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Well, for starters, look at the caulaty figures for combat. You will see that the majoirty of people who get shot, survive the battle. And that includes those hit in the chest with bullets from assault rifles. This kinda touches upon what I mean about damage being too tied to bullet type/weapon. In the RPG an assault rifle does twice as much damage as a medium pistol, regardless of who is uning it or where he target is hit. If real life, rifle bullets often over penetrate the target. The whole thing isn't quite as linear as the game mechanics are. .

Actually it is limited to lower than that. Usially 18 (the max you can roll). And raising it above that is hard, and the upper cap is 21, not the cap during character creation. And my point is that character do have limits imposed on them. So there is nothing wrong with this limit. If I wanted a game with a character like Conan, I'd probably just allow the players to dip into the super power rules. So Conan might have a few points of SuperSTR. I would if I were not running a Supers game. I'd also complain if the building didn't fall apart when he lifted it to, unless it was a supers campaign.

No, Dreji's right. it is Howard. They guy wasn't a big tough guy, and seemed to be somewhat fixated on heroes who were tough and strong. Not all pulp heroes are that way. I'm not even sure if Doc Savage could pass Howard's physical fitness requirements.

Can be good. Competition isn't good of itself. It can be good or bad. For example, look at how standardized formats for video players is better than several competing formats.

Well, an "on" switch would have helped.

I think rust is right. The orignal game system was not designed to do all the things it has been adapted to. That it help up as well as it did is testament to how good a system is is. But each of the various mods and spinoffs done were to adapt the system to a spefic genre or seting. None of it was really built for mixing and matching. Also, over the years, various authors have "shifted" the emphasis of the system. Orginally RQ was simulationist and a bit "crunchy." Then it gone simplfied into BRP, and Worlds of Wonder. After that, CoC trimmed the rules down even further, andbecame the model for Chaoisum post RQ2. So the game doesn't fit toghet the way it would if it had been designed as a genric RPG from the group up. There are a lot of options, variants and alternate rules culled from various ancestors that don't quite work well together. Some things do work well together, and some others come close, but not all of it. And yeah, he system is showing it's age. In part becuase nothing really innovative has been done with the system in the last 25 years.

Thanks for all the info and opinions. Lets see if I can put this all together and see if I can come up with something that should cover most of what people want. Fee free to let me know if I missed something. 1) Guidelines for stating up real world vehicles.Why? - It is heck of a lot easier for most of us to look up data on a 1977 Porsche Boxster 986, take the 240kph top speed and convert that to a MOV of 267 than it is to take a 1420 kg car, throw in a 150 kW engine and figure ouit what the top speed will be. -Some people will want stats for existing vehicles for specific campaign settings. For instance, a 1920s CoC campaign would need stats for more than one car. -Having some guidelines will make it easier to "eyeball" other vehicles, including fictitious ones. If you know your custom car is about as fast as a Boxster, you got a way to get a baseline MOV score. -It gives up a common frame of reference to work with. That way one guy's writeup of a particular vehicle will have stats pretty much the same as another guy's writeup. That way each GM doesn't have to worry as much about who wrote up what and. -Many vehicles in Sci Fi, Anime and Comic books, are given real world data in order to increase thier level of verisimilitude. Thius any guidelines that work for real vehicles should elp with imaginary ones. For example, if we know that an Avengers Quinjet is listed as having a Take off weight of 29000 lb, a top speed of Mach 2.1, and a total engine thrust of 36100lbs, we could use the guidelines to get game stats like this: Quinjet Skill: Pilot, Rated Speed: 50, Handling: +5%, ACC: 12, MOV 2858, Armor: 6/2, SIZ 72, Hit Points: 70, Crew: 1, Passsengers : 5 -Some consistent guidelines would give people to check up on game stats that look odd or are Obviously a typo. So if some idiot author (who I shall leave nameless to avoid self incrimination) gives a car an ACC of 87, anyone can look up the stats and work out if an 8 or 7 is the correct value. 2) Some sort of vehicle modification rules. Why? -So people can customize things so they can do "road warrior" or superhero stuff. A simple way fopr people to figure out what happens if they add an inch of armor to thier car. 3) Super-vehicles. Basically, a way to modify vehicles using the super powers. I see a couple of options here. This isn't too tough. We would just need to work out how some powers might apply to vheilces. Increased STR could up the vehicle's MOV, DEX allpy to handling and so on. -First off, players could simply spend anyof thier hero points on thier vehicle. -Secondly, characters could make some sort of skill roll to add some points to a vehicle. The more points the vehicle has, the harder it will be to modify. 4) A compendium of Vehicle Stats. Why? - Whatever is already written up in already available for use. GM's and players don't have to do the work. Especially useful when you need stats during play and don't want to stop play and waste time to get the stats for a Porche. -The more vehicles that are written up, the more data points we have to use as guidelines for new designs. 5) Vehicle Design/Construction Rules. -This would allow us to write up stats for any sort of vehicle. -Ideally, I think a "front end loader" approach would work best. What I mean by that is, like with some computer programs, there can be more than one method for designing vehicles, but all the methods would give similar (if not identical) results. That way we could have a quick and simple method for those who don't like a lot of complexity, and a more detailed method for those who want a higher degree of control and accuracy. -The front end approach also ensure that the end user can be shielded from some of the math required. If we want to get decent stats, we need a method that is somewhat grounded is reality. At least for modern vehicles. Otherwise we risk "garbage in/garbage out" results. 6) Spaceship Design Rules. -This should be generic, but capable of being adapted to any Sci-Fi setting, including Star Wars or Star Trek. For rather obvious reasons we can't do a Star Wars book without the rights (at least not if I hope to get this thing published). But with a good design system and maybe a Star Wars "plug-in" it should be possible for someone (even me -Like the front end approach above, the spaceship stats should be the same/compatible with the other vehicle design stats, but thet could be stramlined to reflect the needs of Sci-Fi, and other stuff could be dropped, or simplified. For example, we probably wouldn't need spaceships of every SIZ value and could assign SIZ by type/function. . 7) Cargo capacity, passenger accommodations, range, whether or not the vehicle has headlights, and other"fluff" data that could be useful in a game. Naturally, there must be some sort of cut off point to the level of detail. While I'm all for knowing the engine's power, STR rating, and how much weight something can carry, I don't want to get so involved as to work out the number of cup hiolders something has. 8) Rudimentary Weapon Design Rules -Not much sense starting up WWII era tanks if we don't have the WWII era tank guns to go with them. Does that look good?

