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You haven't asked me to do anything. You declared that it is tangential, and don;t want to talk about it. No, it is a deduction drawn from the evidence of what happened. In case you faieled to notice Worlds of Wonder didn't stay in print for years, so at best it could only sell out it's print run. I'm not assuming anything. I'm pointing out that Worlds of Wonder wasn't 1982 Game of the Year. We don't have the sales numbers for Callof Cthulhu either, but we can easily tell that it outsold Worlds of Wonder. What we do have is the reaction that it got at the time, the revies it got in the various magazine of the day, how many copies show up on the shelves (and left said shelves) at the time. Then why go to the trouble and expense of making a printing the game in the first place? . No game company releases a game and then abandon if it is successful. Remember, that was before the days of desktop publishing and PDFs. Making it was a drain on their time and resources. If they wanted to focus on other games they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of making WoW in the first place. An unlikely supposition since they went on to produce other RPGs that they did support. ANd if they didn't want to support WoW, why split off Superwolrd into it;s own line? Which a hit game would have received. Every RPG that Chaosium produced in the 1980 got at least one Exactly, but it's not pure speculation to say how successful it was. Because the past actually happened. In the real world, Chaosium didn't support Worlds of Wonder, and instead focused on other games, specifically Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon and Pendragon, and made a deal with Avalon Hill to try and promote RuneQuest . They relased a Ringworld game, and All thier other games got multiple editions, including two versions of ElfQuest. Everything got more attention except Worlds of Wonder. That was reality. Any claim of how popular WoW might have been if it had gotten more support is the pure speculation. here. THat's all on you. It's like speculation on how things might have gone for RuneQuest if Chaosium didn't make the Avalon Hill deal. But the thing is the deal did happen. . You have shifted the goalposts. You title the thread: Then when I challenged that you said: And that is moving the goalpost. You went from a specific statement about the need for mini-settings -which is debatable, to a statement about the need for supplemental support -which is not. Yes. Generally speaking you have to have the rules to play the game. Which doesn't mean that the mini settings were what was driving those sales. That's speculation on your part. We don't know why the sales increased. In fact, your own argument agianst you, you can't say that the sales did increase unless you have the sales figures, can you? Personally I believe it sold, and that it did so because it was perceived as a good game. Does anybody buy an RPG because it is well supported, or do they buy it because they think/hope it's good.? I think support matter more for how long people keep playing a game, and what game the group in playing is what matters as far as sales to the other players in the group. It why practically everybody who played D&D regularly owned a copy. It was what they were playing. I'm not. Mini-setting can be very good. It's just a bit harder for them to be so, since if something is good there is a tendancy to make more of it. No contention there. Higher page count doesn't mean a better game. Which is exactly the direction that Chasoium was going in before the whole D&D OGL fiasco. But it is an assumption on your part that "demonstrating the game's versatility" is e best way possible. And you doing so at a time where most of the Universal RPGs have been in decline or at best, treading water. But there is no reason to believe that getting lots of mini-setting out there would help BRP. GURPS probably has the widest range of diverse setting to play, and these day it has a lot of short mini-supplements, but the days of impressing people with diverse settings is long past. All the major RPGs have multiple setting now. Not if they are successful. If you look at the various RPG companies, once they have a successful game they stick with it, and prioritize it over a new unproven game. It's basic business. Once you have a product that people like, you don't prioritize something that they don't like. You prioritize what works for you. Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean your priorities are the correct ones in this case. Now what I getting from this is that you personally like mini-setting, which is fine. But I'm saying that isn't necessarily a universal truth. Or even that it is universal to BRP players. It's not like there haven't been mini games for BRP in the past (Fantasy Paths anyone?).I';m not saying I'm opposed to Mini Setting either. IMO any decent supplement helps. What I am contesting is the idea that BRP needs mini-settings. In fact, I doubt if mini setting will move the needle. I'm sorry if you don't like that idea, but you did ask what other people thought.

