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So simply because the opinion has been around for thousands of years you have no respect for it? That makes no sense. By that reasoning you shouldn't believe the world is a sphere either. The age of an argument does not invalidate it, in fact it does the opposite.

Well let me restate it and correct me where I stray from your intentions. You do not have a problem with global standardization in education. You do have a problem with the global standards set by GERM Thus you want everybody to follow global standards, but you don't want to have follow GERM standards, but rather some other standards that you like better.. Now one problem with global standards is that considering the size of the global population any one of us have a rather slight chance of being one of those who gets a say as to what those global standards are. With global standards everybody has to conform to whatever the standard is, good or bad, and most of us do not get a say in the matter. Personally I don't think the school board in, say, Gary Indiana, should have to comply to the same standards as the school board in Bern, Switzerland, or vice versa. Forcing them both to do so doesn't serve the best interest of either community, and only really benefits those who with the power to control the standards.

Oh there is, but it is unplayable. It all a matter of trade offs. With detail comes complexity, and we all have to decide where the "sweet spot" is for us and our gaming groups. Exactly. While added complexity means more work, it also tends to mean more options and more interesting ones.

Yeah, and some of that is understandable. We have machines that do most of our math for us so most of us don't need or use math as much. A similar thing happened with phone numbers. There was a time when most people knew the phone numbers of their friends and family members. Now most of us have smart phones that store the numbers for us so we don't bother to remember them anymore. But that isn't what I'm concerned about here. What I've noticed isn't so much a lack of mathematical ability, but instead an aversion to math. Basically it seems like since some people are bad at math or find it hard or just don't like it, thus math must be bad and we must therefore remove it from our games. I've seen people dismiss Pythagoras' Theorem and pi, as bulls**t, despite both being provable and used countless in everyday life simply because they didn't understand them. Likewise I I've seen people at the gaming table who reject any form of math in gaming citing that they shouldn't need some sort of degree to play a simple game just because they can't handle the resistance table. Now while simplicity and elegance in design is nice, if we start removing things from our games (or life) just because some people don't like, want, or understand them, we will end up playing to the lowest common denonimator.

I just spreadhseeted this and it works perfectly for any value higher than 9. It would work for 01-09 if you include a minimum crit and special chance of 01%.

Ah, I assumed your problem was with apply a global standard to everyone, regardless of goals and needs of specific communities. Instead it's that you do not like someone elses standard and don't want to be forced to follow it - which to me seems to be the same argument, with the difference being that it is being applied to you.

There are a few other RPGs that do something similar but with d4s-d20 die range.. Some games even do something similar for damage bonus. The demon ability table from Elric! is similar. In my case I was trying to bypass the Multiplication Table and Quality Rating Table from the James Bond RPG and did so by putting stats and skills on a 1-6 scale and rolling against primary chance on 1d8 with modifiers shifting the die size, thus altering the chances of success as well as the chances of getting a particular quality rating. It worked, but it condensed the range of stats and skills to do so.

Maybe if the education system were better you wouldn't be so prickly about it. I'm comparing gamers from the past to gamers since 2005 or so. It used to be that players would accept math as a necessary evil of playing a game - which it is. However in recent years I've noticed a lot of players who hate math and go into some sort of denial whenever someone bring up the math involved in gaming. Now, like it or not, any game that uses some sort of randomizer to determine the outcome of tasks is going to be subject to the laws of probability. For instance, players in BRP should be able to figure out that a weapon that does 1D6 damage isn't going to penetrate 12 point armor without a critical hit. It probably doesn't help that some educators treat mathematics as a societal issue. It's not a trap. Whatever education they have gone through now doesn't change what they would have done back when they were younger. The present doesn't change the past. So by that reasoning a police officer would have a different view of the stealing that they didn't do when they were a teenager? Yes, and in a gaming context I gamed with all sorts of people over the years and it's only in the past 15-20 years or so that "math is bad" has taken hold with some gamers. People used to just admit there were bad at some things and work around them, but not it's like they get angry if a game requires them to do any math. If everyone followed the Finnish model them it wouldn't be all that much different that GERM, since one model for everyone is still global standardization. Personally, I think we probably need more parental involvement in schools, and each community set their own goals and standards. Yes there is bound to be some sort of standardization just because there are bound to be certain requirements to function successfully in a given environment, interact with other people and perform certain tasks, but everyplace isn't the same and not everyone needs to know the exact same things.

