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I wish I could have locked it down for you. Do you have any other information to go on? I'm familiar (and have) most of the games I've mentioned, plus a few others, so if you could remember a bit more I might be able to figure it out. Did the game have a rule for interrupting other players? For instance did it cost 1 action point to fire a weapon, but for 3 you could quck draw and fire? Did you use action potions for movement, and did it cost more to move diagonally? Come to think of it, even the RuneQuest Strike Ranks system has some similarities with the 3SR delay for drawing a weapon.

Tough to say. I think your GM might have been using Other Suns, a Sci Fi RPG from FGU, that was based on BRP , and that did use an action point system. I haven't seen Other Suns in awhile so someone more familiar with it would have to confirm that. Other contenders could be: Mythras has "Action Points" but the determine the number of actions you get, not how many points you get to spend. Ringworld was a BRPd100 game that based actions of DEX, with a character being able to act every so many impulse based on DEX with higher DEX characters acting more often. First Edition DragonQuest also had an action point mechanic, but it was dropped in later editions, and DragonQuest isn't a a BRP D100 game. FASA's old Star Trek RPG does have action points based off of DEX that are spent like you described, but it really ins't a BRP game, although it is closer to BRP than DragonQuest is, and shares enough similarities to be almost related.

I hear Russel T. Davies is taking that job back. Strangely enough there are some similar concepts. Not so much with going into a black hole, but the idea of a habitat ship, often a generational ship, flying through space to some sort of doom. Star Trek did it, as did Hitchhiker's. Sometimes with the crew not realizing they were on a ship. It's something of a trope. Metamophsis Alpha did something like that. The idea has lots of possibilities and is open to all sorts of plot twists and turns. For instance, going back to Doctor Wo, the TARDIS time machines are powered by (an in a couple of shows actually contain) a black hole, and are much larger that they appear. So the whole concept could be taking place inside a malfunctioning TARDIS, with the black hole eating the ship from the inside. That could be a nice twist as the idea that the characters would be safer the closer they were to the exterior of the ship is somewhat counter intuitive. Oh, and Doctor Who also had the Matrix about twenty years before the Matrix movie.

Ironically, the Spanish Inquisition always gave the people being questioned advanced warning so that they could get thier affairs in order beforehand. So everybody expected the Spanish Inquisition! Which actually make the skit funnier. But the dark depressing tone of the setting concept combined with the black humor of Paranoia could make the whole situation funny. Especially if there was indeed time to turn the ship away from the black hole, but the A.I. computer running the ship won;t accept any deviations from the pre-programmed route to the new homeworld. Doubly so if the ship is loaded with nuclear and biological waste (including the crew) that the other inhabitants of the homeworld were trying to get rid of and the flying into a black hole was deliberate. Maybe too much of a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy vibe there? Or what if the crew are already dead from some other cause and the PCs are all robots on board wondering what to do now? Imagine what the Alien movie could have been like if all the crew were androids. Sorry just getting some weird ideas with this.

This would be a great setting for Paranoia. Perhaps the group could be on Habitat 47 to find out what happened to Habitat 46? Next session their clones could be the crew of Habitat 48, tasked to find out what happened to Habitat 47.

My point was that the ship would probably be destroyed by gravitational forces long before it reached the event horizon, much like a submarine;s hull is crushed long before the engines will stop working. It's not like the event horizon is some line of death. It's just the point of no return for light. THe point of no return for everything else is further out. Yup. It's important to remember that over 99% of this stuff are things that scientists and mathematicians theorize about, and less that 1% of it has any sort of solid proof. We didn't get our first photo of a black hole until 2019. So a lot of this stuff is just speculation. Well though out speculation by some very intelligent people, but still speculation. There is a tendency for people to present it all as factual, especially in videos, when most of it is guesswork, and much of it contradicts other stuff..Considering what little of the universe we've actually seen and dealt with there is so much we really don't understand. Of course in an RPG the GM can decide what's true and how their universe works, but as far as the real one goes (assuming that we are in the real one), We still got a lot of unanswered questions. I wonder what a black hole inside black hole is? It reminds me of D&D magic-users casting nested rope trick spells.

