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Well, while BRP doubtless is the better roleplaying system, there is not exactly a lot of BRP sci- ence fiction stuff one could convert to Traveller ...

One of my projects is a series of "What If ?" settings that replace real world nations with fictio- nal ones with a different history, society and culture. For example, Asornok replaces the Nunavut region in the Middle Ages, Merasan replaces most of the United Arab Emirates and San Ignacio replaces El Salvador in the classic Cthulhu period around 1920, and now Bhotanta will replace Bhutan in the modern age. I use a "BRP-enriched Call of Cthulhu system" for these settings, but otherwise try to keep them as (pseudo-) historical as possible, so neither the Mythos nor its monsters appear in these set- tings. The only exceptions are fantastical creatures that are a part of the folklore of the region, so there may be Yetis in the remotest regions of Bhotanta. While Bhotanta is mostly Bhutan "with the serial numbers filed off", I have changed the geogra- phy somewhat, and also changed most of the names slightly, while trying to keep the "feel" of the language. The government, economy, religion and culture will be modified according to the country's new, different history, but these changes will not be radical - Bhotanta will remain a Buddhist monarchy with a culture similar to that of Tibet. I use these settings both as adventure locations for characters "from the West" and as opportu- nities for the players to create and play native characters. The adventures are usually connected to the fictional history of the setting, so in this case they could have to do with the Chinese invasion of the neighbouring Tibet, with the war between In- dia and China, with Indian rebels and terrorists hiding in the mountains of Bhotanta, with the extremely difficult trade route from China through Bhotanta to India, and so on. This is a first sketch of what my Bhotanta will look like:

I finally found my Cthulhu Spielleiter-Handbuch (GM's Handbook), which also lists where the various Mythos creatures did first appear in print. If it is right, the Serpent People were in- troduced by Clark Ashton Smith, 1934 in "The Seven Geases". However, a similar race described as "degenerate serpent people" first appeared in Robert E. Howard's "People of the Dark", and I probably confused these races. The Children of Tsathoggua are also a Howard creation, from "The Thing on the Roof", like- wise Gol-Goroth from "The Black Stone", but I think that's it.

I seem to remember some Mythos creatures, for example the Serpent People (= snakes with humans heads) ?

Quite true. If grizzly scenes would drive people mad that quickly, the average paramedic would be a raving lunatic, and trauma center teams would have to be kept in asylums ... :shocked:

Yep, we call it the "Onion Approach", whenever the players manage to peel away one layer, there are still dozens of others beneath ... >:->

Indeed, a good idea. The colony's economy is based upon the mining and export of monazite, and the main reason for the invasion is to gain control of this (in my setting) important strate- gic resource, so the invaders will take care to control this industry as soon as possible.

Thank you all for a lot of very useful ideas. :)

The invaders have landed on Somber after destroying the planet's government and military infrastructure, they have secured all important locations, and their commander has been es- tablished as the planet's military governor. Well, what will he do now to control and rule the occupied planet ? :confused: On my list I have so far: - establish military law and put active resistance under the death penalty, - try to secure all weapons and dangerous substances (e.g. explosives), - search for the leading personalities of the previous government and arrest or execute them, - put all potentially dangerous community leaders under house arrest or into a prison, - purge the bureaucracy of all known loyalists of the previous government, - issue new identity cards to make sure that those who went into hiding are without valid pa- pers. A clever military governor will surely have more ideas how to prevent the creation of a resis- tance movement. What else do you think he could do ? Thank you.

Similar here. I used the Call of Cthulhu system a lot for modern / historical and science fiction settings, but I almost never used the Mythos monsters and the Sanity rules.

The only Cthulhu Rising supplement I am aware of is Jovian Nightmares, also available as a PDF or a printed monograph from Chaosium: http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=3683 If you like Cthulhu Rising, this planned setting also written by John Ossoway could interest you, too: http://basicroleplaying.com/showthread.php/1811-D101-Games-presents-quot-River-of-Heaven-quot You do not need Call of Cthulhu 6 for Cthulhu Rising, basically any version of Call of Cthulhu will do, the differences are really minimal.

Thank you, it looks like an easy and plausible way to handle it, and I like the flexibility.

Thank you very much for the link.

Yes, it is a good real world example, especially because my setting will also mostly be dense forest. As for science fiction sources, I get most of my ideas from David Brin's "The Uplift War".

As Atgxtg wrote, the Cthulhu system did not change much since the first edition, there have only been some minor corrections. I would consider the Cthulhu system a simplified version of the BRP system, it lacks many of the options and features of BRP, especially in the combat rules. Unless you like the Cthulhu setting, with or without Mythos creatures, BRP might well be the better choice.

In Mongoose Traveller terms it will be around TL 9 / TL 10, a little higher for the invaders and a little lower for the insurgents. The invaders will be equipped with combat environment suits, flak jackets and helmets with HUDs and communicators and sensors, and armed with Advanced Combat Rifles plus some heavy weapons, up to combat vehicles like hovercraft and primitive grav tanks and some ar- tillery. The insurgents will start with no real armour and hunting rifles, and will have to improvise or steal most of their equipment until they manage to import some stuff from offworld. However, if I "borrow" most of the weapon stats from Traveller, improvised weapons can be just as deadly as the invaders' military gear - a modern crossbow can silently kill a sol- dier in combat environment suit + flak jacket, and make his rifle and ammunition available to the rebel who shot him ...