Somewhat. I think it is more of a shift in attitude, that a reduction in ability. Players used to look at math as a necessary evil, and understood that like it or not, it determined the chances of success at various endeavors. Not a lot of them just hate math and try to avoid it at all costs, despite the fact that most RPGs are still games of chance are use some sort of random generator (dice, cards, coins) to determine outcomes and that such generators are subject to the laws of mathematics. Dealing with any special restriction or requirements is something left to each GM and group to deal with. I used to game with a guy who was legally blind and sometimes we'd have to back up a encounter when he didn't understand the layout of the battlefield and did something that didn't make sense in the circumstances, but would have made sense if things were the way he though they were. Stuff like hiding on the wrong side of a door or some such. We usually had to be a little more descriptive than normal and allow for a bit more Q&A with him that would otherwise be the case. One way to avoid division would be to alter the dice size. Rolling 1d200 instead of 1d100 would halve the success chance. I actually did up something like this for a similar game to eliminate the tables. Critical and special numbers were fixed according to skill, and then modifiers just shifted the size of the dice. Something easier would roll 1D80, 1D60, 1D40 or even 1D20, while something harder would roll 1D120 or 1D200. Since the crit and special numbers don't change but the dice do, the odds change, but you don't have to do any math. Generally they are, assuming the adds are in simple 5% or 10% increments. Yeah, there are other ways to handle it. Still, in most of the groups I've played in we had at least one person on hand who could do it in thier head (*ahem*), usually had two or three, and the majority of the group could usually work out most rolls just be looking. I mean, someone has to have an awfully high chance of success for a 58 to be anything special. The thing is though is that Basic Role Playing isn't really Basic. Originally the 16 page booklet was a trimmed down streamlined version of the RuneQuest rules, and BRP was a good name for it. Now it's a 400+ page book of assorted rules, variants options, etc. etc, and is more of a toolkit to let a GM customize the game to suit thie own needs. A case could be made for bringing back a short 16ish page booklet again and a sort of Introductory Role Playing .

I've seen it work out for some games. I usually comes down to what the focus of the game is as well as how the abstract system works. In my experience wealth systems only seem to work in games and groups where the players and the player characters don't want to deal with money more than they have to. For instance it was decent in the older Marvel RPGs because the focus was on stopping the bad guys, saving the world and such. I've never seen it work well in Dungeon crawl RPGs since they tend to focus around the accumulation of items and wealth. For the ones that work, the usual method is to assume that a character can afford/own/buy items with a rating lower than their rating., and that they must roll for anything at their own rating. Typically there are limits to how many rolls they can make per week/month or some such, and no roll is required to buy items several levels below their wealth rating (i.e. J.P. Morgan can always afford to buy a new coat, shirt or what not). Also in most such system characters do not have to roll for normal daily expenses (i.e. most people don't roll to see if you can afford to buy lunch at McDonalds) unless their wealth rating is very low.

I think that is probably more of a statement against modern schools and less against old style games. Doing the math wasn't a problem in the RPG community until the mid 2000s when suddenly everyone went anti-math. Just what is considered "basic" has changed over the years. Not only with BRP but will all RPGs. Look how big the rulebook gas gotten. It used to be 16 pages. Most RPGs tend to have some chart or tables that you refer to. It's why most games have a GM screen, and consulting a page full of numbers is pretty much what all the skill modifiers are. If I'm running a one off for people who don't usually play,. I usually run something else, that is simpler to pick up. Prince Valiant was designed precisely for that purpose.

Yes. THat same would hold true if you applied some sort of modfier to a skill, such as for aiming, or darkness. It's not so bad. First off many people know the math and can do it on the fly pretty easily. For instance I know the 30/50/70/90% break points for critical successes, and skill/5% is easy. Secondly, there is a table that can be referenced, often on a printout or GM screen. Thirdly, you do not need to check every roll, you only check when the result looks close, especially when the success chance is low. For instance, if you have a 30% chance of success you could roll the dice and only bother to do the math or look at the table if you roll under 10%, or over 95%, and even then you can usually tell without checking. Keep in mind that as long as the success chance is under 100% any roll between 21 and 95 won't be a critical, special or fumble, and that covers the majority of rolls. The easiest way to handle it is probably to just print off the skill results table (BRP P. 172) and have it on hand for reference in case someone rolls really low (or really high). But honestly, in play you don't have to check all that much. Another way to handle that, IMO would be: Special Success: Any successful roll than ends in 0 or 5. Critical Success: A successful roll with an odd tens digit than ends in 0. Fumble: A failed die roll with an even tens digit than ends in 0. That would mathematically be about the same as the normal method, and would not require doing any math, but would break the "lower is better" approach.

