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Eek! A Mouse! :eek: Probably not mind-shattering, unless you are the mouse.

True, but considering that only a select few have seen the new BRP rules, it would be impossible for us to do otherwise. That why we have this Q&A thread and are pestering Jason. It also why no one is jumping in to write a supplement for BRP yet. It's like a new movie, where we've seen the original, but don't know what will be changed in the remake. (Not the best analogy, since remakes are rarely up to par with the original, and we have higher hopes than that for BRP).

That's one of the big obstacles with all horror RPGs. Players have a sort of "shock absorber" by know what they are getting into, unlike the protagonists in 99% of horror stories. Instead of being surprised and scared, the players immediacy suspect supernatural involvement and go looking for it. My most successful horror adventures were in campaigns that were not (supposedly) horror based. That "this isn't supposed to happen" feeling that goes along with that is perfect for setting the mood. THe old Juedges Guild "HEllpits of Nightfang" advenutre for RQ2 led to one of the best horror RPG scenes I've ever had. The PCs were holded up inside a building, and the Vampire was outside (I was running this before Cults of Terror, so I ran the Vamp with the traditional pwers and weaknesses rather than with teh Vivamort stuff). The Vamp couldn't enter the dwelling (wasn't invited, tradtional vamp weakness), and so had tried lthings like setting the building on fire and mesmersizing someone to get an invite. Standoff. THen the Vamp taunted one of the PCs ending the insults with "why do you come out here and face me light a man!" THe PC replied "Oh yeah, well why don't YOU.....go away". We all got to see the player turn pale and his eyes open wide when he realized just how close he came to inviting the vamp inside. The reverse holds true, too. My favorite CoC adventure was one where the GM threw us up against gangsters. We were all expecting Deep Ones and Mi-Go, and were surprised that we had to deal with something so mundane. They proved a tough foe, too, since most of the Mythos creatures don't call you up on the phone to set you up for a drive by shooting, or bribe the cops. Plus, you can get the chair for killing a gangster. It the unexpected that makes horror work, and sadly, is why horror RPGs generally are not very scary.

I think there is a difference between CoC's "Sanity Loss" for seeing things that are beyond human mind's ability to accept, and being scared out of your wits. A "fright check" sort of thing, makes sense to me, just as long as it is applied reasonably. For instance, a modern person would probably be frightened by a charging wolf, while a veteran warrior from the middle ages either would be less frightened, or frightened, but still able to act effectively. The POW roll seems alright to me, but I'd vary the multiplier, based on just how scary the threat is, and how experienced/brave the character is. Pendragon's Valor roll system might be worth swiping for BRP to handle this. In Pendragon, whener a character faces some sort of frighting foe (or other scary event), he must make a Valor roll. The roll gets modifers based upon just how scary/danageous the foe is. A bear might mean a straight Valor roll (a trait generated with a 3d6 roll, but modfied by background, and can be raised or lowered during play), while a Wrym might be at -5 or -10 (on a d20 roll). We could either swipe the trait, or convert it to a BRP skill, based off the POW roll, but improvable.

In what way? is it a 2-3 POW per d6, or an increasing scale (like 1 POW=1d2, 2=1d4, 3=1d6, 4=1d8, 5=1d10, 6=1d10+1d2, etc.)? It is somewhat ironic that Chaosium threw out all the magic systems from RQ and went with the ones from SB and MW. Both had the problem of making those with magic completely superior to those without. SB did get toned down over the years, so demon weapon were no longer had a half dozen d6 damage bonus, but MW was a quick and dirty magic system. I hope it got nerfed a LOT.

The scary thing was that in MW wizards got a staff that acted as a personal POW stroing device. I think it cost you 1 POW and got POW storage equal to the mage's POW, and regenerated POW, too. WHen I ran MW mages were good for one or two high POW, nasty spells, before being brought down to reality. Not quite as unbalanced as SB1 Sorcery, but much better on the fly.

