Atgxtg

Hi Steve, Hurray, you are working on SPQR again! Any more chapters ready?

Wow, I've been away for a bit, and I noticed that there are quite a few BRP products in the works now, and quite a few more files in the Downloads section.:thumb: Guess we don't happy to worry about BRP disappearing anytime soon!

I think Jason said he was working on a Quickstart, but was waiting for BRP to be finished/released first (makes sense to me.-you definitely want to be certain about the rules so that the Quickstart is up to date with the published rules). I think the key to attracting new fans, young or otherwise, is to figure out what are BRP's attractions and try to draw attention to them. Basically, what makes BRP a good choice for someone to pick up rather than, say D&D 4th edtion. (Yeah, we "know" that BRP is a better, simpler, and less expensive system, but new players don't "know" that.) One problem BPR has is that it is sort of has to torch passed to it from several similar but different Chaosium games. What might be appealing to some players could very well alienate others. The controversy over hit locations and major wounds is one example. Even the game's various optional rules can be both a merit and a detriment. Some people like to have lots of options and choices so they can fine tune the game to match their style of play. Others would rather have fewer options but a more streamlined and consistent rule system. Personally, I think one advantage that BRP might have is in price, especially in product received for the money spent. A copy of BRP costs less than a copy of the new D&D rules. BRP products are probably going to be larger and have more content than a typical "module". That's a bit plus when trying to sell a product to people with limited income (vi9rtually all students, college level or otherwise). A ad or two showing what it costs to get a set of the rules, a campaign setting, and an adventure in BRP vs. D&D might be very helpful. I also think BRP really needs a magazine, either official or a fanzine that fans can go to for new adventures, game aids, errata (a Q&A column with Jason's answers to some of the questions that have been asked would be nice). If someone put together a PDF at regular intervals, it would help a lot. The more stuff out there, especially free stuff, the greater the chance of snaring new fans.

Sure, give me a day or so. The recoil would probably be nasty. But if you are seriously thinking of outfitting a character with this, why not "upgrade" to tne MArdi-Griffin? It fires the .50 cal. machine gun round.

Creature SIZ If it helps, in RQ3 the SIZ chart followed a x2 mass=+8 SIZ, so going with a 13 SIZ being mansized, and using the sqaure-cube law (x2 size = x8 mass), Each doubling in size (all dimenions) would be about a +24 to SIZ.

I think you're right. Considering that Jason seems to have based BRP mostly on pre-RQ3 stuff (Worlds of Wonder, Strombringer, CoC), I suspect RQ3 fans will probably just as many conversion problems. Not to knock BRP or anything but my advice to people happily playing RQ2, RQ3, or even MRQ, and it is covering what they want to do, why change? I see BRP for those who want to do things differently than in RQ ,or those wo want something simpler. But why would take BRP and use the options to turn it into, say, RQ3 if you already have RQ3? JUst seems like a lot of unecessary work.

Don7t forget Troll Lorse for a skill, either. It covers knoweledge of trolls and thier customs and psychology. There were rules in the old Trollpak supplement for humans joining troll cults and even being turned into trolls. If you don't have it, I7d recommend looking for a copy of Trollpak.

They'd probably just raise the entry fee in lie uof the "special guest".

When messing around with vehiicle design rules for BRP months ago, I worked up some fomrulas that seemed to fit the new SIZ ratings. I remeber using two differernt formulas, witha "break point" at around SIZ 160 to allow for the SIZ ratings of battleships and carriers. Supers was a conern when working on the vehicle stuff since damage bonus increases in a linear fashion (+1d6 per 16 points of STR and SIZ) while SIZ does not. Superworld also used a slightly differernt damage bonus (1/10th the higher of STR or SIZ), so the probalem was as pronounced as it is in other BRP based RPGs. I think that might be the reason why Jason kept the Armor values for vehicles fairly low, and gave them more hit points. Otherwise a hero who can throw a tank still can punch through it. Once I get acopy of BRP and see the full table, in all it's glory, I might be able to work out a formula that would allow us to expand the SIZ table as desired. I7ve already been tinkering a bit in that direction for spaceship stats.

Nice Frogswaner! I think I7ll look over some stuff and see about stats for various breeds of horses. Probably the "Pendragon" getting into me again. I'm thinking of Andalusians, Barb, Shetland Ponies, and Shire Horses.

So how does it look compared to "Zero"?

Greg did that because White Wolf/Arthaus probably won't be publishing much more to support Pendragon. It is more support for Pendragon than for Greg.

