soltakss

Unless the artwork specifically explains something then I wouldn't use explanations. You could put a caption under the artwork to quickly set the scene, I suppose, "Cyborg playing with a Plasma Rifle" or "Gunslinger feeling the benefits of Quickdraw" but I wouldn't go further than that. Half the fun of artwork is working out who the people are suposed to be then complaining that it isn't accurate But, there again, I see artwork as basically a filler to avoid large areas of whitespace or to break things up a bit, so it's never been important to me. Chapter art (which I see as having a pretty picture for each chapter or section) has always seemed like such a waste of space - you could have got 12 pages of rules instead of having 12 pretty pictures. If I want pretty pictures I can go on the internet and ...

The whole of the Star Wars series is Copyrighted. That means that all the species, the Force, the Jedi and the rest are Copyrighted. The idea of a Stellar Republic being turned into an Empire by Dark Knights isn't, which is why it has appeared in other novels. Sure, if Chaosium wanted to produce a supplement using the OGL then they could do. However, to combine OGL RQ and BRP would almost certainly involve changes to the BRP licence. Because of past history and the fact that BRP has been distanced from RQ, I can't see it happening.

I'm currently working on producing a RQ Sci-Fi SRD based on the RQ, Traveller and D20 Modern (Future) SRDs. I converted some of the weapons from the Traveller SRD using some things from BRP, but yours look a lot better. Would you mind if I used them for the RQ Sci-Fi SRD? Credit would be given, of course. The unfinished SRD is at www.soltakss.com/rq_scifi.doc and neds a lot of work, but it's getting there.

Far-reaching subplots involving a few background NPCs. Storylines that progress remorselessly in the background, ready to pounce on PCs when necessary. Foreground scenarios that interact with the PCs' backgrounds and the players' likes and dislikes. Sketch scenarios, nothing written up in too much detail. Flexible plotlines and storylines that can turn on a sixpence in response to a good player idea/PC action. Combat light, but sometimes deadly-ish. High-octane adventuring, when I can get the players to work as a team, otherwise slow meandering until they happen to fall over a clue or plot point. Major NPCs have stats, minor ones don't. I can make up stats on the fly, all I need are an attack chance, damage bonus and rough idea of armour/hits. I tend to sometimes throw in something familiar that turns out to be very different. PC actions always have consequences. Sometimes they do the right thing for the right reason in the right place and things still don't work out how they expected. I throw in some HeroQuests now and again, not enough to make them boring or routine, but enough to keep the players on their toes. They are trying some HeroQuests of their own at the moment, so I am winging them. If they do something strange, go somewhere unexpected or try something different then I wing it as far as I can. If it leads to one of my subplots or impacts on one of the background plots then great, if not then they will spawn future scenarios. Don't keep beating a dead horse. If a plot point has died or the players aren't interested then move time on and have an NPC resolution. If that means the PCs are disadvantaged then so be it. Try and include all the PCs in plots/scenarios. Have different things happen for different PCs. Don't make it too easy for any one PC, try and make things challenging but not necessary lethal. Always have some backup scnearios written so that you can move into one if something else fails. Don't be afraid of using published scenarios. Don't be afraid of changing published scenarios. Have a general Timeline to hang things from but don't be afraid to change it. Above all - having fun while GMing and playing. There's no point doing things if nobody is interested.

It doesn't really matter what it looks like. Even the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was scary because it smashed buildings and stomped on cars. Not all monsters need to look scary.

If it has to point out that the armour is not demonic, that implies that other things exist that are demonic. But the books are fiction and do not go into any of the theories of magic or magical items.

What, you mean he isn't? He is very approachable and ran a Steeleye campaign based on the songs of Steeleye Span, which makes him a good guy in my book. He's not always right, though. Definitely. Not to broaden horizons, though, but a lot of stuff has been discussed over the years and they sometimes reach a consensus, disregarding the wild-eyed loonies who sometimes get a voice. Different Worlds, I think, had the Thermonuclear Hand Grenade years and years ago. Just as good as the Anti-Matter Hand Grenade, but you thought about pulling the pin then chickened out. Good in combination with a Teleport, though.

