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SOmething that could serve as a tie in to a long term plot thread. It depends a bit on why the ship is being salavage, or why the planet is doomed, or whatever else is going on. Maybe someone was sneaking off world to avoid someone? Look at what else you got planned sotry wise and try to see how the character could serve the plot. It sounds like the whole attack thing was planned by someone. In that case here are some possibilities: The "passenger" could be the one who sabotage the dome, and the ship was in a protected area so they could escape. Kinda like Dr. Smith in Lost In Space. The "passenger" is a biologically engineered or enhanced soldier. The "passenger" is a maintenance worker who got thrown into the cryofreeze during the bombardment. The "passenger" is the real target ofthe attack, maybe some important business person or the ruling noble, who would be detected by the enemy normally, but not while in stasis. The passenger is a "mob boss'" significant other/offspring/accountant who was trying to get away. The "passenger" is a robot or clone of someone important, or knows something important. The "passenger" is a space hobo who was looking for a ride. The "passenger" is a dead body of a murder victim, and the players could get blamed for the murder if they can't figure out who did it. The "Passenger" was someone with a serious medical condiction who went into cryfreeze until they could get to a planet with acure. Either the dome planet was the desination, or just a stop alone the way. You need a second plot line. Something that that players can be working on before the attack takes place. That way you can get them all focused on something and then yank the rug out from underneath them with the attack. Once example would be if they were hired by the patron to retrieved their rebellious teenage child, who is running off to join the space circus or something. The players follow the clues that lead to the ship, fine the teenager in cryofreeze when the attack starts and they have to escape in the ship.

Ooohh, just think what or who could be on the ship in cryofreeze.

I'm fine with phasers but red clashes with my eyes. much more partial to blue, although I'd expect I might wind up in gold. I thought the quote went: "God created all men, but Samuel Colt made then equal."

You could always have them inherit the ship from some unknown benefactor. Strings optional.

Well, I ususally don't quote myself but...

Don't worry, some things rise to the top.

LOL! The first time I watched Aliens I said that about five minutes into he film, before Ripley, and had my firend (who had already seen the film) rolling on the floor. Hmm, how do you feel about phasers and the color red?

BTW, what sniper rifle do you prefer? No sense waiting until the monsters get into the same time zone.

Then I dated it in high school. No, you found the quicksand! They weren't kidding about the Formidable Perception roll, it took over 24 hours for someone to find it! If we ever end up gaming together I want you on point. BTW, Congratulations for for being the first one to find Quicksand.

The Pelinore adventure with the bandits and questing beast?. Yeah, it was a good adventure. I think it got dropped because it didn't make sense for Pellinore to be a knight wnhen he was supposed to be a king. Still, it was a good adventure. I wish Greg had updated it and replaced Pellinore with another famous knight. Yeah, but most of the NPC stats were too low to work now. IMO they were probably a bit too low even for KAP1, but the way Pendragon has evolved over the years, most of those 1st edition characters would be hard pressed to hold their own against most PKs now. You're remember it correctly. He'd gain damage dice until he was at double at noon. KAP1 drew a bit more fromCeltic sources than latter editions, which tended to stick close to Malory. Yeah. Still, we got to give credit where it's due. If KAP1 hadn't done so much right the first time around, the game probably wouldn't be around now. It was KAP1 that has served as the rock solid foundation for all the other editions. About 90-95% of what's in the core rules now is pretty much the same as first edition. Chargen has seen the most change, but mechanically healing, criticals beating higher rolls, and passions being the major alterations. I can't think of many other games where a player could drop a first edition character into a fifth edition game with as little trouble as they would have in Pendragon. You kinda have. KAP4 is mostly KAP3 with expanded chargen for all cultures , similar to what's in Knight's Adventuerous, as well as a section for player character magicians. Otherwise the two games are virtually the same.

Me too., If a like/follow and RPG then I try to get all of it. That's doable for most RPGs. There are some games that I picked up multiple copies of back in the day, or which I pick up whenever I see them in the used bin or at a yard sale because of that. Perhaps my favorite thing abotu DriveThru is that it helped to bring back old out of print RPGs stuff that otherwise never would have returned. Yeah.And sometimes the changes done when something get updated might not work as well. There are a couple of old RPGs where they updated and reprinted stuff, but changes in the rules altered on how things would play out compared to how they were intended to play out. I think with old books we walk a tightrope between wanting to tell everyone how great it is and not wanting to mislead them about a 20+ year old book that might not have anything in it that hasn't be done better latter on, or rules that no longer are used in the current edition. For instance KAP1 is what started it all, and is worth reading just to see what things Greg focused on in the limited space available in the rulebook, yet virtually nothing in the core rulebook would port over to a KAP 5 campaign.

