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It is just infinitely improbable that it is on that list ...

Of course not, it only makes you a less than perfect Hard Sci Fi GM.

You could also take a look at "World-Building" by Stephen L. Gillett, a soft- cover of almost 200 pages in Ben Bova's Science Fiction Writing Series. It contains all the necessary informations plus a lot of interesting ideas, and it would make a very good "supplement" to "GURPS Space" 4e.

A PM is swimming towards your mailbox.

I have just used Chaosium's current "Summer Souk" to download the Cthulhu Rising monograph, and then I downloaded some material from the excellent Cthulhu Rising website. My setting's background universe is currently based upon the "Honorverse" of David Weber's Honor Harrington novels, but in almost a year of playing in the setting we have left the events of the novels far behind us. In our universe the Solar League of the "Honorverse" has fallen apart in a war against a Mesa Alliance and a following civil war, and I am now looking for a new political entity to replace the ruined Solar League. Much of the background of Cthulhu Rising would fit our setting's needs extre- mely well, and I would very much like to adapt and use it - provided that the author does agree with this, of course. I am somewhat on the cautious side with this, because I had learned too la- te that David Weber has a "zero tolerance policy" regarding any kind of fan fiction and thelike, which led to websites being "cleaned" and similar things. While our setting is entirely non-commercial, most of it can be downloaded (free, of course) from our home forum's archive, which makes it somewhat "public" and could cause a problem. This is one of the reasons why I continue to replace "Honorverse" stuff with other materials, and I would dislike to exchange one potential "minefield" for another one. So, Ottomancer, would you mind if I ... ?

I ... will ... resist ... the ... temptation ... to ... answer ... that ... question. Hah, no infectious meme will subjugate me ! :cool:

I definitely created a terrible monster, an infectious toxic meme, with that desert nomad / Swim skill example, and I deeply regret it ... :eek:

I am tempted to continue this epic "swimming debate" just for the fun of it, but on the other hand ... :deadhorse:

Perhaps a bit of statistics from the USA might help ... Drowning is one of the leading causes of unintentional injury death among all ages. (CDC, 1998) In 2000, 3,482 unintentional drownings occurred in the United States. This does not include people who drowned in boating-related incidents *. The United States Coast Guard reported 519 boating-related drownings in 2000**. (*Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2002; **US Coast Guard, 2001) Drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury death among children ages 1-14. (CDC, 2002) To me, this does not seem to fit the idea of a natural swimming skill.

The same with me, I also never used the Traveller rules for roleplaying, only for world building, designing equipment, and so on. For the actual game I only use BRP (and, before that, Cthulhu Rising rules).

First, the lifepath character generation system, which enables one to create a character with a colourful background history based on his career(s). Second, the world building system, which enables one to create a science fiction background, from the sector of space down to the society of a pla- net, without any need for a calculator. Third, the animal generation system, which makes it possible to create any number of animals of various types, based on the ecology they are a part of. Fourth ... starships ... Basically, Mongoose Traveller does what Classic Traveller did, but it does it with more detail and less contradictions and omissions. This makes it an ex- cellent core rulebook for a science fiction RPG, and since it is a generic sy- stem, one can use it for almost every possible kind of science fiction setting. I consider it a very good science fiction supplement for BRP, at least until there is a BRP SF one, because it contains all the basic rules systems requi- red for science fiction, and they can easily be adapted for use with BRP. At least that is my opinion ...

Again a very interesting idea, I think I will have to take a second look at my setting's skill list with that in mind - thank you !

Remember, we were writing about that desert nomad setting without any op- portunity to learn or use swimming. In this setting swimming does not exist as a skill, the characters can neither opt in nor out because there is nothing there. If you dislike the example, take a campaign on spaceships and space stations in an asteroid belt where water is both extremely rare and extremely expensi- ve: Again, no Swim skill on the character sheet, because that skill does not exist in that setting.

Well, we handle it the other way, what is not listed is not there - otherwise I would have to write incredibly long lists ("There is no Nuclear Physics at 0 %, and no Find Enriched Uranium at 0 %, so I can build that bomb !")

This is a very interesting approach. I usually write a skill list for a specific setting, but allow the players to convince me to add a certain skill to this list if they really think that their character concept requires it.

I fail to see any practical difference between a skill listed at 0 % and a skill not listed at all. But we do not have to agree on this, everyone as he likes.

I agree, although the use of broad skills becomes difficult once characters have different values in the sub-skills of a broad skill. To use an example from my water world setting, most characters there are excellent swimmers, but miserable runners. Instead of using Athletics for both sub-skills, it is much easier to use a Swim and a Run skill for such cha- racters.

Well, I would not put it on a character sheet designed for the desert nomad setting mentioned above. None of the characters would ever have a chance to learn and use it, so why keep it ? Other examples would be the Ride skill in a Maya setting, or the Shield skill in a WW II setting.

This is almost impossible to answer, because it depends on the setting used. For example, while a character on my Pharos IV world really needs Pilot and Swim, a desert nomad in an Arabian Nights setting could well do without it.

I will have to add a couple of skills for my campaign (e.g. Animal Handling), and I will not use some of the skills listed in the book (e.g. Fly), but I con- sider it normal to have to adapt a system to my setting.

I am quite pleased that BRP is not among the 2008 nominees, because I would have found it very difficult to vote for either BRP or Traveller. Besides, if BRP should be a nominee in 2009, there is a chance that it has become somewhat more well-known, and that there are some settings and supplements making playing BRP even more attractive.

You only have to download the 2008 Nominees Flyer from this page: The ENnie Awards- About the ENnies I did not spot BRP on that list ...

According to Chaosium's poll, 20 % of the voters want a Science Fiction set- ting for the new BRP, and even Fantasy has got only some more votes than Science Fiction. If the poll is trustworthy, almost 300 persons have already declared that SF would be their favourite setting, and this should be good enough to try a PDF monograph with SF material, I think. And Ashes to Ashes could well be an example that Chaosium is able to move faster than a glacier. With Worlds Beyond, Ringworld, Future World at hand it should not be extremely difficult to produce a PDF within an acceptable time frame.

It has arrived ! Excuse me, I have some reading to do ...

My FLOGS [O = online] just sent me an e-mail that my copy of the BRP will be in the hands of the postman tomorrow, which means that I will have it on Saturday.