rust

My world's universe does already include a mixed fantasy-science fiction-sys- tem designed by a group of gamers. In their Solabar system the "Elder Races" (fantasy, use magic, etc.) have retreated to one of the system's planets, and the "Younger Races" (including humans, use science fiction technology, etc.) have established their settlements on two other planets of the system. I first considered this a rather crazy idea, but meanwhile I have played seve- ral "crossover adventures" with characters from my Pharos IV visiting the So- labar system, and it worked just fine - the "fantasy creatures" are treated as "low-tech aliens with strange powers", and I really did not have to change a lot to make Solabar playable for my SF group. So, I see no problem at all with The Green becoming predominantly fantasy, I will doubtless still be able to use and enjoy this setting. And I think that other SF-GMs will also be able to make the few necessary changes without serious problems.

Ah, now I have a language problem: The gorges are the valleys where the rivers come out of the mountain range, right ? If so, perhaps you could include some kind of (at least partially) water-filled cave system (labyrinth ?) under the mountains, as a Gate in a flooded cave would make the perfect "other end" of the Gate I already located in a similar place on Pharos IV ?

This is something I would very much like to see in a shared universe.

That looks good. If my spacefarers ever come to visit this world, they will ha- ve a perfect place to land (or is it "to water" ?) off the coast of The Green - unless they would use a Gate, of course. By the way, has anyone proposed where a Gate could be in this world ? If there is only a single Gate, I would prefer a "central" location, perhaps close to the Sky-shelf Mountain, but preferably not in the desert.

Over here we have several RPGs that started as fan-produced free PDFs on one of the forums, gathered a small fan community around themselves, and then appeared as semi-commercial products in print, too. It seems that PDFs are often just a good way to "test the waters" and find out whether it would be worth the trouble (and especially the money ...) to publish an RPG in print. Besides, the feedback received for the PDF is a way to get "free playtesting" for a potential future product.

That was my impression, too. Currently I am working on my science fiction world almost daily, and I planned to start to translate the basic informations into English as soon as the shared universe begins to take shape and I have the time and energy for the translation.

I am not "old", I am experienced ...

I think this is an excellent background story for a fantasy world.

Well, after another killing spree by youngsters even Chess and Lego might come under some suspicion ... When the whole nonsense started, they were talking about "Counterstrike" and "Doom", but then Germany's most influential tabloid added "Final Fanta- sy" to the list, and the law officially proposed finally included all games whe- re the player used "cruelty" on, or killed, "humans or human-like creatures" - which would make for a very, very long list, I think. The current government has promised to ban all "killer games", and although the discussion currently has died down somewhat, this promise still stands, and no one knows where they would draw the line after another bloody in- cident with kids. Most experts on child psychology etc. told the politicians that such a law would be utterly stupid, but our politicians are not exactly famous for liste- ning to experts ... But see for yourself how it started: German gov't considers jail time for gamers - Xbox 360 News at GameSpot

Bad luck ... the law proposed last year by the current head of state of Bava- ria included violence against "human-like creatures" as well, and demanded up to two years in prison for anyone owning such a game - in fact it treated so- called "killer games" exactly like child pornography.

Well, we are still suffering from a very aggressive "killer games" debate after a school "massacre" and some incidents, and many politicians (including some important ones) demanded that all games where one plays to kill another hu- man should be declared illegal, not only certain computer games. This revived an older debate about "war toys" (plastic guns and thelike), and meanwhile both sides of the debate are well "entrenched" and quite willing to ignore any facts - and certain news from the US of A do not exactly improve the situation, as you may guess. Therefore roleplaying supporters over here at least currently do well to stay away from children ...

Yep, it does. The "gasbag material" has a thin middle layer of a gelatinous / semi-liquid substance. When the "gasbag" is damaged, this material leaks out and begins to harden in contact with oxygen. This is sufficient to "heal" bullet holes or other very minor damage, but of course it is useless against any serious damage. Thank you for your suggestions !

Over here you could run into lots of trouble if you would try to introduce 8 - 11 year olds to a game which includes any kind of semi-realistic com- bat. If you would openly target an age group under 14 years you could well run afoul of the child protection laws. We recently had a discussion about this subject on a forum over here, and we agreed that the best age to introduce youngsters to roleplaying games would be somewhere between 14 and 16 years of age.

I just "translated" two airships, one designed after Nobile's "Italia" and the other after the modern "Stratellite", with your system. In both cases the stats seem to fit perfectly, although the Handling is still a problem (because it is done mostly by the flight computer), and I was somewhat at a loss with the AP value (which I finally decided to put at 8, because of the modern self-sealing materials of my setting).

Thank you for these good news, it was a pleasure to read this - keep going !

@ Ars Mysteriorum: Ah, well - I see your point. However, many of the early Chaosium products have even been worse than average Mongoose products, including the first edition of Runequest, and for me the more important point is the fact that those old games are printed, packaged - and sold. In my opinion it is better to have a subperfect edition of the game available than none at all. @ Atgxtg: On the other hand, dozens of the out-of-print-RPGs are now available again as PDFs, and some of them even have managed to gather new communities around them (see Star Frontiers), and have started a "second life" that is in some cases even more vibrant than it was when they were in print. Back then, it was often quite a problem to find another person who played something like FTL: 2448 or Fringeworthy and wrote material for it, nowadays the Internet makes it comparatively easy to make useful contacts that keep even "fringe" games alive.

