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Okay, that clears thing up. It's not that bad a method (in fact it's what old Strombringer used to do, pretty much). Mathematically it's not much different that doubles-at least until you break 100%. BTW, What if you chance of success is less than 10%? Do you have no chance of a critical, or is then a minimum of 1%

Interesting. How do you handle POW improvement? And do you use WILLpower or POW for resistance rolls?

I find it actually works out faster than rolling an attack, a parry, comparing success levels, then rolling damage and hit location.

Uh, maybe. I'm not sure how much rolling dice feels like a swordfight. I just thought the "three in one" method would reduce the number of die rolls and simplify things. I also liked the fact that the damage was directly tied to how much better you did than your opponent, instead of being mostly random (the damage die). That is the nice thing about opposed rolls. I was thinking of raising the starting scores quite a bit to try and get the full die range. Realistically, a person will hit an opponent over 95% of the time, unless the opponent does something about it (i.e.parry/dodge). So why not reflect that in the die rolls? That's exactly what I was trying to do with it. Basically, the damage you do is tied to the difference in effect dice (10s dice). I wasa also thinking that things like disarms, trips, force backs, beats, binds, and such could have a "cost" in EFFECT. So you'd basically buy your specials. Well the obvious choice would be to allow the defender to make a riposte, but I was thinking that this might work better without alternating attacks and defenses and instead just use one "fighting" roll with the winner inflicting damage on the loser . It's simplier and seems to be more realistic.In a real fight you don't just take turns attacking each other. Yes and no. I didn't want to have "crticals" per say, but did want to tie how well someone did to how much effect they generated. The idea was that if you beat someone by a point of two you got a minor victory, while if you beat then by 8 or 9 you probably took them out of the fight. Rolling doubles would have to have a nice bonus to work, since something like a 11 would'n beat all that hot. Oh, and I wanted to use the EFFECT to handle stuff outside of combat too. For instance something like a race could be handled by having to accumulate a certain number of EFFECT points before the opposition does. Same with spellcasting. For something like piloting a vehicle, each of the maneuver you want to pull off could have a cost in terms of effect points (although I had a idea of letting someone "go into the red" for a round urn while attempt a maneuver but they had to come up with the remainder next round or else they'd lose control of their craft)..

Doesn't that make a critical entirely luck, and not based on skill at all?

Possibly. But if you do that you probably will need to give out awards/penetalies for when people do things that affect their relationships in play. That's what I think. In fact, if you are going to use it as a modifier, I suggest you keep in in increments of 5% or better yet 10%, and have it progress a bit slower. Another possibility might be to treat the relationship as a complentary skill (BRP page 50). which would keep the modifiers down a bit. For enemies you can just substract the modfier insteead (so you don't really need a actual negative score). One of the best things I've seen along those lines was for the Flashing Blades RPG. Basically, you had to get a skill check in a skill over the year to keep it at the current level. Note you didn't have to improve you just needed to earn a check. That would be very easy to swipe. Oh, and enough training/pracice to warrent an imrpovement roll (or improvment) would could.You could have the loss be 1D6% or some other value.

What somebody did a long time ago was to divide the skill scores by 5 (your special success chance) and then use the resistance table for the outcome. That how Strombirnger worked. One thing I was working on was to use the 10s digit as the "Effect" die. That is if you rolled a 73, your "effect" was 7 and that was the number that was used to determine things like damage. If you rolled over your skill, your effect die was considered to be a zero. The defender's "effect' Die canceled out the attack, so if you got a 73, but the defender rolled a 62, you only got a minor hit (1 point) past his parry. Weapons (and shields)gave a modifier to the effect. I also used the 1s digit as the hit location roll, so I was able to work out success, damage and location with just one skill roll. All in all, it was a very easy way to handle opposed rolls in a percentile based system. I was working on a way to allow for critical hits (probably something with rolling doubles since it was easy to track, and increased with skill), and for handling skills over 100 (I had a couple of ideas but was hoping to have an epiphany and think of something really clever)

Exactly! It's like if someone did a report on people who had an arm severed in combat, and we adjusted the hit location tabled to reflect the fact that 100% of those in the study had been hit in an arm at least once, or increasing the chances of getting a limb severed since everyone in the study had suffered such a fate. Yeah, somewhat. Although the Wald approach can give you some odd conclusions, since it doesn't deal with why the other planes were lost, but just assumes it was due to a lack of armor. Perhaps. But there is also the fact that in a fight you tend to aim at the opponent's weapon and weapon arm, since it's the thing that is threatening you, and is usually the body part that is closest to you and easier to reach. Plus it's where all the action takes place. Back when I used to mess around with practice weapons, the place that tended to get hit the most was the weapon hand. A lot of partially parried attacks would glide down the blade, off the guard, and into the hand. We started wearing winter gloves to protect our fingers. Do a bit of messing around with a pair of nerf Swords, and you'll find out why chest hits are so rare in RQ melee. It might be a big area, but it generally only gets hit when you try for it and your opponent really messes up his defense. Usually, the blow will get partially parried and defected elsewhere.

