soltakss

Sorry, I was answering a point by Shiba Homer, probably a point too far, really. Your original post was a good question, actually.

Well, not really. Game balance is pretty much for pussies. If you can't live with the fact that your magician is better at drying opponents than you will ever be and that the thief can climb up a sheer wall and pick the pocket of a guard on the ramparts whereas your scout can only survive for days in the wilderness then tough. Different PCs will be better at different things and this might seem unfair, in fact it might be unfair. Also tough. The worst thing he said was that PCs should retire when they reach Rune Level. Then that heroes (in HeroQuest) are taken out of the game when they learn Great Secrets. Not my cup of tea at all. Was it? I thought it was about powerful magic users in a fantasy game. If the original point was about SuperHeroes then the point is pretty much moot anyway. In SuperHeroes games there are several ranks of characters: Super Heroes/Villains, Sidekicks/Henchmen and Everyone Else. Non-Powered characters come under the category of Everyone Else and cannot possibly even hope to compete with Super Heroes/Villians or even Sidekicks/Henchmen. So, once again it's tough. In any case, BRP does not deal with Super Heroes very well. Of all the BRP games I have played/GMed Superworld was the most disappointing as BRP does not cope with using powers imaginatively to cope with other powers. I ran a couple of Super Hero games at Continuum using a cut-down version of HeroQuest and I doubt whether I'll ever run a SuperHeroes game not using HeroQuest as the rules fit the genre very well indeed.

I've seen that myself. Some people only try to do things that are written down in the rules rather than trying to do something and then working out what to roll afterwards. Classic swashbuckling is the prime example - someone wants to swing across a street and land on an opponent but there isn't a rule for it in BRP so he doesn't bother whereas I would attempt it, make an argument to roll Jumping/Agility then SIZ vs SIZ or whatever. Mongoose's RQ has a lot more going for it with Legendary Abilities, which give more combat options/abilities than BRP has. But, again. I'd always try something and then complain if the GM disallows it rather than not bother trying something in the first place.

Yes, a skill-based generation system means that players have to focus on what is important to them, at least at the start. So, a magic user would have spent on magic skills and spells but would not be very good at much else, a fighter could be good at weapon skills, a scout could be good at wilderness survival skills and so on. Power Point limitations are the biggest levellers in regards to balance - if the GM wants to hold back magic users then he should limit the amount of stored PPs available. That way, magic users, as you said, quickly run out of juice and have to rely on their wits. This is a problem with any game. You can have characters sitting around not doing much. In the game I am playing in at the moment I play a were-deer who is really useful in the wilderness but completely out of his depth in towns and the other PCs are Trader Princes who are at home in towns but put of their depths in the wilderness. So, there are times where I sit back and offer a supporting role and times where I lead. Back to your example, there's a few things someone can do in that kind of situation. Not all combats can be talked around or avoided. If you let people talk their way out of every combat then you are depriving people of the joys of cracking heads. Sure, let them be clever and avoid some combat but there should be times when they are attacked or have to attack and get stuck in. The player complained that his character didn't get to do anything cool in combat? What do you mean by that? Did he want to try exotic and challenging tactics and was told he couldn't? Did he want special abilities that he could use in combat? Did he want to swashbuckle all the while? Sometimes it is a good idea to improvise in a given situation and let players try new things to see how they work and how they pan out. That way, everyone has fun, which is the whole point of playing RPGs.

BRP can do fantasy very well and versions of it have done for years. Magic Users are not particularly powerful or weak compared to other people. Don't forget that BRP doesn't have Classes, so anyone who is able to learn magic can do, cultural and religious taboos notwithstanding, and anyone who can pick up a sword can use it, so the lines between Magic User and Fighter are very blurred. Having said that, there are Professions that tend to steer people towards certain roles, so someone who has Soldier as a profession is more likely to be a fighter than someone with Wizard as a profession. BRP Magic Users tend to use Power Points (PPs) to fuel their spells, so are limited by how many PPs they have available to them. They are also limited by the scope of the spells, which tend to be more personal and affect smaller areas than the equivalent spells in, say, D&D. So, BRP Magic Users tend to be less powerful than those in other RPGs. In settings such as Glorantha almost everyone has magic of one kind or another, so the distinction between Magic User and Fighter is almost non-existent. In settings such as the Young Kingdoms the Magic Users tend to be powerful NPCs or struggling PCs and the distinction is more pronounced. But, as far as balance goes, BRP seems well suited to a Fantasy game.