There is a lot of it. Overall the production values were a bit cheesy at times, and in the 60s the show could dip into old style Sci-Fi, which was a bit more "space fantasy", but it often had some very good stories and was usually well written.In part because Sci-Fi had to be well written to work on TV because they didn't really have the effects. Yeah, depending on the mass of the black hole you could have practically as long as you want to run a campaign. The ship could actually run out of supplies and power before it happens. Well, that the point where light can't break free and in the real world nothing else can go faster than light (as was as we can prove, anyway). Now if a ship had some sort of faster than light propulsion, it might be able to break free. Then again it might get ripped apart by the gravitation forces while trying to do so. And that's assuming that the ship (and crew) is still intact and functional when it gets to that point, which isn't all that likely. Probably the opposite. All matter would be pulled together into a very compressed sphere. Probably before it reaches the event horizon too. Kinda like a sumarine. The hull would probably be crushed long before the engines stopped working. Theoretical science often is weird. The thing is all this stuff is still mostly theoretical. We've never notice something moving back and forth in time that way, how could we, so we can't be certain that it all works that way. All we really know is that stuff seems to go in and not come back out - at least not there. Well despair is only a sensible option when you look at the big picture. For example, one day our sun will stop working and the Earth (assuming it still exists) will no longer be able to support human life. Thus all life on Earth is doomed, eventually. But that is a long time off, and even assuming that we do not or cannot do anything about it, humanity still has generations before that happens. Likewise Habitat 47 might be in a death spiral but if it is a long slow death spiral then it might not matter all that much to people on board. I mean if the end is going to happen in two hundred years or so would people feel quite so doomed? They'll all be dead of other causes long before it happens.

There are a few. In the original series the whole Logopolis story arc at the end of Tom Baker's run postulates on the head death of the universe, but that the universe had already reached that state, and that the inhabitants of Logopolis had staved this off by opening up portals to other universes- so that the universe was no longer a closed system. The Master carelessly killing off a few of the inhabitants puts the whole universe (plus probably a few connected ones) into jeopardy as there was no one ready to fill and and do the work of the murdered people. In the new series there is an episode where the Doctor and Rose watch the Sun go nova and wipe out the Earth. IMO the Doctor did it to see ROse's reaction and how she deals with the loss of her homeworld and people-something that he was struggling with at the time. A later episode has the Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack end up at the end of the universe, where some peopel are tying to figure a way to escape the universe before it dies out. The thing is with the Doctor having a TARDIS that can transport him throughout time and space, he doesn't have to stick around at the end, but could retreat to an earlier point in time, ot to metion the occasional alternate universe. Plus there are a lot of powerful beings (and some advanced ones) who could bend the rules of the universe as needed. So the writers always have some ways out, and things can only get so dark. Now with your setting, one interesting bit is that if the station is moving fast or if it starts to get pulled towards the event horizon of a black hole, time dilation would occur, so the end could take an eternity, from a subjective point of view. Plus if you wanted to be nice, perhaps the black hole leads somewhere and you could have there be a way for Habitat 47 to be able to make it through the back hole to a new universe (or the same one back at the beginning?). With stuff like this it all depends on where you want to go with it, how dark you want to get, and if you want to put in a way out. I think that in some ways, having a way out might the setting more interesting, especially if not everyone is working towards it (or can make it). But then again the "escape plane" could just be a pipe dream designed to give the people who find out what is happening something to do so they don't panic and run amok.

Yes and that's deliberate, thee idea is to replicate the 1/10th skill game mechanic without the need of a table. So a Stormbringer style critical (1/10th skill) could be replicated by using one number (say 0, 1 or 9 depending of if we want a lowvalue or high die to be better), a RQ critical by using one number and only the evens (5% chance) and a special success (20% skill) could be replicated by using two numbers (say 1 and 2 or 7 and 8). Thus the chances of getting an above average success level would increase as skill increases. Also the chances of getting a fumble would decrease at the same rate. This lets us ditch the table and math, and makes it easier to use opposed rolls, as it would be the same game mechanic (ones die) used to determine success level.

That assumes that nothing reducies the damage. I would expect that wood and stone either have some inherent armor value or that Structure Points would work like RQ3 Armor Points- that is they stop their value before being reduced. Taking an axe to a stone wall is probably going to ruin the axe long before the axe breaks through the wall.

Yes, although it is a bit of a grey area. Basically the tools themselves are legal to own, it's just that having them on you when you are in a suspicious situation adds evidence against you. For example, if a cop sees you "lurking around the back door of a house" and decides to arrest you for loitering or some such, the lockpicks could let him up the charge to burglary. Now if you happened to own and live at the house in question, the lockpicks pretty much become okay again, as there is no law against picking your own locks-although doing so would certainly be viewed at as suspicious behavior by any obvserver.

Yeah, I know, based on some of your other threads. That's why I throwing out everything so that you have lots of options to pick and choose from. In that case what is the benefit of the critical? How is it better than normal attack vs. normal defense?

