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Well a few, First the changes doesn't address the problem-that is that a wide damage roll will cause some weapons to perform erratically against ballistic armor. Secondly, the rule would serious weaken body armor-to the point of it not being worth the bother. A half damage hit from a rifle will probably disable a location or cause a major wound. The high NIJ rated armor is designed to prevent that. A .32 round fired inot a Class III vest should do less damage than if fired into a Class II or Class I vest. There is no real difference in protection with the Damage Resiistance approach. A 15 point vest might work more often than an 8 point vest, but both would still only give 1/2 damage protection.

Yeah, probably. Not a high priorty though. Yup. That would be the "how to run a Western Campaign" sort of thing. Probably very useful, too. If enough of the technical stuff gets taken care of, that would be useful. Probably would need to differentiate between the historical and cinematic west. I suspect most people will play something more like the latter.

I'll take it. Heck I'll take just about anything to add to the project. I'm not proud. Anyone else got any gems packed away just speak up. I'm still hunting for a good PD pick of a griffon in a stetson....

Oh. I must have blinked.

Hat? We've got hats Men's Hats/Caps $00.21 - $05.25 each I suppose I should get a few brands/types in there. Can't be the West without a Stetson. Right now it is a little too wide for 2 column. I could go landscape, or shrink stuff down. 12 point Arial is nice on the eyes, but take up space. Ill play around with the format a bit. I'll make a backup first. Reformatting the text will no doubt mess up the images. Worst case scenario, it will get fixed by the second draft. It is so much easier to reformat and make corrections that it is to start from scratch! Yeah, I couldn't believe how lucky I was when I saw the price index. Multiplier for rail, wagon trail, and ship (prices in Nevada were probably the worst. The quick and easy supply route was around Cape Horn up to California and then ship it overland, across the desert. Ka-ching! Ka-ching!, Ka-ching!). I'd have to do more research to get the right prices for the right goods in the right terrotires, though. Right now I just have a simple, x2-3 for each "link" in the chain, but no actual links. It's certainly worth a look though. I had something that gave the railroad route around here.... Oh, and thank the higher power for public domain. A lot of really useful stuff it out there in PD. I think I've got train timetable for two different routes and 50 something cities, the patent sheet for the Gatling gun, an image of San Franciso, the works. It's amazing how much better stuff looks with a bit of art on the same page.

Oh, I used the appendix too. But most of what was there was used occasionally rather that perpetually. Never did split SIZ int HEIGHT and MASS though. Yup. Or do 1D20 under stat. It is the basic stat roll that has found it's way into 90% of RPGs in some form or another. But in RQ it has always been something of a last ditch defense thing. I've fiddled a bit. I did a BRP variant that combined stat mods with thebase chances. So all weapons skills started off at something like 2 x DEX + 1/2(STR)%. It reduced the math down to seven mods and no base % to worry about. I own it, read it, played, and ran it, and for the most part have the same opinion you do. SB1 had some weaknesses. Stat mods for culture were too high, and the magic system a bit overkill, but I think it had more Elric flavor that the latter version. I have used Stat rolls in RQ. It s just that I think they needed to bring them more into the light to make them useful. The Luck roll and Idea roll would seriously benefit from some examples of what you can and what you can't use them for. I guess BRP is going to have some of that. [quote=RMS;5370 I like the ideas there, but like above have never been quite motivated enough to change the core system that much.

3 in favor, none against. Must be a Christmas miracle! Works for me, since most of the list is done that way already. :D I suppose I should hunt up stats and prices for those civil war flak vests...

Metamorphosis Alpha? Sorry, had to ask.

