rleduc

Here is what I know

1) the formatting issues were introduced when the PDF was finalized by adding a watermark, cover etc.

2) last Friday, after trying several “quick fixes” Charlie pulled the PDF of the website until the formatting issues can be resolved,

3) today Charlie should get the proof for the hard copy and be able to see if the error has affected it,

4) I did the page layout in Scribus (an open source DTP application), and have been trying to get feedback from the folks in the Scribus community – good news is they are friendly and responsive, the bad news is that the most recurrent piece of advice is that I should get a different publisher...

5) being new to publishing I had done all of my layout on a single layer, and being a little desperate, yesterday I created a version that has a separate layer for Charlie to put his work on – I have sent him a sample from that version, and hopefully we will soon know if that will correct the problem.

6) If you have bought a copy and are interested, PM me about getting a play-test PDF to tide you over until this is resolved.

Sorry for the confusion,

Rich

Charlie just contacted me. The problem has been found, and he will try to correct it. It is unlikely that it will affect the printed version. (It appears to come from adding the watermark to the pdf.)

I have talked with Charlie and Dustin regarding the messed up pages, and I will post what I learn here. There are top people working on the problem – TOP PEOPLE

Also, camazotz great to hear that you liked the monograph! Let me know if you have any questions.

Rubble and Ruin Downloads

Here are links to my Rubble and Ruin files:

Character Sheet

Front

Back

Sample Maps

El Segundo

LA

Finds Book (a GMs aid)

One question to the Author: would it be possible to see these nice Character Sheets in the Download area? Because the Chaosium Imprint is within the sheet and makes it kind of less usable.

Ohhhh the author gets all excited and giddy!!!!

I didn’t expect it to be out for a few more weeks. I will add several documents to the downloads area today – include the character sheets, the color versions of the sample maps and a bonus “Book of Random Stuff You Find in the Ruin”.

True confession, I stopped playing D&D somewhere around 1982 – and long before that the groups I played with were using their own monetary system. For this years Adventure contest I am putting together a fantasy adventure using CF, but I am stumped on what to offer as appropriate treasure.

Case in point, a group of starting adventurers are hired to run a potentially dangerous mission that will last one night, maybe two – how many GP should be offered? Likewise, later the Barron offers a reward for a bandit that is robbing outlying farms – what should be the price on the bandits’ head?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Rich

Yeah me, I just got this from Dustin!

Howdy Richard

Charlie just informed me that the Rubble & Ruin files have been uploaded to our printer. Provided there are no unexpected problems with the files the printed version should be available in 4 weeks. Once it comes in Nick will send you author copies.

A PDF version may be available somewhat sooner.

I have my heart set on doing a Classic Fantasy adventure this year, but if the community settled on pushing for something else, I would try to go along.

If I were adding C of C to a Classic Fantasy game, I would not include SAN, but instead I would add a third Alignment – Outer gods/mythos/chaos/whatever. Like Good and Evil, characters could accumulate affinity with this third power.

To capture the “insidious” nature of over-exposure to the mythos, I would have certain effects that are based on the absolute level of this new alignment. For example, at 10 the character might acquire a behavioral quark; at 50 the character may have some physical effects.

Off the top of my head ideas for gain Alignment points

+1-+5: reading certain forgotten tomes which explain how the entire “Good versus Evil” dichotomy is a cover over a deeper less human-centered theology.

+2: Experiencing the reality-bending effects associated with the materialization of the major Mythos beings.

+5: Traveling to a non-Good/Evil place such as the Dreamlands.

+Var: Knowing letting the mythos corrupt the Good/Evil world (for example by using a Mythos spell rather then “normal” magic).

+1: becoming aware that someone is violating the fundamental Good/Evil conflict. For example, determining that a cultist priest destroyed a village without gaining any Evil points – because it was done with Mythos “magic” not “real” magic (and therefore the priest gained Mythos alignment points – the act although “evil” was outside the realm of Evil and therefore the priest would not detect as evil)

I would also make Mythos magic relatively powerful and easy to use, but hard to find. Further I would make sure that any character which had access to Mythos magic knew that its use was corrupting to the world, so there was always the tug between the cheap-and-easy big effects, but at the cost of accumulating additional Mythos alignment.

(I have run similar fantasy games in the past, where the three alignments became known as “the good”, “the bad”, and “the ugly”.)

As a bonus, cultist clerics would be easy—simply power their abilities of this third alignment.

SAMPLE MYTHOS MAGIC ITEM

The Black Skull: any person attuned to this item (POW roll once per hour to attune) will gain the ability to travel via dreams to the various “lands of the dead”. Once there, the character can find the souls of the deceased (POW roll with a bonus for knowing the subject, and another for having personal items of the subject, and a minus for the length of time the person was dead) and force them to return to the life. It costs the caster one permanent POW point to do this, plus using the skull gives the +1 Mythos per day the person was deceased (to a maximum of +10, after that it is +1 per year)

This is a little off topic, but I hope I will be forgiven – I’m toying with the idea of writing a CofC adventure, but I only use the old 5.5 edition. Should I update to the newer additions – are there any major differences – or will I be able to get by if I stat everything out with the old 5.5 version?

