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Thank yiu very much. I did borrow some ideas from Stellar Wind, for example concerning the reaction drive starships and the natural hazards of the planet.

Historically big game was trapped, hunted with missile weapons from chariot (e.g. lion), horseback (e.g. buffalo) or elephantback (e.g. tiger) or hunted by big hun- ting parties which included lots of dogs (e.g. bear), even a boar was considered too dangerous to be hunted on foot by a single person. In almost all pre-gunpow- der cultures the idea to hunt dangerous big game in "roleplaying character style" would have been considered as being more suicidally stupid than heroic. Today we tend to overlook this and consider big game hunting easy, because with fire- arms it indeed is easy, but before their invention something like a wild bull was the equivalent of a main battle tank.

Oxen were and are used to draw sleds, felled trees and especially ploughs.

Cattle do have more strength than polar bears, at least I very much doubt that two polar bears could pull a wagon as well as two oxen.

This is just 10 % more than a .700 Nitro Express, so I really doubt that the result would look different.

As far as I understood, the ammunition used in the video I linked is the .700 Nitro Express. The .700 Nitro Express is a rather common big game hunting round, and rarely (if ever) fired with a bipod or tripod. It has been available and in production for more than 20 years now, so it is also not exactly a no- velty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.700_Nitro_Express However, if you think this example is too extreme, take the .460 Weatherby Magnum, a standard big game round. It still has a recoil of 140 J, easily suf- ficient to knock over someone who does not know how to handle the gun.

Yes and no, since most longarms which fire high power ammunition have recoil buffers, because otherwise it could well happen that the one firing it is indeed knocked over. Besides, if the one firing the weapon has a minimum of training and experience, he will fire it from a stable body position, expect the recoil and prepare to absorb it with his body. Just take a look at beginners firing a comparatively heavy wea- pon for the first time without any training, it is not that rare to see one of them in a sitting position after the first attempt. Edit.: This one here is demonstrating how not to do it ...: The target normally does not know that it will be hit and cannot prepare to soak up the energy from the impact, and is therefore far more likely to be knocked over. What is nonsense is the Hollywood idea that a hit with a projectile from a normal firearm could throw the target several meters through the air, this is simply im- possible.

Actually, it is the other way: People who wear armour usually are knocked down, because the projectile transfers all of its energy to the armour at the moment it hits when it is unable to penetrate the armour, while in the case of people with- out armour the projectile transfers its energy more slowly while it moves through the body and often passes through the body and leaves it after transfering only a small amount of its energy.

The early novels are public domain in the US, but not in Europe, and once the US applies the Berne Convention they are also no longer public domain in the US.

I think First Aid could save the character within CON rounds, healing magic within CON minutes - afterwards Detect Life would show that he is now a corpse.

By the way, while serious brain damage sets in about two to four minutes after the brain's oxygen supply is cut off, it takes about ten minutes until the charac- ter is dead. If there is healing magic which can heal brain damage, the character could be brought back to normal within those ten minutes, afterwards he would have to be resurrected.

Not a fan of "Casualty" (actually, no idea what that is), but brain damage starts almost immediately once the brain is no longer supplied with oxygen and beco- mes serious after about two to four minutes under normal conditions. If CON in rounds of 12 seconds is used, a CON of 12 would give about 2 1/2 minutes, an acceptable value, although a little on the short side.

Thank you very much for your offer, but I am not sure it would fit well into the style of our campaign. We usually work with a Traveller-style icosahedron map and derive the regional and local maps from there, with the hexes as the basic elements. A small version of Samar's "master map" would look like this:

I have those data, but in German. It should be easy in most cases to see what is meant, but you may have to use an online translator now and then: The star Turan: Typ: F9 V Alter: 3,85 Milliarden Jahre Masse: 1,15 Temperatur: 6.100 K Leuchtkraft: 2,09 Radius: 0,006 AU The planet Samar: Jahreslänge: 676,46 Tage Tageslänge: 19,34 Stunden Achsneigung: 7 Grad Durchmesser: 15.028 km Umfang: 47.188 km Oberfläche: 709 Mio. qkm Schwerkraft: 0,94 G Atmosphäre: Stickstoff-Kohlendioxid-Atmosphäre Hydrographie: 0 % (Aquifere und Polare Eiskappen) Klima : Durchschnittstemperatur 12° C Geländeformen: Felswüste, Sandwüste, Gebirge Vulkanismus: Gemäßigt Tektonik: Gering Rohstoffe: Kristalle, Leichtmetalle (Aluminium, Titan) Biosphäre: keine einheimischen Lebensformen, Bioterraforming The other planets: Alpha Orbit 0,32 AU Heiße Felswelt, Durchmesser 6.210 km keine Atmosphäre, kein Wasser kein Mond Beta Orbit 0,55 AU Ödwelt, Durchmesser 9.490 km keine Atmosphäre, kein Wasser 2 Monde Gamma Orbit 0,93 AU Treibhauswelt, Durchmesser 14.340 km sehr dichte toxische Atmosphäre, kein Wasser 1 Mond Samar Orbit 1,58 AU Wüstenplanet, Durchmesser 15.028 km exotische Atmosphäre, polare Eiskappen und Aquifere Kolonie seit 2376, Terraformingprogramm kein Mond Epsilon Orbit 2,69 AU Kalte Felswelt, Durchmesser 5.830 km keine Atmosphäre, polare Eiskappen 1 Mond Zeta Orbit 4,57 AU Kalte Felswelt, Durchmesser 4.750 km keine Atmosphäre, kein Wasser 3 Monde Eta Orbit 7,78 AU Kleiner Gasriese, Durchmesser 48.500 km 4 große Monde, 13 kleine Monde Theta Orbit 13,23 AU Eiswelt, Durchmesser 2.070 km keine Atmosphäre, eisbedeckt kein Mond Wormhole Orbit 36,59 AU Zielsystem Recalada, Dauer des Transits 3 Tage A planetologist was so kind to take a look at the data, so they should be close enough to rea- listic data for my purposes. Some other data, for example concerning the magnetosphere, are more hidden in the descrip- tive text, so I do not post them here.