I got that in the "notes' section too. Prices double or triple as you move away from the source. I had two "xmas gift" type finds while researching. One was a listing from a Sears & Roebuck catalog for lots and lots of stuff (Price list at 15 pages and should hit twenty, but thats in single colum with 12 point type). The other "gift" was finding a chart that showed the purchasing power of a dollar from 1800-2000. The nice bit was that it showed that except for the understandable increase in prices caused during the War of 1812 and the Civil War, prices remained remarkable stable from 1800-1900. So much so that the price list should hold up for most of it, and doubling during the war years. It was as if someone had made a conscious effort to keep prices stable in case someone in the future was going to write an RPG!

Say, do they adjust the base skills by setting/era. For example RQ3 had cutural weapons and such. Just thinking if they did I could raise the base Ride% for a Western campaign.

Okay, that's one for range. Where's Rurik and his polls when I need them? BTW, Here is a sample of what it looks like. BTW, THanks to the wonder that is public domain and (actually) free clip art I used the images as a sort of quick index. So while flipping though for something you can just use the picture to find what you want fast. I've found it easier to naviate by looking for a shove, phonograph, or gun pic than by reading through the lists.

Okay, I'm about half way through with the Price List for BRP Old West. I got a question. Some of my sources give a range for prices for certain goods. For example, Paper $0.50-$2.00 per ream or Office or a Shovel $0.30-$180 or so. The idea being that there are cheap shovles, and good ones. Clothing in particular gets a pretty wide range. You can buy a cheap suit for $3.00 or get some really fancy duds for $20.00. Is that okay with everyone, or would people rather than I just pick a fixed value like Paper $1.25/ream , shovel $1.00, and Suit $10.00? I think the range is kinda nice, but don't know what everyone else would prefer.

Thanks. That should be enough for me to do up some Western professions. That Old West thing is turning into a bit of a project.

Yes, they are in the APPENDICES. That is just the point. The rolls were really a "core mechanic" of the game the way they are in CoC5 and SB5. They are just chucked in the back with all the other stuff in small print, and get about the same attention as Ga-metal and Ze-metal. CON rolls are for combat. But I don't see many POW and INT rolls. Certainly nothing like a Luck or Idea roll in an adventure. THat is one thing that I like about the fate point option. It is irksome to have a Luck roll that doesn't apply to cobat, just when Luck would make the most difference. Yeah, it is front and center. I dare say that if a stat is involved for a roll, it is probably going to involve the resistance chart. Outsmarting someone in a game would probably have been handled not with INT rolls but with INT vs. INT on the Resistance Chart. SB and RQIII certainly. RQ2 less so, since the 5% increments made things like T-Rexes master "chompers". But I think that eliminating the category mods really weakens the importance of stats in BRP. Basically it doesn't matter how strong or dexterous you are anymore. THere are o "fine grain benefits". The STR/SIZ db has a very wide and rough progression of 1D4/1D6/2D6. FOr most PCs it is basically +1D4 with no finer grades. One thing I didn't like about Elric! was that we rolled 2D6+6 for stats, but once we wrote them down thety didn't really made a difference. Dump 100 points into a combat skill (per the recommendation) and only HP really mattered anymore.

Thanks. Do they give a list of 8 skills per profession? It might just be the "code of the west"? PS I Like the Gyphon cover too. I think I'd prefer just a silhouette like the Chasoium logo. I might just get one of the "demo" books. I was thinking of holding out for the official/corrected release, but maybe I'll cave. Hope they put a list of correction up so the early birds won't be left in the cold. ("No, the 18 AP plate is a typo, it should have been 8.")

Interesting. I'm especially fond of the damage bonus. One thing I don't like about RQ/BRP is the db progression. Any chance of an upload? I'd rather see something smother like 1d2/1d4/1d6/1d8 etc. instead of off another D6 every 16 points. Something like a die shift every 5 points seems about right. Maybe I'll put up parts of my unnamed BRP variant. I did away with hit points and used a wounding system, so I didn't think it would go over well.