That was exactly what I was thinking. The idea was that Perception would start out at a set value (say 2xINT% or some such) and all the skills under it (Spot, Listen, Taste, etc.) would start at that value and be increased separately from there. That way you'd have a half dozen or so basic skill categories that covered all skills that would serve as a default, and then just only need to track specific values in the dozen or so skills that any given character is good at. Some skills could have an unskilled penalty to prevent people from being able to rely on the default to to the impossible, such as speaking a language that they never had encountered before. The example I gave above assumed that the character had increased Spot and Listen above the starting default of 20%. Sorry I should have explained that. IMO this approach it is at least as elegant as the Common/Expert method, but significantly more functional as any skill a character could attempt, that they would have some chance of success with, is already covered by the skill categories. Yeah, in old SB, and RQ3 there were significant bonuses to having INT 20 or even CHA/APP 20 ( A bigger dump stat). Ironically though, those games tended to use random attribute generation so dump stats didn't really matter.

Ah, okay, now I get it. I'd say some drawbacks are: I think that the "Common Skills" list is a bit subjective, and would have to vary based on character background/setting. For instance, Drive might be replaced with Ride in some places depending on where and when the character comes from. I also have doubts as to research being a common skill, it's not like people are born with understanding of the Dewey decimal system, yet can;t even do a web search on google (Computer is an expert skill). And why is navigate a common skill? You would kinda need to know what the geography was like, how to determine which was is North, and such to know how to navigate. It's not like you could drop a Londoner into the Amazon rainforest and they'd know how to navigate out. The expert skills sort of artificially limits character more so that they probably would be in real life. For instance, everyone knows how to drive (Common Skill) but not pilot a small boat (most drivers should be able to figure it out, since the controls aren't all that much different), or why no one can do basic math because there is no common skill for basic arithmetic, know anything about history, or that murder is a crime, that someone without survival skill wouldn't know enough to come in from out of the rain, to build a fire when it's cold out, or someone without medicine not being able to wrap up a wound. At least with base chances they hand some chance of doing basic tasks in various fields. I think if there was some sort of general knowledge skill that players could roll against when performing common tasks covered under uncommon skills it would help. That's kinda what the various Lore skills and Idea roll did for RQ. Attributes don't have any effect on skill value they way they do when you use skill categories. For instance someone with INT8 and someone with INT 18 would both have the same Science skill%, someone with poor STR and DEX scores the same Athletics skill% as someone with high STR and DEX scores, etc. You have to write in the name every skill a character has that isn't a common skill. You need to make more room if/when a character every knows more than 9 expert skills. You need to work up the formula for each skill, as opposed to a base chance. It also limits the characters in terms of what they can do. There is really no chance that some one could get lucky a pick a lock, or pilot a boat which can be frustrating for the players, and it requires the GM to be a bit more careful designing or selecting adventures, to avoid requiring a specific skill which the players lack. Now those might be significant drawbacks to some people but not drawbacks at all to others. Again, I'd say it it probably isn't if every BRP like game moving forward should use a Common/Expert skill lists or not, but instead it depends the type of campaign being run, the setting, and what the expectations are, as that will ultimately determine just what skills are going to be the most useful and what skills the players will naturally gravitate towards. Personally I prefer skill categorizes, and having most of the skills on the character sheet to help in both chargen and to speed up play, and even favor treating the skill categories as a sort of root skill with a base percentage that individual skills break away from, something like: Perception 20% Listen 35% Spot 50% but that's just me and if you like Common/Expert approach go for it.

Possibly... I thought you meant that id you used the shoerter skill list that skills would be more broadly defined and if you used the longer list then skills would be more narrowly defined. A few RPGs have done something like the latter, or even introduced new skills that cover ground that used to be covered under an existing skill, and it is usually a bit of a pain. If on the other hand you mean that there are skills that exist but aren't readily avialble or promoted, then I don't really see the point of two lists. It just means you have to keep track of two lists instead on just one. Again I'll raise the character sheet. In most stand alone BRP games, 95% or so of the skills in the game are listed on the character sheet, and players only have to write in particular fields of expertise [i.e. Science (Biochemistry) or Science (Astrophysics). So they don't need to write in a lot of stuff. Me too. Weather or not that bothers me depends on how relavant said skill is to the character/adventure, and if the write up is supposed to be a full sheet or just a list of significant skills. For instance, if First Aid skill isn't listed in the stat block for the NPC Paperboy on the street corner, I don't mind, if it isn't listed under the statblock for the NPC Paramedic, I get peeved.

