rust

In my new campaign some of the characters will have to blow up quite a lot of stuff during mining and terraforming operations, including parts of a moun- tain chain. While BRP includes rules for the Demolition skill, some basic data on explosives and spot rules on the damage explosions can cause to characters, I do not know how to handle the use of explosives to destroy huge objects, for exam- ple soft and hard rock. The basic question I am unable to answer is: How much explosive does a cha- racter need to destroy a certain volume of rock ? I could of course try to convert rules from GURPS or another system, but per- haps someone has already found and perhaps even tested the solution to my problem. Thank you very much for your help ! Edit.: Problem solved, I will use the Heredium rules for explosives.

The easiest way to contact MJD, the author of Translight, should be this: Martin’s website, such as it is, can be found at http://www.martinjdougherty.co.uk/ and he can be contacted by email at martin-j.dougherty@virgin.net. If you used any other E-Mail address, you could try to use this one to con- tact Martin directly.

Yes, it is probably really that simple, the game mechanics almost disappear into the background and do not interrupt the story each time a die roll is necessary.

An interesting idea, and indeed I prefer BRP for that kind of games - although I still do not fully understand why a percentile system "feels better" for such setting-oriented games.

Here is another one: Translight RPG

I do not know much about normal people, but all the roleplaying gamers I know indeed have those funny-shaped dice.

I am active on several forums, mostly "back home" in Germany. On most of these forums I began to write little posts about BRP shortly before it was published, and since then I have written a couple of "updates" about the material already published for BRP and all the stuff that is "in the pipeline". When someone posts a question about what RPG system he should use for a certain genre or setting, I usually encourage him to take a look at BRP, and I mention quite often that I use BRP as the system for my own settings. A couple of days ago I uploaded my notes for the conversion of Traveller characters into BRP characters for my new Enki II setting into the download section of my "home forum", Fundus Ludi, and I will soon upload them to another forum, too. In my opinion this "by word of mouth approach" is the easiest way to inform people that BRP does exist, and to encourage them to see for themselves whether they could like and use the system. Chaosium's marketing, flyers and all this are fine and necessary, but in my experience something like a link to the excellent content of the download section of BRP Central can be a little help, too - the Middle Earth creatures, for example, were surprisingly well received on my "home forum", and cau- sed a couple of people to think about BRP for the first time. So, just spread the word where there is an opportunity to do so.

Not really Aikido, because it is based on old European martial arts, but it is indeed surprisingly similar. Edit.: Some informations, in case you are interested in it ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampfringen

I have to admit that I just trusted the table in the Mongoose Traveller rules, without checking whether the values are right.

This is true for any fight that follows certain agreed upon rules, because in this case one can train the responses to an opponent's allowed attacks. However, in a free style fight without such rules one indeed has to study and analyze the opponent in order to find out what his strong and weak points are, and what he may be up to. This is one reason for the typical slow and seemingly inactive circling move- ments of free style fighters who watch and judge each other before they make a decision, compared to the usually far more quick and decisive actions of sport fighters. Edit.: A few examples of what you might have to expect in a free style sword fight ... http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=9G_d98ewZmM&feature=related Yes, this would be another good way to handle it, I think. In this case I would probably give different values of the static defense skill depending on the weapon used by the opponent and the defenders familiarity with this kind of weapon, but this would be of course just for "colour", and in no way necessary.

As RMS mentioned, it depends on the degree of "realism" you want to use in your campaign. If you want to use the rules to model real fencing, defenses against failed attacks are a good way to mirror the uncertainty of a fight, where one can- not lean back and study calmly whether an attack will hit or fail, and whe- ther it really was an attack or a clever feint. If you prefer a faster and simpler combat system, defenses against failed at- tacks are unnecessary and only slow down the game.

The Enki II / Tashara Colony setting meanwhile has grown to 30 pages of background material, some maps and a small hill of notes, but it would not make much sense to post the stuff here and ask for comments - all of it is in German, of course. So all I can offer you is the "macroview", the map of the Solar Federation and its neighbours (first draft, most names still missing), and the "micro- view", the map of the region of Enki II where the Tashara Colony will be established.

