DreadDomain

Darn. Oh well, I guess it is a good thing that it sold out! I settled for the PDF instead. Otto, I am quite impressed with your work. I didn't read it in depth yet but the stuff on your website is mind blowing. I hope Chaosium will ask for more of your stuff!

I just had a quick glance over Berlin 61 and it looks quite meaty. I like the look of the book as well, it enhances the mood of the game and it made me think about running a game in it. I guess it's the goal right

I have failed a POW test and have bought, Ashes to Ashes PDF, Berlin 61 PDF, Cthulhu Rising PDF, End Time PDF, H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands PDF, Ravenar Sagas PDF, Return of The Ripper PDF and Unseen Masters PDF. Does that make me a bad person?

Oops! I go to Chaosium site to order the (dead tree) book and it seems it is unavailable now. Any idea why?

I have just seen that Berlin 61 is available in PDF from Chaosium!

All true. I will probably sound out of this world but I made one attempt at constructing a very high powered super using BRP. I came to the (unfounded) conclusion that "reasonable" point budgets to build supers at different level could look like this : Normal 10 Heroic 20 Epic 40 Street 80 Daredevil Very Low 160 X-Men Low 320 Spiderman Medium 640 Iron Man High 1280 Thor Very High 2560 JLA Now I wanted to tackle a few build to see if my theory was working but aside from the Thor level character I build, I didn't really have time to build some more so I could be off. You have to know that my group and I are used to play with fairly high powered characters in Champions so we are not afraid one bit at the balancing act involve with a high budget point.

No but here is my plan. I have been waiting for this for a generic update of this game for so long (around 1990 when I discovered both GURPS and HERO) that I immediately ordered the PDF as soon as it was available, I will buy the paperback as soon as I see it at my FLGS and will buy the hardback as soon as it is available.

So, I decided to create a character just for for. I used a rough concept that will be the base for a HERO 5th character in an upcoming Champions game. The characetr is not written in HERO yet so it was not an exercice of conversion but really one of building a character from a basic idea. I religiously went from step 1 to 10 of character creation except that I skipped step 2 : powers. The idea was to create the "normal" identity before the "super" identity. The creation process was very easy and enjoyable and there is generally enough pointers in the book to guide the player. Step One Personally I find strange that the standrad method suggest to roll 3d6 for every characteristics except for SIZ and INT (2d6+6) when it is explicitly stated the for a human, the average is 10-11 for every one of them. Sure a 3d6 can give very low results for SIZ and INT but so it can for STR and DEX. So what if you can roll a 3 ft, 60 pounds dwarf (or child for that matter)? You can also roll a DEX 3 klutz and it is no less penalizing. Anyway, it wasn't an issue since I choose to allocate 60 points in my characteristics To choose EDU, I used this simple guideline : Raised in society 3 Primary School +3 High School +3 College +2 Bachelor Degree +2 Master Degree +2 Doctorate +2 Each post doc +2 Adjust for age Step Two I claerly wanted a Superhuman level character but since not much is said about how to scale up in the superhuman level (low power superhuman versus high power superhuman), I decided to create my own like this (note that I have slightly adjust normal, heroic and epic level) : Normal 10 points Heroic 20 points Epic 40 points And then Superhuman Street (Daredevil, Green Arrow) 80 points Very Low (Captain America, Batman) 160 points Low (Spiderman, Aquaman) 320 points Medium (Iron Man, Firestorm) 640 points High (Thor, Flash) 1280 points Very High (Superman) 2560 points. For my character, I chose High (1280 points). I have no clue if my scale is correct (can you build a good Firestorm with 640 points?) but I do admit that my character ended up fairly close to what I was expecting point wise. Step Three and Step Four Nothing to report Step Five I like skill bonuses so I used them for my character. The problem is, with Super Characteristics, some of them can be quite high so it can create huge bonuses. I decided that any characteristics would not contribute to bonuses pass 50. In my case, only STR (at 250) was an issue. Step Six This step I quite like. I had a good idea how my character would behave and the four sample personalities helped quite a bit to define the skills I needed. As an aside, I also used the Opposed Traits (page 295) just because I loved them from Pendragon. I know I would use that in any campaign for player characters by simply letting them allocate values the the traits as they like (or roll if they would prefer). Step Seven and Step Eight Nothing to report except that I used both Education and Increased Personal Skill Points. Step Nine and Step Ten Again, not much to say except that I was quite happy with the range and detail of the professions. As I said, creating the character was both very enjoyable and the result surprisingly close to my expectations. The whole process was a breeze except where it got to the superpowers. I had a lot of questions along the way and the lack of example and the sometime too concise decriptions were both responsable of this. There is a good range of powers described in the bok but for a full fledged Superworld campaign a supplement expanding the power creation system would be welcomed. Here are a few questions just in case someone would be versed enough to answer : 1) In many occasion a power, like Energy Control, refers to "affects 1 SIZ of area per level". What does "1 SIZ or area" represents? Does it increase linearly? For example, Darkness Control affects a volume of 2m of radius (radius increases by +1m per level). Is it the same for an area (2m of radius increasing by +1m per level)? 2) How do range increase? For some powers it is explicitely written but for others, not so (Energy Control). Do I have to assume that the maximum range increase par level as per Energy Projection? Or that some levels might be used to increase range instead of effect as per Snare Projection? 3) Speaking of Snare Projection, the Power Point Cost is 1 per use. Shouldn't bu 1 per level per use? 4) When you buy Resistance "always on" at 3 CPC per level, can you still use it against someone else (touch, 1 full turn at 1 PP per level)? 5) Finally, less a question than an affirmation, Flight is really screwed up (ok, that's harsh >:->). A movement power that you can't increase speed except by using another one (Super Speed)? The setup of Leap is much better even if it lacks a way to increase exponentially.

