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I am not convinced that "big names" really would do much good. :ohwell: The last attempts to earn money with roleplaying games for Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Perry Rhodan (a very big name over here), Star Gate and Star Trek were less than overwhelming successes. On the other hand, some of the oldest original roleplaying settings, for example Runequest's Glorantha and Traveller's Third Imperium, are still doing comparatively well. It may well be more prudent to invest the money into an original setting for BRP instead of spending it to buy a costly license, I think.

We create the characters for our campaign with Mongoose Traveller, and then convert them to BRP to play them. However, there are still some possible additions that would make a lot of sen- se in the setting, like the Allies and Contacts and the Influence rules mentio- ned above, and which are not a part of either Mongoose Traveller or BRP - at least not in the way we think we need for the setting. So, some rules tinkering is still required to make the setting what we want to play. As for advantages like ambidexterity or eidetic memory, we do not use any ru- les for them. Each player can give his character one or two special traits during character generation, provided they make sense with the character's background, and the other players do not object to them. Characters can also learn some traits during the campaign, if it makes sense within the setting. They have to spend training time to do so, so the players have to describe to me how their characters intend to learn the trait, and we then discuss the time (and perhaps money) needed for the training. Since there probably are hundreds (if not thousands) unique traits the players could come up with for their characters, I prefer this free hand way of dealing with them. To write down rules for all possible cases, or at least for the most common ones, would just take too much time and effort, I think.

Thank you very much for the nice picture, I really like it. It is not exactly a scene on Enki II as it is "today", but it could very well be a scene from a later point in time, when the terraforming program has made the atmosphere breathable and some large and potentially dange- rous animals have been introduced. The characters will soon have the rather questionable pleasure to trans- port a couple of yaks from Terra to Enki II for the research station of the colony, where the scientists want to find out whether yaks would make suitable animals for the biosphere of Enki II. I am already smiling at the thought of characters without any animal hand- ling experience, a narrow cargo hold of a small starship, and a very angry yak bull ... >:-> The team from your picture could well be searching for an escaped herd of yaks, a herd led by such an angry yak bull.

Yep, this will be "Step 2". "Step 1" will be a method I have seen in Switzerland, but which I find hard to describe in English: The slope is terraced and covered with metal nets (some kind of plastic in my setting, I think) anchored to the rock, and the terraces are stabilized with "walls" made of "metal cages" filled with rocks. Thank you for a good idea. I am thinking of a kind of pre-fabricated shelter, like it is used in many SF RPGs, which is then covered with the earthbag method to provide insula- tion against the cold, as Enki II still has a very cold climate.

Well, in this case ... Here is an example of how settlements are designed in my Enki II setting. The first picture is one of the NASA pictures of Mars that I use for Enki II, it shows a potential settlement site on the rim of a valley, which will con- tain a small river once the terraforming program has succeeded to melt so- me of the polar ice cap. The second picture is an attempt to show how the future Trelawney City will fit into the landscape, with the main part of the city built along the cliff with an architecture somewhat like an Anasazi Pueblo or a Greek Am- phitheatre, rising in steps. The third picture is a kind of city map, showing Trelawney City as it will probably look like a couple of years after the construction has been com- pleted. The "real" city will be domed, but I did not include the dome on the pictures, partly because I did not know how to draw it, and partly because it would have made the pictures less comprehensible (I think).

The Allies and Contacts in our campaign are indeed characters in their own right, although I only write down the informations needed to play them as my NPCs (mainly their background and motivations, and what kind of information etc. they can provide to the character), and add additional informations only as necessary. We currently treat the Ally or Contact percentile as a modifier for social skills like Diplomacy or Persuade to increase the character's chance of success in using those skills with the Ally or Contact, with the restriction that a Contact will not take a personal risk to help a character, while an Ally may be willing to do so. At the moment we do not use experience checks for these percentiles, they rise and fall according to the GMs (= my) perception of the NPC's most likely reaction to the actions of the character and the treatment by the character. In my opinion this is easier to handle, because more than a few of the NPCs have motivations unknown to the characters, and try to use the characters for their own purposes, too. An experience check by the players could give away such hidden motives by making the success of a check suspiciously easy or difficult, I think.

While we do not use the typical "physical" D&D feats, we are experimenting with a number of "social" advantages in our system. One example is the Influence system from the Babylon 5 RPG, which enables characters to gain favours or resources from groups or organizations they have Influence in, in our campaign depending on the strength of the Influen- ce, the group the character has the Influence in, and the distance from his home world. So a trader from Enki II with a good reputation and good contacts can quite easily get support from traders on nearby Kinsun, but less so on distant Ter- ra. A famous scientist from Enki II might easily convince fellow scientists on far away Shoona to do him a favour, but the bureaucrats on neighbouring Horpa would be likely to ignore his request. Influence is based upon a character's initial Status on his homeworld, and ad- ditional Influence points (each worth 5 %) are awarded (or subtracted) de- pending on the character's actions during the campaign. Other examples we experiment with are Allies, Contacts, Patrons and thelike, in the way they are used in, for example, the GURPS system.