Nightshade, I agree with most of you points here. In fact, I even went so far as to work up a "delayed death" type option for my BRP variant that was inspired by Timelords. It wasn't as finely grades as Timelords, but went with a more "scratch/light wound/serious wound/mortal wound) sort of approach. I also agree that the current variable armor system from Stormbringer is a little too random, since it uses a linear distribution for the most part, rather than some sort of bell curve. As it stands, a warrior has as much chance of getting no protection from his plate armor(1d10-1) as of getting 9 points. But I think it isn't any more flawed than the plate vambraces protecting the entire arm equally. As for protecting critical location with variable armor. There is a way to do so fairly easily, and it was done in MERP/RM. It's the general armor that it the obstacle not the variable damage. The full body armor in Magic World had the same problem. But both approaches are valid, and present compriomises in complexity in favor of ease/speed of play. Pendragon uses General HP, General AP, no locations, and a Major Wound rule, and doesn't play too badly for it. It all depends on what people want.

Yeah. It is a "take the easy way out" approach to Sci-Fi. Sensible for a company who'se bread and butter lied elsewhere (Fantasy with Rq, and latter Horror with CoC). Had either of those two settings became as popluar as CoC, I have no doubt that Chaosiu would have written detailed Starship rules back in the 80s. But the bulk of BRP products have leaned towards fantasy and the supernatural raqther than Sci-Fi. Plus, Sci-Fi has generally been the least successful or profitable genre is the never very healty RPG field. Traveller is the closest thing to a successful Sci-Fi RPG, and it is now with it fourth company or so. So I'm not too surpsed that ships haven't been a major driving focus for BRP.

Using just varable armor has some benefits, too. Especially with a major wound chart. YOu trade off some detail for other types. You can get delayed fatalities and chopped off noses in Strombringer, but you lose hit locations. I don't think that the fixed AP and hit location system is superior to the variable AP and general HP system. Just different. The variable system does make runing NPCs easier. The ultimate truism about any game. Probably about Life in general. Is what you are getting worth the trouble of the overhead? Some would say yes, some would say no. I know a lot of D&Ders who don't use hit locations or any sort of active defense, and to them RQ/BRP is more overhead than they are willing to pay for. Personally, I'd ike to take advantage of the fact that we use a 20-sided die for hit location and divide the body into 20 sections, and then work up the coverage. But that's me.

I did say "usually" not always. One of my favorite methods for reflecting this, and easily swipable was the metod used in Flashing Blades. When conducting an attack, the attack picked a location and if successful, he would roll 2d20 for hit location, and pick the result that landed closest to the spot he was aiming at. So, for example, If he was aiming at the head, and rlled Right Leg, or Chest, it would be a chest hit. Very easy to do, adds very little complexity. Every once in awhile, you still get the "aimed at head, hit in foot" thing, too. There are even some better aiming systems in other RPGs, the one in Timelords is my overall favorite, but it doesn't adapt as easily to BRP. But as far as varaible AP goes, the problem is that the fixed AP/hit location system doesn't leave the gaps in. For instance, a 1-3 Right LEg hit location, protected by 8 point plate greaves is 100% protected in RQ. Variable is more relasitic, since a good chunk of that leg is exposed. Anthing above the kneecap is avoiding the plate.

Because you can do a llot at the abstract level without loosing setting color if you do it right. One RPG that I'm fond of is FATE. While a very abstract system, it can handle many things and is easiliy adaptable becuase it is so abstract. Yet the game keeps color and flavor with a few tweaks. soltakss is right, for the most part vechile combat can be handled like PC combat. Just cut & paste the "flavor enhancers" you need to fit the setting. BRP actually does that through Superworld. Many superowlrd powers, are built in a manner similar to Chanpions. While a laser blast, Ki Strike, Disintergrator beam, and magentic rail gun are all differernt, the most important game effect are the range, skill% and damage. Much like a RQ hatchet and shortsword are fairly similar in a fucntional aspect in BRP. Certainly, fine-tuning the system to better fit the setting makes sense for a space combat rule system, but that is desireable for other RPG settings too. As other have pointed out, Chaosium has done this in the past to RQ to apapt it so that it would be suitable for Strombringer, ElfQuest, CoC, etc. I think the reason why we don't have any rules for statships is just that Chaosium has never released a successful Sci-Fi RPG. Ringworld and FutureWorld were barely blips on the RPG radar. It isn't that Spaceships are tougher to work out than Magic or Superpowers. The old Battle Magic system, while easy, certainly doesn't fit 90%+ of the fantasy settings, but we stil have it. I think the best way to handle it, and along the lines of how BRP is being organized, would be to work out a basic Hull/HP, MOVE, weapons, skill based system along sotakss idea (and workable along with the old sailing ship rules), and the work up some SPOT RULES for types fo SF settings. Stuff like different methods of FTL propulsion and all that could be in the SPOT RULES. Come to think of it, the superpower rules could probably handle spaceships. Just limit the powers availably by the setting. For instance, Star Trek gets teleportation, energy weapons, and forcie fields. Nope. Star Trek battles involve a handful of people sitting at consoles, making skill rolls, and saying how large damage control crews are rushing about the ship. On TV the Damage control crews generally boil down to one engineer or scientist character having to make a skill roll. It is really just a half dozen people who are handling the ship, and the other thousand NPCs are just there for color. That matches up well with a RPG group. As for Bablyon 5 (or any other setting) I again bring up the idea of SPOT RULES. THat's a good question. A BRPG spaceship's book? IMO I think that one weakness of generic RPG books is that it is impossible to cover all the bases. WE have an infinite capacity to envision settings, but a finite number of pages to cover it. So we prioritize. Personally, I think some Sci-Fi rules for BRP are more important than Superpowers, but since Supers was already written decades ago I can see why it is in the book. BRP does need some decent SCi-Fi stuff it is is going to attempt to cover the genre, and definitely needs some sort of spaceship rules to do so (hey, they put a spaceship on the cover, right?).

