rust

While I would like all of the options, I voted for what I consider the bare minimum

for a (setting) supplement, gazetteer and scenarios, the description of what is

to be found there, and how the characters can interact with it.

The attacker would still have to succeed at his energy projection skill to hit the target and I would allow the target to dodge at 1/2 his dodge skill.

I find it difficult to imagine a chance to dodge when the energy projected is not

visible, as for example with radiation.

iFor example, an assault rifle does 2D6+2 (average 9) HP of damage per bullet and the target would be hit by an average of 2 bullets in a 3 round burst and suffer an average of 18 HP damage which s far more than 10 points of EP described above, at essentially no cost.

The difference is that 2d6+2 can just as well result in only 4 points of damage,

while a power that always does 10 points of damage leaves the target no chan-

ce to be lucky.

This way 10 points of energy projection damage for radiation, for example, would cost 10 budget points and would use 10 pow points per use.

This would turn Energy Projection into an "instant kill" power. The 10 points of

damage would be sufficient to kill the average human with 10 hit points outright,

while 1d6, 2d6 and even 3d6 still include a good chance to survive the attack.

Player characters tend to have more than 10 hit points, but few players would

like to see non-player characters with a power sufficient to instantly kill their

characters once they are wounded and down to 10 hit points.

1D6 of energy projection cost 10 budget points while an assault rifle does 2D6+2 per bullet in the 3 round burst. This seems unabalanced.

An assault rifle is almost impossible to hide, is terribly loud and requires ammuni-

tion. Energy Projection is an "invisible weapon" which can be transported any-

where the character can go (no trouble with metal detectors and thelike ...), it

is silent, and it requires only a minimum of "power", 1 point per level. Therefore I

do not see this as unbalanced, in fact in my view Energy Projection is a rather

inexpensive power.

...because I haven't seen any reports of anyone successfully resisting a taser

There seem to be quite a number of cases where police officers used tasers re-

peatedly on the same person, but I do not know whether they did it because

the person resisted the taser, or because the police officers overreacted bad-

ly. Anyhow, repeated use increases the probability that the person is killed, and

this probability is already high enough to make tasers illegal in most of Europe,

even for the police (in Germany only some special forces units have them, but

until now never used them).

A normal real world taser is designed to stun a slightly above average human

most of the time, more power than this would be likely to cause more deaths.

I therefore think that a success chance of 85 % against 12 hit points would

probably be about right. Looking at the resistance table, this would translate

into an average damage of 19 (19 vs. 12 = 85 %). This could be expressed,

for example, as 2d6+12, to guarantee a minimum damage of 14 (still a good

chance to stun an average human) and keep the maximum damage (24) low

enough to remain plausible and avoid an unnecessary waste of power.

Just some thoughts ...

I have heard that some martial artist can take someone out of a fight very quickly with special choke holds.

While there are indeed martial arts techniques which can disable or kill almost in-

stantly, I would very much hesitate to introduce them into a roleplaying game.

Many players would like to give their characters such abilities, but they tend to

have second thoughts about it when non-player characters have the same abi-

lities and use them against their characters.

By the way, GURPS Prime Directive, a Star Trek clone, is now available in a ver-

sion updated for GURPS 4th edition and as a PDF:

http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=ADB8401

This could turn out to be a good source for ideas on how to translate Star Trek

into a roleplaying game, I think.

Does the attacker get his damage bonus when choking a victim?

According to the Spot Rule on page 218, "Additionally, a strangle cord, garrote,

or even strong attackers may do basic damage while strangling", so I tend to

think that the attacker does the choking damage plus his damage bonus.

I would go with 1d3 damage, the 1d6 damage would kill a normal human within

2 combat rounds (24 seconds), which seems too fast.

I don't think magicians in ME actualy have special magical skills. Magic isn't a seperate subject you learn, if you want to learn nature magic you just raise your Nature Lore skill or whatever to huge levels and then apply your will. Magic is an extension of the mundane, not seperate from it.

I don't want my players to have to look at or think about lists of spells or blessings or such. I'd prefer a mechanic where they have their character's skills on their character sheet, look at the situation in the game and the opportunities it offers, and then apply pool of points to buy and fuel powers and artifacts in a more organic way.

Hmmm ... in this case you would only need rules for:

- which level of a skill (e.g. Nature Lore) is required to become able to create the

related magic,

- what effects (area, distance, duration ...) are created by a specific number of

points spent for the magic,

and could leave everything else to the description provided by the player of the

character in question.

In the end you could have only one "generic" spell template (skill required, spell

effects per point used), and the players could "fill in" this template as they like.

Something similar to this, perhaps:

Minimum relevant skill required xx %

1 Point per xx square meters

1 Point per xx cubic meters

1 Point per xx meters distance

1 Point per xx minutes duration

1 Point per xx objects

1 Point per xx non-intelligent animal SIZ

1 Point per xx sentient creature SIZ

Just some thoughts ...

I haven't done an A to B check, but do all those exist with BRP stats already?

No, or at least I am not aware of the BRP stats for quite a lot of animals of Harn.

An example would be the seals from the small supplement of the same name, but

there are a lot more.

I think Fergo113 covered the spirit of Middle Earth magic quite well (see the download section),

at least his material would be a good place to start from.

This link isn't working for me. It links directly to a non-existent site.

This one should work, despite the spelling error:

http://basicroleplaying.com/wiki/doku.php?id=appendices:unofficial_errata_and_clarificarions

Great looking project, the artistic style is very atmospheric.