Just a thought, but what if damage to locations came off the vehicles stats? For instance, if using Mecha scale (10 to 1) then a point of damage to the engine or propulsion system (wheels, tracks) could come off the vehicles Rated Speed. So an APC with a Rated Speed of 7 that too 2 points of damage to it's tracks would lose 2 points of Rated Speed and move at Speed 5. When Speed hits 0 the vehicle can n longer move. Damage to steering could apply a -5% to handling per point; damage to a weapon could affect's it's targeting ability (-5% to hit per point) with the weapon becoming inoperable at zero hit points, and and so on down the line.

It not tangential when you have a page count. One nice thing about FATE is that a new player can download an SRD and play a limited version of the game. Or even use FUDGE. But there is evidence. The evidence that Worlds of Wonder did not become a major system, or get any support. While Greg admitted that he didn't always make the best business decisions, I'm sure he and the others at Chasoium would have support (or at least reprinted) Worlds of Wonder had it taken then gaming world by storm. It didn't. That's not the same as needing mini-settings. There are many types of "supplemental support". Changing from mini-settings to "supplemental support" is moving the goalpost. It would be like my saying that people need steak to live, then backing it up by saying people need food or their starve to death. Yes they need, food; no they do not need steak per say. Yes, but that doesn't mean they will sell as well as more fleshed out setting or scenarios. No, your arguing (well arguing is probably too strong a word here. How about your in favor of?) that mini-setting are needed, and that they are the fastest way to support the game. I don't agree. I think the fastest way to support the game it to come up with one good setting (size variable) with lots of adventures. There are a lot more adventure supplements than mini-settings. Agreed. That is exactly;y what happened with the BGB. But to be fair, who are the ones who should be doing that? I mean there is nothing stopping any of us from making supplements for BRP, of any size. That not many have done so, as of yet, could mean that the system doesn't appeal to potential authors as much as some other systems, or that the ORC license hasn't been around long enough for much to be written. If you think about it, Mythras got most of the BGB's mini-settings, because of the old license. ORC opens things up, but now a lot of the authors have migrated to Myhras, D100 Revolution and so on.

That's good, because I changed it! 😁 In retrospect I don't see why a character with more hit points would be less likely to catch some shrapnel. So I changed it to the damage that the compartment takes. I think it makes more sense that a character get's injured if the compartment he is in get's blown to bits around him. Like so:

FATE is a lot lighter than BRP. You don't have pages of weapons tables in FATE. FATE does everything with a FUDGE die roll and the ladder. FATE also has (or at lead had) a free SRD. BRP has a 260+ page rule book (previously over 400 [pages). So not as light. Now BRP once was very lite (16 oppages or so) and in that form it might work in 50 pages or less. No, and neither does anybody else. But if it sold as well as any of the other games, it would have gotten support. Yes, but what does have to do withit being successful. Yeah, you might like it. I liked it too, and Jason Durall has noted that he likes it. But that didn't mean that it was a major success. It got no support. The Superoworlrd boxed set was essentially a new edition. Yes, enitrely speculation - your. You are the one speculating that it could have been more successful, if they had done something differently. But you have no evidence to support that view. It faded because it got no support whatsoever.. Not only that but it's fourth setting, Viking World, was moved over to RQ3 instead. One of the big differences between GURPS/HERO and Worlds of Wonder is that the former two game systems were full fledged games, while WoW wasn't. BRP (at that time) was a trimmed down version of RuneQuest. So if someone wanted something more than what came in WoW, they went to RQ. The original WoW was interesting because it pushed the envelope for the RQ game system. It added superpowers, and science fiction, and a standard FRPG fantasy world (which was new to RQ). Today all that as been done with BRP. To move the needle any similar product would have to add in something that hasn't been done in BRP before. You're moving the goal posts. There is a huge difference between mini-settings, and supplemental support. Yes, it needs supplemental support, all RPGs do. But what it needs is adventures. That's what sells RPGs. As you pointed out BRP already had a supplement with some mini-setting, it didn't move the needle. With settings it isn't about quantity but quality. One good setting will do better then five mediocre ones. And if a setting is good, it would be a waste to throw it away in a one off product. It as worked in conjunction with lots of fully fledged out setting that get support. Several things for Fate of Cthulhu. Even Atomic Robo gets some supplements. FATE does a lot more than cheap mini-settings.

