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Precision does not equal accuracy. GURPS can get very detail oriented and nitpicky, but it's not really any more realistic or simulationist that RQ, or even it's major rival Hero System. A lot of GURPS rules and assumptions are questionable. Some of the minutiae pushes for other minutiae that the game doesn't have. For instance, GURPS makes ax swings slower than sword swings due to the time to recover the unbalanced weapon, but it fails to note that one can make two to three thrusts in the time it takes to swing a sword. Rule-lite can be a good thing or a bad thing. It depends on what you are trying to do. As for RQ, most of RQs rules found thier way into BRP as optional rules. But RQ wasn't as complex as GURPS as it never tried to cover as ,much territory. Rather than being a generic, universal RPG, the RQ/BRP rules were always customized to the specific setting. About the only time they bent the setting to fit the rules was with ElfQuest. EQ was pretty much the RQ rules.

I'm not sure that GURPS is more simulationist that BRP. At least not more than Steve Perrin's RQ/Strombringer version of BRP. GURPS is more detailed in some ways, but that doesn't necessarily make it more simulationistic. RQ3 game mechanics are probably at least as complex as GURPS. And switchable special effects wouldn't make BRP more complicated, since most of the effects already exist, we'd just be adding some choice. I believe MRQ2/RQ6 does something like this, anyway.

BTW, there is an old thread where I did the math for low wins on opposed rolls and it dopes not hurt the higher skilled character as much as most people think.

It isn"t better for BRP. It was better for RQ. Once BRP added opposed rolls, low roll was not better anymore. The added sp[ecial cases where high beat low.

But a bigger die size doesn't translate into grnulatity, thats a misconception. In most D100 systems, most of the time, there is no difference between a 33 and a 34. Most veraints of BRP use only 4 or 5 grades of results; Critical Success, Specia Success, Success, Failure and Fumble. SO just rolling a bigger die doesn"t mean much. Look at RQ2 (the real RQ2), it used a D100, but kept skills in 5% increments. It was practically the same as rolling a D20.

It's not a bad interpretation of the rules, but with so many variants it is harder to come up with a "Standard" method in BRP. I think CoC uses more borad skill categories because it has to cover a lot more ground, skill wise. For instance, pilot covers many different types of aircraft. Withe systems like RQ and Stormbringer, skills could mbe more focused. Even RQ wasn't consistent between editions. Broadsword vs. 1H Sword, for instance. I think what I'd like to see is a list of special effects that a character can learn for each given type of weapon. Stuff like impale, knockback, trip, entangle, disarm, all depending on the weapon/fighting style. . A character would start off with one such special (the default) and pick up another for every 20% on skill or so. THaat would probably give skilled fighters the versatility you mentioned. We could even incorporate some fencing maneuvers or martial arts maneuvers into the mix. Liek a guy with a high martial arts might be able to get a free kick or punch in as a special.

Thanks rleduc, the risk system looks pretty good. I have some questions though. 1) You say that the armor is all or none, but the rules say that if the damage beats the protection, the risk is dropped one level (about a point). Which is it? 2) What method di you use to arrive at the risk vales for the weapons, and the protection value for the armors? Did you base risk on energy, energy over area, momentum? Or did you just "eyeball it" I'd like to know so I can get an idea of how to come up with ratings for other weapons and armors. For example if I wanted to add in a Russian 14mm MG, or a Cassul .454 how would I do so? Or what would the protection value be for an M113 APC? I'm just wondering if you used some method that can be applied universally. THe risk system looks really good, and could help me to solve some of the difficluties I'm having with vehicles and weapons in BRP terms, if it can be expanded to accommodate other weapons and armor. It looks like an energy/area method.

The major differences between the two systems is that RQ is very detailed and gritty while HQ is much more abstract. In HQ nearly anything can be treated as an ability and get a rating, and any rating can be used in a conflict, assuming the GM allows it. In HQ the rating score is not only the skill that you roll, but also works like your hit points. So if you got a W5 skill (25), you can take 25 points of "damage" in a contest. Since practically anything can be used in a contest, assuming the GM okays it, Basket Weaving against Pole Ax, for example, contests can be very abstract, but also quite mythic (The hero encases the attacking army in a huge wicker basket). Conversion between the two wouldn't be that hard. Both have skills and other abilties that can port over to the other, and both have a scale of competency that can be used to convert scores. The biggest obstacle is that in HQ you only track the abilties that you raised or that come from your background. But these could simply be set to average in RQ. But even if you convert a character over from one system to the other, you won't have quite the same game experience. The two systems are different and will play out differently. A dumb fight that might leave a character with a permanent scar in HQ, will probably get the character killed in RQ.

I know I sure did. Dice are just dice. It is how they are used than makes the difference. And the terms D100 and (especially) D20 are normally taken as references to Chaosium's and WotC's RPG systems. If we are going to get technical with how the dice are used, D100 is more difficult because you have to handle twice as many dice. Both system tend to interpret the dice about the same. Either as a weighted D2 (succeed,fail), weighted D3 (critical, succeed, fail), weighted D4 (critical, succeed, fail, fumblee), or weighted D5 (critical, special, succeed, fail, fumble). But that applies to virtually every RPG.

In which case he is using staff skill instead of spear, and won't be able to impale. Basically, I'd say he could get knockback or the impale, but not both. This is where RQ6's ability to pick specials would shine.

I saw some of those, and they are cool. Fairly practical too, they guy who was using one didn't fumble it half as much as he did 2D10s.

Technically speaking there aren"t any restrictions to speak of, but I'd generally not allow impaling weapons to do knockback. A spear that does a lot on damage isn"t going to push the foe back, but go through him.