I think it might be the RQ3 rule I miss the most in BRP. It's easy to port over though. It's sort of a reverse Catch-22 situation. If there is a rule from a Chaosium product that you know of and like that didn't make it into BRP then you can port it over, and anything you haven't seen you don't miss.

I'll second that. It far easier to play when skills like Scan and Listen are grouped together under Perception Skills, than having to go through the whole skill list to find them. Plus I like skill category modifiers, which really make the differences in attributes meaningful. Especially, when they apply to improvement rolls as in RQ3.

Yes, there are reasons not to take the two list approach. There is an old saying which applies here: "A man with one watch always knows what time it is, while a man with two watches is never quite sure." .If you have one skill list (short or long) and one character sheet with the skills listed then everybody who plays the game all use the same list and there is no chance of a player in a gaming group using the wrong list during chargen or play, and no need to adapt any adventures or character write ups for any alternate skill lists (i.e. what happens when a character is a botanist with Botany 60%, but Botany isn't on the other skill list). So having two lists means GMs will need to work to avoid confusion with their players, and authors will need to cover all options. Two skill lists might also require multiple descriptions of some skills if skills cover a broader area in one list than another- for example Althetics skill might cover running and swimming on one list, but on another list Running and Swimming could be their own skills). In addition two lists takes up more pages./space in the game which could have been used for something else. Another reason might be if there is another way to handle skills that an designer might consider better, such as having a few broad skills with skill specializations instead of lots of narrow focus skills. Another reason might be the needs of the setting. For instance in a campaign where the PCs are supposed to be highly competent and skilled in many areas (Star Trek, James Bond) might only need a short skill list of broad skills and a longer list of narrow focus might not work or require significant changes to chargen to do so (For example, if characters need fives times as many skills when using the second skill list, then they will need five times the number of skill points in chargen, plus probably a way to discourage or just prevent players from using those extra points to max out some especially useful skills.) I'm not saying that a game shouldn't have two lists, just pointing out that there are some reasons not to take the two lists approach, and in the end it comes down to the needs of the game and preferences of the designers. BTW, in the case of most BRP games the character sheet can go a long way to helping. Most players seem fine with even a hundred skils, if they are all listed on the character sheet, and easy to find and use in play.

If you have it or can get it without paying an arm and a leg it's worth it as it gives you a decent skill list and chargen. While I think the cadcade/unbrell/enterpise method of doing skills, with skills being grouped together under a main skill, from LUG and Decipher Trek could help streamline things, FASA Trek is still close enough to BRP that you'll pick it up easily. One nice bit is that skill ranges are grouped into proficiency levels, and to do certain tasks only requires you to roll against that proficiency level. For instance, a professional in a skill has a rating of 40 or higher, so if you need to be a professional to do something, such as pilot a ship out of spacedock, then you can do it automatically if have a 40% skill, and have to roll against the difference between your skill and 40% if your skill is lower. This matched up fairly well with BRP's difficulty level. I'll keep an eye out. FASA might help here too since the starship combat rules are mostly divorced from the role-playing rules. And you look at the SPacedock stuff from Steven S. Long, as it covers a lot and is free. Thanks I'll give it a look.

Are you using FASATrek for a base? Being a skill based percentile game system it would give a GM a good head start on a BRP Trek game.

The hurdle with making a clone of CoC, RQ, or other Chaosium games is that they are all separate IPs from the game mechanics, and would require some sort of deal with whoever owns that particular IP. For things that are in Public Domain, such as King Arthur, you could drawn on the same sources (Le Morte d'Arthur, etc.) to make an Arthurian RPG, but a lot of what makes up Pendragon isn't in BRP, and iof challenged you would have to justify why you made all the same design choices for you game that Greg (or the current authors) made with Pendragon. The same with any other clone. Not that you are planning on doing so. I hope so, since otherwise the OGL would be pointless. I mean just about anybody who wants to make their own BRP game is going to want to tweak something about it.

