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But why? If you already have a game with those features why switch? That;'s always been the challenge that BRP systems present to each other. For instance many like Call of Cthulhu, I find it a waste of tree pulp. Toss out most of the RQ rules and make a game where the goal is to survive long enough to go permanently insane. It's like Paranoia played seriously. I disagree. What the other games have is a continuing tradition of existence. RQ's been dead for 15 years, Strombringer nearly so. Chaosium hasn't suppoered anything well except for CoC in decades. So all us gamers have gotten used to being on our own. Bull. You;ll need those other games for all the things that make them work. Setting for one. You'll need to bring stuff along for that. Also, I have strong doubts that groups will really be able to swap out game options from night to night. MOre lijkely that they will pick a set of options and end up running all the other settings with the style of the options picked for Game #1. Good luck. That's probably the biggest pipe dream I've heard of about the new BRP. Basically there is nothing in it that hasn't been around in some form or another for the last 20 years. If the general RPG community hasn't got their heads out of the sand at looked at BRP before this isn't going to get them to now. Nothing against Jason, but he isn't reinventing the wheel here. In fact, more credit to him for not trying. But really, if people didn't stand up and take notice the last ten times the system been put under their noses, what makes you think they will this time?

I think the "anime influence" is really overstated. Most Anime RPGs are really just RPGs with Manga artwork. A few have special rules designed to reflect anime, but that's no different than a fantasy RPG having rules to reflect magic, a Sci-FI game having rules for space travel, or a superhero game having rules for lifting heavy objects. It's not the anime per sey, but the genre that a particular anime is part of. Something like Gundam or Macross have a lot in comon with non-anime Sci-Fi shows and RPGs.

It could. But from what I've been seeing I think it won't. Just this thread alone is showing that. Most of us having been running some incarnation of RQ/BRP for over two decades now. BRP has to compete with that. In the end I think a lot of us will buy it, but that most of us will prefer the rule set we are already using and will use BRP as a potential source for adding on stuff. For instance, I prefer RQ over the simpler/watered down version of the game. I prefer strikes ranks (RQ2 version over RQ3) and hit locations, skill categories and all that. So I'd be more inclined to run RQ with a few mods of BRP than to run BRP. I think that is going to be the bane of BRP, it will get competition from earlier BRP games.

I think that is going to be one cross that BRP is going to have to bear. BRP was never really a system before, but more a framework to build on. Since each RPG was built separately, with rules made up to fit new situations as they went along, there is a lot of minor differences between RQ, Stormbringer CoC, World of Wonder, etc. All well and good until you try to combine them under one hat. By trying to appeal to d100 players as an whole rather than trying to appeal to the fans of one incarnation, guarantees that there will be something in the game that everyone won't like. Just that the "something" will vary from gamer to gamer. Hopefully the pros will outweigh the cons in everyone's (or most eveyone's) mind and all will be good. But I think there is a real possibility of the combined approach essentially alienating everybody.

Shhhsh. Consider what killed RQIV:AiG, the last thing we want is a rumor that Jason got caught in an unnatural act with a DVD.

True. I took your statement the wrong way.

I never said that it has to be a grand story. THat is an misconception. It you look at a book, TV show or film around non heroric characters the same rules apply for the most part. All the emements of a stroy are there. Generally they have to be. The immesnion experience not only involveds being someone else someplace else, but doing something interesting. You don't see CPA the Role playing Game on the shelf. If the characters die off too fast, you can't accomplish much of anything. The overarching care is certainly there. It's called the GM. THe Gm's priamry job is to priovide challenges for the PCs to attempt to overcome (and to usually be successful in doing so). Adsvenutres are tailored towards the abilities of the characters. Hoow often does a GM throw a 90% villian up against a group of starting characters. Fairly never. Why, because it would ruin things. RPGs are not about win or lose they are about playing a role. Thats acting and that means a story. Maybe a partially free form story, but a story nonetheless. There there is the problem of intergrating new characters into the old party. Changes in the balance of power that the GM needs to account for. It is really for the best if the PCs don't get killed. That said. I consider the responsibility to avoid death to rest mostly on the shoulders of the players. If someone wants to hit the dragon tho "see what will happen" I don't have any sympathy for him,. Lots for the six other people who will probably get caught in the fray, but not for the stupid guy. But really all of the narrative stuff is there, just under the guise of the GM. I

I think thatis becuase the GM can and should vary the mutiple based on the diffiuclty of the task. That is the way it has always been done. The STATx5% roll is the most common, but STATx3% or STATx1% (or even x10%) can come up.

