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Well, this is an almost perfect description - my father always wanted me to work for the Finanzamt (tax collection service), and my lady often complains about my lack of fashion sense ...

Well, it has one science fiction adventure, so I am tempted to buy it, although the price would be a little high for only one adventure I may be able to use. Perhaps someone could be so kind to give me a few more informations about "Planet-Fall, by Bruce Thomson" to make it a bit easier for me to decide whether to buy the PDF ? Thank you !

According to the FAQ-page of Drive Thru RPG you can have a copy printed at a copyshop. (I would provide a link, but Drive Thru RPG has recently started a German version, and now I can no longer access the English one ...)

Sorry for your head, but ... fantasy ... wizards ... ;-(

Perhaps I somehow missed your book, or I am unable to make the connection between the book and your forum name - but if it is science fiction, you only have to tell me where and how to buy it. However, if it happens to be fantasy ... I am sorry ...

Well, you see, a certain kind of player loves to kill Orcs and hates to climb walls - for them, killing Orcs is always "cool" (no matter the reason, or the absence of a reason), while climbing walls is not.

To quote Ron Edwards, in a Forge article on Simulationism: Pound for pound, Basic Role-Playing from The Chaosium is perhaps the most important system, publishing tradition, and intellectual engine in the hobby - yes, even more than D&D. It represents the first and arguably the most lasting, influential form of uncompromising Simulationist design.

If I do not misunderstand the texts, they usually had a diameter of 30 mm to 50 mm, although there are also historical pictures of much larger objects.

It would depend on the specific situation (for example the kind of monster involved), but in general I would make it a Difficult action and give the cha- racter a significant chance to wound his friend.

Yep, usually made of lead, with a weight of up to 400 g (at least accor- ding to the archaeological digs over here - the true experts from the Ba- learic Islands perhaps used different ones), and often with "funny" in- scriptions (like "Catch That !"). Slingers could also throw hollow clay balls filled with some burning sub- stance and several other types of "special ammunition".

I think so, too. The fact that the Mongolians, doubtless among the finest ar- chers of history, erected a monument to an archer who hit a target at some- what more than 500 m shows that this was a truly extraordinary feat (that he was Gengis Khan's nephew might also have helped somewhat ...).

In the last one of our historical settings we distinguished between "ballistic" and "line of sight" arrows. The "ballistic" arrows, basically the "artillery" of the setting, did full damage against unarmoured targets (including horses) and half damage against ar- moured targets at long range, the "line of sight" arrows all did half damage at long range. However, I do not remember how and why we came to this rule.

If I remember it right, the English had a saying that if you wanted to train a longbowman, you had to start by training his grandfather. As far as I know, this was one of the main reasons for the replacement of the longbow by the musket around the time of the Thirty Years War, when the longbow still was far more efficient and precise and had a much higher rate of fire than any of the firearms of the time. It was simply much easier to train a unit of musketeers to the point where they could be used in battle than to spend the long time needed to train a unit of longbowmen. And time was most important when huge numbers of soldiers had to be hi- red only a very short time before a campaign, because none of the parties of this war had the finances necessary to keep a standing army big enough for its needs - even Spain and Sweden finally had to hire mercenaries.

It depends a lot on what kind of composite bow you are thinking of, as there are huge differences in construction and performance. If you are thinking of the Mongolian composite bow, most probably the best of all, these quotes may help: An inscription on a stone stele was found near Nerchinsk in Siberia: "While Chinggis Khan was holding an assembly of Mongolian dignitaries, after his conquest of Sartaul (East Turkestan), Yesüngge (the son of Chinggis Khan's brother) shot a target at 335 alds (536 m)." In the historical novel "Khökh Sudar" Injinashi, the Mongolian philosopher, historian and writer, imagines the competition amongst all Mongolian men in about 1194-1195: five archers each hit the target three times from a distance of 500 bows (1 bow = at least 1 metre).

In my view, Outpost 19 is an excellent example of the kind of material I would consider most useful to support BRP: A very good adventure with enough set- ting information, even including some new rules and equipment, to continue from there with your own campaign, if you want - and at a very reasonable price.

I would not consider it "dead" as a roleplaying game, but I would indeed con- sider it quite "dead" as a commercial product. And while I do not need supplements, especially not regular supplements, I would indeed appreciate at least some genre specific material and some ad- ventures now and then. True, I can write all the necessary stuff myself, but some input from other sources is always welcome to complement my own imagination and add de- tails to my setting and campaign I would not have thought of myself. Plus, both my creativity and my time are limited, and I really like it if others do some of the work for me, enabling me to concentrate more on my setting and campaign specific stuff - I would even pay them for writing useful mate- rial ... Whether this material comes from Chaosium or third party publishers is not important for me, provided it is published in a way that makes it easy for me to buy and use it.

This may seem a bit strange, but the true answer is: I am not sure. There was no specific idea I noted and adapted for my setting, but in my experience ideas have a tendency to disappear somewhere in my mind, combine with other ideas, change their shape, and then resurface weeks or months later without being recognized by me. So, while I did not consciously use anything from Aurora, it may very well be that some of its ideas will influence what I tend to take for my own in- ventions ...

There is perhaps no problem for you fantasy guys, but over here on the science fiction side we do not exactly have lots of material to support BRP ...

Thank you for the link. This gadget somehow reminds me of a Shadowrun drone.

You are welcome.

There will be geneered plants and animals, but only comparatively primitive ones. The "green" part of the terraforming starts with various strains of bacteria which generate oxygen and begin to turn the rock and sand into soil. The bacteria will be followed by lichens, then hardy cacti, succulents and plants like tumbleweed and thistles, and finally a full array of desert and steppe plants - all over a time of about 150 years. The first geneered animals will also be very primitive ones, like the desert woodlice (I think that is what they are called in English) on the picture be- low, and then the food chain will be built upon them, beginning with lizards, rodents and so on. Geneering comparatively primitive plants and animals is well within the capa- bilities of my setting's science and technology, but geneering humans would be both extremely difficult and illegal.

Thank you very much. "Roleplaying in a world of real science" reads very promising, I will give it a close look very soon.

Quite useful and completely free: DriveThruRPG.com - Expeditious Retreat Press - A Magical Society: Guide to Mapping

And I am truly delighted to read this.

Very good news indeed.