Ooh, good point. I've seen a interview where someone noted that one of the reasons why it's so hard for economists to to predict things now is because economic theory was based on scarcity of product, and that's not really the case anymore. Cash on the Barrelhead! I kinda wonder, if a society ran on debit cards, but no one kept track of the debts, could it work? I mean if people acted responsibly and did buy 18 cars, 42 big screen TV, or some. In Trek people all have what the need and want, but no one seems to be greedy and grab stuff they don't really want or need.

Well you could just gloss over the economic aspects of things, like Classic Trek did, and just focus on whatever task the characters have to deal with. Give 'em some MagikTek (TM) food producers, and a 90% efficient solar cell generator to power it, more stuff like that, and assume that the basic necessities of live are so cheap and easy to produce, everyone has them. It really shouldn't be a political issue in game if everyone is well fed, has clothing shelter, and decent medical care as long as no one tries to make it so. If you wanted to you could do away with money entirely and just assume that whatever organization the players work for foots the bill. Maybe give the PCs a budget they are supposed to work within. It mostly comes down to how much importance you place on wealth in the setting, and in erms of character goals. Some games make accumulating wealth a major goal of the campaign, and you'll need to make sure you players understand that won't be the case with this campaign, and give them some other goals to work towards.

Yeah I know. In real life the quicksand is denser than people are (even us gamers) and you can't sink below waist level unless you panic, which some people do. But then there is Hollywood quicksand, which sucks you down. For real quicksand, I'll probably go with some sort of INT or Survival roll to know enough what to do or maybe an INT or POW roll to remain calm. The Mandela Effect? I've done some digging and so far I see it mentioned in Pulp Cthulhu but not written up. I'm starting to think I saw it in Justice Inc.l for Hero System. I figure it has to be in some Pulp era RPG, it was a classic jungle film trope, along with piranhas (which are only in South America and generally more likely to be eaten by humans than to eat humans).

Yeah, supplments tended to be shorter in the old days. Overall I think the larger page count of newer books is a mixed blessing. Yes you get more, but often it seems to cover less. I wouldn't recommend buying any first edition Pendragon books, unless someone is a collector, just being a being a completist, or has a couple of bucks to throw away of a PDF to read. It's all good stuff, but almost all if it has been updated, improved upon, and reprinted in some latter supplement. One of the things I hope for with KAP6 is that we get updated versions of everything so we don't have to go back into KAP3-4 supplements to find the rules for things, anymore.

The real life aging table is nasty. Somedays I find 12 point font hard to read.

