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Statstically yes, but in actual practice I don't think there would be too much fuss over !d8+1 vs 1d8. It's not like going with 3d6 or some such. Keep in mind that he is going iwith SIZ+CON for hit points (double that of BRP) so increased damage would have been a possibility. I'm not so sure. It's been a few incarnations since I looked at Mythras hit point and damage rules (i.e. back when it was Mongoose RuneQuest) but characters used to be able to soak a lot more damage, especially if they had a high resilience skill, than their BRP counterparts.

That's another reason why I prefer RQ3 Armor points. Damage below the weapon's armor points got soaked up by the armor and ignored. Thus, an echanted sword with 40 AP was not only very hard to break (you'd have to do about 80 points to deliberately break it at one go, or exceed 40 points multiple times), but can also stop a lot more with a parry. Well for the crystal sure. I'd think that for an enchanted blade, the enchantment would be in the blade. Basically whatever the magic is effecting if probably what's magical. Of coruse the thing is with magical items is that as we don't seem to have any around to study, we have a lot of leeway in how we interpret things. Case in point in D&D a creature that needs a magical weapon to injure takes full damage from a magical weapon, while in RQ such a creature usually only takes the magical component of the damage. Thus a Sword with Bladesharp 2 on it only does 2 points of damage to a werewolf- which might actually be worse than doing no damage. Either approach is equally valid.

It depends on how it breaks. It if it just the tip or the tang it is possible to file down the broken section, make a new hilt to hold the shorter tang, etc. The Seax was often made from the remains of a broken sword. But if you want something comperable to what it was before it broke then reforging is the way to go. In some legends reforged weapons are considered superior and/or magical. Sigurd for instance. In fact, that's probably something Tolkein draw from for the Lord of the Rings. For magic it's a tough call. Most RPGs tend to assume that when a magical item is broken the magic leaves it, but...going back to the aforementioned legends, the opposite seems true. The magic is there, it is just that you need someone who is very skilled to fix/reforge the item without ruining it. But as it's not really covered in nmost BRP games, it's up to you. Personally, I'd probably assume the item can be repaired, but it would be difficult to do so. Any bound spirits, demons, etc. would probably be freed when the item was broken (the exception would be if the spirit were bound in a gem on the pommel or some such and the blade was broken). Depending on if I wanted this to be a one roll repair or a task requiring multiple rolls to fix would determine the skill modifier, and consequences of failure. But it really comes down to just what BRP game you are planing and how you want things to work in your campaign. If you want broken magical items to be lost forever, then you don't need any special repair rules. IF you want to allow broken magical items to be restored, then you might want something.

Yes, it was the first of the infamous Dungeons of Doctor Demento. Originally it was done as a one off for the gaming group, before Massconfusion turned it into a series of convention adventures.

It is, because it straddles the line between fun and tedium. On the one hand, we don't want to be bothered with such minutia. On the other hand, if we ignore it, some players will tend to abuse the situation. Way back, a friend of mind wrote a silly adventure full of such rules exploits. For instance, in one room was a ship. The story behind it was that an adventurer used to carry it around, until the encumbrance rules came out, and then he couldn't carry it anymore, so he had to leave in in the room. Yeah, the general idea is to let the players know that they should behave reasonably, or to account for a long term effort, or the environment. But you don't want it to become a hassle- unless, of course, overcoming such a hassle is part of an adventure. Such as when the PCs have to cross a desert.

That only matters if the characters are going to do it. I think that you'll probably need some form of subdual damage, non-lethal combat to make that work. Otherwise, people will use weapons instead. Especially if they have high tech weapons that can knock an opponent out. Yeah, look at RQ2-3. Both systems have rules where items stuck into shields affect their use. In a nutshell. Weapons of ENC 2+ or which are still held by the opponent prevent the shield from being used. Weapons on ENC1-2 reduce the ability to use the shield by half until removed. Weapons of less than 1 ENC do not affect the shield until 2ENC worth are stuck in the shield. Then they reduce shield use by half. If 4+ECN worth on such items are stuck in a shield, the shield is useless. 20 arrows = 1 ENC. A Dart is 0.5 ENC, and a Javelin 1.5 ENC. Not really, nor should it. Contrary to how many people think greatswords are used (with both hands together on the hilt like a baseball bat), the swords are actually very versatile and can be wielded in multiple ways. Of particular worth here would be "half-swording" the technique where one hand is half way up the blade to aid in stronger thrusts. That would make a greatsword much like a spear in use, and quite good in a narrow corridor. You do not need tons of room for one to be effective.