Yes, RQ3 brought 2D6+6 in because the averages meant that you had a lot more really short people than you would expect, even for an ancient setting. If you interpret INT as IQ/10, then RQ2 had an average IQ of 105 (INT 10.5) but on in 200 had an IQ of 30, which is way too high a chance for way too low an IQ. 2D6+6 isn't really a problem, though.

Thanks. I haven't thought about approaching Chaosium for several reasons: Those rules are based on several SRDs/OGLs and hence are incompatible with the BRP licence I haven't got enough time to dedicate to polishing a document enough for publication The core ruls are not enough , for publication you really need a good setting and I don't have any ideas about a setting In the past I have shied away from writing anything for official companies I might tidy it up a bit as an OGL RQ supplement, but I am in two minds about that at the moment.

Since BRP has many different optional rules, some people will use one skill for each Weapon Class/Type and some people wil us one skill for each weapon. I wouldn't get too hung up on it. BRP seems to be quite flexible in how it works, so even though it says something on page so-and-so that is only a guideline and you should use whichever combination you prefer or use your own.

Try DriveThruRPG.com - Valent Games - The Green It does look very similar to your own, from the blurb. I can't download the file as I am at work. I'd carry on as you are. If you need to change the title then BRP:The Green is different enough.

Most of it was copy, paste and alter, so it wasn't that difficult. The hardest part is to try and fit it all together. My wife's away at the moment so I haven't got much else to do with my time. There, not only an unfinished set of Sci-Fi rules but also a handy screen-washing utility. Two for the price of one.

Generally, in BRP games magic use is available to anybody who is physically/mentally capable. Historically, in RQ/Glorantha anyone could use magic and everyone does. Since BRP is not class-based, the only real restrictions on the use of magic are: Physical/Mental ability Inherent magical ability Social Restrictions/Taboos Cult/Guild Restrictions Racial/Species GM Restrictions

Thanks. It has taken about 2 months, off and on. It helped that I based it on the Traveller/RQ/S20 Future/D20 Traveller Lite/D20 Paranoia Lite SRDs that are all OGL and OGC. There is a lot more I could do with it, but the basics are there.

Third Edition of Fire and Sword, not BRP.

CoC will do fine with or without BRP. People buy it because it is CoC not because it uses BRP. In fact, I hope that Chaosium produce supplements for more than CoC because we need pure BRP supplements - otherwise it will die a slow death.

I know it isn't BRP, but the OGL looks easier to use and Mongoose already has RQ and Traveller SRDs, making it easier to base Sci-Fi D100 rules on RQM. The latest draft of a RuneQuest Sci-Fi SRD is at http://www.soltakss.com/rq_scifi.doc. Feedback and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Anyway, let me know what I am missing, what I have done wrong and what I need to change.

There is a woefully formatted text copy on the web, but the author specifically asked people not to reformat it, so posting a PDF copy wouldn't be right. I started looking at it in Word, to get a formatted copy for my own purposes, but it would probably take several weeks to do and I haven't the time. If there is a scanned PDF around, I haven't seen it, unfortunately. Other Suns is pretty good on background and equipment, but some of the rules are very difficult to follow. Character generation requires a calculator and is far too picky for my tastes.

I really don't think that minor changes to the rules will attract many people. Some people buy many different RPG rulebooks and if they like the game will run it once or twice to try it out. They may well buy BRP to try, although it's a bit expensive to only play once. Other people like to play in campaigns and buy a rulebook and various supplements. However, whereas GURPS and D20 have multitudes of supplements freely available in game stores, BRP has a handful only available as PDFs. The main way to get people to buy BRP is by putting out supplements.