I noticed that some of the reviews have had their format changed in the transfer to the new software and all the paragraph formatting has gone. The Slaine review is one example. I can't even get into it to reformat the review. It makes me look more of a chump than I really am

I wouldn't bother changing anything, unless you had two forces with different equine technology levels fighting. If you are comparing like with like then just assume that the Ride skill corresponds with the current level of technology. So, if nobody has stirrups then stirrups aren't an issue. Similarly, unless a saddle is really good, different types of saddle won't make a lot of difference. Lances are another matter as they supposedly need a good saddle/stirrups to use effectively, but for the purposes of BRP I wouldn't bother with that either. What I would do, though, is to enforce the horse sizes on the culture. So, most ancient horses were quite small and wiry, more pony than horse. Even the Mongols rode small horses onto battle. That would make things like lances less effective as the horse's damage bonus would be less.

As Shaira points out, Martial Arts covers combat training and the super-normal abilities. Anyone who is combat-trained will be a good fighter, will be able to use a sword, spear or whatever at a certain level, whether they are Samurai, Ninjas, Knigths Templars or Vikings. However, traditional fantasy martial arts is a lot more than that. You have mundane things such as nerve strikes that lead to esoteric things such as the Finger of Death. A lot of Martial Arts teach breath control as a technique so you don't over-exert yourself and don't get tired as easily, but that gets extended to Ki control and supernatural abilities in fantasy martial arts. So, you need to split the two in order to compare like with like. RQ3 used Ki skills, RQM uses Legendary Abilities, BRP could use a variation on Powers. IN any case, there should be a difference between being a super-fit excellent swordsman able to cut an arrow from the air and a legendary swordsman able to cut twenty arrows from the air while dancing along a rooftop.

OK, then, I'll vote Yes. Hang on, yes means I'll get upset, so I'll vote No. But that means you won't use it. So, you are deliberately trying to upset people. Good-oh!

www.gamingtavern.eu :: View topic - Who Wants to a be Rockstar, Runelord, Eternal Champion, Supe might make it a bit clearer.

Yes, theer are gadget rules in BRP and they look OK at first glance. It recommends modelling Cybertech using gadgets, which is interesting. However, it would be very time-consuming to build up each and every bit of equipment using the rules because they all rely on spending points to make items. That is all very well during character generation but what about afterwards? It would be very useful to have a number of examples that people could use in their games immediately rather than building each item. After all, you don't go into a garage and ask for a Porsche shell with a Ferrari engine, Lotus gearbox, Humvee tyres and Lada exhaust. You get what is there. But, for building suits etc the gadget rules would work OK.

I GMed Superworld a long, long time ago at a University far, far away. It didn't hang together particularly well, to tell the truth. Champions worked far better than Superworld. Bad Medicine for Doctor Drugs was bad medicine for anyone who played it, as well. I don't think that BRP games work well in a SuperHero setting, just because you have trouble determining how to resist effects. If all you mental zaps are POW vs POW then someone with a very high POW wipes the board. On the other hand, someone with Furious Rage should be able to ignore mind control under certain circumstances, but there is no mechanic for it in Superworld. I like BRP-style games and have played them for years, but I do not think that SuperHero gaming suits the BRP grittiness. SOmething like HeroQuest suits it a lot better.

I was going to attempt something, sometime. But that's a bit vague. It would be good to see other people's ideas so that we can improve on them or use them. There's a lot of RQM material out there that is non-Gloranthan and could easily be used in a BRP setting.

Excellent, that's really useful, thanks. I can't see the Infinite Improbability Drive, but that's probably because it was a silly idea.

As a matter of interest, why do you want it? I always make up Sci Fi settings on the fly without much regard for the hard science part of it. Most of my inhabitable planets are about earth-sized and are about the same distance from their star. I've never really bothered about realistic climates or continents and only have a faint grasp of Tech Levels and similar things. Perhaps that makes me a bad Sci Fi GM.

In essence, the RQM and BRP rules are pretty compatible. Sure, there are niggles. SR is handled differently, Hit Points are calculated differently, weapons have different stats and magic is handled differently, but apart from that you roll D100 and see what you get. Even though the mechanics of the two games are different, you could use characters from one system in another system fairly easily. You might have to recalculate a few things but nothing too demanding. If you already have BRP, then I'd recommend getting the RQM SRD, simply so you understand how its magic works and what things like Legendary Abilities are. That will help you with playing Stupor Mundi.