I wonder if there would be interest ito be worth doing up a bunch of horse stats by type/breed? Or would that just be going into too much detail for most BRPers? :confused:

Rurik, I think you have raised a good point. I think one reason for RQ success was that the old Chaosium RQ supplements were so good. Even today they stand up well with what is now available. But, very few of the people who wrote those supplements are still affiliated with Chaosium. So I don't they they have much choice that to go with outside submissions. Maybe if they get a bunch of great writers and make some big bucks they could exapand to include a permanent staff of writers, but that isn't very likely.Maybe if Charlie Crank hits the lottery....

The Fantasy Trip was originally released as Melee and Wizard, two games of Metagaming's pocket sized game line. These had very smmall rulebooks (about half the size of a folded sheet of paper). Because of the games success, "advanced" (revised and expanded) versions of Melee and Wizard were created, along with "In the Laberith" (a GM guide , setting, and beastiary), with the three books being dubbed "The Fantasy Trip". Theese books were full sized, but thin, and that is by the standard of the day. TFT was very simple. Characters had 2 stats ST, DX and IQ. ST determined what sort of weapons you could wield, carry capacity, stamina, and how much damage a character could sustain. DEX was used to hit in combat, as well as for feats of manual coordination or agility. IQ determined how many, and what type of talents known, perception, and what spells could be learned. THe game was farily simple, being a bit more complex than T&T (Tunnels & Trolls) while being much simpler than D&D or AD&D. One thing that TFT had going for it that many other RPGs lacked was that each stat was important for each type of character. ST no only represented hit points and how big a weapon one could lift, but also was used to power spells. DX was used for targeting spells as well as weapons. IQ was needed not only to lean magic spells, but also talents related to combat.

Just once I'd like to see people are worried that the specials for Craft:Basket-Weaving are too powerful, or slow down the game or some such. I have a suspicion that the real major flaws in any game system go unnoticed becuase they don't involve the possible death of a PC.

I know the feeling. Apparently this is a US thing. From what I've been told, in Europe D&D isn't quite as dominant as it is in the States. In my area finding D&D players is easy, but finding players forother games is considerably more difficult.

Oh there are a lot of games that were designed worse than TFT. KABAL, Spawn of Faschan, and a host of others. TFT wasn7t bad by compasion-especially since it was orginally designed as some stand alone solo games that were later expanded into a system. And as for "self-styled game designer whose only virtue is an ego as big as the Himalaya", there are quite a few of those around. Heck, from what I had heared about Gary Gygax, an "ego as big as the Hymalayas" is probably modest by comparison. I think Jacosn is a good game designer. It is just that he hasn't really done much designing since his MEtagaming days. As far as "what Ifs?" go, I think all us longterm Chasoium fans have the same basic thought-What might have been if Chasoium had dome some things differently. Chasoum was a very innovative company and might have reamined a big player in the industry IF they had done some things different, and IF some other things had gone differently. But, as the Avalon Hill deal proved, the end result isn't guaranteed. SUre, Chasoium had a "Univeral System" that they adapted to multi0plesettings, but would the D100/RQ/BRP system had been as successful as GURPS if BRP had been relased 10 or 20 years ago? Probably not. Worlds of Wonder was realsed back then and it didn't shake up the gaming world. As has been mentioned before, the majoirty of gamers play D&D, and they generally don't notice things until they get incorpated into D&D. I know some local D&Ders who thought things like the AC being the number needed to hit (from Thieves Guild) or skill ratings (from games like RQ) were stupid ideas, until they were incorpated into 3E, and then they became wonderful ideas.

Yeah, I'll second that. A couple of us bought the GW version of Strombringer because it was hardcover (among other reasons), and every one of our copies literally fell apart once we open the book. You could actually hear it when you cracked the spine, and then a page would fall out. Each time you opening the book, out dropped another page or three. I7ve not seen another book that fast.

Games Workeshops edtions! Yuk! Cut to shreds. Get the Perfect-Bound AH Edition.

Actuaqlly, they are. Sincvew the AP chart uses at x2 thickness -+4 APS then a material with a -4 modifers is 50% as effective as steel. THe scale is compressed a quite a bit, to try and get the numbers to match up with the values in the BRP book.

All 3? Even Future World?

I've got Mekton. It's good for the Giant Robot style from 70s anime, where the robots take several hits, but doesn't do stuff like Macross as well. Dream Pod' 9's Silhouette system is another good mecha RPG, and Cthulhu Rising does seem to bear a few similarities to it in how it handles damage.

"touched" ?

Are ya happy now?