FATE is a rules lite system though. So authors can just focus on the setting and atmosphere. BRP would need a little more. Which didn't really sell at that well. Remeber that Chaosium had mostly stopped supporting BRP in favor of stand alone RPGs until WotC started driving off their fans and third party supporters. The original WoW idea was a great concept. Iit came out, but mostly faded. It didn't really help to promote the system, and it was never as popular as RQ, CoC, Pendragon or Stormbringer. So I don't think BRP needs mini-settings. Mini-setting probably won't help BRP much at all. I think it does need at least one new setting with several adventures for it. It's ususally the adventures that make a game.

Yeah but it's not like the crew gets shredded, leaving the rest of the compartment in pristine shape. SO if the vhicle took 10 points to the crew compartment, crew make LUCK rolls and the vehicle take 10 hit points worth of general damage. BTW, I was thinking that for the LUCK roll, the difficulty would be based on the damage compared to the character's hit points. Damage <1/2 HP:Easy Damage>HP: Hard Failure means the character takes frag damage (4D6); success means only 2D6, special 1D6, and a critical means the character walks away without a scratch. I was thiking of treating it like with characters. THe damage comes off the location/system and from general hit points. Yeah. It's a trade off between characters being able to target specific parts (tracks, main gun, engine, fuel tank,etc.) and the simplicity of just using a major wound mechanic, along with a a "major damage table" that could allow for a lot more results (taking out some lights, the antenna, night vision optics, the radio). Perhaps it I did up the table in increasing severity? That way someone could still target a specific system. And it's free, too. I'll give it a look. Not a problem since their weapons also do different damage. Oh, and I do have a formula for working out armor value by thickness that I was planning on using. It kinda comes down to how close I want to keep this to the stats presented in the BRP core book, and CoC supplements. If I didn't use the BRP stats I could just base the armor and weapon values off of real world thicnkness and penetration data(RHAe). I'm trying to keep the values mostly compatible though. Thanks.

Interesting idea, but does any RPG have something like this? Most universal RPGs (HERO, GURPS, d20 Modern) have setting books but they are a larger than 50 pages. I think that by the time an author tweaks chargen for the setting, sorts out what available for weapons, equipment, and powers, introduces and needed new rules, describes the setting, and does up an adventure, it's going to end up over 50 pages. Glancing at the universal supplements I have most seem to come in at about 120 pages. I suspect that's probably about the size needed to jump through all the required hoops. Now maybe if someone just focused on an adventure, and maybe do just the setting, they could get it smaller. Say someone makes a generic setting or two with the required rules, and then a series of short adventures for those settings.

You might be able to find a copy of the first edition on eBay, Amazon, etc. if you look. Just be careful not to overpay. Apparently 2nd edition is rarer. Good news is that both editions are functionally the same with 2nd edition having a different layout and color illustrations.

I'd figure it would be like with people, that is damage comes off of location/system and total hit point. THe idea being that like with a person, you might have a vehicle so banged up that it stops working even though no system is disabled. OKay, We're on similar ground here. Yes,it's just figuring out how. I'm going to have to bend a few BRP rules but it should work. Okay, let me give you the quick version. IN BRP Mocha, large machines (mecha) are given thier own scale. Each point on the mecha scale is 10 points of normal damage. Weapons, armor and hit points are all scaled. Thus a tank with Armor: 20, Hit Points: 140 would have Armor: 2 Hit Points: 14 in mecha scale. Since weapons are scaled a weapon that would do 10D6 normally would do one-tenth that, or 1D6 in Mecha Scale. One of the game effects of this is that you get a lore more variance in the damage rolls. While it's hard to get 50 points or more on 10D6 (0.29%), it's a lot easier to get 5 or more on 1D6 (33.33%). That's good for vehicle combat, since it gets us out of the bell curve of lots of dice, and the 68-95-97.5 rule.. Mechanically it would be the same as rolling 1D6x10. Now Mecha has hit locations (for giant robots anyway) too, although it might work with a major damage (major wound) rule for hits of half total HP , and a major damage table. But hit locations let people target specific areas.

