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RoleMaster springs to mind. In it's simplest form you just add the skill score to the die roll and try to get over 100. The drawbacks to such a system are: 1) It's a bit more crunchy. Some people don't like to add, say,47 and 58 to make a skill roll. 2) It's harder to incorporate success levels.

Most of this is actually self balancing in lay. What happens is that people who don't rely on magic devote more time and experience into other areas. In BRP a guy with Bow 160% at 100 meters is going to be a problem for a spellcaster.

For a land animal I'd say yes. For flying I think it wound't be limited unless he were riding a flying creature, such as a dragon or roc. But I'd certainly consider applying a negative modifier to casting rolls depending on the conditions while flying.

Uh, thanks. You don't have to it's just some brainstorming.

If you used 1d2 damage,you'd get exactly 8 rounds for an average human. Since the 90 seconds is a rough estimate, you could also go with a simple CONx1% roll each round to avoid the damage. Once a character fails the roll he take the damage automatically (like with drowning). That could vary the time a bit, giving heroic characters an extra couple of rounds to get rescued.

To put in my two cents I have looked at this in the past for a different RPG. Forst off, while explosive decompression can be dangerous 3d4 is way to much damage. That would make it pretty much an autokill. 1D6+2 seems about right to me. Check out what wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression Now as far as exposure goes, a person should probably loose consciousness in a round or so, but could survive for up to about 7-8 rounds. For real world info on this check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_exposure I can dig up an article from NASA which says about the same thing if somebody wants it. Rather than a fixed amount of damage, I'd say something like: -CONx1% each round to remain conscious (Maybe CONx1% or POWx1% at the player's choice). -I'd use the same rules and damage as for drowning/asphyxiation with the decreasing CON multiple to resist the damage. I;d ignore the "holding one's breath" part a,d just start with CONx10%. A normal character should last about 7-8 rounds with those rules. A lucky one a bit longer.

In the old RQ days the way it worked was that the off hand weapon was a separate skill. It started off very low (typically 5%, although you could default to half the skill with the main hand), but you did get to make attacks and parries with each weapon. For example, a guy with Dagger at 90% would get a default score of 45% in his off hand, and be able to attack and parry with the off hand weapon at the lower skill percentage.

It's stuff like port and starboard instead of left and right. Nothing that will complicate anything, but can certainly make the ships feel more like ships.

Okay. Page 50-60 done. So far nothing wrong, but I did put in a couple on minor suggestions for "flavor" BTW, I love proofreading the art. Much easier than the text.

I'm not comfortable with annotating a PDF but I can give it a try. I'm supposed to be a fairly bright guy, so I should be able to figure it out, right? If I can't figure it out, I'll let you know.

