soltakss

13000D6? Your formula is way off. I'd put it at 12990D6.

This has become quite angry, for some reason. I gave up trying to understand why any published game was different to the game I actually played long ago. Everyone has houserules and ways that they play and no game can reflect everyone's own rules and styles of play, no matter how many options and sub-rules it has. We were using 4D6 best 3 24 years ago in a RQ campaign and it never hurt us, no matter where it originally came from. It doesn't really matter what the rules actually say. Play the game as you want to, using the rules as guidelines. When I started playing RQ, we had human characters, then I played an Elf, who had higher DEX, POW and INT. The next group I played with had trolls, morokanth, an elf, a centaur, a minotaur and a duck, so 3D6 was comparitively rare. Playing Elric means that you roll on all sorts of weird dice, lots od D8s for chaotic creatures, for example. So, 3D6 is not the norm. Humans have 3D6 because it is easier to roll and the results come out as a bell curve which isn't that extreme. 2D6+6 fives a different shaped bell curve but isn't too bad. Empirically, INT relates to IQ (INTx10) and SIZ relates to weight in stones (or at least that's what I always assumed). You can get 3 stone people and 18 stones people, nowadays 18 stone isn't as uncommon as it used to be. STR/CON/DEX/POW/APP/CHA aren't as easy to measure in the real world, EDU is a strange characteristic and SAN is so far away from my game that I never use it. The way I play RQ/BRP is to do whatever I feel comfortable with. When we had multi GM groups, the GMs had different house rules that several of us disagreed with but still played. The rules are honestly not that important. They are a framework, nothing more. If you don't like a particular rule then use another one. You won't be a heretic and won't be ostracised from the gaming community. I'm not being patronising or giving you permission to play the game how you want to, just saying what needs to be said. Personally, there's a lot about BRP that I don't much care for, and I am on record as saying that. Having said that, there's a lot that I like. I'd prefer it to be more like RQ3, but I'd like RQM, D20 and all other games systems to be more like RQ3 as well, so that isn't reall a surprise. What is a surprise is the hostility that this thread has generated.

We're just full of hot air, so don't be intimidated. There's nothing better about having gamed for a long time than having just started gaming. We just have more anecdotes that we repeat endlessly. Forums such as these will help a lot, hopefully. We all have times where we have run into a problem that we need advice about. A lot of us have run into the same issues time and time again, which is where experience can help. So, ask away - we don't bite. We all get that. I, for one, am continually amazed that people still turn up for our weekly RQ sessions and always seem to feel that I am GMing by the seat of my pants. Looking at some of the posts, it amazes me that I don't do a lot of stuff as a GM that other poeple do naturally. BRP is a lot more flexible than D&D, and RQ is a lot more flexible than BRP, in my opinion. This is definitely the place for tactics and ideas. You get better by doing it, same as anything. If you can't get a local game, apart from the CoC game, have you tried PBEM (Play by Email)? That can be good, if you get enough players who can spare the time. Where do you live? Are there any gaming conventions near you? They are good for one-off gaming sessions - you can also bring along a scenario and run it, getting more practice.

RQ2 had 3D6 for SIZ and INT and RQ3 had 2D6+6. The change was put in, I believe, because 3D6 gave a very wide spread, perhaps too wide. If you go with the rough idea that INT x 10 = I.Q. then INT 15 means IQ 150 and INT 3 = IQ 30, so 1 in 216 people would have an IQ of 30, which is way too low. Similarly, SIZ 3 equates to a very short/light person and 1 in 216 people being very short/light didn't really work.

It was probably more about how confusing the BRP rulebook was, but people seemed to have skipped over that to concentrate on a single rule example.

Mathematically there is no difference between "Makes it by the Most" and "Rolls Highest". Of course, "Makes it by the Most" is not the same as "Rolls Lowest". So, using the examples, an 80%er who rolls 30 makes his skill by 50, a 40%er who rolls 5 makes his skill by 35 and wins. The 80%er rolls 20, making it by 60% and the 40%er rolls 10, making it by 30% and loses even though he rolled lower but he made the skill by less. I did a simulation of two D100 rolls, with Critical/SpecialNormal/Failure/Fumble using various methods of resolution and various starting skill pairs. What surprised me was that "Rolling High" and "Making by the Most" had exactly the same results, no matter what the skill pairs I used. Now, that wasn't using guesswork or fancy statistical methods, I had a program that looped between 1 and 100 and a subloop between 1 and 100, compared the results against target skills and decided who won - totally empirical and the only way, in my opinion, of calculating the results spread of multiple methods. Because there is no difference between rolling high and making it by the most, I choose to use making it by the most.