But not with uniform coverage, or able to protect all areas equally. Through most of histroy, armor had exposed areas.Prior to Gothic plate, all armor had vulnerable spots. Tere were actually weapons made speficially to exploit such gaps. Maille was probably the best as far as overal coverage went, and it tended to be vulnerable to certain types of attack. Maille was also best when forged out of iron, rather than steel, since the softer metal would deform and bend rather than break. That led to the armor degrading during combat, and one reason why armorers were kept busy. Take a trip to a decent armory, and have a look a real armor. There are all sorts of areas to go for. IT is not like it's a forcefield. Realistically, every attack is aimed somewhere. The "roll for location after you hit" thing is very unrealistic. When you swing, thrust, shoot, or whatever, you are actually aiming to hit somewhere, and if you do hit it is usually near the spot that you aimed at. So the eyeslits, neck, armpits (a major weapsot), joints, and any exposed areas are valid targets and would reduce the effectiveness of any protection. With RQ2 Greeky style armor, a man in plate actually has most of his arms, and legs exposed, and is vulnerable at the neck and at the eyes and face. That's why the hoplites used those big shields. So variable protection makes a lot more sense than a fixed number.

AQbout the only "bad" things about metric are: 1) Many Americans and unfamilar with metric and can't tell the difference between a kilogram and a kilometer. 2) If doesn't have the right flavor for a lot of historical settings. Something just isn't right about an adventurer going into a pub and ordering a "half a liter" (ha'litre? yuck!) of ale. You right about conversions though. For the most part, I like to use "Paces" rather than yards or meters. Good enough for most people to work it out, and has a nice archaic ring to it. But for the most part, I7m with you, and just go with 1meter=1 yard, 1 kilogram=2pounds, etc. It's not like the characters are actually weighting or measuring things that often, anyway (maybe the butcher has his thumb on the scale?).

Badkitty. So Jason, 1)What's your favorite new bit in BRP? 2)What's the thing you are most proud of? 3) Did the saling ship rules from Stormbinger/RQ3 make it into BRP< or is our galley stuck up the creek without an oar? 4) How about rules for age and aging?

That's the best idea I've read all week. It's so simple, it makes me wonder why no one brought it up before. :thumb:

Yes, if you are running an RPG around robots in a fixed position conducting the same exact attack on a fixed target. That's exactly how you can rate the inherent accuracy of a firearm. But firring from a bench rest against a fixed target with as consistent ammo as you can get. But that's go nothing to do with combat. Look at baseball. Every swing would be a Home Run. if baseball worked that way. Same with combat. People rarely hit the same exact spot, not do they use the exactly same amount of force, nor hit with the same angle, nor does the target stay fixed. Attackers change the force of their attack to conserve energy AND help to mask thier true strength. The best hit I even got on someone in real life was thanks to a "fumbled" parry (the guy circled parried clockwise instead of counter-clockwise and got clocked). That my friend stepped into the attack and added forced to it with the circular parry all led to the attack landing with a lot more force that I had put into it. If yo've been watching that much Mythbusters, you'll see just how hard is is for them to make some experiments "reproduceable". And that's with controlled conditions (or at least, as controlled as you can get with Adam on the set. )