1)Yes, several. The one used in RQ3 (and similar to the one used in the Superworld Boxed set) has Mass= 2^(SIZ/8)*25 kg. That can be reverse engineered and rounded off to: SIZ= log(kg)*26.575-37.15 I can put that into pounds if you want. 2)Yes, at least in the 8-88 range that 99%+ of things wind up in. 3)Mostly it doesn't-SIZ is based off of mass. Split SIZ was an optional rule in the appendix of RQ2 that was never really used anyplace else. 4) Yes and no. Most everyone else guesstimates. I don't. What I do is pretty much exactly what you did when you compared density. If we assume a human has a density of 1 (or a specfic gravity of 1) and know that the SIZ table usi=es a doubling logarithmic progression with each doubling equal to +8 SIZ, you can get a constant add to SIZ by density. Like so: x1.09 = +1 SIZ x1.19 = +2 SIZ x1.30 = +3 SIZ x1.41 = +4 SIZ x1.54 = +5 SIZ x1.68 = +6 SIZ x1.83 = +7 SIZ x2.00 = +8 SIZ x2.18 = +9 SIZ x2.37 = +10 SIZ x2.59 = +11 SIZ x2.83 = +12 SIZ, x3.08 = +13 SIZ x3.36 = +14 SIZ x3.67 = +15 SIZ x4.00 = +16 SIZ And so forth. The formula is log (density) *26.575 That means that if you have the specific gravity of a material you can turn it into a SIZ modifier. A few minutes with a spresheet and a table of spefic gravity for common substances and you can end up with this: Oak (sg 0.75) = about -3 SIZ Aluminum (sg 2.7) = +11 SIZ Iron (sg 7.87) = +23 SIZ (but, like most metals sg varies by type of ion and purity, so you could simplify it to sg8 and +24 SIZ) Brass (sq 8.5) = +24 SIZ Copper (sq 8.96) = +25 SIZ Silver (sg 10.49) = +27 SIZ Lead (sg 11.35) = +28 SIZ Mercury (sg 13.56) = +30 Gold (sg 19.3) = +34 SIZ Platinum (sq 21.4) = +35 SIZ So a man-sized (SIZ15) lead Golem would be SIZ 43 (mass or weight) and SIZ 15 by VOLume. RTHe nice thing about doing it this way is that it is a method that is reproducable for everybody that takes most of the guesswork out of it. Oh, btw, as an added perk,. STR and CON tend to change at rate of Mass^(2/3) which greatly simplfies in game terms as 2/3 SIZ. So if an iron Golem got +24 SIZ for mass it would also increase it STR by 16 points. Well, that's how I do it.

Okay good luck. Oh, I hope you don't really give that mansized Golem a SIZ of 100. That would put it up overt the 100 ton mark and would mean that it was over 1000 times as dense as a human! Something in the SIZ 42-43 range would be more like it for lead.

I probably should take a stab at it.

If you want, I can help you with the split SIZ stuff. I've got some notes along those lines. Basically I can give you a SIZ (or MAS) for the weight/mass of the material and a modifier for VOLume based on the material used to show how big it would be. Since wood, metal and stone are denser than flesh, most constructs would actually be small for their weight - or hollow.

Yeah, standardize size does help quite a bit with the costs. IMO it would probably be a good idea if Clarence reformatted it to 8.5 x 11 or A4 sizes.

I usually get books like this printed at Kinkos. That can do a color cover, B&W interior, with clear plastic cover (that prtects from spills), and a sprial binding that allows you to lie the book down flat. Not too expensive either. It's about 10-15 cents per page, plus $1 for a color cover, and another $4 or so for the binding.

I beg to differ. Chaosium only had one successful licensed property, CoC. It's other successes were either homegrown (RuneQuest, Pendragon) or a freebie (Strombringer, Moorcock freely let Chaosium and TSR use his Elric books). Games such as ElfQuest (basically RQ3 pated onto the Elfquest setting), and Ringwolrd weren't exactly success. As far as Traveler goes, it's lethality depended on what supplements you were using. The core books (1-3) were not all that deadly, but the add ons introduced all sorts of changes. '

Okay, I'll work on it this weekend. For obvious reason's It will start as a spreadsheet, but these days it's pretty easy to turn one into a PDF. The image was good for posting in the forums, but it I am going to put it in the download section, PDF and spreadsheet are the ways to go. PDF is neater and more universal, while a spreadsheet is easier for me to code. I'll do both SIZ tables (well actually 3 tables, but one is just the corrected one from the book, and the second one expanded to cover more SIZ scores). The official one is riddled with errors. Oh, and I can put in some stuff to do it the other way - that is to determine SIZ from mass (or weight). I use that quite a bit when stating up vehicles and animals. For instance, if you got an elephant with a mass of 5325 kg it will be SIZ 61. I got some stuff for putting VOLume, POWer, and SPeeD on a stat scale that I found useful but others might not. On of the things is does is allow me to determine a car's approximate STR score based on it's engine's POW and top speed.

Okay. Hopefully I can get it done this weekend. First I have to search through a half dozen hard drives to find it, then clean it up and make it presentable.

