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Okay, I've started working on the air to air combat plug in for this. Roughly it shoulw work as follows. Each turn pilots to pick an maneuver for their craft, such as pursue/flee, dogfight, tail, fly by pass, evade and so forth. Then they make a skill check, modfied by the Handling of the Vehicle. In some cases, such as Pursue/Flee, the difference in Speed will play a factor. So a plane traveling 200kph faster than another will close the distance. Realistically, the faster a vehicle is going the the harder it is for it to turn. So a faster plane needs more room to turn, and is less maneuverable. Here's the part I'd like feedback on: To reflect thhe effect of speed on maneuverability, I thinking of applying a penalty to maenuvering based on speed. The can be offset by handling, so aircraft that can pull more g's have a higher handling score. Right now, I'm thinking of each g a plane can pull being worth +10% to Handling. I'm also thinking of limiting the bonus a pilot can get from handling to his skill. So a 50% pilot in a F-16 that can pull 9Gs can only double his skill%. THe penalty chart for speed is: Modifer(Speed in kph) +15% (0) +10% (283) +5% (400) +0% (490) -5% (566) -10% (632) -15% (693) -20% (748) -25% (800) -30% (849) -35% (894) -40% (938) -45% (980) -50% (1020) -55% (1058) -60% (1095) -65% (1131) -70% (1166) -75% (1200) -80% (1233) -85% (1265) -90% (1296) -95% (1327) -100% (1356) -105% (1386) -110% (1414) -115% (1442) -120% (1470) -125% (1497) -130% (1523) -135% (1549) -140% (1575) -145% (1600) -150% (1625) -155% (1649) -160% (1673) How does that look? Does it seem to complex for BRP?

Yeah. I remember once, having to keep track of how much Toilet Paper my character had. But that was in a post WWIII RPG, where Toilet Tissue was a luxury.

Thanks. I figure that the rules won't survive contact with BRP. I know the power costs have been changed and such, so I'm certain changes will be needed. I've still got some stuff to add to it too, and need to work up some more sample vehicles. Ideally I'd like to simply the design process by letter people take a sample motorcycle or car and then upgrade it with Hero Points. I also need to do the Sci-Fi plug ins, artillery rules, air-ti-air combat, electronic warfare and all that. Some stuff for the next upgrade: Increasing Hit Points (1 Hero Point per), Generators to power energy weapons (increases the weapon cost by 50% but eliminates the need for ammo). I would like to see someone try building something with the system, though. Plus some ideas for what is needed (Yeah, I know, I have to run it through a spell checker and do some rewording).

I'd say that it has a lot to do with the style and tone of the campaign. One thing to consider though is that if the GM stresses training and decay, then he should also be responsible to ensuring that the bad guys/monsters need to train too. So if a PC has been chasing some guy for weeks and hasn't been able to maintain his skills, the other guy is probably in the same boat. We generally don't worry much about armor maintenance, or the minor aches and pains, colds, shaving, or even going to the bathroom in gaming. Would we want to?

That's not really a failing of the handguns, but the effects of combat on the shooters. Between the fear/adrenaline dump, and the desire to get the shot off fast, accruracy goes right down the drain. Even today, with out modern firearms, and most gunfights taking place at a range of less 20 feet, only about 20% of shots hit. So I don't think you really need an accuracy penalty. If you wanted to, you could factor in for stuff like adrenaline dump.

Most version of BRP that I've seen had the impale rule, and those that didn't (SB1) had higher damaged for missile ratings. Personally, I think the problem is that limb hits also cause total HP loss, and can kill. While having an arm or leg taken off can, and probably will kill someone, it won't do it right away. To be realistic, a rule like limb hit damage to total HP caps at location HP, combined with a bleeding rule.

Not bad. I did up some AI rules for the vehicles design system. What I did was Let them buy INT and EDU. Int representing processing power and EDU representing data storage. I let them buy skills, but used the Idea roll as the limit for skill % used at one time. So an AI that had to multi task would need to buy a high INT. Other than the differences in multitasking (you give 1 function per INT, I let them break up skill%) and the method of buying skills (you give packages, where I did in in 5% increments) the two approaches are similar.

I was going to ask that, but was worried about people hitting it when they wanted to "Reply to topic". On the side?