Okay Tranquillitas Ordinis, I'll play... First off I used chess as an example. We could just as easily pick any other tasks that could be covered by a skill in the game. Move Quietly vs. Spot, Driving vs. Driving whatever. Fundamentally the problem here is that the better skilled character is going to loose more often that not to a lower skilled NPC. That result doesn't just "not look right", it isn't right. Both from a mathematical standpoint, and from a game play standpoint. Now you can jump through all sorts of hoops, try to rephase things, or deflct thing by obfuscation, but the simple fact remains that when, everything else being equally, the higher skilled character, especially a player characters, is at disadvantage against a lower skilled character, it's a bad game rule. Nice bit a sarcasm there. We don't not need to find a best solution, but we certainly have a better solutions available, namely the task resolution method used in virtually any other RPG. Can you think of any other RPG where the higher skilled character has a lower chance of winning in a skill based contest than the lower skilled opponent? Good idea. THat is a good question, and one which Is a flawed comparison percentile grading relative to other people isn't not necessary the same as success chance. If it were then half people firing a gun would miss the target half the time because they were in the lower 50% percentile, half the people taking their driver's test would fail and so on. All percentile grading does is measure a persona's ability reative to the general population. Nor is the relative distribution of skill in chess among the populace necessarily indicative of relative ability. Since the vast majority of people in the world don't play chess, the statistical mean would put the average rating much lower than what your have on your table. THat average person doesn't have anywhere near an ELO rating of 1650, but are unrated and play that way. A pity, it might be the only useful and constructive part of your apparent attempt to prove your point by trying to belittle mine. Basically your whole argument is that you don't care if the odds favor the NPCs over the characters and that is it somehow silly if other people do. I respond with if these values and result aren't important, why bother having them in the first place? Actually is is an issue. But not with the skill percentages buy with your method of linking skill percentage to ELO. In COC and other BRP games, skills are rated on the same scale. That's why someone with Sword 60% can skill parry an Axe at 60%, as well as another Sword, mace, or spear. To some extent that is a necessary abstraction required to make a game. Not quite. I don't think people expect someone with a 50% skill to win half or a third the time when facing an oppoent with 100% skill. They certinaly don't expect someone with a 90% skill to lose most of the time against a person with a 50% skill. QUite true there. In Chess, getting a draw is both easier that a win, and is also better than a loss, so often players will play for a draw. No, it doesn't. With an opposed roll the 90% skilled PC would beat the 50% skill NPC most of the time. With the difficult scale, he doesn't. So it doesn't predict the results "pretty well" at all. In fact it does a really bad job of it. He also only have a 45% against a opponent with skill 50, where with an opposed roll he'd have a significant advantage and win over 75% of the time. No. Mr. Genius vs even a 50% are not predicted relatively well by the Difficulty level. So the difficulty level method only works well for Mr. Dumb. What if you rated the difficulty not by the absolute value of the NPCs skill, but in the relative skill ratings? For instance, lets say that if the skills are within 20% of each other the player needs a hard (1/2 skill) roll to succeeds, and we shift the difficulty up on down one step per 20% difference in skill? I think you'd find the results to be an improvement over the current method. Then the odds would be closer to what they should be. They wouldn't be perfect, but they'd be better than what we get with the difficulty method. Which right there reveals that opposed rolls give better results than difficulty levels.Thanks for proving my point. Yes that's another result of simplification, in that the higher skilled character wins on tied success levels. This means that a 50 vs 51 results in the lower skilled character needed to roll a higher success to win, greatly reducing their chances. Frankly I'm not thrilled with that either, but at least it still favors the higher skilled players against a lower skilled NPC. Some improvement is better than none. Your "realistic" system was only realistic in terms of chess. Not in terms of other conflict. Now, yes in the game all skills are treated fairly equally, but that doesn't mean the data points between contests match up. What do you consider to be better? You don't consider a higher skilled PC to have an advantage against a lower skilled NPC to be better? It seems to me that you don't care what the results are, you just want to do things the simplest way possible and avoid any math. While I understand why you dropped criticals and such in your calculations, it does skew the results a bit. Yes it does, and illustrates why CoC wasn't originally designed to have opposed rolls. They don't really work well in a D100 roll low system with success levels. I did find it interesting, although I'm not sure what conclusions you think this proves. Does it prove that the difficulty level method gives results similar to the opposed method, or is just as good? If so then I'd say they don't. Simpler isn't necessary better. Again you exaggerate. It not the outcomes of "all" roll, but the general trends that you should pick up on. If you players are failing a lot of the time, desite having good skills, well, there is a good reason right there. Or at least give the players a fair chance. I'm not say thing the player have to be better than whatever oppostion they face. I'm saying that when they are better the rules should reflect that. It's not a little harder, it's a lot harder. In which case why roll? Look, when a player builds a character and puts points into a skill they try to relate that to what they think their character's capabilities. Someone with a skill at 90% in something is consider to be a master, and should, in an otherwise even contest, expect to have the upper hand against a lesser skilled opponent, especially a significantly lesser skilled opponent. But, with the difficulty system, they don't. So tell me. How much fun is it to kill off the player characters each week? It's beyond hard, it's misleading. The odds are against the players. Maybe you and your player like that, but I doubt most players would. CoC is already tough enough on players. Now even the cultists are guard dogs are better than the player characters.

I'm drawing a blank. Does anyone recall rules for quicksand in any BRP product? I figure it must have shown up in an adventure somewhere, probably a Call of Cthulhu adventure, but I can't recall seeing it anywhere. Does anyone else recall seeing rules for quicksand anywhere? No answers? Okay, has anyone seen quicksand in any RPG? I can't be the first GM to think of using quicksand?

