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Thank you very much for your offer. The Partan Walkers are built at a low science fiction technology level. They are civilian vehicles used mainly for sea floor construction and similar tasks. They have a crew of 2 (pilot and marine engineer), their size is ca. 7 m long, almost 4 m high and about 10 m wide, looking somewhat like a mechanical crab. They have a weight of nearly 20 tons and can move at a top speed of ca. 20 kph, with the average speed closer to 10 kph. The maximum safe depth is 400 m. The walkers are powered by radiothermal generators, but I have not yet cal- culated their power requirements, mainly because I found it difficult to deci- de which amount of the power they might need for the modular construction equipment (power drill, power shovel, etc.).

Unfortunately I cannot test this formula, my setting's "Partan Walkers" only have a description, but no stats. GURPS Vehicles did not work well for their design, so I keep waiting for the relevant Mongoose Traveller supplement in this case, too. So, until July these walkers just keep walking - without power plant output, mass and speed.

It looks very good to me. I will use your fomula for the next setting where ground vehicles are possible ... right now the only ones in my campaign are crab-like wal- kers on the sea floor.

Good, in my case. I am currently waiting for a Mongoose Traveller supplement that is announced for July, Civilian Vehicles, which I plan to use for the (re-) design of almost all of the vehicles (air, sea and underwater) of my current Anuira water world setting. Once this is done, I will convert the data of these vehicles into the BRP system - and this is where your table will have its opportunity to shine.

Yep, and also in the Errata in the Wiki.

Thank you very much indeed. Until now I have only used the table for creatures, so I did not encounter the problem, but I will soon need stats for the various vehicles of my new setting, and then I would have walked into that trap. You really saved me a lot of time, because the contradictions between the already known size of the vehicles and the mass they should have according to the flawed table would have caused me to take the vehicles back to the drawing board. Good that you found and solved the problem. :thumb:

In our science fiction campaign I give each vehicle an in-game systemless description including: - dimensions, - passenger and cargo capacity, - electronics (computer, communicator, sensors, etc.) and what they can do (range of communicator and sensors, etc.), - power source, speed and range of the vehicle, - weaponry (if any), - special properties (e.g. "can move on water" for a ground vehicle), - price. For other campaigns I would add an armour value, but in this campaign it is not necessary, because the weapons used are either too weak to damage a vehicle (personal weapons) or so powerful that they destroy it completely (vehicle and starship weapons), and combat is extremely rare in this setting.

I used the predecessor of The Green, when it still was a Shared World pro- ject, as a "lost colony" accessible both through a "portal" and by starship in my Pharos IV campaign, and it worked extremely well - so much so that I have to admit that I am very much tempted to find a similar role for The Green in my new Anuira science fiction setting.

The prices for gemstones and valuable metals are a bit of a problem, because their value depends very much on the background culture. Certain stones can have a religious significance, can have medical properties attributed to them, or can be considered "cursed" and therefore without any value in that specific culture. It is almost the same with the metals, although these are more likely to be considered valuable across many cultures - but there have also been cultures which considered gold useless and without any value. You could try to connect the various stones and metals with the culture(s) of your setting, giving each a "history" and a reason why it is considered as valuable as it is.

So do I, but until now never for a single system. Those 60,- USD per year are the equivalent of the PDFs of three rulebooks or five supplements, and I do not remember that I ever bought more stuff for any one system in a year. And I can keep those PDFs indefinitely, they do not suddenly disappear if I decide to cancel a subscription, or if the company I pay for that subscrip- tion ceases to provide that service (or ceases to exist). So, while that system may be interesting for others, it is definitely not in- teresting for me.

The system makes sense if one intends to play the roleplaying game in ques- tion for a year or two only, but it becomes quite expensive if one intends to stick with it and use it for five years at least: 5,- USD per month over those 5 years are 300,- USD, probably a lot more than buying the printed books one really wants to have would cost.

Yep, and I also like the ability to use the search function and the copy and paste function, because they enable me to "mine" PDFs for ideas and mate- rial to insert into my own material for my setting and campaign, for example to create handouts for the players.

I do not exactly have a good opinion of the current leadership of WotC, but with this ... strange ... decision they managed to surprise even me. >:-> An attempt to fight piracy in this way would be completely unrealistic, since modern pirates find it not more difficult to scan a printed book than to copy a PDF. Therefore there are many proposals for other reasons for the decision on the net, from an attempt to boost D&D 4.0 by making all earlier versions of D&D unavailable to a sinister plan to harm competitor Paizo and then open WotC's own online shop in the near future, but I am almost certain that it was just plain stupidity. I do not know whether it will help BRP or other roleplaying games in general, but I have no doubt that it has harmed - and will continue to harm - WotC severely, both through the loss of the income from the PDFs sold legally and through a deep dent in the corporation's reputation.

True, but most of the experienced archers I have seen at the local archery club hit that target close enough to the center that a person standing in front of it would have been wounded severely.

Well, no. The 90 m (98 yards) distance is a standard FITA competition distan- ce, and experienced archers rarely miss the target at that distance, with mo- dern bows as well as replicas of historical ones.

You could take a look at the file behind the link in the first post of this thread, some of the informations there might prove useful: http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/basic-roleplaying/989-sci-fi.html

Thank you very much for this info.

Thank you.

While I am still interested, my own setting and campaign currently (and for the foreseeable future, it seems) require all the spare time I have. So, I would very much like to see your material, but unfortunately I am un- able to contribute anything myself.

I just downloaded Jovian Nightmares. It looks very good, and contains many very interesting and useful ideas - thank you for iit.

Thank you very much for the information, I have just downloaded them.

This is good news, I am really looking forward to seeing it (and using it in my campaign).

You are the one who wrote Mysteries of Tibet. :shocked: Thank you very much for that one, I used it to introduce Tibetan immigrants (and yaks) into my science fiction setting, because your monograph enabled me to come up with an at least remotely plausible description of what their cultural background might be like in the future - and Tibetans really are some- thing fresh and new in such a setting. :thumb: Ah ... you do not plan to write a monograph on the people of the Andes, no ? - they would also fit perfectly well into my setting ...

Hello Jason, welcome to the forum ! While I usually do not like post-apocalyptic scenarios, I really like your adven- ture, probably because in my opinion it has a very strong science fiction fee- ling to it - in fact, it is just the kind of adventure that I would have needed when I was playing Traveller - The New Era. When I did first read your adventure, I regretted that it did not fit into my current setting and campaign, but then I decided that I like it too much, and that it would be worth to change some parts of my setting to become able to introduce it. I plan to make a few minor changes in the adventure's background, moving it from our world's future to a remote colony world of my setting that suffered a major desaster and slipped into a dictatorship, with the characters as a re- cently arrived and now stranded starship crew that has to work with the Un- marked because they need the "blind spot" in the surveillance system to lea- ve the planet (and inform the Federation Patrol about the situation there).

Well, I have now bought the monograph, I could not resist the idea of Shaira in a chainmail bikini ...