Ah, since in on the East coast that's "only" half a country away. A good part of it. Without knowing the "whys" we tend to miss a bit of the "hows". Gravity is always a fun one to mention since unlike most other unexplained things, it's existence is accepted. People know that gravity exists, design vehicles to counteract it, and yet really don't know what it is. But I also suspect that some of what we "know" is actually not true, but simply an approximation that happens to fit our data. Science is good for the occasion paradigm shift. Sort of like the Sun going round the Earth. Everyone knew it was how things worked, until they found out that it didn't-and even then they had to have it rubbed in their faces to get the point across. Our models for the universe are better than those of our ancestors, but they are still models. I'm sure there are a couple of surprises left in store for us.

Me three. I for one am not fond of taking a perfectly good setting and tossing in magic, etc. I don't mind it as an option, but would prefer the ability to game faithfully in the genre.

True, but the same effect applies in BRP. A crtical from an implaling weapon like a spear or sword is typically going to do enough damage to kill a character. An 18 point arrow or spear hit that bypasses armor will kill over 99% of PCs. So the hit locations don't make the game any more deadly as far as crticals are concerned.

Head hits yeah, and the same for abdomen, since they were set at 1/3rd HP. Chest a bit less so, since it was at .40 HP. But with the melee hit location chart there was only a 30% chance of getting a hit on the abdomen, chest, or head, with 70% of all hits going to limbs.

I think the easiest method was was was used in HARNMASTER and Flashing Blades. Basically you had to get a skill check every so often or decline. Training and practice also counted. What was nice about the Flashing Blades approach is that it allowed adventuring to help maintain skills. I once had a character end up going to war for six months and got enough checks to keep my primary weapon skills going just fine. Eventually, I hit a point where I could maintain one or two skills at peak form and had to let the rest slide a little. That is probably about the right way to handle that in an RPG. There was nothing capping off any of my skills either than the time I had free to train. I was reaching the point where I was considering retiring from my position as Constable General to have time to devote to mastering my rapier. My "sideline" as a banker was providing most of my income at that point anyway.

To some extent you can do that now. Just take either of the following vehicles and modify them with an additional 25, 50 or even 100 Hero Points and you should be able to build a batcycle or batmobile. Try it. I think once you have a baseline vehicle the rules get a lot easier to understand and use. Kawasaki PGz-750 (Motorcycle) SIZ 25(500lb) Hit Points: 13 MOVE- 700m (210kph) Handling: +10% ARMOR-Kinetic-3, Ballistic-3 POWERS-Speed 28 HERO POINT COST: 756 Ford Escort (Car) SIZ 41(1 ton) Hit Points:21 MOVE-500m (150kph) ARMOR-Kinetic-4, Ballistic-4 POWERS-Speed-22 HERO POINT COST: 866 BTW, I found the formula for beam weapons that don't need energy. It costs one half the cost for the levels. So if you had a vehicle mounted laser with a base range of 45m (2 Levels) and did 4d6 damage (4 levels), it would cost 6x3/2, or 9 points, and could fire all day. I'll put that into the next update.

I think they are two separate things. A game can be internally consistent and be completely unreal, and vice versa. One thing about an RPG is that it has to balance out several differernt objectives to attempt to be a playable compromise. No two people ever agree to what extent component X, Y, or Z should be stressed. Hence we have had hundred of RPGs over the years. It gets even more complicated since the items to be stressed change from genre to genre. So even a game that handles one setting very well, probably needs to be altered to be able to handle another one well.

Probably in the end we can just work up some baseline vehicles (generic motorcycle, car, truck, plane) and then allow character to customize them with Hero Points.

Yeah, but major wounds actually reduce the lethality, as they cause characters to drop. Players otherwise would fight on until they ran out of hit points.

BRP really isn't that deadly. The ability to kill with one hit is fairly low, and in most cases restricted to impaling weapons that critical. BRP is more lethal than, say, D&D, but there are deadlier games. One thing about hit locations and Major Wound charts is that they tend to make the game less deadly, as they increase the chances of a character being taken out of a fight while still alive. BTW, While you can't cut someone's nose off with a peacemaker, you can certianly shoot it off.