I was wondering. Just what sort of Vehicle rules do people want for BRP? I know not everybody wants them, and that's cool, but there are those BRP fans who want something to cover vehicles, spaceships and such. Pretty much every other "universal" RPG has rules to cover this sort of thing, too. Plus, like any other set of rules for BRP, those who don't want them can just ignore them. As some are aware, I've been toying with conversions and design rules for awhile, but I am curious as to what sort of vehicle rules people would like to see. There isn't much point in wrting something if nobody wants to use it. So, I'd like some input. Just what do people want. And how detailed do they want it? Would a list of prestatted vehicles help?

Grab a box of treats, and toss him asnack whenever you want him to perform that trick. Works great on animals and students. We have one guy in our group who can total up dice really fast. And another guy who takes forever, and as often as not, getsit wrong. Guess which one is the engineer. But the thing is, most of the time no one really has to do the math. The really low rolls and high rolls are easy. So there are only a few cases where you have to stop and figure out if a roll is a special or not. For instance, for any skill with a success chance of 43% or higher, any roll below 10 is a special.

Sure there are. Quite a few of the tables are flawed, and in some places the text contradicts itself. It is just that most of us are so familar with the system that we don't even need to read the rules most of the time. And what bugs there are can be easily dealt with by a competent GM.

And the math was brought up in response to the argument that the 5% and 20% math is "too hard" to do on your head. Anyone who can do 10% in their head (and that is what the pro 10% side say they can do) should be able to do 5% or 20% in their heads as well. Rusts case of the scientits doesn7t even factorinto the debate, since she probably couldn't work out "10% of X" in her head in the first place. It's not a case of asking the lame to walk, but one of asking people who can figure out 10% thier heads to do 5% and 20%. Buut, I guess it is a lot like asking the blind to see.

Good. otherwise the argument would have been moot. But that was becuase of where she went to school. If the school had not offered that option she would have had to deal with it. Maybe she would have gone to another school, or done something else. No one was obligated to accommodate her. True. But they could have provider her with talking books, or someone to read to her. The fact reamins she choose to pursue a career path where she did not have to use math or physics. What she didn't do is excpect people o toss out Newton's Laws becuase she couldn't do the math. Yes, and her condition isn't used as a justification for everyone who does pooly at math. Or is it? But they do have to deal with the consequences and effects of that math and pysics that you know and incoprorate into the campaign. For example, I have a guy here who doesn't have a very good grasp on basic physics. On more thanone occasion he has tried to do things during a gam that simply won't work. Now becuase the GM does have an idea about how some things work, the player must deal with it in the game. We don't keep the guy from falling if he doesn't look down.