In a campaign where fencing was an important part of the action, we used the house rule that the defender had to make a successful roll in the weapon skill of the weapon type used by the attacker to discover a feint. So, if the attacker used a weapon the defender was not sufficiently familiar with, the defender was unable to see in time whether the attacker was fein- ting. And the better the defender knew the weapon type in question, the bet- ter was his chance to avoid being surprised or tricked. As the result, a true master of the rapier almost never fell to a feint by some- one using a rapier, but someone with a sabre might well have some surprises for him up his sleeve.

It happens in real world fencing, too. Sometimes one cannot be certain that an attack will miss, and therefore pre- fers to dodge or parry instead of just waiting to see whether one will be hit. Besides, many feints work that way, by drawing the opponent into a dodge or parry with a fake attack in order to create an opening in the opponent's defense.

Well, with a d20 you kind of introduce D&D-like levels into the game, because a character can only have one of those 20 possible levels in any specific skill. You have a "Swordsman-12" or a "Archer-9" instead of a character with a bit more individual skill levels, and there is a tendency to look at "levels" instead of characters' personalities - the D&D-style creeps in, so to speak. With a d100 system, a character with "Sword 27 %" is different from one with "Sword 26 %" or one with "Sword 28 %", and it becomes a bit easier to consi- der and play the character as a unique personality instead of a list of statis- tics. But this is just my personal experience and feeling ...

You could of course simplify BRP and play it with a d20 instead of a d100. However, in my opinion this would change the feeling of the game a bit too much. I prefer to have a wide range of different skill levels and pos- sible outcomes of actions for my campaign's characters, and 100 possi- bilities suits me better than only 20 ones.

Thank you very much ! For the Vikunja I used its average weight, about 50 kg, to determine its SIZ according to the SIZ table on page 296 of the BRP. The result also surprised me somewhat, but since I will use the weight of other creatures to determine their SIZ, too, I think I will have to stick to it. As for the Yak, I will change the attributes the way you proposed it.

Once again, thank you for the interesting links ! I am not sure whether I should let these people loose on the planet ... :eek:

I think its style might be a bit too much Fantasy, but I will take a look at it. Thank you !

Thank you very much ! A nice idea for a kind of "emergency shelter", something every vehicle on a desert world with exotic atmosphere should carry, I think.

I find it interesting that an online roleplaying game magazine, SJG's Pyramid, is going to become a PDF magazine in the near future: Steve Jackson Games Daily Illuminator (see the entry for November 7) There are rumours that SJG`s JTAS online magazine for Traveller could go the same way, also becoming a PDF magazine. Perhaps there is still hope for printed magazines, although one would have to print the PDFs ...

Whow, this download is simply... :thumb::thumb::thumb: I knew from the previews that it would be excellent, but I am nevertheless almost speechless. :shocked: Great Work, really, many of the creatures contain most useful ideas even for my Science Fiction setting, and I am almost tempted to start a Fantasy cam- paign.

As far as I know, Different Worlds Publishing still has the rights, but I have no idea how active that company currently is, and whether they would ha- ve any interest in a Different Worlds comeback.

Thank you very much ! Aurochs and Losrandir are a good inspiration, and it seems I will have to modify my draft of the stats for Vikunja and Yak somewhat to make the differences between these two animals more obvious.

In my setting I will use terraforming both as a part of the general background, especially as a way to create a continuously changing planetary environment of the setting's main world, and as the theme for a number of adventures. One example of such adventures is the basic wilderness exploration adventu- re, where characters have to operate and survive under adverse conditions in order to carry out some task for the terraforming project (e.g. map a seis- mic fault). Another example are all the problems that are likely to happen in and around the "road gangs", groups of prisoners from the core worlds who volunteered for mining and terraforming work on remote colony worlds in return for a re- duction of their sentences and a chance to be accepted as colonists after their "probation period". And one can also introduce persons or organizations which want to prevent or sabotage a terraforming project for some reason, from ideology ("Terra- forming kills the planet's Mother Nature !") to economics. And these are just a few examples ...