What if you factored in for fatigue? IN real life altheltes tend to wear the least amont of clothing required for the job, as anything more is an impediment. You could require characters to make a CONx5% roil at various times to avoid fatigue, and you could subtract ENC from the CONx5% value. So if your PC is carting around 20 ENC worth of gear, it would be CONx5-20%. Yeah, damages seems pretty close to BRP standard.

Give credit to Greg Stafford. In Pendragon, whenever you take more damage than your SIZ you have to make a DEX roll or be knocked down.

It looks interesting. I'd consider addingin some sort od DEX or Balance roll for those who get knockedback (if a dragon's tail sends a guy flying back 5m he might not be on his feet). We probably need to see the weapon and armor tables to really see how it will play out. Are damaged standard BRP or something else?

I'll drink to that!

Sometimes. I'd say the damage bonus is significantly different but most weapon damages are the same or similar. How much of obstacle that is is another matter. For the most part an experienced GM can look over the weapon tables, compare similar weapons, and get a rough idea of what the approximate damage would be in Elric! Even if a GM just ported over the weapon stats directly the values wouldn't be too far off, as BRP and Mythas use similar hit points and armor values. I think most weapons are within a point or two, on average.

You might not need them Early on, blackpowder weapons didn't penetrate armor as well as modern firearms do. Armorers would even "poof" thier weapons against firearms (and crossbows) by test firing a round at the armor and leaving the dent to show that the armor was, indeed, bulletproof. Such armor sold for a lot more, too. So if you wanted to you could just assume the same level of technology and go with the stats without any AP modfiers. It would probably make the most sense, too as once bullet start penetrating armor, armor starts to go out of use. If you want bullets to penetrate armor, I'd suggest just lowered the value of lower tech (or non "poofed") armor against firearms. In Elric! the easiest way to do this would probably be to lower the dice rolled. For instance, Full Plate (with helm) protects for 1D10+2 (ave. 7.5) in Elric!, but you could lower the die from 1D10 to 1D6 or even !d4. Considering the damage rating of blackpower weapons, it won't take much of a reduction to get through the armor. I'd say just reduce the armor die by a couple of steps, depending on just how much protection you want the armor to provide, if any. You could always rule that the blackpowder weapons just bypass armor, but that might make them too good, and leave players wondering about wearing armor. For instance, if you reduce the dice by one step...Leather = 1d4, Mail = 1d6+1, and Plate = 1d8+2. if you reduce the dice by two steps...Leather = 1d2, Mail = 1d4+1, and Plate = 1d6+2. if you reduce the dice by three steps...Leather = no protection, Mail = 1d2+1, and Plate = 1d4+2. if you reduce the dice by four steps...Leather = no protection, Mail = 1 point, and Plate = 1d2+2. if you reduce the dice by five steps...Leather = no protection, Mail = no protection, and Plate = 2 points (or 1d3 if you prefer). You can just slide up and down on the die size until you get the values that you like. Probably not. As I noted above, at the time plate armor was still in heavy use, firearms weren't always guaranteed to piece it. However, many version of BRP have an "impale" rule where some weapons do double damage on a very good hit. This is in addition to the critical hit rule. THat kind of leads to a lot of missile weapons getting past armor a lot of the time. Oops correction! The Basic Roleplaying BGB did have official rules: Primitive or Ancient armor only offers 1/2 protection against high velocity or energy weapons. also If armor value is being determined randomly, you should roll for the armor's protection, apply any modifiers, then divide in half, rounding up. Note the term high velocity. Weather or not you consider Blackpool weapons to be high velocity is the question. Historically they fired large, relatively low velocity (for firearms) balls or bullets, which is why plate armor was actually effective against them. Personally, I think I'd rather tweak the armor dice than divide the die rolls in half, too. Perhaps the best thing for you to get, if you can find it would be the Basic Roleplaying rulebook, usually referred to around here as the "Big Gold Book". The BGB is a collection of rules from various RPGs produced by the Chasoium over the years, all of which use the same underlying rule system. Pretty much any BRP based Roleplaying game (Elric!, Stormbringer, Magic World, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Elfquest, Worlds of Wonder, Superworld, Ringworld, etc.) is mostly compatible with other as at least 80% of the game system is the same for all those games. THe BGB collected a lot of that stuff into one book. It might be quite helpful for doing the stort of stuff you are doing, but it's out of print. There are also a lot of "D100:" based RPGs that aren't BRP, but still similar enough that you could take stuff from them, such as anything for RQ6/Mthras, OpenD100 or even BaSiC.