Yes. No as an alterantive to. The main difference would be that a character would have to declare/try for the increased success level rather than it be automatic. That would prevent major characters from being taking out by a lucky "01" from "Rubble Runner Three" or some such. Yes that would be bad. The idea was as an alternative. If I were to combine the two then I'd make the raises cheaper that the automatic. Say -15% or -20% instead of 30%. That way the 40% character would have to decide between rolling unmodified, with a 10% chance of 2 success levels and a 30% chance of one success level, or take a raise for a 20% chance of two success levels. Something like that could get interesting with player having decide between playing it safe and getting their automatic success or taking a risk for potentially greater results. I'm not to sure about -20/30% though. I'd probably want to test out a few values and see what seems to work best. The goal would be to make the choice between automatic success and taking raises a bit difficult.

Not it isn't really simple, especially when "the right value" could vary from GM to GM. Yes there is a risk of higher skilled characters being able to "run the table" by taking low risk raises or even free raises if skill exceeds 100%. It's one reason why I think A Hero Point mechnaic to buy raises/success levels would be needed - as least for PCs and VIP NPCs. Yes and that is why I think Hero Points are required to offset this somewhat. Keep in mind though that in RQ2 or RQG that excess skill would come off of the opponent's skill, which can be just as severe. For instance 120% vs. 80% in this variant could be 90% with one raise vs. 80% which is isn't much worse than RQ2's 100% vs. 60% Yes, if you need to. It would depend a lot on what the difference in success levels is worth. For instance, let's say that you've got a character with 40% skill facing off against someone with 120%. The 120%er takes a raise, so the 40% character ir probably going to have to take a raise to have a chance of winning. Other he will still lose 2:1 even if he succeeds. That's similar to what Rolemaster does. Sort of. I'd say it actually benefits NPCs. My reasoning is that probabilities being what the are eventually even low skilled characters will roll crticals. Since criticals in BRP games tend to be rather deadly even to highly skilled characters, then the rule will lead to PCs taking more crtical hits, making the game more lethal to them. That's kinda true for all critical hit systems. Now yes the same holds true for the NPCs, but so what? Most NPCs the PCs fight are essentially disposable. No one really care if Trollkin #3 or Bandit #2 survive and show up for the next game session. We care if the PCs do. So in the long run a crtical hit rule probably hurts the PCs more than it helps them, just becuase they will get more attacks rolled against them than any NPC ever will. SO the rule should probably be looked at from a PC vs NPC view rather than high skill vs. low skill. From that viewpoint I think something like Hero Points would be required to balance this out for the PCs. But ultimately these are all difference ways of handling oppsed skills, critical hits and degrees of success. I don't think there is one single best way to do that, just several ways,. each with their pros and cons.

In that case, since I'm on a roll, one thing that BRP doesn't have but could work, would be the idea of raises. Basically, someone takes a penalty to a skill roll but gets a higher Success Level if they succeed. This would be similar to your "make by 30" idea but a bit more controlled as the bump up in SL would be more by design that by chance. It would be nice since not only would it reduce the chance of the inevitable "01" by a mook killing off a PC, but it would also work out pretty well for PCs who are over-matched, as the higher skilled NPC might play it safe and take the sure thing while a PC might have to risk the lower percentages to have a chance of winning.

Me too. I fear that it would make a 30% difference a commanding advantage. That could be bad for "heroic underdog" situations where the PCs confront a more highly skilled bad guy. It probably would take a lot of the risk (and thus excitement) out of PC vs mook conflicts. In some ways this is similar to how Masteries work in HeroQuest. Perhaps HQ could provide the solution, too., Hero Points. If Hero Points could be spent to bump up success levels, we'd have a counterbalance to big skill differences. It could also be used to ramp up the dramatic tension, with an overmatched PC holding off a more skilled adversary by burning through Hero Points. Oh, and just to toss out another variant, and one that I believe I've mentioned elsewhere, we could always just use the 1s digit for the success level. That would give us up to ten possible success levels and an equal number of failure levels (more if we do something like odd or even for the tens die). For instance we could do something like: 0= best result (i.e. critical success/fumble) 1-2= second best (i.e. special success) 3-7 = average result (average success) 8-9 = marginal result (marginal success) So if someone had a skill of 57% and he rolled a 34 it would be a a normal success. If they rolled a 59 it would be a marginal failure. Obviously we could add more that four success levels or change the bands to 0-1/2-4/5-8/9, flip it 9/7-8/3-6/1-2, or whatever.With a slight tweak we could even get the same breakdowns as in standard BRP, Stormbringer, etc. Note that if we tie things like damage done, damaged parried, distance moved etc more directly to the success level if desired. We could even treat extended tasks as require a certain number of success levels, and then keep a running tally. --Just throwing it out there as a possible game mechanic that doesn't require math.

