soltakss

Since Uncounted Worlds will not accept RQ material, that may exclude a lot of the Alephtar range. In any case, competition is good, isn't it? I, for one, would buy both.

A good example of a Fumble – Hit Self. Same Strike Rank, same DEX. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2BV0Z39a8Y&NR=1

That sounds like a good idea. We could update the SRD as other things are published to include things such as Summoning and Enchanting. That would make it a full medieval magic SRD.

Ah, so it's just the Christian Saint cults that are hamstrung by not having Rune Magic. It makes sense for medieval Rus to have both magic and I suppose it makes sense for some pagans as well. Consider me corrected.

Perhaps, unless you had access to a temple within an episode. I've never houseruled this and don't really accept the reasoning, but that's another discussion. Some people claimed that. I always found that I cast one-use Divine Magic if I needed to stay alive, faced a dangerous foe, needed to help someone else or had a general pressing need. My initiates never hoarded Divine Magic, simply because it was so useful to be cast. Also, I found that the skill requirements outweighed the Divine magic requirements every time. With a POW Gain Roll every scenario, almost guaranteed, my initiates would make a POW Gain roll every 3 or 4 scenarios and generally spent it on Divine Magic. In fact, keeping POW fairly low meant that the POW Gain chance went up and the POW gained also increased. Acolytes had access to reusable magic and didn't need the 10 points of Divine Magic, at least in our games. But, we found that it was beneficial to reach 10 points of magic and then continue to sacrifice. That meant that using the one-use magic store magic wasn't that crippling and also meant that you kept a lot of magic when you gained Priesthood. Which is, possibly, OK. It gives Initiates acces to magic without relying on Rune Magic which means that the Theist/Animist distinction can be made clearer, I suppose. I prefer using both Rune and Divine magic, but in certain settings (Stupor Mundi/Merrie England for example) this won't happen.

As a huge fan of the Water Margin, I'd be interested in buying this. As to what we would like to see, I'd like a solid BRP-style setting, with good character generation, chinese professions rather than generic ones, name lists, good background material, examples of the laws of the time and special rules for the Mythic elements (Taoist sorcerers, shamans, magical swords and other weapons and rules for over the top things such as Chi, Kung Fu and martial art fighting). I'm not particularly in to the modern chinese films style Kung Fu, I preferred the type of stuff in the Water Margin and Empress Wu - low level, almost believable but still breathtakingly awesome. Oh yeah, you need to have rules that allow someone to be cut in two lengthwise with a sword - that was one scene in the Water Margin that blew my mind as a kid. Isn't there a supplement coming out from Alephtar Games covering Chinese Kung Fu? Maybe you could tap into some of that. Yours would be a solid setting rather than just being generic rules.

I'd use Personality Traits and Allegiance, but for different things. Personality Traits describe what the character's personality is. It helps with roleplaying because the player can look at the Personality Traits and ask "how would my character be expected to behave in this situation". Allegiance describes how a character is supposed to act, in terms of which organisations/cults/societies he belongs to. So a player could say "I think that my character would be expected to behave in such a manner". However, neither of these should determine how a character behaves or what a character does. If a character has Chaste as a Personality Trait but is seduced by a wanton barmaid then having Chaste does not stop him from being a naughty boy. Afterwards, he may well be wracked with guilt or he might be taken to task by his superiors for his immorality, especially if he has taken a vow of Chastity. During play, the GM may well ask him to make a Chaste roll to see if he is tempted and play may well proceed in different dorections depending on the result, but I wouldn't force a PC to behave in a certain way just because the player rolled or failed to roll Personality Traits. After all, history is full of examples of people being expected to behave in certain ways but actually behaving very differently. One caveat I will add is that someone who has a high Chaste Trait, for example, who goes around seducing everything in sight would quickly lose the Chaste trait as he is clearly not chaste. Similarly, someone with Brave who runs away from battle, or someone with Cowardly who charges into battle at every oppotunity might lose their trait. OK, the last example might be due to the coward overcoming his personality trait and might be a good story or plot link.

I've uploaded V0.6 to http://www.soltakss.com/rq_scifi.doc. This version includes information from the High Guard and Mercenary SRDs, an attenpt at Traveller-style character generation and slightly tidied-up ship generation and space combat rules. Comments, as always, are welcome.

I've bought the Career Book and Traveller Zero PDFs because they came to about 5 pounds between them. They seem to be useful and make character generation look easy. Thanks.