Here we go... Quick trip to the atomic level-just try to make something like that, especially with medieval techniques. Imperfections and foreign substances exist to some extend in even modern metallurgy. Back to the Macroverse-that said, you don't want a homogeneous material for combat. Virtually every weapon and armor requires a mix of materials. Good swords, both western and eastern, were made with strong/hard cutting edges and a softer core to give them "spring". The best bows were composite in nature, and axes, maces, etc. all benefited from a combination of materials. Generally it comes down to making several trade offs. Also, as far as armor goes, a composte material protects better than a homogeneous one. IN general it is the same problem as with the sword. What is hard to cut is usually bad at abosrbing the kinetic energy, and what is good at abosrbing the energy is usually easier to cut. A good example would be Kevlar. Decent for absorbing energy, but fairly easy to cut through. By the time you did work up something homogeneous that would provide ample protection, it would probably be too heavy/bulky to wear. As for the rest, well coverage is a big factor that is rarely "covered" in BRP. FOr instance in RQ, vambraces (or occuasionally vambraces and rebraces) are considered to protect the arms. Historically, such protection left gaps that could be easliy exploited, avoiding the armor. THis was fairly eventent in RQ2, with it's Iron Age type of armor. A warior might have "Plate Greaves" on his legs, but the legs were unprotect above the shins. So variable protection makes sense. Even medieval armor tended to leave the backs of the legs exposed, as well as the armpits (the first to save weight, the latter for mobility). Full protection didn't really exist unil the latter middle ages, when the "maximillian" and jousting armors were developed. Just about the time when weapons technology supassed armor. Now interestingly enough, this sort of coverage was adressed in ONE BRP product-ElfQuest. Since the ElfQuest elves don't wear much armor, but were gaming in a RQ3 ruleset, the designers gave them a POWx3% roll to see if their jewelry was hit and absorbed some AP damage, like armor. Something like that could be expnaded to adjust weight and coverage. Now another argument for variable armor is that medieval armor was never homegenous, but was always a combination of overlapping materials. FOr instance, a strike against a knight dressed in "plate armor" might hit "plate" but might also hit a spot not covered by the plate, but protected by one or even two layers of mail (most joints for much of history), or cloth padding. So right there you could, in RQ terms have AP scores from 23 (plate+mail+mail+padding) down to 1 (padding). Add to that the fact that medieval armor is made thicker in some spots that others and the argument for variable protection is strong.

Yeah, and it's about time. THose of us over at the TrekRPG site, including a couple of line reps, are completely disgusted with Decipher. But the three years of line reps saying "I don't know, no one answers my emails" was unfair to the fans. That be one heckuva sales pitch. "Hi, give me you game and I write something for it!". Worthy of an Issaries Rune Lord. Wonder if I could adapt that to dating. BTW, Jason, We're not griping at you or Chasoium (okay, so we all want BRP now, but that's a good kinda gripe), just that all us old timers have gone through enough ups and downs with our favorite RPGs to take a "wait and see" approach. We all sort of secretly expecting/dreading that the bottom is going to fall out and are bracing ourselves for the fall. When that does happen we are usually caught a bit off guard.Even worse is the fear that some big RPG company might snatch up our favorite RPGs and pervent them by adding classes/levels and XP charts. 'cuz it's happened before. I'm afraid of the RPG bogeyman.

Back before MRQ was released and things started heating up over at the MRQ site, I noted that there were seven authors credited in the MRQ rulebook and drew a Gloranthan Red Goddess parallel that could have been used in the RQ fans didn't like the forthcoming product. As far as I'm concerned, the parallel stands. I expect the third, am not surprised by the fourth, and am pleased by the second. The first doesn't thrill me, as it usually means the product is so shoddy it wasn't worth buying. It's when something goes into the 41/2 limbo that scares me. Things like Chasoium's HEROQUEST, in limbo for over a decade (I had coffee go up my nose when I heard the Greg was releasing an HQ RPG, even if through a different company), or pretty much the entire Decipher RPG line (not dead, but as good as). As far as writing for an RPG goes, well, I sorta need a rulebook. If I offer to write something I wonder if Dustin would send me some rules?