Pulp is a genre named after it's the "pulp" (newspaper grade) magazines that it was populized in. Characrer like the Shadow and Doc Savage started in the "pulps" and pulps were the ancestors of modern comics. Stories were generally considered low brow, and sensationalism was the norm. You head about it a lot, because Pulps and RPGs cover a lot of the same ground. In fact, most of your early Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Western and Detective authors probably did work for the pulps. There is also a fairly strong tie to cinema, since the movie series often used pulp characters and story lines (and vice versa). Pulp store is tended to be a bit fast and loose. In large part because of the demands to get enough material to fill out out the whole magazine , some of which came out weekly. Generally if you like a fast, freewheeling style of play with action being more important that detail, you probably would find something of interest in pulps. A lot of it (probably most) was crap, but there was some classic stuff that came out of the pulps too. Hows that? Oh, and I actually wasn't referring to pulp fiction, but to Pulp Fiction the movie. Specifically how John Travolta's character gets killed part way through the film, only to reappear later, as the film is a collection of segments rather than a single narrative. BTW, Do you want to know about bondage covers?

That wasn't what I meant by the distinction. By heroic I was referring to the character's actions in the story. Many stories have normal people, or central characters who are less that noble. It's not really about if they can get killed or not. That is the thing, they really can't. It has to do with narrative structure. If you kill off the central character partway through the story, it derails the rest of the story. The loss of the main character can be dealt with in several ways, usually by promoting another character to central character status for the rest of the story. Other approaches are to use a non-linear story. An example would be in Pulp Fiction, where one of the characters gets killed in one scene, and they appears later in the movie n a story that is assumed to have taken place at an earlier time. That sort of solution is hard to implement in RPGs, and sort of makes it even hard to maintain suspension of disbelief. You can start a novel or movie with the main character's death and then go into a flashback, but the technique isn't very common in gaming. As a GM should be. THat is really a central point to a RPG. If we wanted to be spectators we could read a book, or watch a TV show or movie. It is the interactaive quality that makes RPGs appaelaing. The ability to do what yuo wouldn want to do (or what your character would want to do) rather than what action someone else has decied for the character that is fun. But by story derailing, especially in terms of a long term, on-going story, I am talking about situation where adventures are tailored to the characters rather than just being something that characters are "plugged" into. For example, if a PC is out looking to find his long lost brother, that is an important campaign goal for that character. If that PCs dies, a lot of the interest in that particular storyline will die with him. Maybe some other PC could decide to take an interest, or find the brother to honor their deceased companion, but the whole stroy arc could just as easily be left unresolved. This can be a bit of a problem since the PCs are not only actors, but the audience as well. For instance, if Luke Skywalker got killed by the Wampa ice creature, the audience would still be interested in Darth Vader, even if the other characters don't have a personal motivation to go after him. Not really. Like I said earlier, it is a balancing act. I don't fudge, or have done so very infrequently. I've reversed a ruling a re fought a few battles when I felt the PCs weren't given a fair shake. For instance, one of my players was blind and sometimes he thought that he was at one part of the room instead of another, so I accommodated when he did something that seemed suicidal. But generally, I let the dice (and the PCs) fall where they may. As a GM I also do a lot of prep work to avoid that, though. If the PCs die every week then no one has fun. So I usually set the adventures up with a strong bias for the PCs. Everyone really does that. If it were 50-50 every fight, then 90% of campaigns wouldn't last 6 weeks. Of course style and lethality varies by genre and game. I have run RQ and L5R campaigns where I literally wiped out half the group each week ("You can't fix stupid."). I've run Morrow Project and have generally wiped out over 95% of the PCs with only a single session being successful for the PCs. I've also run games like Marvel Superheroes where not a single PC was killed in the running of the adventures. Beaten senseless and buried under 40 tons of rubble, swallowed whole by a dinosaur or abducted by aliens, sure--but not killed. THe key word being "too". That's subjective. You could have an exciting RPG game by having everyone wake up with amesnia and knowing nothing. Maybe even spending points on skills or rolling attributes during play. Well, I see two differernt issue here. One is simply providing variety buy coming up with something else to risk besides the character lives. That is good. If the players can get into something other that fighting and care for something you have tension and things can be exciting. There is nothing wrong with a high stakes poer game that won't lead to violence, or a contest of some sort. It is the challenge that is important. The stakes (the characters lives or not) are really only important for keeping the players interested. That why killing characters isn't fun, just a unpleasant duty that is required tomaintain the excitement of a campaign. But, if another meaninful contest is substituted for combat, that's fine. On the other hand, some RPGs do go out of the way to make characters invulnerable, and that can be a bore. But then one of the biggest exmples of this is the most popular RPG out there. Not too many other games let you shrug off a .50 caliber bullet like D&D. At least not many that don't dress characters up in capes and tights. I disagree. I think film/cineman is the most noticeable expression, but really the concept comes from the narrative structure. Rpgs are probably inspired more by literary sources than TV Or cinema. We expect Conan, Aragorn, John Carter, King Arthur, and such characters to live through their adventures (most if not all) and for good to triumph over evil and feel cheated and surprised in they were to bite the dust on page 8. The film/TV tie in RPGs might demonstrate that, but the source goes back to older forms of story telling. If Tarzan of the Apes had ended with the Apes bashing the baby's brains out against a tree in the first chapter, or Tarzan getting eaten by a lion during his "first adventure" the story does work. THe same feeling does accompany RPGs. Keep in mind RPGs are not really a game/contest. It's a rigged game. It isn't about who wins and looses, but how they do so. Any GM can wipe out any character at any time. The GM holds all the cards.