One concern I'd have with that method is that it would require a certain skill score to achieve certain success levels. For instance, someone with Sword 20% can't make a skill roll by 30% let alone 60% or 90%. It will also make a 30% difference in skills much more decisive, as it will result in more success levels. For example someone with 120% skill will average 1 success level more than someone with 90%. I'm not saying it's a bad method, just that it will really change things.

It had criticals and impales since first edition. I remember the notes for automatic weapons with only the first bullet in a burst impaling on a special success in the 1920s Sorcebook. I believe i was the old RQ2 MAx plus rolled version of impales too. Not that crits and impales mattered much against Mythos nasties. I won't be home until the weekend, but if you want, when I get home, I can look it up.

Yeah, but there are multiple ways to represent that. D&D went with a 3-18 scale for attributes and separate modifier that was applied to damage, attack rolls, etc. For instance, an Ars Magic style attributes would have allowed for the same thing without the need for a 3-18 attribute, making things a little simpler. Of course that's what happens when someone is the first to do something. I sometimes wonder just what D&D would be like if Gygax and Arneson could have looked into the future and see the games that were to follow.

I believe that it is in the critical and specials table.

Yup. I think what happened was that D&D added some degrees of abstraction to things, and that became the norm for RPGs that followed. Thus attributes and stat bonuses became a thing common to RPGS, similar to how class and level became a thing common to RPGs.

Yeah, the idea was a natural evolution of game design at the time, and probably several people had the idea at at about the same time. I remember DMs doing opposted attribute rolls to handling things like arm wrestling back in the early-mid 80s. Pendragon used opposed attribute rolls in 85. So I think things were tending that way. I think Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip might be the first RPG to eschew stat bonuses and just use the stat. Melee was released in 1977. I suspect the nature and limitations of a microgame probably led to the direct use of attributes as the simplest way to handle things.

I doubt that, but it's probably the most well known game to do so early on. I suspect that there were some other RPGs in the late 70s and early 80s that did so but are mostly forgotten today. Even the game mechanics used for WEG's D6 system does something similar, with the attribute actually being the die roll, with the default stat block for NPCs being 2D/4D. I think the idea evolved from people playing AD&D where stats below 15 didn't affect game play all that much. When there isn't much difference between a 6 STR and a 14 STR you have to wonder if it is worth the bookkeeping. Yeas, and one of the big perks of that approach is that you do not have to track a bunch of "average" stats for NPCs. The stat block for a group of bandits can be reduced down to Str+1, Dex+1, Sword 2, Survival 1.

There are also some percentile based non-D100 games that use critical rules that could be adapted to a BRP game. For instance: HARN uses die rolls that end on 0 or 5 as critical successes or critical failures depending on if the roll is under or over the skill roll. This is very simple and easy to adpat to BRP. It could even be expanded upon to allow for multiple success levels based upon the ones die (i.e 0 = critical, 2-3 = special, 4-9 = success). The James Bond RPG uses a table with 4 Quality Ratings (Success Levels),based upon 10%, 20%, 50%, and 100% of the success chance. As the game ties most results (weapon damage, distance traveled, time to complete a task) directly to the Quality Rating the Quality Ratings were a bit more important than they tend to be in most BRP games..

HARN is somewhat similar with rolls than end on 5 or 0 being crticals or fumbles depending on if they are successful or not. It's really simple to game, scales along with skill, and doesn't require any table to use. I think the 00 =100 thing isn't that diffuclt to grasp, but a 00-99 roll isn't any harder to run than 01-100. BTW Halcyon uses a 00-99 mechanic, and I think the first game I saw using is was some sort of espionage RPG. Yeah, I even tried using it for a BRP variant I was working on. I think the 0, and 5 rule from HARN is as easy to use as doubles. Personally, I think the best method would probably be to somehow use the values on the dice as the effect (damage, distance moved, etc.) instead of degrees of success, but implementing it is the tricky part. That way you don't get the 2 point impales and such. I think I saw it in some new spy/espionage RPG, maybe Covert Ops. I recall it have very simple game mechanics with the "00" thing being a twist that stood out. I've seen more than one RPG that uses 00=Zero, it seems to be a popular thing now, so there could be dozens of RPGs out there that use it.