LOL. I used to program my Tandy PC4 to calculate Skill Category Modifiers, Total Hit Points, and Hit Points per location. 😁

Yup. Ah. In the setting, vehicle can get damaged as well as destroyed. So it's a win win. I know the feeling, but if I abandon the BRP model here, why use BRP for the rest? I mean other than being a BRP fan. These days thre are alternatives that can handle vehicles better and still have a good skill based game for the PCs. Pretty much. THe idea of some sort of save is there both to keep hit points relavant, and to give PCs some chance of surival. SOmething that happens in both real life and in the setting. Heck in real life one on the resons why things are arranged the way the are in a tank is to give the crew added protection. A round that hits the engine probably wont be killing the crew too. It's in the lead right now. That or Mecha scale with hit locations. The latter being more BRP ish. Oh skill is important, but a big tech advantage helps. It's just that the leaps in technology are more pronounced. Probably a bad example. WWII really showed that manufacturing and logistics are key. It doesn't really matter if the enemy has a bigger badder gun and twice the armor if you can out produce him ten to one, plus supply all your allies.

Good question. I don't want to depart too much, but I have toyed with a KILL% idea so I'm not far off from your model. It's pretty much how BTRC's Timelords does it too. Damage is read as a percentage of the total hit points. How do you handle the damage/hit point calculation? Do you do it on the fly for each hit? I'd probably want to simply that somehow. Say break hit point total up into 10% chunks. So a 140 hp tank would have a 10% kill chance per 14 points taken. Thanks.

Somewhat. A lot of the time a kill is a catastrophic kill- that is vehicle and crew are dead. But depending on what shoots what and where, sometimes only the tracks get killed or some such. Okay but just what does that damage mean? And how much od the damage do we apply. What's left or what was rolled. Okay, let's say our 140 hp tank has an engine that has 25% of total hp, like a hit location. That's 35 hit points, and far more killable with the weapons in game. Now lets say a tank gun hits the tank and the engine takes 26 points of damage. Now what does that mean? Is it like with characters, that is no effect until the location reaches 0 hp? Or does the tank loose some speed? Exactly how? Using the example above if the crew compartment takes 26 points of damage does everyone in the compartment take 26 points? What if only 1 point gets through. Realsitically, even if 5% of a the energy of the round gets into the crew compartment it's bad for the crew. We're talking a couple of hundred thousand joules here. That not really how damage works in BRP though, not even for characters. Even with hit locations a character is still alive until total hit points reaches zero. The only exception is when head, chest or abdomen takes twice it hit points in damage. With 35 point engines that's going to be hard to pull off. Especially with bell curves. Someone rolling 1D6 is going to see a 6 far more often than someone rolling 15D6 is going to see a 90. That's actually one of the reasons why Mecha scale appeals to me as an option. Give that tank Armor: 2 Hit Points: 14 in Mecha Scale, give that engine 4 hit points, and let that 15D6 tank gun do 1D10 damage, and suddenly an engine kill becomes a real possibility, as does a 2x engine kill explosion. Even the character works out better as 1 point through is 10 points in character scale, and bad news. Yeah, that could solve a lot. It even allows for a total hit point kill with a slightly above average special. Yup. And it's fairly realistic too. Lots of cases where the crew get fragged but the tank seems fine except for this fist sized hole. Just look at Ukraine. Exactly. That's why I'm trying to find something that is quick, simple, and playable, but can still give acceptable results for the setting. It's not so easy. BTW, in the source setting most hits are kills, some cause damage/impairment of some kind. But also, most of the attacks are with weapons designed to shoot at what they are shooting at.