Yup, and Yup. I'm not sure what your point is with that though. Again yup. I think this is all common knowledge to those who have seen both books. The GPC expnads upon and fleshes out the timeline presented in the PC. No. The several years at once thing was something that Greg used in a few special cases. At first it is used with pre-PHASE ONE starting date, so that the players can get familar with the game system and how it works and even have time to create replacement characters should things go sour, before being put into the campaign proper. Then, a few years are run at once to help give the players time to establish family lines and latter to trim those lines as needed. But the pace of the game was always the same at approximately one game session per year. Stuff like that is gold, since it helps to show us what Greg was thinking about with certian characters, why they have the stats they do, and provideinsight into how to run them. Yeah, no two Pendragon campaign are, could be, or should be, exactly the same.

Yup. There are a few gems in the PC that for some reason or another never got reprinted. The character timelines and the encounter tables come to mind. Plus any of Greg's "Designer's Notes" are gold, as they give us an insight not only into how the game is designed to work, but also why. I can't say how many times at the gaming table where having an insight into the designers intentions helped me to deal with a tough GMing situation.

Thank's for mentioning that. I've been advocating that approach to handle opposed rolls in BRP for years, but people claim that it favors the lower skilled character. The math indicates that it doesn't, and that most people focus on one subset of the possible outcomes." It's kinda like if the guy with a 05% skill rolls an 01 it's unfair to the guy with a 99% skill because he has no way of winning.

Sorry Mike, nothing personal but I honestly cannot not think of a single situation where I'd consider Option A to be a viable option. I have nothing against Fred either. I just think it's a bad rule.

Inconcieable! Of coruse. It's really the only they they can do. Then it is a broken system. The whole point of a RPG is allow players to do things than have meaning, and a game where their abilities mean nothing id pointless. It's not like CoC was alwalys this way. It was changed to streamline the rules. Now, I mentioned this rule to one of my players ealier today and the resonse from her was "Why bother wring up a character and playing?" I think it's a bad way to write up and run an RPG. I believe there were better ways to handle an opposed task.If I were to run that rule my players would all quit the campaign, and I can't say as I blame them. Players who know the rules just say "$%^# that! Let's play something else." And yes, that is a somewhat censored quote from one of my players. Of course it does. Look we aren't talking about Shoogoths or some such here. We are talking about any normal NPC with a skill score past a certain threshold. For example, let's say that an Investigator has Chess at 90% skill and is a Master. He plays a match against a decent player who has a 50% skill and only has a 45% chance of winning. That is a textbook example of a "particular rule puts players in disadvantage or treats them unfairly."

I'm not. I just believe it to be a bad method of doing things. People can dislike a rule without being upset. Yes, but that doesn't make the rule any better. A good GM can house rule or adjust anything. Considering how CoC7 plays, I can't really see a reason why a GM would put someone in there with a 90% spot skill except to trip up the players. It would be differernt if it was something that the players were made aware of and could try to work around it, but it's just something that will pop up an ambush them. Actually there is quite a bit people can do about core rules they don not like. FOr instance they can mention it. Much like how the OP can mention that is seems off to him, because, well it is off. Yes, it easy to house rule around, but so if everything else in an RPG. Just because something is easy to fix doesn't mean it isn't broken. while still doesn't offset the advantages the opponents have. For instance, if someone with 90% sneak skill tries to get past a 50% guard, the odds favor the guard, and if the PC pushes he suffers greater consequences. Yes. I'm not opposed to the idea of there being hard or extreme difficulty tasks, Only that an opposed task against someone with the same or lower someone with the same skill rating, shouldn't be extreme. Personally I think it makes more sense to set the rating by the relative difference in skills. I agree completely. If someone trying to decipher a 2000 year copy of the Necromicon tome written in a archaic Sanskrit it should be tough. I don't like the consequences of those concepts. Not only does it give the players a false sense of thier own competence, but they have no way of knowing what they are in for until it's too late. I don't agree with everything. The stark reality is that the laws of probability still continue to function at the gaming table. Players still make decisions about what they do based upon their understanding of what they believe will work and what won't. CoC is pretty bleak as it is without needing to up the ante for the players. Okay, same to you, except then why do you put that after trying to continue on with your argument? If you are going to debate a point with someone you actually need to listen to the other side, otherwise there is no debate or discussion.

Me too. Plus,there are better ways to get the same streamlining. This is like one of threshold high level AD&D modules where some sort of magical field prevents teleport, wish and all the other high level spells from working.