Yeah, it can be added to the download page. Right now I just have to go through my notes and make sure I find the right table. I had a few pelimnary attempts and have to find the final version. I looked on the forum and found where I posted it long ago, but the picture hosting service dropped the jpg. Speaking on which, what format would people prefer it in? JPG? PNG? PDF, or Spreadhseet? Also, I have a newer table that I've been using for the last 3-4 years instead of the Expanded & Revised on, and maybe I should post that one too. It solves all the problems with the official table, and has a consistent progression all along the table.

Ideally we wanted to publish the guidelines, our reasons for using them, and the stats for some 1200+ creatures as a standard RPG supplement, as well as one formatted for tablets. Some sort of creature design tool, as well as out database of creatures was going to be made available either as part of the supplement of as an add on. The spreadsheets we have now are sort of bare bones tools designed to crunch numbers and spit out game stats, and aren't very pretty. My partner's skill with databases also made most of my functional spreadsheets obsolete. While I can justly take credit for most of the science and number crunching formulas that automated the process, it was my partner who deserves the credit for setting it all up in a database and turning it into an "assembly line" that could spit out stats for 1200 critters at once. Yeah, it could be turned into a small app or program, assuming one of us had some software to code it in. In fact a couple of my spreadsheets were practically apps. I have one I dubbed" Critter Fitter" that was what we first used to automated the processes of scaling up/down animals. One of the early tests was to use the Large Shark from RQ3, and scaling it up to get stats for for Megalodon, and down to get stats for a Mako Shark. The way it worked was that you would type in the stats for the base creature and then adjust the length, and the spreadsheet would use the square-cube law to determine the chance in mass (SIZ) and what the effect would be on STR, CON, DEX, hit points, armor, damage bonus, and bit damage die. To give an example, let's say we are using a White Shark as the baseline creature. If we assume that they are typically 5m long, as we assume that Megalon was 3 times that length, then Megalon would mass about 27 times as much as a White Shark, which would mean an adjustment of +38 to SIZ, and about +25 to STR and CON. It would also have about 32 more HP, and about +3D6 higher db, and 3 more points of armor. It's bite would probably do an extra die of damage, too.

JUst tossing in some more info. Castle Falkenstien also has a card based dueling system. Each character gets two black court cards (attacks) two red court(defenses) and two low numbered cards (rests)> The outcome of the duel is based on what choices the characters make (in serect) each excahnge, and relative skill. For instance id someone plays two attacks, the defender must play two red cards to block it completely. Only one red card means they get a light hit, and no red cards means they get a "double" hit. Oh, btw, one thing that might be interesting is that in fencing, the moves are laid out along lines of attack and defense, that are numbered. For instance a defender would parry in six (or sixte) to stop a head cut. I was thinking that this could be used with a deck of cards as the basis for a combat system.

Okay here's the basics: Instead of dice the game uses cards. The Marvel version of the RPG(the simplest) uses a deck comprised of four suits: Strength, Agility, Intellect, Willpower, and Doom. The first four suits are the attributes, and the Doom suit is bad news (more on that later). Players draw a hand size based on their character's experience, and then play cards against the difficulty. For example, if wielding a sword the character would play a card and add it to his Strength score (as Swords is a STR skill). If the player plays a card that matches suit with the attribute being used, it is considered to be trump, and the player can draw a card off the deck and add it to his total.The total in compared to the difficulty. If the total beats the diffuclty the difference is taken as damage. When a player takes damage, he must reduce his maximum card size by a total number of points equal to or greater than the damage taken. When a player runs out of cards he is beaten. Where the Doom suit comes in is that when a player plays a doom card, he hands it to the GM, who can play it latter on to increase the difficulty of some task. After looking at your card based system, I was thinking that you could port over some ideas from SAGA. For instance you could use suits to determine the location attacked, and suits to determine the defense attempted.

Card based? Interesting. Are you familar with TSR's old SAGA system?