Yeah, that works. Just as long as they have some chance. Assuming the PCs have the abilties to do so. See what I mean? If the skills are very narrow then it becomes impossible to cover all the bases and it becomes very easy for the group to get taken down by something they lack. Large ships full of NPCs can help with this too. If you got a space cruiser with a thousand crewmen aboard, then the GM can easily throw in an "Astrobiologist" or "Temporal Mechanics Engineer" into the game if the PCs find themselves in sudden desperate need of one. But probably works fine for the game. Same with Civ. Relasitically, most technologies would probably require several other technologies to learn, and most techs aren't all or nothing, but tend to have layers of knowledge to impart. Plus most new technolgies grow out of older tech. It's not like lightbulb technology was created in a vacuum (😉) but that it came out of existing knowledge of electricity and material science. Same with laser technology. It's all additive. For instance, Blu-Rays came about because of knowledge of light wavelengths. Blue light has a shorter wavelength that red light, thus a blue laser makes a smaller mark than a red one. That was pretty much academic until someone decided to use lasers to write as much information as possible onto a defined area (the disc). I suspect the same idea will have merit in the medical field one day, if it hasn't already. I'd like to see that. Are you using your own ship design system or some preexisting system. I'd have to see how you do up ships and aircraft to see. On a possibly related note, I recently bought a Naval Wargame and was midly disappoin ted that it used generic stats for aircraft, so maybe indiviualized stats might be useful after all. Possibly, I kinda depends on how you do it. Reminds me of Blake's 7. The main characters were a bunch of convicted criminals/freedom fighters in a oppressive empire , who somehow got control of an advanced alien spaceship. It's a great set up for a RPG.

Yes. just as long as the player characters can get those skills before they need them.

I think it will help. Just to claify, my big concern is that it's easy to create a [problem that the PCs lack the skills required to solve. I might be a bit over sensitive to this though, as it is a big limiting factor to some of my starting campaigns. For instance, in the James Bond RPG, rookie PCs tend to start off with a half dozen skills or so, and it's easy to see them fail because no one knows how to fly an airplane or defuse a nuclear device. This despite the game only having a skill list of around 25 skills. So I'm careful with what I throw at them during a mission at first. After a few missions, when the PCs make it to agent rank, this isn't a problem anymore and if the group lacks a skill it's their own fault, but early on they just cannot cover all the bases. The same holds true in modern and high tech settings where there are so many more skills (and specialties). BTW, in the Bond RPG, there are Fields of Experience, which cover things that aren't considered to be skills. A character who has the proer field either can avoid certain rolls, or get a bonus to taks involving that field of experience. For instance, anyone would get a roll to try and identify the rank of a character in uniform, while someone with the MIlitary Science Field of experience would be able to tell without making a skill roll. That kind of approach might help. For instance, a character could make an enginnering roll to fix a defective FTL drive, while someone with the FTL Field of experience could do so without a roll. While it make make total sense in real life for someone to fail at some task due to lack of knowledge, it doesn't make for a good RPG experience. I would kinda suck if the Enterprise blew up because Kirk didn't know how to stop a warp core from going up, and no one else was in the Engine Room. It's much better if that soret of thing doesn't happen, and that usually means either given Kirk some chance to save the ship. IN RPG terms it's much better if Kirk saves the ship, maybe by ejecting the warp nacelles, and then has to deal with the problems caused by his actions (i.e. how do they get back home without warp engines?). LOL!. Keep in Mind that MoO is a 4x game for a computer, not an RPG. So a lot of stuff that works in MoO won't necessarily make sense in a fleshed out RPG. It's why you have to be careful when adapting MoO to BRP. Hmm, in a similar vein, in Civilization VI you can build the Pyramids without knowledge of Mathematics! It's really just the nature of the skill tree. Plus in a game like Civ or Orion there is more of a "big picture" view of things, and and All of nothing approach to technology. In real life things aren't so clearly defined, and a lot of skills are semi-known by a civilization. So take some of MoO with a grain of salt.

JUst two things I'll stress again: There should be some way for a character to do something without the proper specialization, otherwise the PCs will eventually wind up not being able to do something vital-as there is really no way for them to cover all skills. Even something like a LUCK roll to fake it, or spending Hero Points is fine. Just as long as they have some chance. It's not all that fun when the one character who can fly or repair the ship is dead on incapacitated, leading to a TPK. Be a little fuzzy with science and technical skills. There is a lot of cross pollination and overlapping going on. For instance nearly every science and tech skill relies on Mathematics to some degree. Most rely on physics to some extend as well. So some sort of default or crossover makes sense.