A nice inspirational story rust. One that I can relate to, since I had to deal with some partial facial paralysis that slurred my speech and had most people thinking that I was mentally retarded when I spoke (as opposed to when I type;)). At one time it was so bad that I used to walk into fast food places carrying a copy of "Transistor Circuit Approximations" under my arm just to get a little more respect when I ordered a burger and fries. So I can relate. I only had a taste of what she must have gone though, but I can re;late. But... 1) Do you game with her? 2) Do they throw out all the math in Germany to accommodate her? Or did they print the text books with scambled lettering to accommodate her dyslexia? Or did she work hard and rise above her limitations? What really bugs me here is that people seem to feel that we should dumb things down to accomodate for everybody's limitations. That's silly. Neither Chaosium nor any other RPG publisher should have to write or rewrite an RPG to accomodate some impairment. A GM and group of players might choose to do so, but that doesn not mean that everyone else has to follow suit. If someone can't figure out 5%, or x5 that's too bad. But it does not validate claims that "the math is too hard". The vast majority of people (with some elementary education) can do such math. Rust, you run a lot of hard Sci-Fi campaigns. Such setting require you do some math and physics. Such is unavoidable if you want to set up a realistic planet. You don't just throw it all out and ignore it because you don't like or want to do the math. You deal with it because it goes with the territory.

Yeah, rust, but I doubt all those people happen to be playing BRP together. There isn't one guy (or gal, if I'm not careful I7ll be accused of gorgeously insulting women.) at the table who can do the math? Or look up a number on a table?

Well, some estimation is always going to be needed with doing up stats. I find the sqaure-cube law very helpful. That is, is you double the height, width, and depth of an object 8or critter), you should multiply it's lifting ability by 4 (+16), and mass by 8 (+24). You can pro-rate that so each +1 height is worth +2 STR and +3 SIZ. It hold well up to SIZ 88 or so, where they stopped using the fixed progression. If it help's I did have some notes for working up SIZ by volume (and/or density). It might help with ballpark figures. If we dropped the CoC SIZ values after SIZ 88 and just continued on with the normal progression, things like battleships and daikaiju would be a LOT easier to stat out.

Not quite the same argument, rust. There quite a difference between going from a 5.56 to a 6.8mm and going to a to a big, slow 13mm mini-ball. Plus the 6.8 remington doesn:t give up velocity or energy in comparsion to the standard 5.56 round. Many weapons could become more effective with a heavier, slower round. Up to a point. Eventually the loss of energy makes the tradeoff not worth it. I don:t believe that the mini-ball is as effective a damage doer as a modern 7.62. It might make a wider hole, but it is a shallower one. Hey, since we can`t go around shooting poeple to prove this, you think we could send it in to Mythbusters?

Maybe I should dust off my Vehicle Rules. Or at least update my conversion rules. Statting yup real world vehicles is pretty simple. Why are you winging it at cow SIZ? Why not just follow the progression? The SIZ progression is consistient up to around SIZ 90 or so. Prior to that, it is a simple doubling progression.

You think MRQ is the best version of RQ/BRP! Oh, maybe you mean MRQII? As for reverting to eariler form, I think the current form is bad enough. Tick off RQ fans with the RQII name, then drop the name and leave fans and 3rd party vendors in the lurch.

With luck RQII/Wayfarer/Legend could become History. Does anyone still think Mongoose Publishing is a good thing for BRP?

becuase in a fight, you can ingore those complications. I doesn`t matter much if the guy you shot is going to be crippled for life, or that he might die in 3 hours if neither effect kicksin until after the battle. As far as BRP goes, unfortnately, there are only two results. The guy either runs out of HP somewhere (or takes a major wound), or he is still fighting. Things like brain damage, or other permanet types of damage, are not factored ito the game. First off, my point is that this result is enitrly based on luck and weapon damage die, rather than skill. Secondly, the results might be what you expected, but as people have been saying, our expectations are wrong. 97% of people shot in the chest by assault rifles don`t just drop. BRP is, in fact, far more lethal than reality. No, high skill is a minor advatagein BRP. Each of those terrorsts have a much better chance of dropping the SAS guy with a burst from thier AKMs than he has of pulling off the head shots. The 2D8 assault rifle damage plays a much larger factor than skill or hit locations. Remember, torso and abdomen hits are about as deadly, and limb hits can incapacitate and kill in BRP.

I'd take a 7.62/.303/.30-06/etc. over a minie ball any day, damage wise. I think the n\major reason for the minie-balls "deadliness" was Civil War era medical care. The "big slow bullet" argument really doesn`t hold up. Otherwise modern armies and police would simply take some powerder out and put more lead in to thier bullets. Size helps, especially mass, but you still need sufficient energy to do real damage.

There is an unofficial FUDGE supplement, Knuckleduster, that is a nice compilation of US weapons made during the 1800s. It has some good info, and lots of weapons, many of which could end up in China, or are very similar to what was in China. In BRP terms, you can probably only do so much. Especially since firearms did not have interchangeable parts in those days.

That might be why the tactic was considered "cowardly". Most cultures tend to villify any tact that works against them. Soem Celtic tribes used to go into battle naked, and considered it very cowardly of the Romans to wear armor. During the American Revolutionary War the British considered it cowardlythat the Americans used to hide behind trees and rocks instead of lining up to be shot at.

I think SAN really only holds up for CoC. Even then, it stems more from Lovecraft`s mental disorders than how people would react to seeing things. Either than, or everyone who works in an ER is completely insane (partially, yes, but not completely).