Okay, since I spent the holiday at hone, I started putting together stuff for BRP Old West. So far I"ve started work on: Firearms Tables, by era Firearms full write-ups by Era Heavy Weapons Professions New Skills Spot Rules Critters (with a special section on Horses) Comprehensive Price list with a quick conversion method so you can use it for any year from 1800 to 1910. It will probably be the next thing uploaded. Wages A Cover (okay, It was a looong weekend) I have also thought about, but haven't put together ideas for: History/Timeline, with emphasis on the major things like the Civil War, War of 1812, Gold Rush(es), Railroads. Geography Notable People Geography The Military (North & South) Native Tribes (and how the got hosed and when) Weird Stuff-Hidden valley with dinosaurs, the Phantom Empire (it's PD now, and if I were doing this professionally it would probably be a supplment with stats for BRP, SotC, and a few other pulp games). Did I miss anything? Who knows, maybe this will evolve into a actual supplment?

Can anyone give me a quick heads up on how they do character genereation. DO you break up points among professional skills or what? I'm working on the Western stuff and a little insight would be helpful until I get a copy.

I think this is much like the 1D3+1/1D4 knife. By the rules a kill in combat is limited to small people with low CONs, unless hit location are used. Yet virtually any weapon can kill if applied properly. The OSS and British Commandos did use, and hand out a .22 caliber weapon to kill enemy soldiers (so you you take their gun). Surprise is a big factor. When you put the barrel up against the back of a guy's skull you not only got an auto head hit, but probably at least an impale. Like I wrote earlier. What I think we might need is some way to aim for increased damage. Something like halving your skill for an impale or maybe for a die shift (D4-D6-D8 etc). Personally, I'd really love a Damage Class/die shift idea, with the STR/SIZ modifer shifting up the die rather than being a separate die, but I doubt that would go over well with others. For firearms though, the ability to aim and bounce up a die by one or even two steps could really make small pistols useful in expert hands. It might much up armor though. While I could see carefully aiming a .25 Beretta to avoid the kevlar vest, I can't see carefully aiming it to avoid the the 12 AP steel bulkhead that otherwise would have stopped the bullet cold. Come to think of it a die shift for range might be a good solution. Kick up the damage die at point-blank and drop if at long range. That might help all around. A pistol round at 2m has a lot more energy that it does at 200m. That would also get the 1D6 pistols up to the much more lethal 1D8 range that can kill 99% of the humans in the game. Yeah, that isn't going to happen much. I'm not sure if we can come up with a solution that will please everybody. Right now, I'm leaning towards: 1) shifting up the die a step at Point Blank (DEX) range. So a 1D6 pistol does 1D8, a 1D10 pistol does 2D6, and so forth. The we could drop the damage die at longer ranges. So a .32APC with a 15m base range would do 1D4 at 60m, and 1D2 at 120m. 2) Allow a character to take an aimed shot at half ability, but bump up any success by one grade. So if a character with a 60% pistol skill did a called shot, he would shoot at 30% but get an impale if he hit, and have a 6% critical chance. I think I'll put those in the next draft of the Western "spot rules". Could make a pocket pistol kinda useful.

