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I think your memory is off on this one. The max+min rule was from RQ2, and was dopped in RQ3 in favor of the the new limits (like DEX x 1.5). In RQ3 it was perfectly possible for a human to end up with a DEX higher than 21. As a general rule, RQ2 had stricter limits on things than RQ3.

RQ2 rules. Species Maximum = minimum amount possible plus maximum amount possible (talk about mini-maxing). Since in RQ2 humans had 3D6 for all stats (3)+(18) = 21. Especially in terms of the DEX and APP/CHA limits.

Yes, it is. Probably because it is incorporating rules from several different version of BRP. Some of the rules go back to RQ2, other to RQ3 and still others to Elric!/CoC.

Hey, it looks like I guessed right: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/hist/hnud-nhut/principal-arm-eng.htm

THis would be a lot easier if it was c. 1927. 1925 is where some of the service records overlap. The Lee-Metford, Lee-Enfield Magaizine Load (MLE) , Lee-Enfield SMLE Mk I and Mk II were all phased out of service after 1926. But after that, I would expect that the Lee-Enfield (SMLE) Mk III would probably be the most commonly carried rifle from 1927 onwards. The Winchester repeating rifle was in production, although the Model 1895 seems to be the one that would most likely be carried by Mounties, since it was sold in numbers to the British, and was available chambered in .303, the same as the Lee-Enfield. The Winchester Bolt Action rifle would be another possibility. Most of the other designs would have been a bit dated. Also, one of the major advantages of the earlier Winchester repeaters was that they could be chambered in the same calibers as the popular revolver designs of the era. But that probably wasn't the case with Canadian revolvers. So for your setting I'd recommend the Lee-Enfield SMLE Mk III as the basic rifle for your North West Mounted Police.

Yes, but that isn't any help to the guy with the longer weapon, since he was to sacrifice his attack in order to keep an opponent at bay. So once the guy with the spear (or other long weapon) decide to try and keep someone at bay, he's lost. So "keeping someone at bay" just means the guy with the longer weapon doesn't attack, so the guy with the short weapon has to make a roll. It is a self defeating tactic. Even if the guy with the shorter weapon fails to dodge, he doesn't get hit, but is only kept at bay. (it's all on page 219 under close combat). If the guy with the sorter weapon actually decide to close (closing p. 219) then the guy with the longer weapon will go last and parry at half ability). So the best thing for a guy with a short weapon to see on the battlefield is someone with a long weapon who tries to keep people at bay. It's a no risk encounter! Sooner or later the short weapon guy is going to make the rolls and the only risk he takes is that he could fumble his dodge roll and twist his ankle. The spearman can't hurt him without giving up his reach "advantage". Now what I think is that: - if the guy with the shorter weapon fails the dodge roll he should get hit (treat keep at bay as a attack roll). -a character should be able to keep multiple opponents at bay.(perhaps a dodge bonus of 30% for each attacker after the first?) -as the long weapon is always in the way, the "keep at bay" maneuver should either be a free action, or at least that the long weapon user could be given the choice of what action to sacrifice for the maneuver (attack or defense). -the foe with the shorter weapon could try to brush the long weapon aside to close, using weapon skill in place of dodge. (treat kept at bay as an attack vs a parry)