Following Loz's comments on the Mongoose Forum, I think I'll abandon the mechanic and just use a table. It reduces the effect of having a high skill but that doesn't matter so much in the context of what I need it for. My wife doesn't like me buying RQ stuff, so she'll be even less pleased with me buying Traveller stuff as well. Perhaps I'll lolok at buying some cheap PDFs. The Babylon 5 Traveller stuff looks interesting, though. I was hoping that the Trvaller SRD was fairly complete, but it looks as though the Traveller rules have a lot more detail. Hmmm, I guessed as much. A rule that I think isn't in the SRD. I'm going to have to buy the Traveller rulebook, aren't I? Having them spread around in various books is an excellent way of generating income but is really frustrating for me. Oh, I am going to streamline it for RQ. If people want the full version then they can get Traveller and adjust it for RQ. Yes, I am using Survival rolls, to a certain extent. People won't die during character generation like they used to in earlier Traveller incarnations. I am using Resilience to determine if people get wounds and am using Characteristic x 5% rather than Traveller's Int 9+, Soc 8+ etc to determine Survival. I'll have a look at it again tonight and see how much I can simplify it.

I'm working through the High Guard and Mercenary SRDs and adding them to the RQ SciFi SRD. Traveller loves its tables, it's taking half my time combining multiple tables and stripping out unnecessary tables. When looking at Traveller-style character generation, the rules in the new SRDs refer to Degrees of Effect and allocate results accordingly. Now, I take this as being the number that a target is exceeded by, so if I have a target of 7 and I roll 10 then I have 3 degrees of Effect. Is that right? What would be the best way of converting this mechanic to RQ/BRP? I could say 1 Degree of Effect for every 20 rolled, so rolling 01-20 gives 1, 21-40 2, 41-60 3, 61-80 4 and 81-100 5, but this doesn't take into account criticals. My preference would be based on how much you make a roll by, but this doesn't gel with RQM. Also, the Traveller rules goes very heavily into ship design, but the SRDs are very sketchy and are little more than toolkits. How many people have built ships using the Traveller system? How many would want that level of flexibility for a RQ/BRP SciFi game? To a certain extent it leaves me cold, but the power gamer in me is itching to optimise ship design and I would guess that a lot of people feel the same. Are there any sample Traveller ships on the web? I couldn't find any when I last looked, but there again I didn't look very hard. Personally, I would prefer to have a dozen or so sample ship types that people could use off the shelf rather than having to spend ages designing a ship. Also, people seem to like the Traveller Lifepath character generation system. I don't know why - it seems overly complex, unrealistic and cumbersome to me. Are there any examples of other professions available anywhere? I've got examples of Scout, Merchant, Mercenary and Navy but that's a very small number of professions. I'm also posting this on the Mongoose forum for those people there who don't use the BRP forum.

"oiracaN kciN" Did it work? Is he still here? Seriously, things like Time Travel are fine, if used well. I haven't seen the supplement, so I can't comment on how it is used there. If you have a scenario where a dragon appears from nowhere, fries everything and disappears then that might make sense, in a fantasy world for example, but might not work in a modern setting. Are you familiar with the phrase "deus ex machina"? Roleplayers tend to be the people who watch a film and say "That bit's not right". We are geeky and nerdy to a certain extent (myself, of course, excluded). That's why we like things to hang together. Things need to be consistent otherwise they become unbelievable. For an off the cuff scenario it isn't too bad if things aren't that consistent, but for a published scenario that people pay for it can be unacceptable. By the way, making inflammatory comments doesn't win any friends, it just makes the person making the comments sound obnoxious.

Lifepath it is, then. I'll include it as an optional character generation. In any case, this is for RQ, not BRP, although it should be fairly compatible. The OGL is easy to use, BRP's licence isn't. I have no real desire to give away 250 copies of anything I produce, so I doubt if I will write any BRP material.

Off the top of my head: Creature Traits New Creatures Traveller-style Lifepath chargen Working spaceship rules Better combat rules Better space combat rules More weapons More equipment Better Psionic rules More Psi Powers Better Robot Rules More sample Robots Better Cybertech rules More Cybertech examples

No, not yet. The SRD is incomplete, so I didn't think it was ready for a character sheet. In any case, character sheets should really be setting specific rather than being generic. But, if anyone wants to do one then I could include it in the SRD.

I like extra characteristics :ohwell: I think MAS and LEN make sense for a SciFi game. SOC was kept from Traveller as it means something very specific, although I suppose RQ skills could do the same job. I left POW in as standard RQ, but PSI means something different again. I like having mixed games, so I'd keep POW for magic as opposed to Psi powers. ROB means something very specific and is a measure of the amount of Robotness someone else. Unfortunately, BRP is not covered by the OGL and I can't really take too much directly from BRP. I deliberately did this for several reasons: 1. It's a RQ SRD not a Traveller one. 2. I did not have many examples of the Lifepath progression and have no writeup on how it works (The only Traveller material I have is the SRDs). 3. The Traveller professions were not published in SRDs or as OGL supplements. However, the High Guard and Mercenary SRDs do have full examples of the LifePath, so I may be able to produce a RQ equivalent system. It won't be the same as the Traveller one, because it is for RQ. Thanks. I'll try and develop it a bit more after I've finished Merrie England:Age of Eleanor.