I know of someone who goes into a games store, takes the D6s, rolls them all, takes the ones that rolled a 6, rolls those, takes the ones that rolls a 6 and repeats until he only has 1 die left, then he buys it and puts it into his "6" bag. Then he does the same for 5,4,3,2,1 and so has a bag of dice that is probably likely to roll the required number. But, perhaps that's going a bit far.

It is confusing as written, if only because it doesn't explain the background or intention of the rule. To me, this means that a Critical versus a Special will be less of a success than a Critical versus a Failure. The Special moves the Critical down 2 levels to a normal, the failure doesn't affect the Critical. Personally, I'd have preferred a Number of Degrees of Success resolution, so a Special is 1 Degree of Success (DoS) higher than a Normal Success, a Critical is 2 DoS higher than a Normal, a Fumble is 4 DoS worse than a Critical. The effect of a victory is better with a higher Degree of Success difference.

I've spent too many years training my percentile dice to roll low, it will be very difficult to train them to roll high or to roll low, but not too low. So, rolling low and making the roll by the most works for me, but there again I've never had a problem with subtraction. Whatever works for other people is fine, as long as it is consistent.

In my games, spogs (mooks in your terminology) are identikit - they all have the same stats - and are very one-dimensional. They don't use fancy tactics and if they are severely injured then they are out of the combat. They don't heal and don't come back. Normally, they don't attack cleverly, normally they attack and parry, sometimes they attack two on one or try to mob their opponents. I still use locations but spogs don't have much magic or armour. I also sometimes forget to attack, leaving them milling around doing nothing, reflecting their normal ineffectiveness.

Regarding class-based BRP, there are two issues. First is the jack of all trades syndrome, where everyone becomes good at everything, a typically RQ/BRP problem. What I would do, and have done, is to have a limited number of experience rolls available in each session, that way the players must choose which skills to focus on. I do this by having Experience Points (actually Hero Points which can be used as Hero Points or Experience Points) which the players can spend, with 1 XP allowing one skill gain attempt. Second is the character class system, where a fighter should be good at fighting and not thieving, a magic user whould be good at casting spells and not scouting around in the wilds. Normally, this is not an issue with BRP because everyone can, in theory, do anything they want. However, with a BRP-based D&D then classes are important. The easiest way around this is to give each class two skill lists, the first is a set oc core skills that are spcial to the class, the second is a set of skills that are typical for the class, and to make it easier to improve those skills, or more difficult to improve other skills. If you use the restricted experience gains as above then skills not your class's lists cost 2 XP to improve rather than 1 XP. You could even say that skills from another class's core list cost 3XP to improve. If you don't use restricted improvement, then assign a bonus or penalty to class/non-class skills, so I might get a +10% bonus to improve skills in my preferred list, -10% to improving skills that are not in any core list and a -20% to improving skills in another class's core list.

Reading the above posts, it seems to me that the Opposed Roll rule is an example of the confusing nature of BRP rather than the main problem. As BRP is a collection of rules options as well as a coherent rules system, I'd relegate Opposed Rules to a Rule Option that can be used or ignored at will. Having a set of rules that can be used or discarded is not to everyone's taste and is condusing to a lot of people who have never used BRP before. What I would tend to do is to decide which rules I meed to use in any campaign and then forget about the rest. That cuts down on the number of rules to be learned and also makes the game a bit simpler. As to whether it is worth buying BRP rather than using an old BRP-family game, the current BRP rules are, in my opinion, better than any other rules system in the BRP family, with the exception of RQ3 (the pinnacle) and is as good as RQM (Mongoose RQ) which also has its flaws, but different flaws to BRP. I'd certainly recommend buying BRP as a generic rules system that can be used in virtually any genre. When more supplememts come out supporting BRP, it will show its capability and versatility as a rules system.