Thanks,

Rich

(True confession, my gaming group bought me 5.5 when it came out because I was still running using the first edition – I know, I’m a stick in the mud)

I took a different approach in my treatment of training dogs (http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/downloads.php?do=file&id=111).

I viewed each animal “profession” as having a required Animal Handling skill, and than the trainer would raise an animal in the profession over time. Each profession then has associated animal abilities, some of which might require an animal handling roll in order to evoke from the animal, while others were just simplified away to a skill bonus (getting a blood hound on to a scent trail required a roll, while a good sheep dog just gives a bonus to your shepherding skill).

This forum is "the old school". (I started in '77 with OD&D, and moved on to RQ by '79).

Risking shameless self-promotion, I would like to point out that the Game Template (found here) is useful for writing up settings. It gives you an editable document that can be customized for what ever you finally settle upon as appropriate WWII professions.

Rubble and Ruin has some basic cybernetics, mostly replacement limbs for soldiers and a few gadgets. Unfortunately it is still in play testing.

I am also using Scribus and have found it easy to use if not a little quirky (but not nearly as bad as when I was trying to do everything in Word).

I would like to again thank Puck for the artwork he has contributed to my monograph and recommend that you consider his offer.

Jut WOW! Rubble and Ruin is around 70,000 words, and I'm working hard to finish it---80,000 for Book 1 alone!

I can't wait to get a copy!

Thanks.

I am working in Scribus on the advice I read earlier from this forum (so I’ve got that going for me). And for anyone else who might care, I used IrfanView last night to convert the images to black and white and it work, so I wont get a chance to try GIMP.

Ohhhh, great!

Special Racial Trait: Given the rat-men’s natural aptitude for mechanics, they learn the following skills exceptionally fast; LIST OF SKILLS. During character creation they receive +2 for every experience point used to increase these skills and they improve +1D10 points during play. (Better language to follow, but the idea is there.)

Thanks,

Thanks for #1,

#2 was what I had in the back of my mind, but wasn't sure if it would work for the general reader...

Hello,

I posted this as a separate thread in the hope of getting a larger audience. Rubble and Ruin is based off a world I have been running for over 25 years and under a lot of different mechanics. One race that worked very well under Aftermath, and okay under GURPS seems a little off in my BRP version, so I thought I would ask for your input.

There exists in this world a race of giant (three foot tall) rat-men who were created specifically to work as mechanics and technicians inside massive robotic tanks. To reflect their mechanical aptitude I have given them +25% on all skills fixing or creating mechanical items – can anyone suggest an better way to make these guys “mechanical geniuses”?

Thanks,

Hi,

I am about to start page layout on my monograph and I had a few questions I was hoping someone here might be able to answer:

1) All artwork most be black and white according to Dustin, does anyone know an easy way to convert PNG files to grey scale?

2) I have included references to the core rules wherever possible. Any suggestions on a shorthand for these, currently I am using something like “BRP core rules page XYZ” – but there is probably a better way. Any ideas?

3) I need to make a nice character sheet to be included in the monograph, and I know there was a long thread on that recently, does anyone remember what the punch line was for best tool to do this?

4) Is it my imagination, or did I read somewhere in the core rules, a penalty for characters not getting enough sleep. I would have sworn I saw something about that, but when I went to find it – nothing. Does anyone know of one?

Thanks,

You may also like: BRP Central - Downloads - Dogs

This may only be relevant in my mind, but some time ago I added a file to the download section that can be used as a template for setting out which rules will be used in a given campaign. For my style of gaming this is an essential step in starting a game.

The file can be found here: BRP Central - Downloads - Game Template

Rubble and Ruin monograph

I have completed a rough draft and started serious editing. Chapter 1 is effectively in finished form, chapters 2 and 3 will likely only see minor changes, chapter 4 needs its first post-draft-now-that-I’ve-had-some-time-to-think-about-it revision (I’m new to editing, but I think that is an official level of editing), and chapter 5 was just completed in the last week. I sent a very rough draft to Dustin last week in the hopes of getting some preliminary comments.

I am off to a conference at the end of May-first week of June and I hope to have enough layout done that I can take a copy with me to work on the index and TOC.

Oh, and in case you can not read my mind, the chapters are:

1: General background

2: Character Creation

3: Spot Rules (Firearms, dogs and Cars)

4: GMs Sections (Campaign ideas, sample gangs, general comments and a small bestiary)

5: Two sample adventures

I am hopeful that it will be submitted by late June.

TTFN,

Rich

I was going to recommend something like, make a simple rule that a SW+2 is a BRP +15%, but then I got thinking, hey what does the benefit work out too anyway.

I generally don’t like games that hide the probability of success behind weird die rolling conventions, so back when I had an interest in SW I build a spreadsheet showing the probability of rolling the numbers 1-16 (or higher) for each die type, with or without the inclusion of the Wild die. If you take the average benefit of a +2 across the entire table you get +13.97%. Of course, in reality the types of dice used and the target numbers are not uniformly distributed – but biased towards the center of the range – so you might want to call SW+2 a +25% bonus.

As an aside, I use +25% in Rubble and Ruin as a typical bonus as it is large enough to make a difference (and hence to be worth writing on the character sheet) but not overpowering. (For example a biomodification that gives you exceptional climbing abilities gets a +25% to climb.)