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Just wondering, you do mean higher roll in the same success level, right? So an "01" will still beat a "20" in most circumstances, right?

In my campaign, PvP is usually a sign that things are going offtrack. The exception might be when two or more players enter some sort of gambling competition. To be honest, I try to avoid opposed skill rolls in BRP, as it is one of the systems weakness. So many other RPGs handle it beautifully. The D100 method used to resolve most things in BRP isn't well suited for such contests. ;

Don't supposed you remember what issue of the Dragon that was in? Or even if there's some way to get a hold of the info?

I really think this is all a move to try and control the market more. Way back when 3.0 came out and the whole OGL thing started, I commented that it was an attempt to try an restore D&D as the dominant system as the game was faltering. I mentioned that with all the third party companies going 3E, WotC was able to eliminate many competing RPGs, or al least slow them down, and that one day WotC would "pull the plug on 3E" in an attempt to regain the kind of dominance that TSR once enjoyed in the RPG world. I don't think anyone here qualifies as a "typical" gamer. We are all familiar with several systems, including "relics" such as BRP. THe "typical" gamer isn't familiar with many systems other than d&D/d20.

Yeah, I think we do. Otherwise it isn't fair in player-vs-player situations. The carry over seems the best solution. It fits most circumstances and it adds tension/drama. For Player vs. NPCs I think it is probably better not to use opposed rolls but simply have the player roll, and apply a modifier based on the skill of the opposing NPC, say 1/4th the NPC's skill? So sneaking past a guard with 20% in his perception (Spot/Listen) skills wold be at a -5% penalty. Sneaking past an alert guard with 80% in his perception skills would be at -20%. It's probably biased towards the PCs, but I've never had an NPC complain about it.

I think Jason's right, I don't consider this to be an ant-piracy move, more an anti-competitor move. I consider this an indication that the OGL thing backfired on WotC. I think what they were shooting for was an early 80s model, with only a small percentage of D&D stuff being produced by 3rd parties. Instead, some companies can actually produce more d20 product than WotC can. Taking D&D/D20 off the net means that most gamers, instead of buying whatever is available on-line, will probably continue buying WotC stuff, and thus be exposed to (and possibly buy) less third party stuff. It won't hurt BRP much, if at all, since we aren't the kind of gamers who follow the D&D set anyway. It will hurt the small companies that make their money by selling d20 support material in PDF format.

Years ago there was a couple of articles in Dragon magazine that stated out these legends of the west for Boot Hill. Latter, this was converted to Boot Hill 3rd edition. It would be fairly easy to convert those stats to BRP and get a pretty decent base to start from. I recently did something like this for a NPC I wanted for a "Space Western" setting in a different RPG.

I'll dig it up off the hard drive. I know I did two or three versions, but am not sure which ones I have on the drive. I'll try to get it for tomorrow.

I have some homebrew rules I was working on for spaceships. I showed it to a couple of people last year, and was planning on redoing the whole thing, but if you want to look at it (and assuming I can find it) I'll send it to you. In a nutshell (hope I remember this right), you pick a SIZ and TECH LEVEL for the ship and that tells you how many SPACES you get to buy stuff like weapons, engines, and shields. But, be warned, I was planning on revising this, so it is not very polished (or very good). But it does work/cover most SCI FI settings to some degree.

rust, 90m is only used for the qualify round, not for the elimination rounds. During the 90m round, the target is 122cm in diameter. Few people I know are over 1.2m wide. But I suppose shooting an obese person would be possible out to further ranges.

Just in case no one'S mentionted this yet. Realistically, you can't hit a man sized target with an arrow beyond 80 yards or so. Virtually all hits beyond that range historically were with volley fire against massed groups. So technically, while the arrow can fly out to as far as 700m with some bows, an archer couldn't hit anything smaller than the "broadside of a barn" at that range.

Nick, Thanks for the link. Very entertaining. Wished I could have gamed with Dave sometime.

Sadly, most of my freinds are on the wrong side of the Atlantic for that. If this pans out to be as good as all indications suggest, Pete's Wife is going to start hunting us down.:thumb::eek: I can hear the cries for the Roma Imperium book already.

Sorry to see Dave go. From all account's I've read, he was a nice guy and major factor behind D&D who got shafted by Gygax.

Forgive me for sullying such good news with such a dirty subject as money, but any idea what the rpice tag is for this. I'm gonna start saving up some denarii.

Yippie!:thumb: Uh-oh. "Download requires login". So someone has to sign up with Chaosium to download the BRP Lite PDF. Not good. We all know how much people like to sign up and give contact and marketing information to companies online, especially to look at a sample/trail version. I wonder if Chaosium will make it okay for people to host this elsewhere (like, say, here). Considering that the who point of BRP Lite is to get people interested in BRP enough to buy the full game.

The "bug" with scaling the Resistance table is that the table is centered around 10 with 5% per point of difference. Basically, a human scale. There are ways to do this without a calculator. frgospanners table, for example, is reminencent of the one used in Timelords, an RPG that is scalable. Basically, just set a scale, and the "degree of difference" and it will work. For example, if we used a x10 scale, and gave +5/-5% per 10 points of difference it might work for high end supers (a x5 scale might be better). Note that scaling systems aren't perfect. With scaling you tend to loose the finer grades of distinction. For example, a 99 STR and a 105 STR end up about the same with a x10 scale. Yet another wat to do this would be to repace the resistance table with a die roll and compare the results. For example, if we used the old demon stat chart from Elrric!/Strombringer 5 a 10 Stat would roll 2D10, a 20 roll 4D10 and so on. That would be simple, do the job, and work no matter how high the values. People could put the dice to roll next to each stat on the character sheet, eliminating the need to look up a table or do any math more complicated that adding up the dice for a total. If people wanted to they could scale it simply to reduce the number of dice being rolled. For example. instead of 100 being 20D10 it could be 2D100.