Thanks for pointing these out. I've downloaded them and had a look at them. I will be including these, in some form. It looks as though the character generation rules for Mercenary and Naval Officer could be adapted to a RQ-style or RQ-Traveller-hybrid-style chargen. The equipment lists can easily be included and the Space Warfare and Ship Design rules could be adapted to RQ.

Yes, it is an SRD after all. The normal rules apply - it is produced under the OGL and that should be included with copyright notifications. If you think of any rules changes/additions, equipment, creature traits legendary abilities etc then let me know and I'll add them to the SRD for others to use. That way, we can keep a common base for RQ Sci Fi.

I didn't know they were out, but I'll check them out and start to include them over the next few weeks. Thanks. If anyone else knows of any more SRDs that haven't been included, can you let me know?

Possibly, depending on how I get on with Merrie England. I was planning on Wars of the Roses and Hundred Years War followups, probably after I retire in 20 years time, but I don't know a great deal about the history of that time. The trouble with the Wars of the Roses is that it is pretty much a series of battles between warlords and there's not a lot of scope for other roleplaying, beyond the normal "go to an inn, hear about a ruined castle, go there" scenarios.

As has been stated, HeroQuest uses a D20 for die rolls. It also has an interesting and very scaleable way of skill resolution. At its most basic level, HeroQuest has Abilities than can represent skills, characteristics, personality traits or special abilities. All use the same mechanic and can be directly compared. This makes HeroQuest a very easy to use and very powerful system. However, it has lots of sub rules bolted on top to make it fit into Glorantha, but these can be ignored quite easily. RuneQuest is a D100 system that is similar to BRP. It has slightly different skill lists, slightly different Characteristics, a different character generation system, a slightly different skill resolution and a very different magic system. So, RuneQuest and BRP are slightly different and RQ/BRP and HeroQuest are very different. It is fairly easy to convert between BRP and RQ and also between HeroQuest and RQ/BRP, if you skip over the problematic parts. For example, converting HeroQuest cults to RQ Gloranthan cults is very easy. Converting Mythic Russian (HeroQuest) cults to RQ Alternate Earth Cults is easy. In fact, I use HeroQuest as a first-level template for RQ cults. Since BRP magic is different to RQ, converting HeroQuest cults to BRP is a bit harder and depends on how you model BRP cults.

As others have pointed out, SIZ represents Mass, rather than Weight. It has aspects of Height as well. Short and fat can have the same SIZ as tall and thin. If we are talking weight, then a high-gravity world would have SIZ increasing which doesn't really make sense. Hence Mass for SIZ. MAS and LEN averaged as SIZ works better for a Sci-Fi setting.

Is that right? Hmmm. I've done a little bit of martial arts and a little bit of LARPing and in both I can fight with 2 weapons and can attack with both. So, if I (a useless fighter) can do it in real life then it follows that ... BRP should not need a special rule to allow two-weapon fighting. I'll have to check my rules to see if it really is not allowed.

What? :innocent: It was a dream, right. I sometimes dream about Glorantha and occasionally dream HeroQuests, like everyone else I assume. But back to Realism Rule # 1, you could have a skill for Self Pleasure, or Pleasure (Person) to generalise it slightly, so you could have Pleasure (Self), Pleasure (Other). Fumbles would have to be at the discretion of the GM or played through with the GM and Player. Success in the skill would be deemed to have brought pleasure, specials or criticals would bring pleasure quickly, efficiently or perhaps more intensely. Failures may well mean that pleasure was not achieved, took a long time or whatever. Fumbling is, of course, possible. Examples could include self-injury, embarrassing stains or being discovered. By the way, we are talking about things like eating chocolate, watching sport on TV or watching Sci Fi on TV while the wife is out, aren't we?

I bought this at the weekend but haven't had much of a chance to look at it in detail, yet. It looks pretty good to me. The usual suspects are there, character generation, background etc. There is a chapter on Mythos which allows CoC GMs to use the Mythis with the setting. I'm not that keen as I generally don't think that Cthulhu Mythos fits anything at all but I appreciate that there are a lot of Mythos fans out there and this fits the setting as much as anywhere else. It isn't over the top, though, and can be freely ignored or used. I'd have liked it to be a bit longer, but it's a good start. Hopefully there will be more supplements following up Val-de-Loupe.