rust

73% skill is so much more obvious than Stat +3 Skill +7 Situational Bonus +1 +1d20 vs target number, that you don't have to think about it. This means you can get on with roleplaying your character and involving yourself in the story.

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.

For me (...) percentile based mechanics are best suited for game where the setting is more important than the rules which govern a characters interaction. Thoughtful games - that's what occurs to me, first and foremost. Games where the acquisition of power and the driving need of character development (powers, feats, abilities) is secondary to the interaction of players with the settings are more conducive to a simpler; and inclusive; percentile based mechanic.

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

Or do "normal people" all have funny-shaped dice these days?

I do not know much about normal people, but all the roleplaying gamers I

know indeed have those funny-shaped dice.

Anyone got any idea how?

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.

Well if fencing is anything like boxing you dont actually make any decisions at all. You basically do what you do in training, not time for actual thinking of any kind. This becomes more and more the case the better you get.

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

For me a more realistic way to handle it would be to have a static defense skill of say between 0 and 50% which is taken from an attackers skill before he rolls. No need for a parry roll at all.

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.

Certainly I've never made people roll defenses against failed attacks, it seems unnecessary and also to slow things down for no good reason.

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.

The defender would probably have to make a Sense roll in order to see if something is in fact a feint and thus not fall for it.

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.

Why would a defender dodge or parry an attack that was going to miss anyway?

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.

How would you use terraforming in a scenario? Could it lead to some dramatic scenes that would be exciting for player characters or is a terraforming company good only for background?

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 ...

Yes, indeed - one of the reasons why I wanted to have them in my setting.

Fergio, since the creatures download is not yet in the downloads section,

may I ask for your stats for the Losrandir and the Aurochs, since these

could be similar to the stats I am trying to define for my setting for the

Vikunja and the Yak, and therefore could give me something to compare

my stat ideas with ?

Thank you !