The trouble with shamans in RQ2 and RQ3 is that they didn't really work that well. The Spirit Plane was ultra-generic and didn't vary according to where you were Shamans could only access very generic and bland spirits Special or cult spirits were hard to find With the exception of some Zola Fel spirits there were no Spirit Traditions written up Shamans weren't really given an edge in spirit combat Shamans were virtually untouchable magically very quickly Shamans didn't have many options for binding/controlling spirits (bind into fetch or bind into enchantment) A powerful shaman was about as dangerous as a weak shaman - powerful shamans took theoretically longer to break down but in practice both types were untouchable in spirit combat Fetches were treated as virtually another type of allied spirit There were no Spirit Guides Other shamanic powers, with the exception of laying on hands and self-resurrection, were not used So, if I wanted to create shamanic rules for BRP then I wouldn't necessarily start from RQ2 or RQ3. Instead I'd start from first principles. I'd list what powers and abilities a shaman should have, how a shaman interacts with his people, how shamanic worship should work, how shamanic people deal with their surroundings and so on. Then I'd work out simple game mechanics to model/mimic those.

Only giving a POW gain roll if your chance of success is below 50% seems a bit harsh. I wouldn't use it. If you had sword attack 70% then you would get a tick if you used it, so why not for POW? I can see the munchkin argument, but that has never applied in my games. But there again I like people getting more POW as I prefer higher powered games.

It would be a shame if they delayed publishing something that was ready except for the artwork in favour of something that was still a pipedream just because people wanted more of the pipedream's genre. People tend to buy what has been published. Sure, some people perhaps wouldn't buy a historical supplement, but a lot of fans would. If Rome is struggling, what does that mean for Iceland? What about the other supplements? Are we going to see any printed supplements in the near future?

The problem with Shamanism is that everyone has their own ideas and opinions of what constitutes Shamanism. At one level, Shamanism is like HeroQuest's Common Magic - spells that everyone has access to in a culture. However, it is more like the interaction between people and the spirits that are found everywhere. How you placate spirits, how to make them work for you, how to gain powers from them, how to worship them. Shamanism is not just about shamans. It is about all the people of the shaman's culture. But, Shamanism is also about shamans and what they can do. If you list the powers of a Shaman then you can model them by using the rules for Powers. You need new Powers, though. Shamans could well use Astral Projection but what about controlling spirits? What about Spirit Quests, Healing, Curses, Blessing and so on. It gets very complicated.

Looking at the three SRDs on the Mongoose website, all are distributed with an OGL and none specify which is open content. That means that the whole document is Open Content and freely available. The whole point of an SRD is that it allows people to develop games based on the SRD freely as long as they include the OGL and specify which parts are Open Content and which parts are not. So, you can use anything from the RQ, RQ Companion and RQ Monsters SRDs by including the individual OGLs, or a combination of the three OGLs. The rulebooks themselves are a bit different as they may well not be Open Content. SRDs, however, by their very nature are. It is a shame that the core rules from some of the other supplements haven't been made Open Content. I'd have liked to see a lot of the rules from Pirates and some of the rules from the Gloranthan supplements made Open Content.

RQ Monsters is OGL, at least the version in the SRD is. However, the problem isn't with using OGL RQ, the problem is combining the OGL and Chaoisum's BRP licence. If I wrote anything for BRP and I wanted to use rules from RQM, then I would simply include the rules, the OGL, state explicity which part of the rules come under the OGL and let Chaosium sort the rest out.

Hiya All I am thinking of clearing some space on my bookshelves and selling my ancient collection of White Dwarf magazines. I never read them and the RQ content is low enough for them not to be very interesting to me. What I have is WD#20, WD#23-27, WD#29-102 with around 10 duplicates. They are mostly in good condition, hardly ever read and stored in folders. I also have 5 White Dwarf magazine holders (hardback, in red with the White Dwarf logo on the spine and strings in the inside spine for holding magazines). At the moment, I am leaning towards putting them on e-Bay as single magazines. I don't think people would be interested in buying the whole lot at once and I know that some people would be more interested in the binders than the magazines. What do you think? Should I: Sell them one at a time? Sell them in batches of 4 or 5? Sell them all at once? Sell the binders separately? I've never bought or sold anything on e-Bay before, so I would be interested in people's opinions on how easy it is to sell things there. I've also got RuneRiter #1-4 that I found in an old envelope, although I'm not sure what the demand would be for those.

So, if the game is combat-light then why is there a low survival/high death rate? Is it just PCs going insane? Or is it a hypothetical question? It looks as thoug you are trying to make the game more survivable by making it combat-light, anyway.