There have been a couple of new Western RPGs, such as Gunslingers, but in general they don't draw much attention.

A few games, like HARNMASTER do have rules for skill decay. Usually they are a little forgiving on the requirements for maintaining a skill. The Harn rules would work in BRP too. Basically I think it is a question of how far do you want to go with such details. RQ has never tracked armor damage either. It certainly happens, and is at least as important as skill maintenance, but generally isn't considered worth the effort. Then again, if we are going to be realistic about skill maintenance, then we should be so for skill acquisition. Realistically speaking, the experience check method is much too generous. Most improvement would be by training, and the D6 increase is way too much. More like 1 point, maybe 1D2 with training. It all boils down to where we want to draw the line. I can think of dozens of things that are equally unrealistic that we allow, including all the fantastic monsters and species. It's hard to push for realism in a unrealistic setting.

In Superworld (the original) characters started off with a number of Hero Points equal to the sum of their stats. but could get more by taking limitations and such. In Superworld, a vehicles would only cost Hero Points if it had any unsual abilities. So a car would be free, but one that was armored and could shoot laster beams would need to pay for the armor and lasers. When I wrote my adaptation, the idea wasn't so much to allow PC heroes to buy special vehicles as much as to be able to be able to be able to come up with stats for real world vehicles. The Hero Point costs are really being used as a relative gauge of how expensive something is. As written, there is really no way for a character to be able to build their own tank. What I need to do is work up a few benchmark designs, like a car, motorcycle, tank, fighter jet, etc. to put everything in some sort of reasonable scale to each other. Eventually, once BRP is released, I'd like to adjust things to work with the new rules and work out some sort relationship between Hero Point cost, HP cost for PCs, and money. But, as it current stands, you can deign practically anything with the rules, up to an including a self guided flying brick than can turn on a dime, and can destroy an entire city with one shot. It might cost 30,000 points, but you can build it. Also, I eventually want to scale this up to handle battleships and spaceships. Will probably use a "kilopoint" idea, with one point worth 1000 Hero Points and scale everything that way. Oh, BTW, while it isn't in the rules, the system was designed with the CoC SIZ table in mind, that being the latest SIZ table out for BRP, and the one that can handle huge vehicles.

A sidetrack about passions in a gaming context led to a mention of Pendragon (a game that has a mechanic for passions), which led to this thread being split off into a new topic, leading to the posters losing track of the topic.

No hurry.

I don't know. Where is "here"? Right now I can narrow it down to about 13,000km. Just that they don't cover all situations. Basically opening the door for Quantum mechanics. Still, "Newtonian" Physics don't "work" all the time either, but will work nicely for practically any walk of life except for physicists and some electronics specialists. Personally, I don't think we've figured out just how the universe actually works. Physics is sort of like a very detailed RPG. I models what the real world does very well, but isn't quite what the real world is actually doing. Yeah. From what I've seen about Eistien he probably couldn't balance his checkbook. It is really difficult, if not impossible to handle things like leaps on insite in RPG terms. Discovers tend to seem very logical cause & effect, after they are made. Its a lot like knowing who the killer is after you read the book. Yeah, I don't doubt it. I just don't think than one INT stat covers it. INT is such a blanket stat in BRP, covering everything from creativity to perception to general knowledge. Much to broad to limit half the skills on the sheet. I've got a friend who can do basic math addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) faster and often more accurately than I can. But throw in one algebraic equation or raise something to a power and he's dead in the water. In skill terms he probably has a higher "basic math" skill, but I've better at any intermediate math, and he has no chance with any higher mathematics. Besides, there is also the player to consider. If we make INT that strict, then we would have to limit players to character with their own INT scores, as people really can't role play different INT scores easily or well. Most tend to "dumb" down the lower INT characters and playing higher INT is practically impossible. About the only way to pull that off is to try an anticipate what is going to come up during an adventure and do a lot of advanced planning-then make it look spontaneous. On top of that, there is the game ramifications of gaming characters whose skills have capped out at 50 or 65%. It takes a lot of the fun out of characters when there is no room for improvement. Caps don't work for a lot of setting too. Rune Level characters either become impossible, or need a loophole (like in old RQ, when only Rune Levels went over 100%).

Over 100 views of the thread, only 1 download. I take it no one is interested.