Yes, that's it exactly.

Let me rephase thing. Now people are more likely to use long term character goals and themes for a series of adventures. The more character driven the campaign the more important those characters are. RPGs have a lot in common with fiction. We are introduced to a central character (heroic or otherwise) and we watch him (her, it) face challenges until we get to the end of the story. If we see the central character get killed off early on, it can derail the story. It can get worse if the character gets killed off three quarters into the story, after the viewer has invested time an attention getting to understand the character and story. Now the same holds true in an RPG game. Maybe more so, since the players have a vested interest in their characters that a viewer usually doesn't. No one really want the PCs to die, especially not the GM (if a GM brags about how many characters he is killing something is wrong). In order for the game to be exciting there needs to be an element of the unknown and some risk. On the other hand we don';'t really want to wipe out the characters as it is counterproductive. The GM's job is to walk that tightrope between conflicting expectations. Recently RPGs some RPGs have looked into other ways to maintain the risk other that death. For instance in most films, novels and legends we know the main character is going to be around, at least until the end. That's how stories work. Yet we can usually be kept interested in see how the character gets out of whatever mess he got into. we know Batman, King Arthur, James Bond, etc. is going to survive the current peril and make it to the end of the movie. In most fiction the writing ensures this. If is is good, it is still exciting to follow. What some games have done is reduce lethality in one way or another to get that same sort of result. Some better than others. But there are also games that just do it because people don't like loosing characters.

One thing that could and should make a different if movement. If a character is actively trying to make ones self a hard target, halving the attack skill chance is appropriate. Cover would be another big plus. I'm not a big fan of doging in a Western game. It just gives the wrong feel. Doding firearms is more of a sueperhero thing. But I'll happily use Haro/Fate points for a similar effect. On fact, the old LUC roll from the FASA Star Trek game might work. In that game if a character got hit by a phaser if they made a LUC save they were only "grazed" and took only a fraction of the normal damage, roughly a third. A luck roll to take half damage or so might just work. Or a LUC roll to downgrade the Sucess level by a grade. Another solution would be the "Flashing Blades" method. In Flashing Blades most weapon only did about 2 points of damage of an attack. But on a roll of half skill or less it added 1D6 to the damage. If we had normal hits only do 1 point of damage unless under half skill it would make flunkies less threatening without really hurting the PCs or big villains.

Not as bit a fit as you might think. Superworld also allowed dodging of byullets and such. It simply fits the genre. How often do you see Spidy or Batman leap out of the way of a hail of bullets. Too often for it to be missed attack rolls. As for the Batman armor, well the started that with the first firm. Probably becuase unless you have the physique of Bruce Wayne, you won't look like you do in spandex. Adame West used to comment that you could watch the shows and tell when he had eaten a big lunch. From a modern perpective the armor makes sense too. I'm sure Finger and Kane would have had Bruce wear it in the 40s if it had been around. What they had at the time was too heavy. The balancing act for any RPG is for the player to feel threatened and like all the odds are against him, when in reality the oppoiste is true. The last thing a godd GM wants is to wpie out the PCs. That ruins the mood, and requires new characters, and more work to get the new characters into the campaign. zFor instance, we want whoever is playing Batman to thing that those six goons have his number and that he's dead unless he does something clever. In reality the six goons can't shoot straight and probably are as likely to kill each other in the crossfire as they are to hit the Batman. More likely. That is where the GM comes in. BTW, that is also why I like the "Hero Points" fix for lethality. It is more transparent than some solutions. The PC doesn't look any tougher on paper.

