take, as it contains several categories of weapons with RQ-style damage that should be pretty much compatible with BRP.

 

I get what you mean, however the megacorps have so much weight in my setting that I would like to distinguish from between manufacturers somehow. I think I remember the original mutant chronicles having different reliability rules so I'll possibly try and dig that out.

Having said that, this is a fantastic document! And I will definitely be using it, thank you. I love the idea of traveller but never got much passed character creation. What I might try and implement is different effects for different kinds of weapons like plasma rifles etc. I think the wh40k crit tables are good for this.

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, I think that is mostly because there isn't  lot of sci-fi stuff for BRP in general so you end up with a small weapons table with generic examples. 

 

Now there are quite a few alterative RPGs that could be used as a source, and several ways of converting, depneding on what systems you are coming from, but...if you want a way to convert weapons that will give you a decent match with BRP, and keep it simple, I'd suggest start by looking at the firearms in comparison to the energy weapons. 

For example, under"Modern Missile Weapons" a medium pistol does 1D8 damage.

Under "Advanced Missile Weapons" a medium laser pistol also does 1D8, while a blaster pistol does 1D8+2 (2 points more than the laser), and a disintergrator pistol does 3D4+1 (or three times a die two steps lower,plus 1).

Now, Assault Rifle 2d6+2, laser rifle 2d8, blaser rifle 2D8+8 (8 points more), and disintegration rifle 3D6+2 (three times a die one step lower, Plus 2) follow a similar pattern.

So you could create more weapons by converting other firearms to lasers, blasters, etc. by applying similar modifications to them. For example , a derringer does 1D6, so a hold-out blaser could do 1D6+2.

THis method not only works with the sample firearms provided in the core rules, but would also work with other firearms from other BRP realted supplments (such as Call of Cthulhu). It could aos be applied to weapons for other RPGs by finding a BRP analog for comparison.

 

For instance, the 40K Lasrifle would be analogous to the BRP laser rifle and should probably have damage stats that are similar (2D8), with some variation between models based on the decription and characters of each individual model. Again BRP firearms can help here to get a idea of the difference between say a Assault Weapon and a Sporting Weapon.

Now for the bolter is is essentially a advanced slugthrower that fire a big, heavy .75 caliber round, so I'd probably look at the BRP Musket for an baseline. The Musket does 1D10+4 which is pretty close to the 1D10+5 you mention for the bolter.

 

How well this works for you kinda depends on what you are expecting. In BRP getting hit by a musket will probably ruin your day, unless you got good armor or other form of protection. In some other games, a single hit by a weapon doesn't have much of an effect on an experienced warrior (i.e. in D&D a .50 cal bullet does 2D12, but a typical mid level PC might have 40 or 50 hit points). SO when converting over you need to decide if you want the results to be in tune with BRP, or with the source game system. If the latter, you might want to consider doubling hit points or maybe increasing the armor a little. 

 

Hope that helps.

 

 

  

 

This is very helpul, and something I started doing with the 40k stuff. However what I think I'm missing is how to work out 'can deal more damage' and 'always deals more damage. For instance 3d6+2 gives a minimum of 5 damage which, for a head shot, would kill most characters. However a shotgun at close range is 4d6, which means minimum 4 damage. I feel a shotgun at close range should generally be more deadly, idk. Then there are the mean numbers for rolls etc. I do have a document about modern firearms I got off here with this table in it:

But I was hoping to find one that had more dice and went higher and took into account the minimum damage as well. Ideally gurps could be converted. It has everything in it lol

That's great, thank you. I'd seen a couple of these somewhere else but didn't realize there was so much on this site. I'd been searching using 'weapon' as a key term (which didn't bring up much)

I found the mutant chronicles hack and going to use that with the original weapon jamming etc.

Thanks again

JFR

Hi all,

I've fallen in love with BRP, but what there doesn't seem to much variation in weapons in the source material I have. For instance, A shotgun is just a shotgun or sawn off, no difference in manufacturer etc.

I like the 40k RPG weapons and I've been toying with making those stats fit. Main thing is the damage is far too high as toughness rating of the character soaks damage. I was thinking about removing 4pts of damage (average toughness ballparked) from each weapon but unsure on how to do this so that it is reflective of the weapons in the BGB and so that it makes the average hit  4pts less. For instance a bolter is a d10 plus 5; I was thinking drop the die down a step (from d10 to D8 or d6. and remove 2,3 or 4 off the other part) so D10+5 becomes D6 plus 3 Anyways, I was wondering if there is something all ready out there that would fit (D20 modern or something)? Or if there is a dice step plus average roll chart that would help me out someone could point me to?

For what it's worth I'm more into gritty space horror than shiny happy future stuff. Think Aliens or Warhammer or cyberpunk.

Thanks in advance