rust

Again, thank you very much - especially for the Swiftsure submarine, which

provides an excellent design example for my water world setting.

I was looking for the Vehicle Design Rules and Vehicle Modification Rules (both

version 4.1) you mentioned in your file, but unfortunately I seem unable to

find them ?

Thank you !

@ Atgxtg:

This looks like a very useful idea.

Right now I have only one remark: It could be useful to differentiate between

necessary crew and accomodations for surplus crew (e.g. medics, scientists,

marines etc.) or passengers.

This is one of the best fantasy backgrounds I have seen for quite a while.

It gives a very good explanation both for the existence of strange monsters

and the existence of dungeons of varying degrees of danger and protection

(the tombs of the Azchir and those of their more or less powerful servants),

and it gives the entire world (or at least the parts once ruled by the Azchir)

a fascinating ancient history that is connected to the Gates.

Please continue, I am looking forward to reading more of your ideas.

Well, my SF is not that "hard" ... FTL drives and hyperspace tunnels do exist,

since astrophysicists do not rule them out completely (at least some do not),

and weird aliens also do exist - although they usually have to be very alien

to be believable. As for immortals and psionics ... sorry, no.

@ Puck:

Yes, you have a point there - in a Star Wars-like space opera I would pro-

bably prefer the Trogod to one of those races who look completely different

from humans, but act and talk like the people next door.

If you think of space opera, it should not be too difficult to adapt the Tro-

god. In the end you would only have to replace their magic (they could

still believe that it works, so it could become their religion ?) with techno-

logy and "modernize" their culture, I think.

@ soltakss:

The idea of the Seeder races ... it would be a possibility, but I have to ad-

mit that I do not like it. Our DNA and our entire biochemistry are closely lin-

ked to all the other parts of our planet's biosphere. The Seeding could only

work if the Seeders would seed entire biospheres, because otherwise the

"humans" on other worlds could not even eat native plants and animals, be-

cause a different biochemistry would either prevent them from deriving nou-

rishment from them, or would kill them off immediately. And if the Seeders

would indeed seed entire biospheres, all the inhabited worlds would look mo-

re or less the same ...

However, I am one of those "Hard SF" guys (at least most of the time) and

therefore have a sad tendency to spoil space opera fun - you may just as

well ignore my "grunts" in such cases.

@ Atgxtg: Thank you very much for the info on carbon fibre and titanium !

Thank you very much for this material, it really is very useful.

By the way, do you have any idea where Carbon Fibre and Titanium (the

two most common materials in my setting) could be in your table ?

Thank You !

While the Trogods doubtless are a very fine fantasy species, I doubt that

they would do well in a science fiction setting. In my opinion they are too

much like humans to make a convincing alien species, like for example the

Puppeteers or the Trinoc of the Ringworld RPG. Even if you would give them

a very alien culture and technology, they would still look more like some

strange human sub-species than like aliens, I think.

Thank you very much, a very good idea !

I have looked it up and ordered "Natural Selection" right away.

Over the years there have been various "undersea environment" supplements

for some of the RPGs (D&D, Transhuman Space, Traveller, etc.), with rules

for activities under water, equipment and sea creatures.

However, up to now I was unable to find out whether something of this kind

was ever produced for one of the BRP-based games, be it fantasy or science

fiction.

If you know of any such material (I am especially interested in unusual "non-

monster" sea creatures like the Wrillabees from the Ringworld RPG ...), could

you please let me know ?

Thank You !

Except for the Vampire/Werewolf crowd, who seem to forget that they're only playing a game - you're all muppets...

Oh, how considerate - you are trying to make me feel at home !

Thank you very much for this information !

The colonists in my Pharos IV-setting come from different planets with diffe-

rent cultures, and I was looking for a way to "mirror" these differences in the

character generation for quite some time.

Attributes and skills did not really work, but traits could well be a way to do

it, because they could directly influence the behaviour of the characters, not

only their abilities.

So, I will give it a try and design different sets of traits for the characters'

home cultures. I think I will not use these traits in the Pendragon way, with

dice rolls in game, but I will find some in-setting way to "reward" the players

for adhering to their cultures' typical traits instead.

Thank you again for a good idea.

An interesting idea. Did you use the traits in the Star Wars game only for

Jedi Knight characters or for all kinds of characters, including Fringers and

Scoundrels ?

Yep, I am also convinced that roleplaying has something to do with fun and

with personal taste.

But I have been told over and over again that only "old-school roleplaying"

(Dungeons and Dragons, Tunnels and Trolls, etc.) is "real roleplaying", while

all other games are somehow flawed, and the World of Darkness games are

especially "wrong", because they encourage "narrativism", which "leads an

entire generation of young gamers away from true roleplaying" - and so on.

And on. And on - ad nauseam.

It is especially bizarre because most of the missionaries of this creed are

less than twenty years old, and know "old-school roleplaying" about as well

as I know life in the Middle Ages - from hearsay only. But the less they know,

the more aggressive they are. Call of Cthulhu players have been called "swi-

ne wallowing in their desire to be driven mad", to give just one example of

that "style" of debate.

Ah well, I am far off topic now, but when something touches that sore point,

I am likely to go off ... sorry for complaining, so.