Actually, there is a scenario but not by me. I did some other stuff for the Birchbark Chronicles. When it officially comes out, I'll be converting a lot of my stuff to RQM and also to BRP, given time, so you should have some Mongol-types available for a medieval campaign. Stupor Mundi is very detailed and well worth getting for a mid-medieval setting. Mythic Russia is a HeroQuest setting that is a bit later and the time of Robin Hood is a bit earlier, but the basics of Stupor Mundi are pretty much good for all those periods.

Just because it isn't there doesn't mean you can't use it. I'd say that extensions like slug/buckshot and different gauges are fine and would work well with BRP. Someone just has to collect them together and post/publish them somewhere. It does look like a sawn-off shotgun with a pistol grip. But an elephant gun with a pistol grip is sexier.

Well, no, swimming is not a basic skill that everyone has. You have to learn to swim and I know several people who cannot swim. Even many sailors couldn't swim (the rationale being that if you were wrecked at sea then swimming wouldn't save you). I'm a fan of cultural skills. So you start off with a culture and get your skill basics based on that culture. Bushmen would have a different base skill set than citizens of Metropolis, for example.

Well, it all depends on taste, really. Just because someone can charm the shirt off your back doesn't necessarily mean he can bargain with a merchant. Similarly, a brilliant merchant might not be the best at persuading armed guards to let him past. But, I am sure that if you wanted to use a generic skill for both tasks then that would be fine. Similarly, someone could be naturally dextrous and could dodge based on that, or he could have trained in dodge or have bcome very experienced at dodging and would have a higher skill. Either would probably work, but I prefer many different skills.

Nobody going anywhere with SciFi rules? Shame.

My take on weapon damage is that weapons are designed to do as much damage as is needed to take out the opponent. You want to take out a human? You need a modern firearm or an ancient-style melee weapon. You want to take out a tank? You need an RPG or something similar. Things like phasers and other energy weapons have a certain charge/battery storage and more powerful blasts take more energy, so you restrict yourself to the sort of charge necessary to disable/kill the opponent. I usually make the assumption that a more powerful weapon is more difficult to make because it has to be better engineered, stronger, have a better quality lens, needs to be able to release a larger burst of energy or whetever. So, you buy weapons according to what you are going to fight. Look at the Starship Troopers film - the marines had very powerful weapons because their enemies were very strong. Limbs came off left, right and centre because of it. There's no point using a Thermonuclear Hand-Grenade (THG) in every combat, but against a Planet-Killer you could use one. Similarly, you could go around carrying a massive Ship to Ship weapon on a harness to blow anyone to bits, but it would be cumbersome, expensive and incredibly difficult to recharge. These would be setting specific, of course. Something set in an Asimovian universe would have needle-guns and blasters. Star Trek has Phasers, Disrupters and so on. Star Wars has Blasters for most people and Light-Sabres for Jedi. In most cases, a standard pistol would be as good as a blaster, but pistols are very dangerous in space as they tend to punch holes in spaceships. Once again, Klingons use melee weapons as well as energy weapons because it is a cultural preference and energy weapons are not much cop in close combat. I would expect soldiers to be equipped differently to itinerant adventurers simply because the opponents and battefield conditions will be different. I'm not a fan of Disintegrators as they are not particularly good from a story point of view, nor are they particularly realistic. I can rationlise a Blaster - it fires a chunk of enrgy that hits you and burns away part of your body. What does a Disintegrator do? Is it a Field-Weapon that interacts with the field around a body and destroys anything within that field? How does it do it? Does it disrupt the chemical bonds? If so, why doesn't it disintegrate part of a body or something the body is touching?

The thing with volley fire is that you are sacrificing accuracy for speed. When you have 100 archers firing, they don't all aim carefull at an opponent, instaed they aim generally for an area, get as many shots off as they can and hope that between them they hit the things in the area. Look at films such as Hero for excellent representations of volley-fire in action. The final scene shows why you can sacrifice accuracy if you are firing a lot of arrows.