Sounds about right for TSR at the time. Iv'e sen and heard a few things that suggest that they were not a nice company to deal with. Or more specifically that certain people high up were not nice to deal with. There are reasons why Dave Arneson went from cocreator into the mists of obscurity. MOst of the ones I heard weren't very nice reasons. Mike wrote differently on his board. Where or not he remembers correctly, was being vengeful or was correct I can't prove or disprove. Strange. If they were going to renegotiate anyway, why not cut out the middle man. I had read, again from Moorcock's board that he was threatening Chaosium with legal action. It does look like miscommunication seems to be a root cause. Maybe something happened when Chaosium started printing EC books? That was a change from producing RPG stuff and sort of a bold move for a company like Chaosium. Yes. It is funny consider how much some people complained about Whitaker that they ended up with him again. In some cases people have done a strange 180 degree shift in direction. There are a few Mongoose "fanboys" whose opinions seem to be colored more by the Mongoose logo on the cover than the content beneath the cover. Certainly. There was a rich heritage. But I would say that it was Elric that really caused a shift in the sort of heroes we saw in heroic fantasy. There isn't much Howard, Burroughs de Camp, Anderson or Smith (Doc?) in Original D&D. More like 60% LOTR, 10% Medieval history, 15% Elric, 5% Vance's Magic, and 10% pole arms (Gygax's fascination with pole arms has me trying hard not to look at it in a Freudian light). I wish there were. I'm surprised that we never got a Burrough-based RPG. Tarzan or Barsoom both have potential. I'm amazed that it took so long for an official Conan RPG to arrive. I'm disappointed that we never got any Poul Anderson inspired RPGs. I like his stuff. Yeah. There is something about the original Elric stories. Artists seem to produce their best work hen they are suffering and miserable. I enjoy Corum, Erekose and Hawmoon, but the early Elric stories are special. The 70s Elric stuff is good, but after that it just isn't the same. Moorcock has aged almost 50 years since the first stories and is a different man. Unfortunately that has resulted in Elric aging and gaining a certain maturity that the original character lacked and actually died before acquiring. I have a problem accepting that the more recent Elric would go on to do the things (and make the mistakes) that the early Elric did. I think the new books are more like "What would Elric had become if the world had not ended?". I prefer early Elric, followed by HAwkmoon/Erekose (toss up, John Daker's partial comprehension of things makes him a favorite of mine. He is one of the few who isn't a complete slave to his destiny, and is never a blind one). Corum seems to lack a certain empathy that the other have. Perhaps he is just more detatached? :focus: True. Very little effort. Dump the geography and you can go with it. Take out the Law/Chaos stuff, and the Beast Lords and it is almost "RQ-lite". Ah the Bronze Grimore. Boy did I have fun with that. One GM and I even based an entire campaign around one spell in that book. I never even cast the thing in play, either. I just used it for backstory. The one where you turn someone into a statue. I had a Melnibonean PC use it on her husband. That was how she got exiled (she refused to turn him back, and if they killed her he'd stay that way. So they exiled her and she'd change her mind, right?). One spell got the whole ball rolling on that campaign.

Interestingly enough that isn't entirely unrealistic. Pocket pistols and derringers has a well deserved reputation for being almost equally dangerous to those on either end. Killing someone with one usually takes a very lucky shot, a severed blood vessel, and time. The hard thing about BRP though is that because it has hit points, there is a numerical rating that must be reached to kill a character, and a weapon that doesn't hit that rating just can't kill with one shot. Realistically, killing someone with a .25 or .32 caliber pistol with one shot is very very rare, but remotely possible. That isn't always the case in a game though. Somewhat. IMO hit locations tend to reduce lethality. Killing someone with one hit tends to happen with attacks that would have killed the guy anyway (critical hits with impaling weapons). Characters tend to get taken out of the fight before they get killed. I think I'll work on a "eventually fatal" type of result for the Western Spot rules. I might as well, I've got a 14 page price list, 6 weapons lists, bestiary, professions, new skills, a alternate rule for toxins ('cuz its more fun to have you buddy rush you back 20 miles to town to see the Doc then it is to have someone drop dead on the spot). If I did a chapter on history, notable personalities, and geography I could go for a entire supplment. Amen. That is the tightrope that game designers must walk. Everyone sees the rope in a different spot, too. However, the thing is, I think the damages in BRP thanks to instant kills might be even more deadly than real life. One thing that I liked about Timelords and CORPS was that a character could take a hit that might kill then in a couple of hours, but would be okay if it were treated. Something like that might not be a bad solution for some of us with BRP. It would be a potentially fatal wound so the lethality and danger factor is still there there, but can be treated, so the PC survivability factor is still acceptable. Even a really simple would deterioration idea like: Damage from one hit <=1/4hp= loose 1 hp/day " " >1/4hp=1hp/hour " " >1/2hp=1hp/min " " >3/4hp=1hp/MR might do it.