BRP is ideal for this kind of thing. Shadowrun was written to be multi-genre, but didn't really work for me - the system was too complex. BRP, on the other hand, has a very simple core system and is also designed to be multi-genre, even though it started in Fantasy. The background you described would be ideal for BRP.

Ah, the Banned Beetle becomes the Banning Beetle!

So, an average horse (STR 28-29) would produce between 5 and 6 horse power! Ah, just seen the 1/.4 STR rule, so a STR 28 horse uses STR 7 over a period of time, relating to 1 horse power. Clearly, there are no flies on you. It looks like a pretty good reference table. I like the simple way of converting between STR and HP when stopping vehicles. How would you figure teams of animals? What STR would a team of four horses (STR 28 each) use? Looking at the two tables, it would be very useful to include STR and SIZ in the Vehicle Table. But, thinking about it, would you use STR or STR/4? Maybe using STR/4 as the base STR but STR for acceleration purposes, might be a good way of doing it. Certainly, what I'd like to see is a set of tables that relate Characteristics (STR/SIZ) to objective measures (Horse Power/Mass) and also a set of tables giving sample stats for vehicles with both Characteristics and Objective Measures. That way, I could use the vehicle table to work out similar stats or sample stats or I could use the background tables to work out stats for new vehicles.

Yes, it was censored. Fortunately, the Great Beetle himself refers to said Beetle secrets in http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/site-related/28-future-basic-roleplaying-com.html#post505 and http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/basic-roleplaying/274-kickoff.html#post4451 so I expect those posts to be censored as well. Then, of course, I'll post the way to get past the Ever Vigilant Beetle on my uncensorable website ...

[bLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!] Perhaps Banned Beetle could give him some hints.

There are a lot of numbers, which is good. It is a table so I can look up a SIZ to give me a weight, which is good. It roughly agrees with the rule of thumb of SIZ = weight in stones for normal sized people, except for below SIZ 5 and above SIZ 17, which is good. Why is Short Tons shown as Weight and metric tonnes shown as Mass? It only goes up to SIZ 300, which is bad. What if I have a SIZ 310 starship, giant or mecha? Is there an underlying formula or is it handcrafted? Having it as a spreadsheet would be good. Enough comments?

Whereas I thoroughly enjoyed that and the rest of the series. Some of it is a bit heavy, but I like shamans and primitive societies so I thought they were great.

That still sounds good to me. Any material would be useful for a historical setting as well.

Back to the original question, I'd only stat up a car if it is important. Just any car to get you from A to B doesn't need stats. If you have combat or need to do some fancy driving then use bof standard default stats and throw it away if it gets trashed. However, if it is a special car, if it can drive itself, shoot rockets, eject passengers, turn onto a boat or can fly then give it a character sheet and hope it is never destroyed. As to how detailed you make it, that is up to you and the style of the campaign. HeroQuest details the important aspects of an object and covers the rest in a keyword, which is a good way of doing this. You might need top speed, acceleration, manouverability, handling, armour points, hit/structure points and any intelligence/skills it might have.

And you can put a mattress in the back ...

When is the last last chance to preorder? I've just realised that Darren is going to Tentacles and I might be able to persuade him to bring me back a copy.

A Bronze Age Fantasy Campaign? Tell us more. Have you any source material or background for it? A Word document or a PDF would be fantastic ...

The RQ Historical campaigns are: RQ3 Land of Ninja RQ3 Vikings RQM Land of the Samurai RQM Pirates Stupor Mundi These are set in the Medieval Age, pretty much, although Pirates is a little later and Vikings is possibly a little earlier. BRP itself does not have any historical campaign settings. Cthulhu Dark Ages is a setting based in Dark Age Europe, but has a lot of Cthulhu Mythos, so isn't that historical. BRP Rome is coming out soon. BRP Iceland was supposed to be coming out, but has stalled, I think. It all depends on what you mean by Ancients campaigns. Bronze Age? Iron Age? Classical? There is a Bronze Age Sourcebook available from the Downloads section and Warlords of Alexander is a post-Alexandrian setting. Apart from that, I can't think of any other ancient settings.