Yes, and that is my concern as well. It's kinda like the problem with Superheroes. It all works fine until an NPC shows up with a power that the PCs have no defense against and trashes the group. It's not the PCs fault either, because there is no way they can cover everything. I had most armor could as half value against other forms of attack sor just that reason. Plus I figured six inches of hardened plate steel is probably going to stop some laser, heat, etc.

Yes, take a look at the Star Trek RPGs from LUG/Decipher. They greatly shorted the skill list by combining several skills. Alternatively, keep the FASA skill proficiencies so that a 10% skill makes someone qualified to operate something, fly a shuttle, etc. FASA Trek gave characters a lot of low skill socres in secondary skills that worked with the 10/40/100 proficiency scale, but wouldn't help much in standard BRP.

Probably, if you use a shortened skill list in SciFi. Either that or a specialty system where the specialtiy gives a bonus to skill. The thing that worries me about making everything exclusive is that the players will never be able to cover all the bases, and eventually lack a vital skill at the wrong time. I mean, who thinks to specialize in "Life Support Systems" during chargen?

Yes, the default BRP system is more restrictive, but not all BRP systems as that restrictive. RQ had/has a rule for related weapons starting off at half the skill of a weapon that you know, and I could see something like that applying to other related skills. Someone whith Medicine skill should know something about biology and biochemsitry. No, for BRP I'd go with a related skill rule, and then handle the overlaps on a case by case. For instance, someone with Aircraft repair probably could get a car engine to start, but probably wouldn't know how to refine gasoline. For your system, I'd just allow a broader use of specialties. I think is had a lot to do with just what is wrong, rather than what you are working on. For example... Let's say a medieval peddler who drives a small cart from village to village has to change a tire on a car. Now he obviously doesn't have any automotive skill, but the concent of repalcing a wheel isn't foreign to him, and, if he knows what a screw is, he might figure out how to loosen the nuts and take a wheel off. Or let's say that a radar technican is having car troubles so he opens up the hood of his car to check the battery connections. My point is, skills and tasks aren't as ridigly defined as most game rules would like. The LUG/DecipherStar Trek RPGs come to mind here. They have some skills that cover several things, such as shipboard systems. The idea being that if you can read a control panel you can operate most controls and systems on the ship. It works too. Those games also have specialties. Thus a character could have Shipboard Systems (Helm) 2 (5), making them great a piloting the ship, but only okay with everything else. That's really not too far off from what you are doing by trimming down the skill list too. Oh, and bringing up another game with a short skill list, Bond, it handles science skills with one science skill, but allows fro specialties. A character with the appropriate specialty gets a bonus, while one lacking a specialty gets a penalty. It allows for just the sort of overlap I think we need for a good RPG. Ultimately, we all want the PCs to have a chance of success. It really can kill a campaign if the PCs can't repair something at all and end up stuck on some planet with no chance of escape or even contacting someone for rescue.

Yes I should.

It was kinda stillborn - at least as far as the BGB went. But the core game mechanics are used in virtually every Chaosium RPG from RuneQuest to Call of Cthulhu, and even Pendragon, although the latter uses a highly modified version. So BRP is probably as alive as it ever was, except maybe in the early 80s.

I get your intention, I just think it's a bad idea. Oh, I get your intent, I just disagree with it. In real life there is a lot of crossover. A medical doctor's knowledge and skill does apply somewhat when working on an animal. That's why I don't like your all or nothing approach. In the real world medicine isn't worthless without specializations. A human doctor is going to be much better at treating a sick or inured horse than someone with no medical knowledge at all. I just don't think that's a good idea. You are going to win up with lots of odd situations where someone's related knowledge will prove worthless. That's why I think you should allow either to work. Again, in real life someone with either electronics skill or mechanical locksmith skill could open the door. The difference is in how they do it. For example, some places use key cards that employees need to scan to access certian areas. THe way they work is by encoding the proper access codes onto a magnetic strip on the card. Now if someone wanted to bypass that type of lock they could: Manipulate the lock mechanically as a locksmith Trip the lock eletrically with electronics Copy the acess code witha computer and put in on another key card with Computer skill Reprogram the access codes for that lock with Computer skill There are multiple ways to get the desired result, and which one you lean towards depends on your skill set and what equipment you have. I think just limiting it to one applicable skill or specialty is not a great approach.