Which isn't much, since few BRP games even have vehicles. So far the most helpful option was the KILL% from one of the Chtlhu variants. Do you know of any others? I'm not familiar with any, although I hope someone else is. . Keep in mind here that armor isn't the big issue. For example, let's say we took two BRP "modern tanks" and cut the armor off the front of one, then shot at it with the other. 15D6 isn't going to take out (or by RAW, even impair) a 140 hp tank, without either a critical hit (180 points) or a impale that is 4 standard deviations higher than the norm (less likely than the critical).So AP options that reduce the damage just make the problem worse. What I need is a way to either reduce the hit points or maybe divide them against certain weapons. The thing is with how BRP works, even if you get 10 or 20 points through the armor, the tank is not impaired. In real life such a hit would trash some of the insides of the tank (and likely some or all of it's crew), heck in real life even a 2 point hit through the armor would do that, but in BRP the tank just loses a few hit point. It's like someone with 14 hit points taking 1 or 2 points of damage with generic hit points. That's what I'm trying to find a work around for. Basically what I need is a way to model the same sort of lethargy that the game has for characters, where one shot can kill. Instead vehicles get hit point attrition. Even with general hit points, a character can take a major wound. But not vehicles. Even someone with 18 hit points can be dropped by 1D6 with a lucky impale or critical, but a vehiclee with 180 hit points cannot be stopped by 10D6, even with a critical. Specials are already modeled with the impale rule (by RAW only AP weapons can impale vehicles, or at least armored ones). I can add in something for HEAT rounds and such, but the core issue, the high hit points, remains. By RAW a LAW rocket won't make a modern tank go boom even with a critical. It's not likely to make a vintage one go boom either. A lAW rocket, even the original M72 LAW should open up a "Vintage" tank like a tin can. And again, it's not so much the armor that is the issue in BRP, it's the hit points.

I don't know. Barring lights and antennae. I'm not sure 't know if having detail that's not needed is a plus. Well, I'd kinda like to for armor penetration purposes, but probably in an abstract way. Something like a tank loses 4 armor from it's sides, 8 from it rear, 12 from the top. Just to give players a reason to move around behind a tank, or to let aircraft be effective against armor.

Well according to David Scott, when he replied to the OP about a Prince Valiant reprint: Since David Scott is in the loop, Prince Valiant will be available in the kickstarter.

Iit is about the rules because: I'm trying to emulate the results of the source setting, which do not match the results of the BPR rule.I'm going to need vehicles to be able to kill each other fairly often with one attack. TO do that I need to alter some rules. This isn't about how the player see advantages and weaknesses but how weapons actually work against vehicles. In real life (and most fictional setting at least try to factor in a bit of reality) heavy weapons can take out armored vehicles, but that isn't really the case with the BRP stats. In BRP even a critical hit from a LAW rocket (8D6 AP) doing max damage (96 points) through armor, won't kill a modern tank (140 hit points). The weapon just can't do 140 points of damage, and by RAW nothing less can stop or otherwise impair the tank. Any method of altering that means altering the rules. BRP game mechanics do not factor in for weak spots, known or otherwise, other than by impales and criticals. To add in a way to exploit such weaknesses would require changing the rules. So yes, my issue is about rules. That said, I like your idea of adding weaknesses. Thanks, I don't think it addresses my problem but it does make things more interesting, and would help with a specfic vehicle in the setting which pretty much has to be taken down by targeting a particular weakspot. So the idea helps Now if all fairness to BRP, it's based around personal combat, and was never really designed to handle vehicle combat, beyond the occasional chase. What we got was stuff that was added in piecemeal and the actual values didn't really matter much, since 20 points and 50 points usually mean about the same thing to a character. Dead by 5 points of 500 points doesn't matter. I just looked at some test paper on battlefield statistics and the researcher broke down the "kills" in an interesting way, and one which might mesh with your idea of adding weaknesses. What the paper did was break down kills into catastrophic kills (vehicle go boom), mobility kills (vehicle immobilized), and firepower kills (vehicle weapons disabled). I was thinking that: A vehicle has to roll against it's current hit points when damaged. A roll under hit points means the vehicle is damaged but functioning normally. Maybe the difficulty of this roll could be adjusted based on the hit point state of the vehicle? A roll over hit points means a "kill" of some type. Odd failure means a mobility kill (vehicle stops moving, but is otherwise intact) Even failure means a firepower kill (weapons out but vehicle otherwise okay) A roll that fails by more than 20% is a catastrophic kill (vehicle destroyed, character make a LUCK roll) Weaknesses could be factored in by targeting a spot/system and having it apply a modifier to the survival roll for the targeted weakness. For instance targeting mobility or firepower would ensure that they are what get's taken out on a kill, and targeting something for a catastrophic kill could could the kill margin to more than 10%.