Nice theory, but bad in practice. Using your example, of a 2D6+2 rifle going to 3D4, you can see that the character would have been better off not using AP ammo. 2D6+2 would have better PEN and damage than 3D4. Same with the 1D10+1 vs. 2D4. I think you got a good idea here, but you have to fiddle with the numbers a bit. The basic concept, improving PEN at the cost of lowering damage is good. Maybe dropping the die size, keeping the add, and using the min. roll as the PEN? FOr example, an AP round for a 2D6+2 rifle would do 2D4+2, and have a PEN of 4. The 4 PEN would hake the round slightly better (2 points) against armor, but do less damage (7 vs. 9) on average, and have a lower max (10 vs 14). Hollow Points could be done by reversing the process. You bump up the dice, but double any AP up to the min. damage rolled. So a HP round for a 2D+2 rifle would do 2D8+2, but double the first 4 points of Armor.

What would your stats be for a 120mm AP round (APFSDSDU if you got it)?

DO any of those systems have guidelines to tell you how much protection (in AP) provided by a given thickness of armor? Or how to determine the PEN value for a weapon? I'm not thinking about personal armor as much as about cover provided by walls, vehicles and such. For instance, if somebody is inside an APC and the APC gets sprayed by a 7.62mm Machine gun, can the bullets penetrate? That sort of thing.

Some of the newer BRP supplements use the weapon damage rating like a PEN score. If the damage exceeds the AP the target takes full damage. This reflect the fact that the damage progression is not really linear. That is one round from a 120mm cannon (20D6) has much greater penetration, and hits a lot harder than twenty rounds from a light pistols (1D6, rolled twenty times). The idea of a PEN stat has some merit, but it would require working out a correlation being AP and armor thickness. You'd have to rework all the weapon damage stats, too.

I like the facvt that D100 is leading, but not the reasons why. It has little to do with the size of dice rolled. Its about everything else but the dice. Skill based vs. Class based. Skill based instead of Level based. Fixed HP vs. Increasing HP. Active Defense vs a Static Defense (AC) Injuries vs. Generic HP loss. Degrees of Success vs. a Pass/Fail system (okay Pass/Fail/Critical with attack rolls). THose are the real differences. Not the dice. Just rolling a bigger die doesn't mean that much, unless you use it to adjust the effects somehow. A 60% success chance is the same, and the difference between 60% and 62% really isn't worth bothering about. I'd much rather play a skill-based game like RQ or BRP using D20s than play a class/& evel game like D&D that uses D100s.

To date there isn't one method of stating out things that is used by everyone for all BRP products (I'm working on it). Rosen has some sort of scaling factor for the mech rules i.e.-1d4 damage on mecha scale is a lot more than 1D4 character scale.

Interesting sheet. What is Size Class 3? And what is the scale for STR and SIZ? Is it SIZ 80 character scale, or SIZ 80 *mecha scale*?

This is very interesting. It pushes the "envelope", and stretches the BRP game system in ways that it hasn't been.

I see your point, but there will be a few things to watch out for if you aren't running a modern day setting. Some things that are fairly inexpesinve today would be much more expensive in a lower tech setting. Good quality steel, weapons and armor, fresh seafood (if not on the coast), oranges. The $1 silver piece is easy for the players to grasp, and GURPS has used it for years, but it doesn't always hold up.

That might not be the case. Prices for goods do not always stay the same relative to each other. For instance back in the 70s when the minimum wage was around $5.15, fifty cent beers were common.

You probably won't have too much trouble with it providing you leave it as just a conversion, do not charge forit, and don't use explain 2300AD setting spefici details. It's bad form for a RPG company to go after it's fanbase. It generates bad feelings among current or potential customers, and costs money. It also costs money for them to go after somebody, and the conversion would just expand the potential customer base as to use the conversion one must have 2300 stuff to convert. It's when you start to cut into their profits or use setting specific stuff without permission where most companies act-usually to protect their property or license. Even then, most companies will just contact somebody or send them a cease & desist rather than come down on them hard-since it isn't worth it. Coming down hard will end up costing the company more money than they will get, and make the company look bad.

I don't agree with Nick's point about tech being tied to setting. Magic is tied to setting even more than technology, yet BRP has several such systems in the core book. And with tech there is a bit more common ground from one setting to the next than there is with magic. Most SciFi tech ties to at least pay lip service to the laws of physics-even if it bends or breaks them. I agree that we don't necessarliy need a set of design rules for SF vehicles and spacecraft. But we could ceetrainly use a good genric sampling of such craft to help with setting up own of SF campaigns. Most Gms don't want to create everything from scrath and will probably go with a system that gives them more tools to work with than try to port everything over from a system that does have such tools to one that doesn't. rust is something of an exceptionin that regard. Likewise, a little something on planet genereation and such would help. We don't need fantastically detailed and accurate stellar and planetary data that would impress Hawking and Sagan, but some simple world generation tables would be nice. Those who want more can just port stuff over from other games or real world textbooks. In other words, what I think BRP needs is something along the lines of GURPS SPACE or STARHERO. Since BRP is a genric toolkit system, it should give us enough tools to do the job. Sure, this stems from a lack of SciFi settings from Chaosium. But that sidesteps the issue. Back when Choasium created most of the stuff that wound up in the BRP rules, all thier products were setting specfic. The various rules and subsystems came from various incarnations of RuneQuest, Stormbringer,Elric!, Call of Cthulhu, Elfquest, Nephilim, Worlds of Wonder and so on. So what? The BRP core book changes that. Instead of being a setting specfic book it is a generic toolkit designed to help people to adapt and use BRP for any setting. But since Chaosium didn't publish much SciFi stuff (Future World and Ringworld) there wasn7t much SciFi stuff hanging around that could be included in the BRP book. If BRP doesn't cover that,it will miss out on that segment of gamers.