Thank you, I will think about it. If I did understand it right, this could be a single skill (e.g. Recon) to get a quick result for the NPCs and a combination of skills for the PCs to turn it into more of an adventure ... yes, I like that approach.

Yes, exactly - Bloodtree Rebellion is the board game I want to translate into a roleplaying set- ting. :) While I intend to change a few pieces of the background (the Mykin clone soldiers and the role of Petrochem Orionid, for example), I hope to stay close to the general "feeling" of the board game. The main difference will be that in my setting there will be a number of other worlds, and that both the actions of the invaders and of the insurgents will influence not only the opinion of the inhabitants of Somber, but also the reactions of the other colonies: Atrocities by the invaders will cause secret and finally even direct offworld support for the rebels, terrorism by the resis- tance movement will close all doors on other worlds for them.

Yep, I agree - although this means some effort to adapt the systems I intend to borrow from Babylon 5 and Traveller to make them work with a comination of skills instead of a specific single skill, but this should not be difficult or time consuming. The one exception is Tactics, here I still think that it is better handled as a new skill. It is dif- ferent enough from Command, which I intend to treat as a leadership skill based more upon personality and psychology than knowledge, from Strategy, which covers things like the war aims, the "grand plan", logistics, politics and thelike, and from Knowledge (Military), because Tactics has an element of creativity in addition to the knowledge of military standard proce- dures.

This is what I intend to do, but when starting the thread and before Cjbowser's post I was un- sure whether to handle it with a seperate skill (one roll only) or a combination of skills (now two or three rolls). The main reason is that there will be many situations where the scouts will be NPCs, and I dis- like to waste gaming time on rolls for NPCs, effectively playing the game with myself instead of with the players, and so to reduce it to one skill with one roll seemed tempting. However, the way proposed by Cjbowser does not require much more effort and models the si- tuation better, because it allows for cases where the scout succeeds in gaining the information but is spotted (and perhaps tracked ...), or where he is not discovered, but fails to bring back the information.

Imagine that resistance movement scout sitting high up in a tree and watching an invader pa- trol march by in the distance. When the scout returns to the rebel camp to report, he is expec- ted to know how many invader soldiers there were, in what direction they marched and how fast, what weapons and equipment they had, to which unit they probably belonged (based upon their uniforms and gear), and so on. To do this, he needs Stealth (or, in this case, Hide) to avoid being discovered and Knowledge (Military) to make sense of what he sees. There are of course reconnaissance missions that would be adventures, for example sneaking up to an enemy camp to get the informations, but there are also the more simple tasks like the one mentioned above.

Thank you very much. I will use the Tactics skill, and I like the ideas on Reconnaissance and Propaganda.

I am currently working on an old project, a science fiction campaign about an insurgency on a remote colony planet that has been invaded from space, with the characters as members of a resistance movement against the invaders. Since BRP does not yet cover that kind of scenario well, I will have to adapt some material and rules from other systems, mainly Mongoose Traveller (science fiction stuff in general) and the Free Mars supplement of the Babylon 5 RPG (rules for underground movements). To adapt the rules that BRP does not yet offer, I will also have to either expand some of the BRP skills, or to introduce a few new ones, namely: Propaganda, Reconnaissance, Recruiting, Tac- tics. Propaganda would cover the political activities of the resistance movement, especially the me- thods to win new supporters for the movement and to turn the population against the invaders. Reconnaissance would be the skill required by the guerilla arm of the resistance to scout enemy positions, determine enemy troop strenght and equipment, and thelike. Recruiting would also be a "guerilla skill", used to turn sympathizers of the resistance into new members of the fighting arm of the movement. Tactics would be the skill used to determine whether the guerilla unit manages to stage an am- bush, to withdraw in an orderly fashion after a hit and run attack, and so on. It seems that Propaganda and Recruiting could perhaps be specialties of Persuade, and Tactics could probably be included in Command and/or Strategy. Reconnaissance requires the Perception skills, Stealth and something like Knowledge (Military), and it seems that it would be less complicated to treat it as a seperate skill instead of an entire cluster of skills. Please let me know what you think about it, and also if other skills useful for this kind of setting come to your mind. Thank you. [Apologies for the ugly smiley ...]

As far as I understand it, yes, but only if: - you do not use any intellectual property that is owned by Chaosium (e.g. proper names, unique names of creatures, unique terms of the BRP system, etc.), - you adhere to the FreeArt License and publish your own material under this same licen- se, enabling others to copy and distribute it freely (not a good idea if you want to earn mo- ney with the material you intend to publish). By the way, here is the FreeArt License website: http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en

Yes, please. One problem with Chinese material are the many different and therefore confu- sing transcriptions, and it would be nice to have the surnames in a uniform transcription and the place names on the map in the same transcription as their names in the text. With Wiki- pedia and many other internet sources one gets rather mixed results in this regard.