To give some numbers, Samar has a diameter of 15,028 km and a surface gravity of 0.94 g (it has a lower density than Earth, the iron core is smaller and the hea- vy elements are more rare). This makes it much bigger than Mars, which probably was the remark that caused some confusion, but only slightly bigger than Earth.

For my setting's vehicles I normally use only armor and location. Once a weapon is powerful enough to penetrate the armor of a location, this location is damaged and no longer functional. For example, if a weapon hits a ship's bridge and pene- trates the armor there, the bridge is damaged and can no longer be used until it is repaired. In my view this works quite well for modern and futuristic heavy wea- pons, which usually do a lot of "area" damage when they are able to penetrate armor, so counting individual hit points does not seem necessary.

It could be used that way, although I do not use its equivalent in my campaign, Athletics*, as a defensive skill to avoid dangers. * For my campaigns I have combined Climb, Jump, Swim and Throw into one Athletics skill, Brawl, Grapple and Martial Arts into one Unarmed Combat Skill, Hide and Stealth into one Stealth Skill, and Listen, Sense and Spot into one Perception Skill. This made a little elbow room on the character sheet for the various engineering, science and technology skills my science fiction setting requires.

True, but what I did mean was that even a Hindenburg retrofitted with ramjets more powerful than the Yamato's diesel engines would have less hit points than the battleship. Edit.: But if you do not like that example, take two otherwise identical ships, one with a diesel engine of 10,000 kW, the other with a diesel engine of 20,000 kW. These two ships should have different STR, but I see no reason to also give them different hit points. As far as I can see the BRP system does not offer useful data on other potential variables, like structure or material, to determine the STR of vehicles or other ob- jects.

I am not convinced that STR is useful in determining the hit points of a vehicle. When I give a vehicle a more powerful engine this does not necessarily increase its damage resistance - even a Hindenburg with ramjet engines more powerful than the diesel engines of the Yamato would have less hit points than the battle- ship. In my view everything but the dimensions and the mass of the vehicle (or any other object, many have no STR anyway) could be deleted from the equation.

According to BGB page 277 there is a correlation between an object's SIZ and its damage resistance ("an average object has hit points roughly equivalent to its SIZ"), but in my view this is also not very convincing. As has been mentio- ned, the zeppelin "Hindenburg" and the battleship "Yamato" have approximately the same SIZ, but I am fairly certain that they do not have the same number of hit points, and the rule of thumb "SIZ = Hit Points" actually works for very few real world examples.

It works as long as there is no situation where characters can build vehicles or one has to deal with vehicles designed by different people. For example, in my science fiction campaigns the characters with the relevant skills (Enginee- ring, Science, Technology ...) can design and build devices and vehicles, and without a common and well defined framework for what is possible with the technology of the setting this would soon run into problems. Edit.: Just imagine a magic system with no other framework than "What do I want this spell to do ?" - no range, area, endurance or any other data for the spell. I doubt that magic user players would enjoy that.

This is how the BRP-based Ringworld RPG did it, replacing SIZ with MAS in the creature stats and with Mass and Volume / Dimensions in the technology stats.

To quote myself from the BRP flaws thread: The fact that the SIZ scale is not linear would not irritate me, but that it does not distinguish between "low weight / high volume" and "high weight / low vo- lume" really does. This way both the dirigible on BGB page 271 and the locomo- tive on BGB page 277 have SIZ 100, and to me this does not make any sense.

The fact that the SIZ scale is not linear would not irritate me, but that it does not distinguish between "low weight / high volume" and "high weight / low vo- lume" really does. This way both the dirigible on BGB page 271 and the locomo- tive on BGB page 277 have SIZ 100, and to me this does not make any sense.