rust

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.

PM me and tell me more...

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 ... ?

It's helped make the point that Swim can be so contentious that it should always be on the character sheet, to avoid such disputes in play. Right?

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:

:focus:

...so, we now have proof that inherent ability to swim (or lack of it) could cause arguments!

That's why Swim should be printed on the sheet, so everyone can see what their character can do (or can't)...

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.

For SF, Star Wars and traveller I use only BRP or Savage World (if it is a pulpier game) and I never like Traveller rules that much in any incarnation.

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).

So whats so special about MonTrav IYO?

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 ...

I also allow negotiation on closed skill lists – and since closed list skills are non-overlapping, they are easy to add – because they don’t affect any other skill.

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 !

Which is perfectly fine, except for Swim. That's the one skill that is so fundamental (and potentially life-saving) that players really should have to "contract out" of spending any skill points on at character creation, if they dare. Then they've only themselves to blame.

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.

Ah, with it listed at 0% the player knows he can't swim.

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 !")

In my mind, skill sets come in two forms that I call “open” and “closed”.

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.

Like I said, it's the one basic skill that can't be coverd by any other stat and should be listed. Even if it's just 0%

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.

Case study. MRQ uses the skill athletics. It covers swimming, jumping, climbing, running, lifting things up and so on.

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.

But swiming is still a basic skill that can't be really coverd by any other stat. that's one that needs to be kept.

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.

Although this might be a little to soon, what do you guys feel if you boiled it all down, would be the "core" skills a PC would apsolutely need.

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.

How do you check what the nominations are?

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 ...

Such a thing would be nice to see, but is there even a market for such a supplement?

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.

Just generic "BRP Space" rules I don't think would sell as well as generic rules plus a few space opera backgrounds with it.

On the other hand, it could be useful to "test the water" with a generic BRP

Space PDF monograph, and it could create important feedback for a possible

later printed version with the improved rules from the monograph plus a set-

ting, I think.

How is that working for world building?

I did buy it, but the mail from the USA takes up to 60 (!) days to arrive in

Germany, so I am still waiting for it ...