Yeah, a guy with two weapons is going to be more problematic. The BRP rules do indeed point out that he can use the free arm to strike with his fist or small weapons, and that tends to make grappleing against someone with two weapons a bad idea. You grab his axe, he shoves a shiv in you stomach. You hold onto the axe, he stabs you again. You let go, and he buried the axe in your skull. Pretty much a bad idea. Unless you grab the dagger. Then the axe is no good (alothugh the guy could probably use it, or any weapon, as a makeshift club for increased brawling damage) Yes, BRP does has closing rules (and close combat rules). But they don't pose much risk to the guy with the shorter weapon. Basically the guy with the longer weapon can keep an opponent with a shorter weapon at bay by sacrificing his attack, and making a skill roll. This is one of those "turn around and bite you on the rump" special rules that RPGs have that are great for discouraging their even being used. Think about it. The guy with the longer weapon completely gives up any hope of scoring a hit, for a chance of preventing the opponent from getting an attack. Best case scenario is a stand-off. Worse case is the guy with the long weapon gets attacked but cannot retaliate. Some advantage. And if there are two attackers, the guy with the longer weapon is really in trouble. Personally I think it should work the other way. The guy with the shorter weapon who tries to close should be forced to make a parry/dodge roll or get skewered automatically. The rules do specify that you grab a random location. There are some maneuvers (change hold, grab a second location)l that allow one to change locations once they have gotten a hold. For those who don't use hit locations, I'd just go with a luck roll, with the grappler getting his choice of locations on success. So someone would need to do multiple grappler to get both arms/weapons. The problem is, as Nightshade has pointed out, once a character is successfully grappled, there is nothing they can do to get out of it. At least according to the grapple rules. It just a waiting game until the grappler fails his skill roll. I think we all agree that some sort of chance/skill roll should be allowed to get out of the hold. So I think Nightshade is quite right here. Grappling is in danger of become a "super maneuver". Grapple someone. If he parries you got his weapon, if not, he probably can't use it anyway. Then do another grapple or two to immobilize both arms, and he is helpless. The fact that the guy has a laser sword and a 120% skill score is almost irrelevant. There is nothing he can do to prevent the grapple other that cutting down the grappler before he makes the attempt. I think this is because BRP/RQ grew out of experiences in the SCA, and the game tends to handle lethal combat much better than it handles non-lethal combat. This is the RPG where a typical punch to the head has a fatality rate of over 50%.

BRP still has this, since you do pick what you are trying to grapple, but it's sort of a no trainer. Do you grab and immobile the arm holding the axe or do you go after the other arm and get chopped? The point is, grapping that arm holding the axe should be easier said than done, and a good way to loose a few fingers. But at least we don't have to pull out the "pummeling and overbearing" tables.

Yeah, trying to grapple an armed man should run the risk of getting "close and personal" with the guys sword. But BRP have never really done much to cover the offensive part of defending. For example, one of the major advantage of a longspear is that it can hold foes at bay. Someone trying to get in close enough to hit with a sword or mace, is going to have to bat the spearpoint out of the way first, or get skewered. The obvious solution here would be to use opposed rolls, probably with a modifier. If the grappler wins he gets the grapple, if not he gets attacked (but can defend). That would lead to there being a couple of abortive attempts on a grapple attempt, and that seems right to me. But I hate opposed rolls in BRP.

In that case I'll make another suggestion. Swipe from Pendragon. In the latest edition Grapple defaults to DEX, so in BRP terms an Agility roll. Combine that with my suggestion above that a grappled target can roll to break free and characters will always have a way, and a reasonable chance, of escape. I suspect there is/was a roll to escape in the BRP grapple rules, but that they accidentally got cut or something. I'm pretty sure there was a way out in RQ and CoC. I can check them to see how they handled this.

Two things: 1) By the book, a grappler has to make a successful grapple roll each round to maintain the hold. So eventually the attacker will fail and the victim will escape the hold. Still, if the grappler has a 95% skill, it will be a long wait (probably around 10 minutes), so. 2) I'd say that a grappled character should get a chance to break free. How about an opposed grapple roll, and make the grappled character's roll DIFFICULT (half skill) due to the superior position of the grappler?

Random charts are tools. Nothing more. Using them can add spice and send adventures off in directions that the GM never would have considered or prepared for. That is often a good thing, as it keeps the plots from getting into a rut. I remember years back, I was rolling up a village for D&D. The dice were rolling poorly and all the villagers were low level, nothing above 2nd, except for the 12 level fighter (!!) I rolled (dice are random). Now my first impulse was to toss this out and reroll, but instead I opted to keep the 12 level fighter and flesh him out a bit to explain why such a seasoned warrior was living at this village. In the end I came up with a retired old soldier who settled down in the village, when aging took his STR down below the point where he could use most of his combat feats. The locals thought he was rich. He ended up becoming the most used contact for the PCs. So charts & tables can be a good thing. As long as they are used creatively. If something "whacky" comes up, it might be worth thinking out how or why it could be that way. The result could be a richer campaign.

I believe the changes are minor. You should be able to get by with 5.5 with little or no difficulties. I don't think CoC has gone through any major changes since 2nd or 3rd edition.

One of my favorite "unforseen events" was in Megazone 23. Someone crashes through the wall of a building and winds up in...space. Makes a great bit for a RPG.

That kind of depends on which version of Traveller you are running , and with what supplements. Late original Traveller, MegaTraveller or Traveller 2300/2300AD were much more fleshed out than just a "simple 2d6 system". But, as rust has pointed out, there wasn't much Sci-Fi stuff from BRP to convert in the first place. There was Ringworld and then,...uh....did I mention Ringworld?