Well I think it also is a sign of a change from dungeon claws, and unconnected adventures to campaigns. If a GM wants to run anything that bring out characters as opposed to rolling dice, then he needs to work plot hooks around the PCs. That creates a potential problem in that if the PC dies at the wrong time, it can derail an adventure or even campaign. As for whats on the minds of the kids playing D20, well with them it is generally, kill monster, get EP, get treasure-anything that keeps a PC around longer is good. Anything that doesn't is bad.

Yeah, pretty much. What I found with my Powergirl clone was that the character wasn't quite a s good. Of course having 20 odd powers didn't help. You could probably build Thor with the STR, toughness and skills of the thunder god, but wouldn't have enough points left over to do justice to his fully array of powers. But most of those limits were more "not enough points" than "system can't do it". And the game did get a little clunky at that level.

Actually I think we need a spot on the wiki to list settings. People have been coming up with a bunch of good setting ideas. I'm working on four now.:eek: A spot where they could all be listed and those of us with the desire can tackle them. I'm somewhat guilty of old pup hero envy too. Also for street level heroes. I even used the "Tumbler" Batmobile as one of my testbed vehicles for the vehicle Design and "Quick Write-Up" rules I'm working up. I think I'll tackle the Black Beauty, the Green Hornet was always a favorite, especially the radio series. How about a Supergirl clone? Serriously, I didn something like that once. Years ago when we were playing a "Wildcards" style supers vccampaign I did up a character who had Suergirl-like powers. She wasn't really on Supergirl level, but could take out a tank. THere were a lot of personal things going on with her that made her an interesting character. Mostof her problems couldn't be solved with super strength. I've never set a power level. It really doesn't matter in a comics style campaign. The "weak" characters always get a chance to shine in the comics and should get the same opportunities in an RPG. Game balance is mostly an illusion anyway. It not so much how tough the bad is on paper as how tough he is in the player's heads. Part of the duties of any good GM is to get into his players heads and screw with them. Yes. Superworld the 18 page booklet is a concept. Superworld the boxed set is a fleshed out RPG. Many of the RQ/BRP rules get tweaked in the boxed set to better fit the genre. One example is the SIZ chart. In WoW Superworld, a Tankw as SIZ 150, making it impossible for any PC to even have a remote chance of lifting one. In the boxed set, however, th SIZ chart was changed to an exponential scale (an idea that was later used in RQ3, and seems to be an influence of BRP. At least to around SIZ 160). That meant that a character with an 80 STR could now lift a tank. Plus the cost for STR went from 1:1 to 3:1 so 50 hero points went a lot further as far as STR went. Of course SUperworld the boxed set used the standard STR+SIZ damage bonus fomula, while WoW SUperworld used a +1D6 for each 10 points of STR or SIZ (but not both) over 10. But all in all the boxed set handles supers better. It is also a bit clunky. It"s like an old radiator, it works, but it will attract your attention while doing so.

