MrJealousy

There are about 370+ American tribes that are officially recognised by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. The list includes confederations, subsets, other divisions and some 'tribes' represent less than 30 people! Wikipedia has a list of them all here with links to a bit of knowledge on each. I am willing to bet there are omissions. Certainly you would have to look at Canadian and South American tribes as well. If you wrote it as an RPG book, included some general information, special abilities, magic, favourite method of warfare (or some thing) and at least one significant event in their history. That would require a minimum of 1 page per tribe (optimistic in some cases) giving you a 370+ page tome that is guaranteed to annoy someone and only be of limited use to any RPG group. Yes, I would like that book too! But I think we might be in a bit of a minority niche

I've mucked around with this kind of thing in Excel for RQ3 and Call of Cthulhu, which I've just uploaded here... BRP-CoC It's very simple though. Or, for something that is a bit more ambitious (but potentially also less useful), I have done a javascripted Aces High character generator here ngen.htm. Which is more complex and much more specific. My RQ3 'Foes Too' excel sheet is pushing 3mb and includes 50 plus pages of critters, but was never created with the intention to pass it on (means its rather messy, open to modification and primarily for creating NPCs). If you want to see it, if you're interested, let me know.

I'm with you on this one (despite my stupid post above). I had a similar moment when I realised going from RQ3 with its Search and Scan became BRPs Spot. Doesn't make a lot of difference to most people, unless you are short or long sighted. Both of which I have as disadvantages in Aces High...

Yeah 100 points to divide amongst their skill Brilliant!

That sounds a lot like Traveller, and Athletics used like this would make more sense to me.

I have a suggestion! You could have just two skills on the character sheet, Physical Athletics (STR+DEX) and Mental Athletics (INTx2). Bang! All possible eventualities covered, and so much simpler than having to faff about with... Oh no wait! I have a better idea! We could just have a skill called Skill (STR+DEX/INTx2) and then all of our characters and NPCs could be created in seconds... I'm sorry I'm not really being serious here... but I do sympathise with the original point. Just extrapolated it a bit

My two Aces High monographs devote a lot of space to the Natives. The AH mono itself deals with them in a fairly generic way but does draw attention to things like language, religious powers, and a supernatural difference between the tribes. The AH:New Mexico book is almost half filled with Hopi religion, with a little bit on Apache too. Both my AH monos are written from the point of a 'pale face' but I have tried to offer depth for the Native tribes with the intention that someone could use the information to run a game with Indians. That said, there are literally hundreds of tribes and while Sioux, Apache and Cheyenne are (possibly) the most popular ones there are others out there that almost scream for attention. Its why I focused on the Hopi for the New Mexico Book, I felt they deserved it... Although I do plan on elaborating on Apache for an Arizona book in the future...

Harpy New year. I'm looking forward to playing 'Derek Bullet, P.I.' in an upcoming CoC game, then finishing off part 3 of my RQ3 campaign and somewhere in there I will also be hoping to hack out another monograph for Aces High...

I always thought of it the other way around. NPCs can make outrageous lies and either they are caught out by inconsistencies in their story or the PC makes an appropriate roll to detect the lie. In BRP that'd be an insight skill roll, or some kind of Perception roll. I don't really think an NPC needs to make a roll, in fact I would go as far as to say that an NPC shouldn't make a roll to lie. It's a give away to the players... NPC says "I am the king of Atlantis" GM rolls dice and says "he seems to be telling the truth". When have you ever had to make a roll to tell the truth? My players would become immediately suspicious... However, NPC says "I am the king of Atlantis" Player says "Really!? Is that right..." GM offers the player an Insight/Psychology/Perception/Human Lore roll to 'read' the NPC.

Goof news indeed!

Not in bad form at all... and thanks for the compliment! I'm afraid you're not going to be impressed with my answer though, because I used MS Word! That's the format Chaosium want their monographs submitted in, so I assume all Monos are word docs.

Yes, it's AP=Armour Points. Should have been HP and I seem to have made a similar mistake in the New Mexico book too... but only for about half of the weapons! Sorry for the confusion I reckon if I do a third book I might get it right

Hmm, looks like this thread has been seriously usurped! I've done something similar on a smaller scale here for Aces High and here for RQ III. Neither of these were written for flexibility though... oh yes, and I've been working on this for RQ III too.

I'd be inclined to make it a Manipulation skill. Physical skills seem to be more about the whole body, manipulation is more about fingers and hand stuff. Not that my cowboys do any of that nambypamby stuff! Pull a gun, shoot someone. That's what i say It's poetry...

Yeah, over the years I have begun to really dislike the needless killing of natural creatures in my games. If my players stumble across a bear in my RQ campaign, for example, and they kill it. They then discover that it was only defending its cub, or it was stalking something really dangerous and might have been helpful, or something just NASTY happens to then in return. So when I'm creating new critters I'm not thinking 'this will make a good combat opportunity' I'm thinking 'why is it here, what is it doing, what does it want'. Most of the time the critter is essentially unaware of other societies (when you are talking about beasts they just don't understand) but that doesn't mean that it does not have a motive and an objective of its own. And I think having access to that motive can make a creature more than just a combat encounter. Anyway, thanks for the nice compliment. My RQ gang are going to bump into a couple of these tonight

Ok, I'm sure someone has done this before, but here's my attempt anyway... Yeti ... updated later in this thread...

Chaosium do reprint the monographs and Witchcraft looks like one that sells quite well. So I would expect it to reappear when they next get round to doing their reprint run. Hang in there I'm sure it will appear! Don't hold your breath

Oi

'Chaosium, turning order into chaos for thirty years.' That gets my vote!

Huh! Where's the fun in resorting to the book eh? It just proves that my memory isn't as good as... what was I talking about?

I would approximately advise... trainee, basic skill to 40% middling, 40% to 60% advanced, 50% to 75% master, 75% +

Thanks Filbanto, its just that kind of prompt that actually makes the whole process worthwhile for me!

I think it took about 8 months to get the payment for my Aces High:New mexico book, don't think it had anything to do with the print schedule. Dustin always came through for me in the end though, but he doesn't hold the purse strings... And yes, it is incredibly frustrating.

Its another Chaosium Sale! - Chaosium Inc.

Sorry missed that one... You're talking Aces High again aren't you? The -20% is a one off penalty. Fanning sacrifices accuracy for speed. Getting off the shot is quicker (-1 Dex rank) but the penalty to your skill (-20) does not stack up. Your skill for all shots while Fanning is at -20, doesn't matter how many shots you fire its always -20.