BRP is pretty much the opposite. Practically anybody can roll a lucky critical and main or even kill just about anybody else. A key factor too is that "dead" is usually forever and if it is a PC said player will need to write up a new character to continue. Ambushes are to be avoided. In D&D they are used to ramp up the tension but in a game like BRP, a good ambush can take out half the PCs before the players can do anything about it, and that can often turn the encounter into a TPK. Basically the thing to take away from this is that real tactics work, and so something that would play a major factor in a real fight (ambush, fortification, heavy weapons) will likewise play a major factor in BRP. While skill and experience do provide an edge, they do not provide the commanding edge they do in D&D. For instance a 10th level fighter in D20 really has little to fear from a 1st level NPC behind a heavy machingun. Even if the 10th character gets hit he can probably shrug it off in D20. In BRP, a heavy machingun will probably incapacitate or kill even an experienced PC on a hit. You can also try playtesting a fight. Get copies of the PC's character sheets and run though a fight or two to see how it goes. IN BRP the PCs winning a fight unscathed is okay. PCs don't have to lose half their hit points for it to be a good fight (I know some D&D players who use that last bit a criteria in D&D and they got mauled a lot in RQ and Pendragon because of it). There are some options for increased survivalbility, namely: give the PCs a signficant edge in skill, gear and magic. By making it appear tense. The key thing is that the stats on the NPC sheet are not what make a NPC seem tough, powerful and scary, it is how the GM presents and plays the NPC that makes the NPC seem tough, powerful and scary. So if you want a villain to seem like a big baddie the roleplay them the same way you would if their stats were higher. Ultimately the players don't see the NPCs' character sheets and don't know that said NPC has a 20 STR and Sword at 350%. The players only find that out when the GM shows the NPC doing things, and in the case of such a NPC , hopefully long before the PCs fight said NPC. For example, in Star Wars, we (the audience) are shown that Darth Vader is a major badass long before Vader shows up in his TIE fighter to shoot at Luke's X-Wing. We see him pick up a man, choke another through the Force,interrogate/torture Princess Leia and even face off against Obi-wan Kenobi in a lightsaber duel. So we know how much trouble LUke is in during the trench run. The key to making encounters exciting to to make it seem like the PCs are in a tough spot, even when things aren't quite as bad as they appear. Basically most of what the players see is what the GM presewnts to them so a good GM can greatly influcne how the player see a situation or NPC. You don't want to overdo-it though, or else the players will just assume that you are hyping up everything, but in general try to make the NPCs look threatening. If you set up the encounters well, you can make a pushover enemy seem like a real threat. I've run some adventures where some time afterwards a player would see the actual NPC stats are being surprised at how low skilled, somethings even incompetent, the NPCs were.

But if an RPG is placed in a specific setting them it should be true to it's source. Otherwise it won't feel like that setting. I think they are the "gold standard", not because they are the first or the most accurate to the folklore, but because most FRPGs use a pseudo-Tolkien world, with pseudo-Tolkien races. Same with elves, and why orcs are now a generic FRPG race. Also why hobgoblins are now thought of as large goblins instead of small goblins. It might not be the best way to do it, but it's what we got to deal with. So it comes down to what version of something should be in a given game or sorucebook. As most FRPGs are pseudo-Tolkien they use pseudo-Tolkien races, as BRP and RQ came from Glorantha, they use Gloranthan takes on races, and games based on history and legend such as Ars Magica and Pendragon would use more fokloric (and region) versions. LOL! THose would probably be the easiest things to use. Tolkien didn't invent those mnames but lifted them from Nordic legends. Most of the dwarf names dwarves from the Hobbit cam from the Norse Voluspa, which proves there is some merit to reading the Annotated Hobbit! 😁

Now there is the best argument I've seen for changing Dwarf SIZ yet. They probably should have shifted the db formula to account for the increase in average human SIZ. The problem is even more noticable in Pendragon. Originally humans had a SIZ of 3d6, and PIcts had -3 SIZ modfier for an average SIZ of 7-8., with the typical NPC PICt at SIZ 8. Over time though, PC SIZ changed from 3d6 to 2d6+6 and in KAP5.2 K&L it sits at 3d6+4. Yet the typical NPC Pict is still at SIZ 8. I think you just won me over.

It's not always a benefit though. A CON 18 human is probably going to do better if they don't use HP. Using hit points just tends to move things back towards the mean- unless you are dealing with large creatures.