rust

If I had the task to write a science fiction supplement for BRP, I would most

probably ignore Future World completely and take a closer look at Other Suns

and at Star Frontiers.

Other Suns has a partially ridiculous setting (the furry aliens ...), but it could

give a lot of ideas about how a percentile system can be used to solve the

typical problems of a science fiction game, for example the starship construc-

tion. Not all ideas used in Other Suns are good ones, but they would make for

a better start than Future World.

Star Frontiers is an excellent example of a space opera roleplaying game that

was interesting enough to survive even the death of its publishing company

for a very long time. It still has its devoted fan community, the Star Frontiers-

man magazine does still publish new material, and so on - the authors of this

game must have done something right, so I would take a very close look at

how they built their space opera.

Well, this is just a minor problem. All that has to be done is what others have

done in similar situations: Create a new calendar, start all over again.

Atgxtg probably does not even have to change his name (although I have to

admit that there are names that are easier to type), all he needs is a new,

fresh account starting at 0.

And with a little board software hacking, it should even be possible to make

sure that the account stays at 0. Forever.

If this solution should prove to be impossible, I am thinking about something

a little more drastic, like an abduction by aliens ...

1864 does still seem early, the first country to officially adopt the Rolling Block was Denmark in 1867.

Meanwhile I have found some other dates, and the majority puts the founda-

tion of the modern Jiangnan Arsenal into 1865 instead of 1864, but they all

agree that it immediately began to produce modern "western" arms.

The best source for the true story would probably be a biography of the man

who founded the arsenal, Zen Guofang, a high ranking military leader during

the Taiping Rebellion and then a leader of the Self-Strengthening Movement

to outfit the Chinese forces with modern weapons.

There are a number of such biographies, but the more reliable ones (e.g. pub-

lished by history departments of universities) are hugely expensive.

Edit.:

I think I have understood it now. The arsenal did indeed begin to produce

rifles in 1864 or 1865, with machines and technicians of an American firm

in Shanghai, Hunt and Company. However, these rifles were considered a

failure, and therefore from 1871 onwards the Remington model was produ-

ced. I wonder what the earlier rifles were like, but to find that out would

probably take more research time than I am prepared to spend.

At least I still have Santa.

Don't forget the Easter Bunny.

BTW, what term do you use in German to refer to a breech-loading smoothbore weapon.

It would most probably be called a "Flinte", although this word is mostly used

for shotguns.

Edit.:

Yep, that's it. There once were two words, "Flinte" (for a weapon firing bul-

lets) and "Schrotflinte" (for shotguns), but when smoothbore weapons firing

bullets disappeared, the shorter "Flinte" became used for the shotguns.

By the way, I just found this sentence in an article about the Taiping Revolt:

1864 was the year when the first Chinese indigenously built bolt-action single-shot rifle appeared ...

So at least the elite units of the Chinese army probably were armed with such

rifles after 1864.

Edit.:

It obviously was a Chinese copy of a Remington rifle, produced at Jiangnan Ar-

senal in Shanghai with machines imported from the USA. However, I have not

found an information which Remington model it was.

I guess we need stats for a smoothbore musket.

Now I am beginning to suspect that I have a language problem, because in

German a musket is defined as a muzzle loading smoothbore weapon ? :confused:

There was a comment that hitting a man at 200 paces with a musket is about as hard as hitting a man on the moon-that is impossible.

Yes and No.

The mass produced muskets of the European armies were used for tactics

that did not require high accuracy and range, they were mostly used to fire

volleys at comparatively short range into massed infantry formations, "killing

by statistics".

However, many of the hand crafted, long barreled Arab muskets were de-

signed for high accuracy at long range, and for example the French in Alge-

ria considered them rather dangerous at up to 250 meters.

But you are of course right about the "Brown Bess".

As for the standard musket of the age, the "Brown Bess", I think the stats

given for the "Rifle, Musket" on page 255 of the BRP core rules book come

close enough, and you could get some additional details (weight, etc.) from

this Wikipedia page:

Brown Bess - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just, my unsolicited two cents-- BRP needs to be brought up to modernity's standards to compete.

I agree that it could make the game more popular, but I doubt that it would

still be BRP.

As far as I know, there were only two major Chinese units equipped with com-

paratively modern firearms during this period, both during the Taiping rebellion:

The Ever Victorious Army under British leadership and the Beiyang Army under

Chinese command.