Let's see, Spidey can lift around 5 tons, that's in the SIZ 60 range, give or take. THe webbing, wall clawling, a very high DEX, a few level so leaping, and an great dodge ability, and spidey sense (tough to work that one out. For startes it would let him dodge when surprised). So if Paker is a bit scrwney, SIZ 11 the with a STR+SIZ of 71 he is in the +3D6 range. A tough street super. Really? Rogue, Phoenix, Cyclops and Wolverine are all tough customers. Cyclops optiblasts outdo Iron Man's repulsor rays, Rouge is almost as strong, and Phoenix is sheer overkill. Oh he is definately a bit beyond the street level, but he is a reasonably powered character as far as supers go. The problem with a 12AP iron man is that he suddenly becomes pin cushion man. A staple of the genre is bulletproof heroes. As it is now, the 24AP of the modern tank aren't going to stop an impale from a .44. I think that if someone is going to do such a character they need to be true to the concept. Yeah, he is a high powered character, but superheroes are by definition. Based on his abilities he would probably rate in a lot more than 20APs. That is what I meant before about how the settle and numbers mix. If tanks have 25APs then machineguns can now hurt tanks. In BRP terms it makes more sense to get rid of anti-tank guns and just load a bunch of machineguns. Between burst fire and savings in cost, you'll shred a tank must faster with bullets. Basically RQ was never really desined to handle tanks or supers and a lot of the ideas that seem perfercly reasonable for characters like impales and crtical hits don't tranlate well under those conditions. Someone damaging a tank with a .25ACP pistol because he rolled a critical was not something anyone foresaw when the game was originally designed. Yeah, a fistful of D6s is clumsy. There are a few other options though, like multipliers (4D6x5 is a lot easier than 20D6). Scaling is another method. The old increasing SIZ/STR chart meant that you could easily do scaling by subtracting from stats. But again, any RPG that is going to cover superheroes needs to be true to the source. Unless uit is devising it's own setting. Most people who decide to play a superhero gam have a good idea of what they want to be able to do, and expect the game to allow for it. Maybe not every character can lift a tank, but every superhero team seems to have at least one character than can. I sounds like Nightshade was right. You don't seem to be wanting to run a supers campaign as much as a "masked crimefighter" campaign. I think your style is more along the lines of the Shadow and the Green Hornet than the Avengers or Justice League. That's fine, too. I just hope the game can handle such characters. The original Superworld couldn't, the boxed set could. THe Godzillia rip off in CoC was nerfed! His SIZ was down in the Dragon range. A more realistic Gojira at his orinal (small) mass of 20,000 tons would be SIZ 2000 with a STR to match! (a 249D6 damage bonus!:eek:). Now that is well beyond BRP limits! It also well beyond the limits of most supers, even the ones wearing monomolecuar chainmain reinforced with ionic fields. TO me it looks like a job for Superman. But I did throw a couple of T-Rexes at teams of supers in the past. One thing that I loved about V&V was that players played themselves as superheroes. THis meanst that everyone's real life was part of the campaign. it served as a great source of troubles, since while a GM might have to wonder just what might happen to a newly created hero, he had no problems figuring out what could happen to his friends. We had some fun sessions where the big problem wasn't so much the villain, but trying to finish the job fast so the characters could get to work on time. One hero even eneded up coming to something of an understanding with one villian who covered for him. It added a whole new dimesnion to things. Plus it is always fun with supers to do the occasional common mugger, or hold up, where the PC completely outclasses the guy and kicks butt. It tens minutes tops, but it is an important tend minutes.

You don't always have to match the heroes in power either. For example, one of the best adventures I ran involved a fire and ther hores trying to save people. In that case superstrength didn't solve the problem. Likewise a hurricane or earthquake (and the rescue/clean up afterwards) can prove exciting. Or just have a villian with some smarts. For instance, if you knew some superstrong guy who was immune to bullets was likely to pop up, what would you do the keep him from catching you? Maybe arange for some diversions. And there is always the old standy of the comics. Matching the PCs against Supervillians. Not that there is anything wrong with "street-level" superheros. But any game that claims to be able to run Supers needs to be able to do the Spiderman and Iron Man types too.

No prob. I was just curious. I mean it's not like the game has even been released yet.

Jason, I know you said you were working on this, just "pinging" to see if there;'s been any decision. Are Maneuver and Handling going to end up as a single ability, or will one apply to chases and the other for non chase situations or some such?

You could also save character sheets and hand out pennies to the players to "spend" when they use POWer.

I'm with Sarah here. Point for points: 1)Anime Influence: We've had a handful of anime RPG, and if anything has had a exteme influe since the mid 80s, it isn't anime. 2)Scripted/Railroading of Adventures: Are you forgetting the A series, B series, etc? Most of the TSR stuff was heavily scripted, when PCs being lead around by the nose from point a to Point B and eventually into the next module. If anything games have gotten less structured. 3)Refusal to let PC die: I don't see that. I have seen several games that had been less lethal than, say RQ. Many with good reason, such as superhero RPGs, or games that are more realistic--fixed hit points and instant damage is easy to play but not very realistic. What I have also seen are RPGs that do not revolve around combat the way most RPGs did in the old days. A RPG can do other things besides fighting every ten minutes. I've also seen RPGs that make RQ look pretty tame, combat wise.

The old rule was round to the nearest. Is there a crit & special table in the new book?

Well, that just ruined MacBeth? "Is this a dag- Hey where'd the dagger go?!" Is there a bladed weapon that does 1D6 or 1D4+2 like a bokdin or a dirk?