Quite true. One of my player now can't manage to figure out how to roll 3d6+2. I don't know about that. By that logic the game should use the d20 rules system. BTW, A few years back I considered using the multiplier idea for a RPG core mechanic, but with lower stat values (1-10 range or so). Most of the effects would be tied to the difference in multiples.

It could. For those who like the opposed stat rules. I'd like divide the roll by the stat to get the "stat mutiple" and have the lower multiple win. For high stats, divide by by a denominator to get the right ratio. For instance with 200 cs. 190 treat it as 20 vs 19. It looks easy to me, but I know if I tried it several of my players would look at me and freeze up-- much like watching streaming video on a dial up connection.

Rurrrrrik!! Hey, I'd die too if my patron diety had his IO cut off and I didn't know Y. :innocent:

Yes, and that is/was one of RQ/BRPS good points. Unlike D&D a fairly weak foe always poses some threat to an experienced character in combat. That means GMs can still use weak foes without them becoming only a minor annoyance. That is also why ther "escalation treadmill" isn't as bad in RQ/BRP as it is in games like D&D. I like it too. But remember RQ did have Divine Intervention. But if a GM want's to run a cinematic game, all that grittiness works against him. Superworld being a prime example. Ideally, what the GM wants is for the players to believe that they have been in greater risk that they were, yet not make them so intimidated that they fail to try. Basically a good GM plays mind games with his players. Well, that particular method is from the James Bond RPG. The rationale behind it is simple, it keeps the big baddies from spending all their points to kill one PC. The group wins the battle, but each adventure or so someone would need to roll up a new character. I really love the Bond RPG. It actually isn't quite so easy to "just escape" in the RPG. It has my favorite take on Hero Points too. 1 HP adjust the die roll one quality level (think wsuccess level in BRP). This grades of success approach also tones down the Hero Points, making their effects more subtle. Turning a serious injury into a minor wound, as opposed to turning a critical into a miss. The latter is possible, but so costly that even Bond can't do it very often. Since the damage inflicted is based party on the success level, a 1 level shift isn't as severe as in some RPGs. Also once a point is spent, it is gone for good, so PCs don't waste them as with similar point systems. Instead they are more likely to save most of them until they need them. While characters can earn more points, they can't just get them "refreshed" next week. So PCs don't feel invulnerable when they have a lot of points. And players get worried when the points run low. This method is great for handling the "series of bad die rolls" thing too, making the RPG my favorite for solo play. Less chance of losing a PC to that eventual fumble.

One thing that I found very neat in another RPG, is to allow character to choose special effects after die rolls. For instance, in most RPGs if a PC wants to try something "cinematic" like disarming a foe, tripping them, or such, they usually have to make some roll at a significant penalty. The net effect is that the character is usually better off just doing the standard attack & parry. But, if the GM allows characters to do stuff like this after the die rolls with a special success (instead of the usually damage bonus), you can get players to do a lot more "cinematic" stuff, since they are not longer penalized for trying.

I considered this awhile back on one of the Mecha threads. I was thinking that we could make this scalable by either reducing the 5% per point difference, use a constant demonstrator like divide both sides by 5 or 10 for vales over a certain score), or simply use the actual ratios. But considering how much grief +/-5% per point gets, I'D suppose I'd have a been change of getting an infinite number of monkeys to finish Hamlet that gettting five gamers to use any of the above options. :eek:

But all RPGs have them to some extent. Just some methods are better and/or more transparent than others. For example most RPGs give PCs and VIP NPCs abilties than "Karl Kobold" or "Tom Trollkin" doesn't have. Most RPGs don't actually prohibit such characters from being high level or reaching Rune status, but in terms of play these guys don't have the same abilities as the PCs. Three points. One iis that the GM is not an adversary and so isn't openly fiddling against them. A bad guy NPC might getting lucky, using the Force or whatever. Not the same thing. Second Point is that some games restrict what can be done with Hero Points by the bad guys. For instance in Bond, Bad guys can only use HP defensively. This helps to enforce cinematic play, since it gives the good guys a reward for being good. Thirdly, the key to making a Hero Point system work is to limit the number of points so that the PCs have enough to do what they need to do, but not enough to do what they want to.

Well the easiest ways IMO, to make BRP cinematic are: 1) Don't make the minor foes too tough/skilled in relation to the PCs. A bunch of militia or mercs at 25-40% with their weapon skills is not only good cinematically, but probably realistic considering BRP's skill curve. 2) Much of what what for a cinematic style isn't game mechanics but the type of adventures the GM runs and how he runs them. How players play makes a big difference too. If you want players to act like heroes, then there should be some things that encourage such behavior. If the PC knight saves the damsel in distress only to fall victim to her witchcraft, he will be likely to save damsels in the future. So if you want the PCs go go around saving people, don't make them regret it later. At least not most of the time. Likewise, reard those things you want the PCs to do. 3)Slant your descriptions and play style to encourage the sort of play that you want. For instance, if you are doing a LOTR type adventure and you want your heroes to flee from a hoard of orcs, don't let the group get bogged down in a toe to toe fight. Instead let them fight one or two orcs, have some others fire a volley or arrows (only roll for one or two serious attacks), and then give the PCs a chance to run.