However, I have no idea what weapons were used by these units, although I

think that the Ever Victorious Army probably was supplied with British stan-

dard muskets, many of which later went into other hands, because the Ever

Victorious Army suffered badly from desertion.

Much later, around 1900, the Beiyang Army was outfitted with the standard

Japanese infantry rifle.

Naturally. What I was really asking was whether you guys sufficiently like the few details that are given about the WoW/FW setting, to think it's worth (anyone) developing it further...

I am afraid my answer is not a helpful one, but I really think this would be up

to the author of such a supplement, in my view he would be the only one able

to decide whether Future World has the right "feel" for him to work with.

GURPS has numerous literary licenses that never went beyond one setting book and maybe a single supplement.

True, but with perhaps one or two sad exceptions those books remained

available for many years, some even had several editions, while Ringworld

had to be abandoned almost immediately after its start.

Personally, I think we'd need a lot more than Future World, even with O19 added. Future World, like the other WOW settings has very little to it. Since It has to cram character creation, setting, gear, and scenario into a small booklet, it barely scratches the surface.

I agree. In my view the BRP science fiction flagship should have all the chap-

ters expected of a good science fiction roleplaying game, for example starship

construction, system and world design, and so on.

What was the problem with Niven, please remind me?

I do not know for sure, so I better keep silent, but as far as I know Chaosium

published the Ringworld RPG and Ringworld Companion only in 1984.

By the way, I just remembered an even shorter literary license, the one QLI

had for David Weber's Honor Harrington stuff - and never used.

It seems that Chaosium had both the "longest" (Moorcock) and the "shortest"

(Niven) literary license of all roleplaying games companies.

What other systems would you be interested in seeing stats for?

Mongoose Traveller would be nice.

I'm no RPG industry guru - is this something that commonly happens?

At least over here it is very common.

But there are of course companies that are far more interested in their profits

than in their products and do not feel a need to balance their commercial in-

terests with the "content interests" of the fans.

To get back on topic, in my view the examples you mentioned (especially the

WotC example) are of that kind, while I see both Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu

and Mongoose's Runequest II as examples where companies offer good con-

tent to justify the production and sale of a new edition.

I think it's really just a publisher's tool for re-selling the same old thing to the same old people a second time around. It's a great business oportunity, but hardly benefits the fans of the game.

Of course. However, consider the alternative. Once the sales of a game drop

beneath the "profit point", the publisher cannot continue to produce material

for it without committing financial suicide. So he can either offer a new, "im-

proved" version to keep the game alive, or he can discontinue it completely

and produce something else.

I've lost all of that, although I continue to play the games and worlds I love.

I understand that, and I dislike it when it happens with one of my favourite

games.

On the other hand, there are - usually good, commercial - reasons why an

edition is discontinued or replaced with a new edition, and the alternative

to the new edition usually is the "death" of the entire line.

With the new edition around, the game at least continues, although perhaps

not exactly in the way I would like best.

To use your Traveller example: Better to have MegaTraveller in the shops af-

ter the end of Classic Traveller than no Traveller at all - at least in my view.

Oops, bad luck for me - I do not agree at all, but I also do not want to re-

peat a discussion I have grown tired of during Traveller's "version wars".

So, to cut it as short as possible: When a new edition is published, not a

single word of the previous edition is changed or disappears, you can con-

tinue to play it and ignore all later editions completely - they do not des-

troy your favourite game, they add another dimension you can use or not.

To hate them is quite a waste of emotion, your favourite game is no wor-

se off than it were if it had been discontinued without another, different

edition - nothing lost at all, even if nothing were gained with the new edi-

tion.

Just my opinion, of course.

How about "BRP: Outre Space" ?

Ah ... Frankish crusaders on robot horses fighting Muslim aliens in orbit ?

But who publishes it? Chaosium directly? Alephtar Games? The Unborn Collective?

I would vote for Chaosium, mainly because this seems the best way to

get such a supplement into the FLGS and close to the BRP core book.

Alephtar Games seems to concentrate on (and get a good reputation for)

historical settings, science fiction might not fit in that well, and the Un-

born Collective would most probably remain the Unknown Collective for

quite some time.

Much closer to 2300 in flavor than classic Traveller.

This may well be, I do not know 2300 AD well.

And, fond though I am of CR, it's really not "soft" Space Opera in the style of the TV shows / films I listed up thread...

Yep, it is much closer to (and probably inspired by, I think) Classic Traveller,

which is at least "semi-hard" SF, not space opera.