rust

a race of planet-hopping gypsies

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.

I thought the idea was a fantasy world and a separate primarily sci fi universe.

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 ...

Self sealing: Sounds to me like the ship can do First Aid on itself.

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).

I'm 20 years old. I GM for a group ranging in age from 19 to 22. All of them have become fervent fans of BRP, and some have even begun proselytizing for the system.

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 !

Not finished yet.

Well, there is at least one reader waiting for that stuff ...

Edit.: I have used your system for some calculations for both real world vehicles

(e.g. the research submarine Alvin) and science fiction vehicles (e.g. a re-

search submarine I designed with GURPS Vehicles), and your system is doing

very well.

To give an example: Alvin has a safe depth of 4,500 m, which according to

your formula would require 32 AP. The real vehicle has a hull of 50 mm of ti-

tanium, which would give it an AP 27 on your table - quite close enough for

my purposes, especially since Alvin is a small vehicle with a pressure-resistant

form, which helps to absorb pressure and reduces the need for armor at least

somewhat.

Your system did even better with my science fiction submarines, which have

more conventional forms, and I am now looking forward to using it with anti-

gravity vehicles and spaceships.

You are right, and indeed only few creatures from Earth (e.g. drifting sea

weed, deep sea coral, dolphin, whale shark) have made it to Pharos IV.

All other introduced plants and animals came "from other colonized planets",

which means I had to invent them. Fortunately there is a friendly marine bio-

logist on another forum who lends me a helping hand now and then, by tel-

ling me which of my ideas is possible, and which is nonsense.

And yes, there are some remnants of the native fauna. Most are rather un-

interesting (snails, worms, etc.), but there are also the so-called "octopoids"

which inhabit the deep sea trenches of the planet (and which, in fact, are

not native at all - but this would be a very long story about undiscovered

ruins and previous alien visitors).

So, Pharos IV really is a truly alien environment, but this is exactly what I had

hoped for: An interesting world to build, and a true challenge for the players.

My only serious problem is that I seem to be running out of truly good ideas

for animals and plants before Pharos IV is sufficiently "stocked" ...

Thank you very much for your remarks !