Yes, indeed - I have seen lots of commercial products which looked not half as

good and were not half as easy to read.

As for the content, I only had time for a quick scan, but as far as I can tell it

is also quite well done.

Thank you very much.

I have recently started to work on a kind of BRP-Harnmaster crossover, and this

fits in perfectly well.

The fact that the orc is stunned affects the orc's options for actions in his next

combat round, he cannot attack and needs a success with an Idea roll to dodge

or parry and successes with an Idea roll and an Agility roll to flee. This obvious-

ly means that the orc will remain stunned until after the moment in the time se-

quence when he could normally make his next action, and I would probably rule

that he remains stunned until his second opportunity to act after he had been

stunned - he "loses" the first one, but recovers in time for the second one.

i hope noone takes this the wrong way i am only trying to give my first impression of the brp book, to attempt to perphaps see why its not so big as other systems.

You are most welcome to do so, it is always interesting to hear about their im-

pressions from people who are new to BRP.

I can well understand that the BRP book can be intimidating, and I think that

only my experiences with Runequest, Call of Cthulhu and some other versions

of BRP made it comparatively easy for me to use the book. A slimmer and mo-

re focused version of the book would certainly make it easier for newcomers

to the system to get into it.

As for Savage Worlds, it may well be that the hype has died down somewhat,

at least the number of threads dealing with Savage Worlds has declined on my

"home forum", too.

. Please check the status of, say, the BRP gold book, the Mongoose RuneQuest line, or the BRP supplements.

Even The Laundry, published only recently, now is a "silver medalist" on DTRPG.

Having read through the previews and quick plays of Hackmaster, to be honest, I don't really rate it all that highly as a product.

I also do not want to step on anyone's toes, but over here Hackmaster is usu-

ally seen as a parody of AD&D based on the Knights of the Dinner Table car-

toons, far more an insider joke than a really playable and playworthy game.

There simply still are better retro-clones of D&D available.

Edit.:

Oh, and supplements like this one do not really make it easier to consider

Hackmaster as a serious roleplaying game:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=14536&it=1

I flatly refute this idea that BRP is in decline under the influence of games such as those highlighted above.

I very much doubt that BRP is in decline at all. Since the "big book" was publi-

shed the number of supplements has been continually growing, and as far as

I can see they are selling quite well. So in my view BRP currently is moving up-

wards, not downwards, although most of us would probably want it to grow a

bit more quickly.

If a lot of BRP material was put on the shelf, is there a feeling that BRP would become popular? Or does the nature of the popularity of the likes of Savage Worlds and D&D give a sense that the risk is not worth taking?

From my experience it seems that BRP is likely to remain a niche product even

where it is easily available. There are now lots and lots of good roleplaying ga-

mes out there, and many of them are free, and BRP competes with all of them,

not only with D&D, Savage Worlds and the other "big ones". Therefore I think

that BRP can of course become more popular, but I would not expect it to be-

come hugely more popular.

I may well be wrong, but I sometimes have the impression that the preferred

style of roleplaying games follows the same trends as literature and movies do,

and therefore changes over time.

In the first phase I can remember, the successful literature and movies of the

time before about 1950, the protagonists almost always were extremely skilled

and nearly invincible good guys who easily defeated their usually extremely evil

enemies.

After 1950 this slowly began to change, now the protagonists often were more

average people in unusual situations, and for a while the anti-heroes who were

underdogs who suffered defeat and barely survived more often than they were

the winners even dominated.

This changed again after 1980. Now the protagonists turned into nearly super-

human and invincible heroes again, although they did never again become the

truly good guys of the first phase and usually kept at least one of the underdog

weaknesses of the second phase, like alcoholism or a ruined social life.

If there is any truth in this (and I am not at all certain), the roleplaying games

could well mirror the specific phase's idea of what a "hero" is like, and for a ma-

jority of the current newcomers to roleplaying such a "hero" would be a super-

powerful character with some major flaw, perhaps with the characters from the

World of Darkness setting(s) as a good example - but the current version of D&D

would also fall into this category.

The "heroes" of Runequest, and BRP in general, would then be a little "behind the

mainstream", more average humans in extreme situations (see for example Call of

Cthulhu), more vulnerable than today's heroes, but without the "dark side" that

only became fashionable later during the "age of anti-heroes", after Runequest

was published.

As mentioned, I may well be wrong, but I suspect that one reason why D&D is so

successful and constantly moves towards more and more invincible characters,

and why BRP is comparatively less attractive to many newcomers, is that D&D

enables the players to generate exactly the kind of player character that mirrors

the heroes of today's literature and movies - and BRP does less so.

Ah, well, just some thoughts ...

Since the Teleport spell transports the victim to "another place", I would rule

that this means that the victim has to materialize on solid ground, and not in

midair. This would leave a teleportation of the victim into something solid as

the only real combat use of the spell, and I think the rules for this are good

enough (3 power points per level, POW resistance roll and Luck roll).

Technology is not exactly a strength of BRP, the technology information in the

BRP book is entirely generic. There is not much of a system to design technolo-

gy or to distinguish between designs from different stages of a technological

development. Without such a background a system of technology levels does

not seem to make much sense.

My advice would be to be careful with the number of opponents and with missile

weapons. Outnumbered characters can more easily become dead characters than

in many other systems, and missile weapons are often more efficient than in ma-

ny other systems.

Apart from that, as Conrad wrote, keep it simple. You can always add more op-

tions later on, if you and the players really want them.