Thank you. The original ones are much bigger, but I downsized the copies for the upload, because I did not want to litter up the forum.

Thank you very much for the links. The Earthbag Construction is a very interesting idea for the construction of most of the terraforming outposts and other temporary outposts on Enki II, I think. A short while ago my colonists have begun to use habitat modules for the set up of "base camps" for the construction of settlements. Dave Chase has designed a couple of most useful modules for the Traveller RPG, and they are almost perfect for my campaign's purposes: SFRPG Art Gallery - Modules for Modular Cutter Once the "base camp" for the workers and their robots and machines has been established, the engineers begin to build either an underground habi- tat, like Circle Hills below, or a domed habitat, like Gerardi City below. Unfortunately my drawing skill is very limited, but I think it is possible to get the idea:

Thank you very much ! I have been looking for some good ideas to make some of the alien species of my setting a bit "more alien", and this is full of good ideas. :thumb:

The best supplement of that kind that I know is the "Saxons !" supplement for the Pendragon roleplaying game: DriveThruRPG.com - White Wolf - Saxons!

Unfortunately this is already beginning to happen. There was quite some in- terest in the new BRP over here when it was published, but this interest is already fading away because the system is not very well supported.

I would not consider it necessary, but since the player character normally does not know whether the other character is lying or concealing something, an Insight roll could help him to discover that. Example: When a trader tells the character that a horse is so cheap because black is considered an unlucky colour in this region, an Insight roll could help the character to find out whether this is true - or whether the low price may have other reasons (but not which reasons).

Frankly, I very much doubt this. It is a part of my real life job to "read" people, and unless the patient in question willfully suppresses his body language, this is really not difficult for someone with the right training and experience (= Insight skill).

According to the rules, "willful deceit" (which in my opinion would include a "poker face") would force the character using Insight to make an opposed Insight check against the target's relevant skill, with Fast Talk and Etiquet- te (good for diplomats, I think) provided as examples. This seems a good approach to me, I have no problems at all with it.

A very nice fanzine. :thumb: I especially liked the lifepath character generation article.

Welcome to the forum ! Each of the BRP-based games has its "specialties" to adapt the basic BRP rules to the setting, for example the simplified d20-system (the biggest dif- ference of all the games, I think) and the personality traits of Pendragon or the sanity system of Call of Cthulhu, but the basics remain the same, and it is very easy to convert from one BRP-based game to another. So, yes, you could put Elric against Mi-Go with almost no problems. The on- ly ones I see at the moment are Elric's magic and the Mi-Gos' ability to cau- se a sanity loss.

I would treat the character as Stunned until he made a successful Stamina roll.

Yep, lots of it, although the biggest species currently are just humble lichens ...

They will have to fight real hard, because there is no slavery in my setting. >:->

I very much like the Mongoose Traveller character generation with its careers and events, especially the additional careers from Spica Publi- shing's supplement Career Book 1 (they fit my setting almost perfect- ly), but I very much prefer BRP rules for the actual roleplaying. Yes, of course. By the way, there are BRP stats for a SMG in Vile's conversion of the weapons from Traveller's Striker rules here in the download section, you would only have to copy them.

Yep, these ones are in real trouble. :shocked: Thank you for the link !

Unfortunately not. In my system I use the character generation system of Mongoose Traveller and then convert the characters into a BRP version tailored to my setting. The only potentially interesting parts could be the skill level conversion ta- ble and the attribute conversion table, both somewhat "streamlined" to fit my setting: The skill levels: Skill level 0 = 40 % Skill level 1 = 60 % Skill level 2 = 70 % Skill level 3 = 80 % Skill level 4 = 90 % The attributes: Trav 02 = BRP 03 Trav 03 = BRP 04 Trav 04 = BRP 06 Trav 05 = BRP 08 Trav 06 = BRP 10 Trav 07 = BRP 11 Trav 08 = BRP 13 Trav 09 = BRP 15 Trav 10 = BRP 16 Trav 11 = BRP 17 Trav 12 = BRP 18 For the Traveller part of the character generation I also use a modification of these pre-enlistment options found in another forum: SFRPG • View topic - Missing a Traveller University There are also a couple of house rules, for example a modification of the research rules from the Ringworld RPG, but all this is in German. I am sorry, but I am afraid I have nothing of value to offer.

It really is an excellent document, and I use it quite often to expand and improve my own BRP-Traveller crossover system. :thumb: By the way: Soltakss, would it by possible to post an announcement here in this thread whenever you have created a new version - I almost missed the step from version 0.4 to version 0.5 ? - Thank you !

I wholeheartedly agree. While I am currently more into Science Fiction, I re- member with pleasure my historical settings. A famous author once remarked that his readers would never see 90 % of the material he had researched for his books, but that these invisible 90 % deter- mined the quality of those books. In any case: Good luck with your project ! :thumb: