rleduc

Have you contacted the Scribus people, or chatted on the support forums about this? Seems odd.

SDLeary

I have not contacted the Dev List – that might be a good idea. I did update to the latest version (which had noticeable improvements in the way it wrote PDF files), rebuilt the test file and sent it off to Dustin and Charlie to see if Scrybus quietly fixed the source of my problem. That was late last week and no word back from Charlie yet.

I’ve submitted a Classic Fantasy adventure.

A good question – the powers in Rubble and Ruin were developed (for the most part) long before the new core rules and are the result of my pig-headed running of basically the same world over 25 years. Thus, they play well with each other (at least in my hands) – but when I ported them to the core rules I did not try to balance them against other powers.

A lot of the powers converted exactly to the Book in Yellow, but many of them are grossly under powered. For example someone playing a nano-psionicist in a world with core psionics will be shorted – the psionicist will be able to do a lot more then a nano-psionicist. On the other hand, in a world without other psionic powers, nano-psionics are great; you can see into the next room, TK small objects, or heal wounds etc.

Most of the biomods should match the core rules point for point (but I think I did reduce the costs on a few below core costs).

If you are using damage by hit location then the cybernetics give more benefit then reflected in their cost, but this benefit is balanced against a lack of natural healing. So, in a game where characters can pop into a repair shop between encounters, the cyborgs are likely to be over-powered relative to other core powers. In the rubble finding parts to repair damaged cyber-limbs is a constant hassle for the powerful cyborgs characters.

I hope this helps,

Rich

It is completely off topic, but I get a kick out of seeing what you have done with parts of Rubble and Ruin – it was my hope that people would be able to find stuff that they could move over and fit into their own creations.

Thanks for sharing, and I am looking forward to the next installment.

By the way, how did you do the map?

It is my understanding that train robbers had to pick their locations carefully in order to be able to catch the train.

For car chases I introduced the idea of maximum safe speed – traveling faster then the road allows will have risks even if you are under the maximum speed of the vehicle. A curve in the track or even a rough bridge may force a train to slow down enough that the robbers could catch up on horse back.

Oh the tragic tail of the Rubble and Ruin PDF. So when I did the layout I used an application called Scrybus which is an open source application that had all sorts of accolades at the time when I made the layout-software decision (and please note that this was my first book so I really had no background to guide my decision). So I did the layout and sent a PDF to Chaosium – they put together the file to send to the printer which worked great, and a PDF to go on-line. Unfortunately, the on-line PDF had issues – the Scrybus-generated PDF would not accept the objects Chaosium needed to add for the electronic version of the document (actually, it took them, but it knocked large blocks of text off their pages and rendered the book unreadable). I have tried everything I can think of to fix the problem at my end (short of getting a new application and doing a complete redo of the layout), the advise from the Scrybus forum boiled down to “get a new publisher”, and so we are left with hoping that Charlie can find a solution at his end. I asked about the problem two weeks ago and extended my offer to help in anyway I can and Dustin reassured me that they are working on it.

I have this feeling that the answer is going to be that I will need to do a complete new layout in another application – but I have not yet brought myself to do that.

I will post here as soon as I know anything new.

Sorry for the inconvenience (I assure you, I want you to be able to get my book). Also, I can assure you that I will never do another layout in Scrybus.

I added Wilderness Survival to Rubble and Ruin – complete with a specialization in “ruins”...

But that is just me.

I would point out that the Modern Equipment guide has a lot of material that would be useful for near-future global war type games.

It does not have anything specific to T2000 but useful for that setting.

That’s unfortunate. What does the data look like further out?

As I drew it there, the relationship is from Rated Speed to Log Move. The idea was simple to show the linear relationship between these two variables.

A sample calculation:

Move 350 gives log(350) = 2.5441

Speed = 18.

Y = 0.0593(18) + 1.4363 = 2.5037 which is approximately 2.5441 (within about 2% of the “true” value).

That shows Speed to move – except you still have to take 10^Y to get the actual move value from a relative speed. But again, I was more interested in demonstrating the linear relationship between the log Move and relative speed.

Hope this is clearer then mud.

I wasn’t sure how to add an image to a thread, so I put it on my blog here.

My take is, if you ignore the first three data points you are looking at the log of Move giving the rated speed.

That will teach me to not have files open when I write something: Speed 1 = 10 MPH.

In general I think the mechanics are there to handle two separate events that occur in play – first a vehicle can come zooming through a ground combat, hence the MOV states, and second there may be a classic “chase”. Unless the setting is focused on some element of the vehicles I don’t worry too much about it. On the other hand, for post apocalyptic car chases in Rubble and Ruin I defined 1 MOV = 10 MPH (which is a useful scale for American automobiles), and I extended the chase rules to have a few extra spaces (in effect, it was slightly more complex, but that is the general idea). My goal was to take the core chase runs and add a little crunch that would marry into the car construction rules.

OC got shorted just because I was running in El Segundo and Long Beach – still I would hope you find some interesting material. I tried to present the background in a “city neutral” format, with El Segundo as an “example”. My hope is that each GM can build their own ruin using the book as a guide rather then a “setting”.

Let me know how it works out for you.

Thank you -- and thanks to everyone who helped me with the project. It was a long haul but I am glad I did it.

I'll try and nudge Charlie.

Cool setting -- you may find Rubble and Ruin of interest.

Also, I think we may have a new meme growing, you have the red mist and I have red sandstorms!

Yeah, Charlie pulled it from the website -- currently you can only get the hardcopy version (which came out fine).

Sorry

I'm glad it was well received -- I wish the PDF problem could be resolved at least as much as the next guy.

The reply I got was "ask again later" -- I have offered to help in any way I can.

Dustin gave me my Rubble and Ruin money as store credit and I went crazy!!!!

Abbey (CHA0303)

BRP Quick-Start edition (CHA2021)

BRP Rome (ALG001)

BRP Witchcraft (CHA0386)

Cthulhu Dark Ages (CHA2398)

Cthulhu Invictus (CHA23115)

Dragon Lines (CB75801)

Fractured Hopes (CHA0384)

Frontier Cthulhu (CHA6041)

Legacies of the Renaissance (CHA0318)

Modern Equipment Catalog (CHA0385)

Pastores (CHA0313)

Dragon Lords of Melniboné (CHA2017)

This Old Haunted House (CHA0361)

Secrets of Los Angeles (CHA23111)

Secrets of the Congo (CHA0387)

Extrico Tabula (CHA0354)

Yeah me!!

I would ask you to think of the scope of BRP. In Rubble and Ruin Craft is the skill to manufacture new items – Craft (Handloading) allows a character to take powder, bullets, cases and primers to make new rounds of ammunition while Repair (firearm) would be used to take the damaged but repairable remains of a weapon and get it to shoot. The skill Craft (firearm) [the ability to use milling machines and blank steel to create a new firearm] would have been lost in the wars.

In this setting it is useful to keep the two skills separate.

The first thing I would do is let the players know that this is a short prolog, even if they do not know the relationship between these characters and their “actual” characters. Further, you may not want to be too strict about the parent/child relationship – let the flow of events in the prolog guide who the real characters are – for example in the prolog we may learn that Bob and Joe are brothers, but Bob dies doing X. Later one of Joe’s kids may be off to finish the quest started by Uncle Bob – and so on with increasing complexity.

We're back... At least in hardcopy! The paper version of Rubble and Ruin look fine, it is only the PDF that is messed up.

We're tentatively planning a BRP R&R intro game this Saturday. Ahhhh the elation of getting my post-apocalypse fix.....

Hey have you got an opening for another player. I would love to play!