Some ideas for a quick adventure: Thief: Something is missing and one of the PCs is either the victims, or the prime suspect. PCs must figure out who the thief is and where the stolen item has been hidden beofre the ship arrives at it's desitnation and the culprirt can make a getaway. Spy: There is one (or more) spies abord. One of the PCs overhears something, and the spy decides to try and neutralize the PCs before he can blow his cover. The spy is carrying some inportant info that the PCs could discover. Storm: The airship gets caught in some bad weather and the PCs have to help make emergency repairs or even help to steal the ship. Bomb: There is one on the ship. They have to find it before it explodes. Note this could work with the spy idea above, with the spy being a saboteur from a foreign power. [bWerewolf: Someone aboard the ship is a lycanthope. Pcs need to discover who before they wind up on the menu. And, doesn't that full moon look lovely? It flies is some families: The ship's captain has gone insane. Perhaps he's delusional, perhaps he wants to flap his arms and fly home. Perhaps he decides to run amok on the ship with a saber. Worse still, perhaps he's already gotten to all the other qualified airship pilots before the PCs get a chance to subdue him.

The CoC rules are similar to, but not exactly the same as BRP. Generally the CoC rules have only changed slightly over the years. Character creation has probably recieved the most changes. Starting character tend to be a bit better now than tin previous editions. If you didn't like the tone of CoC in th epast, there is no reason to run the game now. Practically anything in CoC could be ported over to BRP if a GM wanted to, with little effort.

I believe the CoC contracts are a separate arrangement than BRP. Having one does not allow for the other. Although a company with an arrangement to produce one certainly could negotiate for the other. It would be nice if the rough details of a BRP license were more public. I suspect a lot of would be authors don't pursue it in part because they feel that they couldn't afford a BRP license. And few people are willing to write something that they can't publish.

Like rust said, plus: -Game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, but game specific terms and text can. As can "intellectual property" (setting, creatures, stuff like that). -You cannot take something verbatim. You need to at least reword the text. That's the legalese bit. Now just how happy people might be with a game that is a barely concealed direct copy of another RPG is something else entirely. But if your new product is only lossly based on an existing product that is something else. Everyone realizes that due to the similar nature of RPGs and similar settings, there are bound to be some similarities. You could also contact Chasoium and see what it would take to get an offical BRP liscense. That would clear all the obstacles and possibly attract some more customers to boot.

I think it is Love (God) not that there is any functional difference between that and Loyalty (God).

It's not historical, but IMO the old RQ2 Borderlands boxed set had one of the best formats for a campaign. a book on the setting and people, another with stats, a player's handout, and then a bunch of adventures. One of the things that made it so cool was that if gave enough info on the setting that a Gm could easily get more adventures out of it than the 7 that came in the box. It wouldn't be a bad way to handle a historical scenario book.

Possibly. Or the X could simply be a function of mass. Lots (most) RPGs don't use a SIZ stat, and work just fine. I don't however think substituting STR directly for SIZ is necessarily a good thing. I'd prefer doing things by weight rather than the resistance table. A character could be given a certain amount of weight they could lift based on thier STR. If they want to lift more than that, it would require a STR roll with the multiplier based on just how much the added weight exceeds the STR allowance. Or even something like lifting the the allowance is easy, twice that is normal, and four times that is difficult.

I've been tempted for some time to work out STR in a fashion similar to Swordbearer. In that game a person's STR is based off of their SIZ and varies a few points. In BRP terms something like STR-4+2d3. On a related note, while working on a alien creature generator, I ended up basing creature STR dice in relation to SIZ. For instance humans worked out as having a 4D6 SIZ (adjusted to 2D6+6 by trading some dice for a fixed bonus), and having STR dice 3/4 of their SIZ [3/4*4D6=3D6]. Most of the animals in BRP work out along similar lines with STR dice of 1/2, 3/4, 1x, or 5/4 SIZ.

There is something along these lines in the DL section that I did a few years back (before BRP was out). I'd suggest replacing the modifiers with Easy--Normal--Difficult, but it might be worth a look.

I agree with the idea of "cameo adventures" (very similar to Pendragon's "short form" adventures). Often a lightly sketched out idea with some stats can be more useful that fully detailed adventures, since the full details might not mesh with other GM's campaigns.