I like both ideas. I am always on the lookout for interesting ideas for my

world, and I often have ideas which seem interesting, but will not fit into

my world's framework, so a place to "trade" ideas would be nice. And a

place to discuss new world elements before throwing them at the players

(and having the bad ones being thrown back at me) would also be a great

advantage.

Yes Oh yes. Over here we have some people who travel from forum to forum

in order to explain with missionary zeal the One Right Way to roleplay, based

on their pseudoscientific roleplaying theories, usually insult all those who re-

fuse to join their semi-religion badly, and in most cases get thrown out of the

forum in question. However, some weeks later the next missionary appears ...

I am a rather peaceful person, but there are moments when I wish Attila the

Hun could lend me a helping hand with some of these people ...

Not at all, I just wanted to explain from my point of view why I would appre-

ciate the kind of solution you proposed.

While I would have no problems at all if others would copy my world's material

and change it in any way they like, I would find it difficult to accept if they

would make changes to my "original" material, which is the "canonical" material

on my world for "my" players.

This could force me to work with (and remember) at least two different ver-

sions of my world, the one in the wiki and the "true" one at home, and this

could become quite unnerving, I think.

@ Trifletraxor:

Not only for Cthulhu, they are also doing quite well in our science fiction set-

ting. That one-legged oldster can be rather dangerous with a gauss harpoon

in his hand ...

@ Charles Green:

Of course you are right, we always leave it to the player to decide whether

he / she wants to accept a character with "weak" attributes, or prefers to

reroll for a "better" character.

And I have to admit that we sometimes "balance" a "weak" character with

in-setting advantages (like lots of contacts for the oldster) that make sense

with the character in question.

It depends on the style of roleplaying one prefers. In our group we consider it

far more important who the PC is (biography, personality, motivations) than

what the PC can do (attributes and skills), and it can be quite a roleplaying

challenge to play a crippled old man or a child (= a "weak" character) instead

of the usual hero, whom everyone of us has played dozens of times already.

Besides, playing a "weak" character means that you have to develop new me-

thods of solving old problems, a test of cleverness and creativity. Playing an

average hero is a simple task, once you have done it a couple of times, and

after some years of roleplaying (thirty years in my case) you can do it while

asleep. It even becomes quite boring. So, why not try something different,

and play the clumsy clerk or the one-legged oldster ?

But, again: In the end it is purely a matter of personal taste.

An equal / even playing field is an excellent idea if the PCs have to compete

against each other, but at least in my game this is rarely the case. And to

establish such a playing field with the enemy (e.g. PCs and monsters having

equal stats) seems to be somewhat counterproductive.

Having "strong" and "weak" PCs in the party usually makes the game more re-

alistic, and offers additional opportunities for roleplaying, I think.

If we decide to use Gates to connect the worlds, even a different background

should be no real problem, the Gates could still connect worlds in "parallel uni-

verses" with completely different political etc. background situations, even

with slightly different laws of nature (e.g. to allow for different FTL drive phi-

losophies).

In my opinion, this approach could make it even more interesting than a sha-

red background, but that is probably a matter of taste.

Pharos IV currently uses the "Honorverse" of David Weber's Honor Harrington-

series as its background, but it could easily be "moved" to any other back-

ground where a remote human colony on the very edge of the explored space

is possible.

Thank you, and I hope my colonists will one day be able to visit The Green -

most of them have never seen any kind of forest, and can only dream of the

things that might be discovered there.

There is at least one other shop in Germany that offers BRP:

Sphärenmeisters Spiele

You will find BRP under Englische Rollenspiele / Cthulhu.

Hello Puck, and thank you for your interest.

Most of the colonists live on Floaters, huge rafts with several decks, which

are linked together to form settlements. There are also some domed habitats

on the sea floor, mostly to operate the crystal mines (crystals are the main

export of the colony), and there are the Faders, a kind of "sea gypsies", who

live on their catamaran ships.

The people need diving equipment underwater, but there are many types of

submarines and submersibles, and some of the most difficult and dangerous

tasks are handled by aquabots (aquatic robots) or by trained dolphins and

wrillabees (the latter from the Ringworld RPG).

Typical underwater weapons are gauss harpoons (where magnetism is used

to accelerate a metal dart) and sonic stunners.

The colony itself is a rather peaceful and perhaps even somewhat boring pla-

ce (people go about aquafarming, fishing, mining - the usual drudgery), the

only exceptions are the exploration of the planet and of some abandoned ru-

ins of unknown origin, the encounters with the potentially intelligent "octopo-

ids" of the deep sea trenches, and the diplomatic and political games with the

various powers which would like to control the colony.

True adventures happen offworlds: Raiders and pirates from a nearby failed

interstellar state, trade missions through more or less hostile regions, a con-

flict with a megacorporation which produces genetically modified slaves, and

similar stuff.

The focus of the campaign is the development of the colony under adverse

conditions. Up to now we have played some fifty game-years, from the first

landing to the independence and afterwards, and have produced about fifty

pages of "canonical" material, some maps and lots of unedited notes.

For the technology of the colony I used GURPS material, for roleplaying we

currently use a modification of Cthulhu Rising, but of course I plan to "trans-

late" the setting into the new BRP. We do have some homebrewed underwa-

ter rules, based on the Ringworld RPG, but not very detailed.