rust

I like to see cattle pull a wagon with no wheels!

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.

Its a t-rex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.577_Tyrannosaur

"This cartridge has the distinction of possessing the heaviest free recoil of all commercially available, shoulder-fired weapons, at 220 lbs into the shoulder with its heaviest solid of 750 grains."

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.

Actually it is neither. A bullet ust doesn't have enough kinetic enegy to knock the target down. And that is a good thing, becuase if it did, the shooter would end up on his butt, too. Equal and opposite forces.

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.

... because the vast majority of people will be knocked down when shot in the chest (if they have no armor).

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.

Barsoom. Is that public domain yet?

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.

Hrrm, does that mean that "CON in minutes" might be a better approximation?

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.

icebrand, is it okay if I use CON in rounds in my edit of the rules? Should be done in a day or two (didn't quite manage to finish it this weekend).

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.

CON in rounds is nice and simple. Any "Casualty" fans recall how long it is before brain damage starts?

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:

If you are going to get into the details of your creation Rust, then what type of star does it circle and how many AU is it from that star? What is the axial tilt? Does it have a magnetic field? Moons? How many gigayears old is your planet? What other worlds are there in the system?

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.

I'm not convinced that vehicles should have "hit points" unless they are living creatures, like the Vorlon ship in B5.

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.

But does the Jump skill in the BGB fill that niche?

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.

The Hindenberg had ...

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.

And, you assume a vehicle's STR is solely determined by the output of its power plant. I do not believe that to be the case.

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.

Yes, which is why the (SIZ + STR)/2 average works out nicer. The Yamato would probably have a much higher STR than the Hindenberg. And, if you modify SIZ to either be lreative to mass, volume and STR, or more closely aligned with mass, the standard HP formula would probably work out nicer since the Yamato would have a higher SIZ in both cases.

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.

So I don't see the need for giving a very large object a SIZ. But maybe someone else can give an example of when knowing something like a certain ship is SIZ 350 rather than SIZ 325 matters.

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.

Without any system in place, making a creature or vehicle in BRP becomes a simple exercise in "what do I want this creature or vehicle to do?" Maybe it just works better that way?

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.

I'd hate to add stats, but perhaps we need to replace SIZ with MAS (mass) and VOL (volume - though this still requires some intuitiveness) ...

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.

Because it is useful. Just becuase a scale isn't linear doesn't mean that it isn't useful.

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.

Why are we still using SIZ again?

Yeah, but it isn't just oxygen you have to worry about. As the gravity increases the planet is able to retain lighter elements, not just oxygen. So Nitrogen-CO2 becomes less likely. Eventually you reach a point where the planet is mostly hydrogen.

While this is true, a planet with a high enough surface gravity to retain a size-

able amount of free hydrogen long enough that it is still there when the planet

has cooled down enough that humans could theoretically want to terraform it

and live there would have a too high surface gravity for humans anyway - if it

is cold enough to live there and still has lots of free hydrogen in its atmosphere,

you would not really want to go there.

I normally use both DEX x 5 and Dodge, with DEX x 5 as the innate ability to re-

act and Dodge as a trained skill. Agility is used in everyday situations, for exam-

ple getting out of the way of a chariot coming down the road, Dodge in the more

complex situations which require some judgement to understand that one should

get out of the way and which way one should take.