You might want to look over the old Elan rules in Stormbringer. While it was designed to handle standing with Gods, the basic mechanics could work out fairly well for handling groups. Basically, there was a list of things a character could do that would affect his standing with a certain deity. I'm just not sure how that would actually work in play. If someone who was unfamiliar with the group has a 50% rating, could he call in favors and such using that 50% rating? That's why I suggested Directed Traits from Pendragon. Basically what Directed Traits are are modifiers that apply to another trait under certain circumstances (i.e with certain groups). For example someone could have a +20 score against people from a particular area, but a -30 score with dragons and so on. Well you could apply a multiplier to fame based on how far the character is from his usual turf. Maybe in his home town it would be an easy roll, in the next kingdom over it would be a hard roll, and in a location where he isn't know at all it would be at 0. The thing with tracking just relationships is that someone might be well known to a group, but not all that well know to the public, depending on just what he's done. Butm, hey it's your idea, I'm just tossing out some ways you could work with it. Or not. Oh, BTW, maybe instead of a fixed reward you could have some actions give an improvement check? That way the higher the character's standing with a group the more he will have to do in order to increase his standing.

Yeah, and you'd be the first person people would think to go to when they had some sort of problem. And the first target for young toughs trying to prove how "bad" they are. But I could see how it could help even when dealing with those who aren't well disposed towards you. The bad guys might be more willing to negotiate if they are up against some hero with a 90 Fame score (and the skills that go with it).

I could see it being applied positively or negatively depending upon the situation and whom you are dealing with. For instance, someone who has gained a Fame score of 70 by slaying dragons might be a hero in the realm (positive score) but be considered an enemy of dragons (a negative score). Frankly quite a bit of this could be extrapolated from the old Stormbringer Elan rules, Pendragon, and possibly even the old Thieves World boxed set.

Can you share a little info on that?

Just some thoughts on the subject: 1) It probably makes sense to have the affiliation increase awarded for how well the character succeeded at the task, and how important the task is, not so much on a die roll. For instance, if the character had to defeat an enemy of the group in a duel, winning the duel, even if he wins by a series of marginal successes is more important to the group than if he gets in one good shot (a special), but loses the duel. Therefore I'd suggest basing the award on the task and treating the degree of success as a modifier. For instance if a task was worth a 3% (or 1D6%) increase, a special success might up the reward 1%. 2) I think the relationship should probably start off much lower. Probably 0% for unknowns. I'd use a negative score to reflect a negative relationship with a group That would allow people who do something against someone to earn relationship points with a group by acting against someone who has a negative score. I also think the relationship rating could be used to complement other social skill rolls involving that group (see below).. 3) What you might want to do is track a score for Fame using your basic method, since if someone does something impressive, it will be impressive no matter who is is doing if for. So if someone slays a dragon, hits a coin from 200 paces with an arrow, etc. it will still generate fame. But the relationship score for an would be based on what the character does for (or against) that group. This could mean tracking it as a separate skill, or, if you are familiar with Pendragon, as a directed trait. What that means is that the group score would act as a modifier to appropriate skills involving the group. A high score would make it easier to bargain with them, an negative score would make it harder, and so forth.

Uh, no, not really. While modern banking came from this, there were lending institutions that existing back in the ancient era. "Credit" existed long before that. In fact, it was an easy concet to accept back in the days where most transactions were done without money. And while compound instrest might not have existed as such, the idea of interest on loans did exist, as was the concet of increasing payments for falling behind. I think that is actually how compound interest got started. For example, lets say someone has a loan out for 100 coins with 10% interest (payment of 10 coins just to break even). He misses a payment, and the value of his debt is increased by the amount missed (10 coing) and he know owns 110 coins. While technically not considered compound interest, the effect is identical.

Thanks. I wouldn't mind paying a nominal fee for a hard copy, but I doubt my FLGS will have the Quickstart. I'm in D20 country.

Thanks. I wouldn't mind paying a nominal fee for a hard copy, but I doubt my FLGS will have the Quickstart. I'm in D20 country.

How hard is it to set up Roll20? Specially, are there issues getting through firewalls. I tried another program for running a game on-line (Screen Monkey) and no one could connect. I could connect through another PC locally, but no one could connect who weren't on my network.

Is the Quickstart going to be available as a PDF for download somewhere? I'd hate to miss out if my FLGS runs out of copies on FreeRPG Day.

