rust

Generic SF rules for BRP would jump right to the top of my RPG shopping list.

How does that sound?

It sounds very good, although I have to admit that I would probably buy

only Supplement I, the Worlds Beyond rewrite.

It seems that I am a bit more old fashioned ...

While I have no problem at all with intelligent starships and thelike, I never

could "get into" any kind of cybertech- or transhumanist-SF.

In my settings I always had to introduce some legal obstacle (above 50 %

cybertech and you are a robot and someone's property ...) or religious rea-

son (He/She/It created us without artificial enhancements ...) to keep such

stuff to a minimum and the game "believable" for me.

But then, I am almost as old as dirt, and being old fashioned probably fits

me well. :cool:

I am already convinced that I will like it, and I hope I will be able to play

it soon. :thumb:

Would Serenity RPG be easy to convert to BRP.

Serenity uses the Cortex System. Here a short descrition from Book Rags:

The Cortex System

The Cortex System is based on the Sovereign Stone System. The system described here is as it appears in the Serenity book. Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd has stated they plan to release a refined and expanded version with their Battlestar Galactica game. The dice used in the system are d2, d4, d6, d8,d10, d12.

The system uses a variation of the dice pools system used by many different role-playing games. The primary variation arises from the use of different types of dice rather than increasing or decreasing the quantity of dice. The system has the potential to roll more than two dice, however, rolling more than six is incredibly unlikely. The primary mechanic of the game rolling a die based on one of your "Attributes" and one of your "Skills" and then adding the total. Complications or Bonuses are reflected by "steps" which change the die type involved by one for each step. (e.g. A d10 with a 2 step penalty becomes a d6.) The game uses a system of Disadvantages and Advantages to provide flavor to characters, as well as giving them various bonuses and penalties for dice rolls. This borrows from the Merit and Flaw system used by many role playing games including White Wolf in its World of Darkness line prior to its conversion to the Storytelling System, or in Steve Jackson Games Gurps system of Advantages and Disadvantages, Hero System, or Pinnacle Game's Savage Worlds game, which the Serenity system greatly resembles. To increase the survivability of characters in the game as well as give players some impact on the game, the Cortex System uses plot points. These serve to allow the players to gain an extra die to roll or modify an existing roll. They can also be spent to try to influence the course of the story if the Game Master allows. These points are also used as a source of additional "Advancement Points" which are the same as experience points in other games.

I would find it difficult to "translate" such a system into BRP.

There once was a GURPS sourcebook with a lot of useful informations for

just the kind of campaign you describe. Unfortunately I do not remember

the title. It could have been GURPS Cliffhangers, but I am not sure.

Edit.:

Here is a review from the Amazon website:

"GURPS Cliffhangers, like almost all GURPS books, is a gamemaster's delight. The book gathers handily in one place almost all the information you will want on the history and background of the 1920's - 1940's in one place. It not only covers the events and the background information for North America, but for almost all of the world. The layout is clean and well organized, and GURPS-specific rules are, as with all GURPS sourcebooks, confined to one chapter. This means that the book is easily usable as a source for GM's running campaignes set in the Cliffhanger era using different rulesystems. Several pages at the end are reserved for a very thorough bibliography of othe sources - not just books, but comics, films, and other games. If you're looking at running a cliffhanger/pulp style game, you can't do wrong by using GURPS Cliffhangers as a starting point."

All I can write is that it looks good. :thumb:

If there are any differences, I fail to spot them ...

I think it would also be interesting to contemplate a SF sourcebook for BRP which combines the best elements of Ringworld RPG (minus the Ringworld-specific content) with things like space combat and world generation from Worlds Beyond.

Yes, a very good idea !

Yep, I have a question, or perhaps a proposal:

It is quite possible that Mr. Shewmake and / or Chaosium are not interested

in publishing an updated print version of Worlds Beyond, for example because

it would be a lot of work to do, or because a commercial success is conside-

red unlikely.

In this case, could it be possible to publish Worlds Beyond as an e-book PDF

for downloading it, for example from the Chaosium website ?

This approach has been used for a couple of older and less popular SF RPGs,

for example FGU's Space Opera, and it seems to work quite well, and to earn

the author at least some money ...

Can you explain a bit about the char-gen lifepath system?

The character's creation is divided in career terms of 4 years each. The play-

er rolls for the major events in the character's life during each of the terms

(e.g. training and skills, advancement, mishaps, life events, etc.), with the

results depending on the career during this term.