They might but it's usually due to an autocannon, rocket, energy beam, nuke, etc. striking the vehicle. Yeah that could work, but it would mean coming up with hit locations, and even then I'm not sure if the attack could do enough to take out a system and knock out the vehicle. For instance, using my tank example, a typical hit is going to get about 28-29 points through the armor, which is less that 25% of 140 hit points. But it's still an idea. I don't relish having to do up hit location tables for every vehicle, but it might be worth the effort. It varies. In most cases in the primary source they just go boom is a nice fireball, but sometimes they just are intact but inoperable and one or more survivors get out. Some vehicles have ejection systems. I was thinking of allowing a LUCK roll to escape a destroyed vehicle. Maybe adjust the difficulty based upon how "destroyed" said vehicle is. A vehicle that get's "killed" twice over might be a hard LUCK roll to escape.

I'm working on setting up a campaign for a specific sci-fi setting. One where characters in vehicles sometimes shoot at other vehicles and vice versa. In the setting various vehicles can often damage or destroy each other with one shot. My problem is in adapting the BRP rules. For example, lets say we have two modern BRP tanks (Armor: 24, Hit Points: 140) shooting at each other with tank guns (15D6). Doing the math, we can see that on average, it will take five hits for one tank to take out the other. Factor in for an impale and it might happen in three. Still too many for the setting. I've been thinking of ways to achieve the desired results, and am posting them below for other people's opinions and (hopefully) a better alternative. Option 1: All of Nothing If an attack gets past the armor the vehicle is destroyed. This is closer to my goal and to how it tends to work out in real life. But it makes hit points worthless, and would break down with bigger vehicles (tank gun takes out battleship). Option 2: Hit Point Save This is the same as option #1 exact that the vehicle gets a "saving throw" against it's remaining hit points to survive the hit. A roll of 96-00 is always a failure, and a 00 is probably a catastrophic one. It will probably still take several hits to take out a vehicle but at least there is always a chance of a kill. Option 3: BRP Mecha and Resistance Table The idea here would be to covert every to BRP Mecha scale (1/10) and then compare the incoming damage to the remaining hit points on the resistance table to see if a "kill" is scored. Anyone got any other ways to handle this in BRP?

that contradicts what David said So if David has it right then this would be a way to get Prince Valiant?

Sorry David, but most of us hear anything about it in four years. That'snot a good sing for a kickstarter. Has Chaosium managed to renew the license for Prince Valiant? The last posts from MOB and Rick Meints, in 2019, didn't indicate so. Also, any idea when the Concordance will be available?

That's what I thought. I think that has changed. Remeber that the project was announced some years ago, by Stewart Wieck, who is sadly no longer with us. At the time he held the rights for both Pendragon and Prince Valiant, all of which has changed. The comments section do not look promising, and I fear this is probably a failed kickstarter.

And often those holdovers are either incopatible with each other or with new rules added in the BGB/UGE. Basically most, if not all, of this stuff worked, back in the game where it orginally ame from. But the mix 'n match nature of the BGB leads to things being used together that were not created to do so. Yeah, it's greatest strength is it's greatest weakness. It's a great tool kit for experienced GMs who want to fine tune it to fit a specific setting, but it's very hard to get it all to work together until you do. Yup. How well it works will be the issue, and that is subjective, both by player preferences and by the genre being emulated.

I'd go with: Weapons of the same type (1H Sword, 1H Axe, 2H Spear, etc) used the same skill (so Broadsword, Shortsword and Scimitar would all use 1H Sword). Weapons that were considered by the GM to similar (i.e 1H Club and 1H Axe) can default to one half the higher of the two skills. OPTIONALLY: Rule #2 can be applied to someone using an weapon that they are unfamiliar with at first, until they get time to become familiar with the balance of the weapon. For instance, if a PC loses their broadsword (1H Sword) and picks up a kopesh (also 1H Sword) for the first time. That seems a lot simpler to me, and is more in keeping with the spirit of older BRP games.