BRP is not the only one of the "old" RPGs that is still alive. Some are doing quite well (Traveller), some are barely surviving (Empire of the Petal Throne), some even almost returned from the grave (Star Frontiers). True, most of the players of these games could hardly be called "Youngsters", but there are also at least enough younger players to keep the games alive, I think. Besides, from my experience many players stop playing at around the time when they start their careers and found their families, but not a few of them return to roleplaying a couple of years later, once they have settled into their "adult lives", and remember their former hobby. Therefore there is a certain "thinning out" in the age group in question, which is at least partial- ly "repaired" in later / older age groups [sorry, my English is probably not sufficient for this subject, but I hope one can guess what I mean ...]. So, I am not pessimistic at all. Like in art, music and many other fields at least many of the really good "classics" have survived, and will most probab- ly continue to do so. Moreover, some even start "growing" again, with Tra- veller being a good example: Two new editions planned for this year.

If we wanted to be "realistic", we would need different tables for different weapons and different ammunition types for both penetration and charac- ter damage each. A high penetration value does not necessarily mean a high damage value. In fact, the best "manstopper ammunitions" are designed with a very low pene- tration value, because the important part for damage is the amount of ener- gy transferred to the body tissue, not the energy "wasted" for penetrating it. Any RPG simulation of real world weapons and ammunitions and their effects on all common materials and the human body (not to speak of other creatu- res' bodies - that would require even more tables ...) would become unplay- able, I think. So, instead of getting lost in details, we probably should concentrate on a fast, slim and simple system for firearms combat - and I think the current CoC system is good enough, and needs only few changes. A good armor table is one such useful addition, a catalogue of penetration and damage tables for all kinds of weapons and ammunitions is too much of a good thing, I think.

Well, for the past five months I have been working on a detailed description of a single planet with a colony of (now) just about 60,000 humans, and now I have about 50 pages of "canonical" material, some maps and many notes - and there is still a surprising lot to do before I would call this science fiction setting "complete". And no, this is not unusual for science fiction. Just take a look at the Blue Planet RPG, an entire RPG with lots of supplements, and all about one single planet. Many Travellers GMs also have developed their planets to the point where they are just as well described as any fantasy world, and one guy on a world builder forum recently remarked that he will consider his world "fini- shed" when he has written its capital's phonebook ... As for science fiction novels about single planets, I could literally name do- zens of them. Jack Vance alone probably wrote more than a dozen of such novels, and there are lots of quite famous "one-world-SF-novels" by authors like Heinlein or Niven. There are even at least several science fiction novels about single cities.

Blind archers and swordsmen ... frankly, I do not believe that anything of this kind realy can and does exist. However, if I would have to explain it, I would use some kind of psionics.

I have just finished "translating" some civilian antigravity vehicles, with this Skimmer a typical example: Grav Skimmer Mk. I This is the colony's standard skimmer, it can carry the pilot plus 5 passen- gers or 1 ton of cargo, has a range of 3,000 km with a standard energy cell, and is outfitted with a flight computer, inertial and satellite navigation systems and a long-range communicator. Weight 2,000 kg / SIZ 51 Hit Points 51 (built as "airship") Hull 10 mm Aluminum / AP 13 (without the -10 for civilian vehicles) Top Speed 200 km/h / MOV 170 As you see, the AP is somewhat high for a civilian vehicle, but this is very welcome, as this skimmer has to be able to withstand ocean landings in a rough sea. The skill system I am currently working on has a root skill maximum of 60 %, and I have decided that this is also the maximum performance of a flight computer. Using your proposal, it would give either a skill bonus of + 30 % or fly the craft itself at 60 % - which means that even an unexperienced person should be able to fly the craft under routine conditions, while severe weather conditions could be a problem even for an experienced pilot. Of course, I cannot compare your numbers to any real vehicle in this case, but they make sense and work well within the framework of my setting.

@ Atgxtg: Thank you very much for the detailed answers ! I will raise the Hit Points for vehicles with futuristic materials somewhat to give them the same number of Hit Points vehicles with conventional materials do have. Unfortunately I cannot write much about the Handling numbers. The vehicles of my setting are almost all computer-operated, and I have not yet decided how to determine the relevant skill levels of the "flight" computers used, and how to give the characters an opportunity to use their own skills despite the computer's "superiority". I am eagerly looking forward to your new material.

Thank you very much for the information !

Right now I am preparing to "translate" the technology of my science fiction setting into the BRP system. I have started by writing "templates" for the most important stats and infor- mations. While it is no real problem to do this for spaceships and vehicles (thanks to Atgxtg and his most useful files), I find it difficult to decide what informations I will need for robots. Unfortunately I have no copy of the Zero Edition of BRP, and therefore cannot look up whether it includes any robots, and how they are described there - and the Ringworld RPG did not use robots at all. Perhaps someone with a copy of the Zero Edition could lend me a helping hand ? Thank You !

@ Atgxtg: I seem to have a minor problem with the way the Hit Points are determined. My colonists built the same vehicle twice, a prototype with a steel hull and an improved version with a hull made of composites. Since the one with the steel hull is considerably more heavy, it has a higher SIZ score, and there- fore more Hit Points - but otherwise it is exactly the same vehicle, even the AP values are identical (due to a somewhat thicker hull on the improved ver- sion). This is nothing serious in the case I mentioned, but I could imagine that it could become more of a problem with truly huge vehicles, when lightweight materials will make a really significant difference in weight / SIZ, but not much difference in AP: The more modern vehicle would be less able to ab- sorb damage, for no obvious reason. Or did I overlook something, or get something wrong ? Thank You !