It depends a lot on both what type of firearm the character is trying to bring in and who they are and to whom they are connected. For instance, it is going to be difficult, if not impossible for someone to bring over a Thompson submachine gun. However it probably wouldn't be all that unheard of for a rich industrialist with contacts in the aristocracy to bring over a Holland & Holland rifle for hunting.

No, there isn't. But...you could adapt the Super Power rules from the core rulebook into Cyberware. Basically just build an item with powers that do what you want. Another possibility might be to port over cyberware from another RPG (Cyperpunk for example). It's not all that hard to do- it's mostly translating values into the BRP equivalents. You could probably use SAN to handle Humanity loss, if you wanted to. For example, if a cyberware concealed pistol does the equivalent damage of a medium pistol in one RPG, it should do medium pistol damage in BRP.

What often happens is that early on, the newbies tend to defer to the "experienced gamers". Then once they see how THAT works out, they decide they couln't do any worse if they made thier own decisions. But there tends to be a window where they are vulnerable to suggestions from the vets. I recall one campaign where I chastised a new player for constantly listening to one of the "more experienced" players. I told him that if he absolutely had to listen to one of the other players, why he have to pick the guys who kept getting killed every other week? Why not listen to one of the survivors instead?

Couldn't you just chalk the cuteness up to an artist's interpretation of the species? Kinda like the Disney version. Or were there things in the rules where the cuteness stuff played a factor? I wonder how much of "critter aversion" might be due to cartoons, especially the classic cartoons from the 40s and 50s?

Im not claiming that you did. I'm just saying that I think a GM really needed a bit more to be able to run a campaign with it. WoW was fine for a one shot or a short series of adventures, but, IMO, needed more to sustain a campaign. Yup. they used gates. A clever GM could have pulled out the stats for modern day equipment from Superworld World and come up with a decent SG-1 type campaign. A really clever Gm could have adapted the Superpower rules into item creation rules to handle tech.

Yeah, some of the decisions and assumptions made ended up being kind of odd for a generic SciFi game. One of which was that enerfy weapons weren't that great and that slug throwers were still the sidearms of choice. Yeah, probably a case of underestimating PC potential and development. Not that surprising considering that back when Traveller was written any computer with any real power was a mainframe, and it wasn't even as powerful a a typical smart[hone of today. That depended on if you were using the advanced chargen. The basic characters form the first three books had more useful skills, but not as many. I agree. I have been kinda of working on something along those lines off and o. IMO it's not all that difficult to come up with a tool to adjust the tech rules to the setting. There are a few systems that have supplements that allow them to do so. Stuff! for EABA is one of my favs as far as that goes. I find that the difficult is is coming up with such a tool that fits in with the stats and data that already exists for an existing RPG, such as BRP. Often design dechasions chosen by an author can cause difficulties- and it's often the "throw away" decisions that can cause the most problems. For example, it would be very easy, from a game design standpoint to work out vehicle stuff such as acceleration based on the thrust to mass ratio. Now this in turn would be very easy using the SIZ table (i.e. Thrust to Mass ratio is STR-SIZ.). Now STR-SIZ is pretty simple, right. In the old Superworld RPG, we could do just that. Nice and simple. But, because the designers of RQ3 (actually the same ones as for Superworld) chose to have the SIZ table progress at a different rate at the very high end (over SIZ 88) in RQ3, and since every SIZ table in every BRP related game stems from that table, we can't do that anymore. But' it not like we every really use SIZ scores that high in any sort of meaningful way other than Hit points and DB, anyway. But it does shut down that approach. A pity since a lot of tech stuff, like range, damage, power, speed, etc. could be very nice to manipulate and work with if they could be put on some sort of universal scale. And sometimes it's not so much a case of balancing them, but dealing with how the will impact on each other.

So then why not dump WoW and just build from the ground up using the 16 page BRP book? With WoW It was that, IMO, you needed more that what was provided to sustain a campaign. I'm not talking about setting stuff, but gear, rules and such. For instance future world had nothing to cover spacecraft of anysort, heavy weapons, and was pretty sparse with vehicles and equipment. I don't think it even had any sort of vacc suit. Whereas Classic Traveller covered all the bases as far as a SCi-Fi campaign went. Any of the WoW ""Worlds" could be fleshed out by an experienced GM, who could add anything he needed or wanted. But in practice it was a lot easier to simply port over what you wanted from other Chasoium RPGs, or even just use those other RPGs sans setting. It wasn't that big of a difference between Magic World and Stombringer, for instance. So a GM could port over other items, armor, weapons and such, and use the relative pricing of items to work of a reasonable price in MW I did just that for a player who wanted a weapon that wasn't listed. Likewise things like lance charges, skill training and practice all ended up getting ported over for players who were used to being able to do those sorts of things. Interesting. I don't believe I was ever aware of this. I'll have to do a little web surfing.