Is there any preview available for AtA. A few pages somewhere so we can read a bit and see how it looks like. What options are used for it (aside than magic described above)?

I see. My train of thoughts, I realize, is a bit confused but in a nutshell, 1) For those in the know, is there any plan to expand the superpowers in CBRP or re edit Superworld in a new edition? 2) If so, is there a list of know issues that should be adressed in this new edition (super high strength, higher versatility, expanded failings and power modifiers, etc.)? 3) For fellow gamers, have you identify such issues and how do you sort them out (for example, I thought, rightly or not, that a reworked SIZ table could sort out the super high STR issue)?

And huge STR also one of the stumping block in many super games. This is exactly why I like to look at how Superman's STR would look up in a new super game. It gives me a starting point as to what the game can do. To be fair, I know CBRP wasn't specifically aimed at supers but hey, there are super powers in there so... Sure but it is a patch that i'd like to avoid. I prefer when the game is more consistent from the get go. In that case, I think CBRP is laid out on a very solid base and slightly ajusting the SIZ table would, I think, do the job.

and Exactly. That is why I think a new edition to bring it to speed with the actual BRP would be great. In Superworld sure but not how it is actually written in CBRP.

Hey guys, First off, I am very pleased with the new Chaosium's BRP. The system is among my favorite for about 20 years now but for the past 15 years, our group played GURPS and HERO almost exclusively specifically because of the flexibility of both systems and the "almost all rules at the same place" and "almost always the same rules for any genre" aspects of these games. This new generic universal edition of the Chaosium System is thus very welcomed. Second, I am no PDF lover but I am glad we finally get access to old stuff like Superworld though Chaosium's website. I bought both SW and the Companion as soon as they were up as well as the BRP Core book (couldn't wait for the dead tree book to get my fix). Let me give my appreciation to Chaosium for including the covers with the PDF (some publishers exclude them because it is too much work to according to them). Coming to my points after this long introduction, I'd like to point out that there are two things I find a bit annoying in the Comparative Sizes (BRP p.296). First, there is a mistake on the metric weight values for SIZ 72 and onward. At this level, the weight should be 12.8-14 metric tons and not 6.4-7 metric tons (otherwise SIZ 64 and 72 have the same values, remember 1 metric tons equal 1000kg). Second, and that is more important, I believe the table is flattening too quickly. Sure, it is not an issue for most of the games but it may be a problem when you want to play DC level super heroes. According to such a table, Superman would have about what, STR 80 000? Sure there is some work around like using the table in Superworld. For those without Superworld, the progression of this table continues doubling every +8 of SIZ so Superman would end up with STR 200 which is a lot more manageable but on the other end would give Supe a mere +12d6 of damage bonus which might be low. Just for the fun of it I have devised a table that is very close to the actual table up to SIZ 100* but after that, the values double every +32 SIZ. With such a table, the Big S would end up at about STR 500 (and +31d6 damage bonus). This brings me to my last point. Quickly reading though Superworld, I realized how good it was for the time and I kept wondering if it would be updated/modernized for the actual edition of CBRP? Is there any plan for this? Sure there is a lot of stuff in the core book but it still comes short a bit from a full blown Superworld rule book (for instance, the way Flight works is strange. You buy it according to how much you weight not how fast you want to move?!) Uh!? Wow, I didn't intended to talk that much. Sorry about that... * For those interested, I could post the table. The progression is basically thus : Between 1 and 10 : doubles every +2 Between 11 and 100 : doubles every +8 Between 101 and 1000 : doubles every +32 Etc. To smooth the transitions a bit, I do fudge the results between 8 and 10, 80 and 100 and 800 and 1000. The end result is that between 1 and 100, the result are almost identical to the actual table (with SIZ 100 weighting at 100 metric tons) and that it still goes fast enough afterwards to make Superbricks playable.