Elephant are barely killable without hit locations. You just need an impale and a 3D6+4 elephant gun. I think the difficult with firearms is that BRP sort of glosses over the most significant factor in firearm damage. Shot placement. We do have differernt levels of success but since only 20% of success are specials or better it isn't something that a character can control. One idea I was thinking of was to allow a character who tooke the called shot penalty to boost his damage. Instead of just shooting the elephant, aiming for the heart. THe same who be useful for something like a pocket pistol. Maybe rolling at half ability for aiming but getting an impale. NO, to show why there seems to be a split over firearm damage ratings. What can stop someone with hit locations and what can stop someone without are really too different things. From some of the posts I've been reading I starting to see that the RQ players and the CoC/Eleric players are really playing two different games, and I think that is partially responsible for some of the friction.

Quite true. About the only real reason why casualty rates were higher in the Ancient and Medieval world was that wholesale slaughter and massacres were more common. Any weapon can have a 100% mortality rate if you work at it. A spear thrust might even be more lethal than a .38 bullet. It makes a bigger wound and causes more bleeding. The same is true with the 50% difference in what it takes to drop someone due to hit locations. The main reason why I am adressing it now is that with more archaic weaponry the combat dynamic allows for defense in the form of a parry or dodge, with armor soaking up some of the damage. With firearms we have no body armor to speak of (okay, there were two companies that make flak vests during the Civil War, and a couple of improve stove-plate situations), and Dodge is usually of limited effect if any, depending on what BRP game you are running. Since "bang-your dead" isn't much fun to play. Especially when a player might not be able to do anything about it (like when the other guy has a higher DEX and Dodge doesn't work against bullets).

Jason, How will the tweaks and adjustments in BRP affect animal stats. Will a Bear or Horse have about the same STR, SIZ, hit points and damage as in RQ or CoC, or have the numbers been adjusted in some way?

Enpeze, I think I agree with him. Without either a hit location system or a major wound system the chances of dropping someone with a light pistol are close to nil. Even CoC5's "Shock" roll makes a big difference. I think a lot of these system disputes boil down to a gap between which derivative of RQ people have preferred over the years. Depending upon what game and which edition people play really determines what you rules say. Overall I think we are all just playing with different rulebooks. For instance, in CoC5, a guy with 15 hit points can risk shock by taking 8 or more points in one hit, so a 8 point hit is needed to be able to "Stop" someone, a 13 point hit needed for an auto-unconscious result (2 hp), and 15 points is needed for a kill. CoC1 doesn't have the "Stun" rule so 13 is the magic number. In RQ3, you can take someone out of the fight (for the most part) with a 5 point hit to the head or abdome or a 6 point hit to the chest. You can kill then with twice that. So, you can drop someone with 15hp in RQ3 with a 5 point hit, someone in CoC1 with a 13 point hit, and someone in CoC5 with a 8 point hit. To kill then you must do 15 points in CoC1 and COC5, but only 10 points in RQ. So RQ is potentially 50% more lethal than CoC. That's a big difference. I'm starting to think that the disputes over damage values comes down to this. THose who are RQ3 fans (c'est moi) are looking at the damages from a RQ perspective, while those coming from general HP/major wound games like SB ans CoC see the higher value. soltakss actually picked up on this awhile back, mentioning how he liked the two damage values (CoC and persumably RQ)that I gave the Peacemaker. THat wasn't my intention, but he was right. It is probably one reason why Badcat and I don't see eye to eye on firearm damages. It depends on the frequency of sudden death. Again I'm pointing to the difference in systems. For a guy with 12 hp the "instant death threshold" with hit locations is only 8 as opposed to 12 in CoC. For a guy with 18 hp the "IDT" is 12 as opposed to 18. Maybe the two sets of western damages is the right way to go, after all. Or some sort of damage class/sliding scale. So a 1D6 firearm in RQ could be a 1D10 in CoC or some such.