Cat, IT is getting all the rules collected in one place and updated, with spot rules, suggestions and enhancements that make it worth it. Plus, like the bug said, what is to come. I've got RQ/RQ3/CoC/WoW/Superworld/5 different editions of Strombringer/etc.(I even got back up copies of some stuff). There probably isn't much RQ based RPG stuff I haven't seen if not bought. Yet having a single book that I can use to run a campaign has it's appeal. Heck, I even am working on my own BRP variant, and am just waiting for feedback from the someone who I emailed some stuff too (perhaps I should have "Yelmailoed" it instead of "Emaled" it? ) Besides, from what I sounds like, BRP seems to be turning into something similar to what you were using for your house system anyway, so you can save youself the time and trouble by forking over a few bucks to Chaosium and let them do it for you.

Interested, but I7m hesitant to bite the hook until I at least see the bait. I want to see what BRP looks like. I'm gunshy after seeing how the "return of the classic RuneQuest system" turned out. :eek: I'll be happy when I can flip through the BRP book and see all the familar RQ-based goodness. Plus see what's been modified.

Yeah, several suggestions. It depends on what sort of SCI-FI ships and combat you want. One suggestion (and perhaps the simplest method) would be to use the starship combat system from the CODA edition of STAR TREK. Here's why: 1) The starship combat stats are set on a different scale than the character combat rules, so you could use them "as is" without worrying if theyt match up well with BRP weapon scores. Of course you could alway equate 1 Hull pont to 100 BRP HP and 1 point of Penetration to 3d6x10 damage and work the rest out to BRP terms if you wanted to, but you don't have to. 2) Spaceship combat is abstract, with ship performing maneuvers like strafing runs, weapon locks, hard about and so on. Movement is done through range bads (like short/medium/long/etcd>) rather than on a map. This makes is easy to run "rules lite". 3) Most tasks are done by rolling 2 or 3d6 plus modifiers vs a target number. That makes it easy to just multiply the modifiers by 5 or 10 and apply to D100. Since most taks are tests aginst a skill rating, that plays right into the ways things are done in BRP. 4) The ship construction rules are simple and stand alone from the RPG rules (see point #1). Basically you decide how big your ship is, and that gives you a number of SPACES that you can fill up with goodies like weapons, engines, and shields. Badcat, I've got something lke a dozen Sci-Fi Rpgs, so PM me with what sort of setting your shooting for, and how complex you want the rules, and I'll try to find something.

You can reject RMS's point, but it is true. For one thing, few materlals are made to be "homogeneous" other than milk. Take a lot a modern engineering, everything has points that are stressed. Even if you went with a material that was strong, there is the fact that things like the type and angel of attack made a big difference is how effective something is in stopping an attack. Fighting materials need to balance between being hard enough to take the hit, and being soft/flexible enough to absorb the impact. And those weak points that you don't want to worrying about, trapping trusting attack and the like, were exactly what the warriors on the battlefield were worrying about. It doesn't really matter how well the plate protects if you don't have a helm on. At the local armory, one thing worth noting is how the eye slits kept getting smaller over the years. You really have tunnel vision with most medieval helms. But if you didn't, you take a sword, spearpoint, or arrow in the eye. So, a variable protection system makes sense. Especially if you are using general HP.

Ah. I got WoW. I take it that the magic been adapted to fit the full system a little better. MW just gave creatures a SIZ stat (and had that wacky either/or Damage bonus chart). So I take it Sorcery would include summoning AND the Battle Magic-esque spells from Elric!? Yeah, theres a lot of overlap there. Both systems had summoning rules too, so not all elementals will be created equally. It will be interesting to see how this all looks. Hope Chaosium can get this out soon. (Imagine the horror of continuing this thread for years and years if BRP goes down the HEROQUEST "coming soon" path! :eek:).

Ah. I didn't "forget" Magic. I ust didn't know it was something other than Sorcery. (What's the difference? Is SOrcery just the Summoning stuff from SB/Elric!). Having most of the BRP stuff on hand, I can see your point. SUPERS, not surprisingly, outclass just about everyone else (I actually had one guy in a super campaign write up a Special Forces character with no actual powers, just great stats and skills. The "Batman" concept works out rather well in BRP. For the most part he did everything better than the SUPERS, except things that a human can't do, like fly.) I think the mix & match stuff would be mostly magic/sorcery & psychic anyway, so i is good they sort of balance. Mutations sounds like it might have some possibilities for non mutated concepts, like a mad scientists' creations or "giant" animals, or to make new beasties. Take a rat, make it a meter long, armor it up and... ...oh...yeah. That's been done. Has the mutation stuff been expanded from the rather sketchy rules in Hawkmoon?