For example, if his character served a term as a scout, an event could have

looked like this:

"Your scout ship is one of the first on the scene to rescue the survivors of a disaster. Roll either Medic 8+ or Engineer 8+.

If you succeed, gain a Contact and a +2 DM to your next Advancement check. If you fail, gain an Enemy."

Or he could have failed a survival roll, with a mishap result like this:

"You inadvertently cause a conflict between the Imperium and a minor world or race. Gain a Rival and Diplomat 1."

So, at the end of the character creation the player has both a character and

the framework for an entire background history for this character.

Besides, this system can also be used to create colourful NPCs, and to con-

nect them to the player characters - just think of the Enemy or the Rival

the scout would have made in the events mentioned above.

.

I'd like to see Worlds Beyond get a new lease on life... but I kind of doubt there is much of an audience for it that isn't already satisfied with some version of Traveller.

I like and use both systems, BRP and Traveller, and I will "translate" the

excellent character generation lifepath system of Mongoose Traveller into

BRP as soon as the German edition of MGT has been published.

From what I did read on other forums, there are at least some people with

similar ideas, and who also would very much welcome something like an

updated Worlds Beyond as additional material for their SF roleplaying with

both BRP and Traveller.

Congratulations, it really looks very, very good ! :shocked:

I have to admit that I have currently neither much interest in nor much time

for a fantasy setting, mainly because I am quite busy with my own science

fiction setting right now...

Some FLGS in Gemany have begun to offer BRP, but I am not sure whether

they all offer the same BRP - the price tags range from 27,95 Euro up to

39,95 Euro, so it can hardly be the same book ... :eek:

Yep, looks good to me !

I especially like that your system allows for different methods of space tra-

vel and different technological levels.

Yes, of course.

That's all I'm doing, is asking a lot of what if questions.

Well, in this case ...

As for the first shock, there is an excellent description of such a situation in

the Uplift novels by David Brin, where humans are just a recently discovered

and very unimportant species in a universe inhabited by many extremely po-

werful alien species. It would be a bit difficult to describe the Uplift universe

here, but perhaps this could give an impression:

Uplift Universe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The second shock reminds me of the Perry Rhodan series mentioned some-

where else. There the Terrans have to come to terms with the fact that

they are the descendants of settlers of a lost colony of a very old and now

decadent, but still incredibly powerful empire.

In this story the humans at first attempt to hide their existence from the

Empire, not wanting to become a remote colony of it, and secretly study,

then infiltrate and finally take over the Empire.

We are already into the third shock, I think. I could imagine that the alien

species controlling the frontier empire would prefer to look the other way

as long as the humans do not risk to cause an interstellar war.

Well, just some thoughts ...

I'm half Croasian. It goes with the territory.

Mental note for next summer vacation: Do not go there. :eek:

Oh, I do not think that replicators would seriously reduce the amount of

interstellar travel (because of all the reasons you mentioned), but I still

think that they would very much reduce interstellar trade.

So, while the total number of passengers would hardly be reduced (per-

haps even increased, because more people could afford passages in such

a society ?), the total tonnage of freight would most certainly go down,

and the lives of free traders (a typical SF RPG adventure character type)

would become much less attractive - at least from my point of view.

By the way, are your outsiders the Ringworld "Outsiders" ?

My copy of "Shock" should be crossing the Atlantic right now (not by ship,

I hope ...), so I do not quite know what to write ...

While I did read a few stories of that kind, I would not call it a cliche. One

only has to introduce some more and preferably unique details, and it is an

original and plausible setting for fascinating adventures, I think.

I kept searching a bit, because the subject really interests me, and this could

perhaps be the FBI material you mentioned:

The Gun Zone -- FBI Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness

I very much prefer to have all the material in one book, because this makes

it somewhat easier for me to transport it or to search for something in it.

Perhaps this could be interesting:

Reality of the Street? A Practical Analysis of Offender Gunshot Wound Reaction

My copy of Runequest (1980) has ca. 120 pages, BRP Zero has almost 400

pages (although much of it is non-Fantasy), so there obviously are some dif-

ferences ...

However, those differences are not fundamental ones, and I think that it

would not be difficult to move from Runequest to BRP and back, since the

basics are identical. From my point of view, the differences are mainly in

the details and especially in the number of options.