soltakss

Ian M Banks, yes, I struggled through a couple of those. I found them like swimming through treacle and didn't particularly enjoy them.

The trouble with AIs is that you would have to put so many checks on them as to make them effectively useless.

So, Asimov has his 3 Laws of Robotics. These are fine, except where you have military or combat situations. If you apply them to AIs you can't have AIs with a military capacity. So, they're out straight away.

So you have to put something in so the AI doesn't take charge and knock your own side out. You need a way to countermand an AI or to take it over. But, an evolving AI would probably become immune.

So, you need a way to turn an AI off. But, a distributed AI becomes harder and harder to turn off as its systems become separated. Even if you can turn it off, there's the moral and ethical aspects - if it is Intelligent, is it alive?

It's a minefield, so I prefer my AIs to be small and dumb.

Red Dwarf had the right idea - clever AIs that look stupid so as not to be threatening.

BTW, Here is a sample of what it looks like.

Looks very nice indeed.

No hats, though. You've got to have different-sized hats.

If you are using that kind of layout, then 2 columns would be perfect, twice the information and no space wasted.

Being able to keep the prices constant is really useful. It's worth having a price multiplier depending on transport links, though. After all, shipping that red satin underwear via wagontrain across Indian Terrirtory is a lot harder than shipping via the railroad.

:focus:

Of course, being easy to kill is the least of the reasons to have Fate Points/Hero Points/Whatever-They-are-Called-In-BRP-Points.

Using them as Plot Points is one of my favourite reasons - Damn, we've been caught by the City Guard and locked up in a prison. But, wait, look, isn't that guard the very same one we rescued from bandits last month? (1 Plot Point) Isn't that guard the brother of the person we rescued from bandits last month? (2 Plot Points) Don't you remember when we rescued those people from bandits last month, isn't that guard one of them? (Never actually did it but seems like a reasonable backstory event - 4 Plot Points) Isn't that a nasty storm? What if a lightning bolt came and smashed the wall down for us? (8 Plot Points)

Rerolling a really bad or unfortunate roll to help gameplay in crisis situations is also another useful way of using them. I even allow them to be used when rolling for Experience - it makes the players happy and soaks them up quite nicely.

Of course, I fully understand how people can think of them as cheating in some way, as you are rerolling dice or affecting what actually happened. But, quite a lot of the time the same people that dislike Fate/Hero Points have no problems with rolling dice secretly or fudging dice rolls. But, that's not cheating!!!

soltakss actually picked up on this awhile back, mentioning how he liked the two damage values (CoC and persumably RQ)that I gave the Peacemaker. THat wasn't my intention, but he was right.

With Hit Locations and Without Hit Locations. Not necessarily RQ and CoC but close enough historically.

The "How can I kill an elephant in one shot?" problem in CoC is due to CoC not having Hit Locations and an elephant having bucketloads of Hit Points. Give it Hit Locations and it becomes killable, although it is still difficult and requires a good shot. Hit Locations are Good. Everyone should use Hit Locations. Look deep into my eyes :shocked:. Everyone should use Hit Locations ...

As a matter of interest, what was your intention? Just to show the CoC stats and a different damage for BRP?

I need to get through Christmas before doing anything else though.

Open: Is anyone running games over Christmas, and if so does anyone have any tips for including festive tidbits in them?

I hate Christmas Specials on TV. There aren't Easter Specials or Whitsun Specials or Summer Specials so why Christmas ones?

So, not for me, I won't be including any Christmassy things in any of my games. Bah Humbug!

Anyway, we play on Mondays and that means Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so no games over Christmas for us.

The Firearms Table covering the 1873-1885 period has been uploaded and is available in the Downloads/Other section.

It looks good. The table is cramped but that's probably because I am viewing it in a browser.

This is the first draft, so people can look it over and see if it looks to be heading in the right direction, or if I need to adjust some numbers.

There seems a lot of 1D4s, but that keeps rolls around the average. The damage seemed on the low side, but nobody wears armour so it's probably pretty deadly.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The blank section of the sheet mean that the stats are identical to the ones above it. This is for weapons like sawed off shotguns or pistols with a alternate caliber cartridge that are otherwise identical to the original weapon.

Do sawn-off shotguns do the same damage as normal ones? I'd have though the close-up damage would be higher and the far-away damage would be lower. But perhaps I am misreading the table.

How's that for a start?

Pretty good. Quite often it doesn't matter if things are 100% accurate or even mostly accurate - what's important is that they are out there and usable. People change things anyway, so get more stuff like this out and people will use them.

It would be good to get a definitive list of weapons or weapon categories for different BRP settings.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, it might be worth looking at supplements such as Worlds of Wonder, Ringworld or Superworld just to see what stats they have for weapons. It might be worth comparing them to CoC stats and seeing what the differences are.

You probably need two sets of damage, one for settings that use Hit Locations and one for settings that don't. (You had that in your sample Colt 45 writeup and it's a good idea)

So, a gun that will take someone down in CoC would be too powerful in RQ because all you need to do in RQ is hit a vital and do 1/3 HPs but you need to do a lot more in CoC.

Of course, if everyone started using Hit Locations (as everyone should) then it wouldn't be a problem.

You could do a lot worse than base it on the weapons stats from Future World (Worlds of Wonder). They cover several basic modern weapon types and look reasonable to me.

I think the first thing you need to decide is an era. That way you can try to get information on costs and availability for the period you're looking at. I don't know much about the hstory of the Wild West myself, but I'm sure costs must have been very different depending on when the game is set. You also need to set the era so you can create your weapons tables.

Looking at Wikipedia, the Wild West is from the American Civil War to 1890. But, that doesn't really take into account the mass influx of settlers post 1815ish.

So, it would depend on what kind of Wild West you wanted.

The expansion period is roughly 1815 to 1848 when the USA gained many areas from Mexico following their war. This is when settlers flooded through the mid-west, through Indian lands, and settled many of the areas claimed by Mexico. More settlers travelled the Oregon Trail westwards until 1869 when the Railroad made wagon trains obselete. So, this is the period for wagon trains, raids by Indian tribes, land grabs and so on.

After the Mexican War, soldiers headed westwards and this fuelled the Wild West. The American Civil War had a number of irregular armed gangs acting on both sides, raiding their enemies. After the war finished, they moved westwards and became outlaw gangs and gunfighters. The railroad linked east and west in 1869. This is the time of cowboys, the Indian Wars, range wars, the Califormian Gold Rush, gold towns, ghost towns and so on.

The other approach is to try to do a 200-year (or so) book showing everything with an availability range ( like 1790 to 1830) and a price range. As others have said, location will also be a factor.

I wouldn't do that, really. Having rough periods with equipment lists might be useful, but if you want a Wild West supplement then list the Wild West periods and equipment availability.

But, I'm not American, so what do I know?

Here is a sample of the format I am thinking of going with for the weapons in the "Western Handbook". I'll put a table at the end too for quick reference. Does it suck?

Does it suck? Absolutely not.

I liked the font, liked the layout and the stats.

I've never really seen the point of Generation Tables for worlds.

As a GM, if I want the PCs to go to an Ice World then it's an Ice World and I can worry about the details when they get there. Tech Level might be important, but what's more important is how it links into the campaign and what's useful about it.

As for space being 3D, it's probably has a lot more dimensions than that. But that's irrelevant. The important thing is how long it takes to travel between worlds, not how far away those worlds are from each other. If three planets are one jump apart from each other then that's all I need to know.

So, Star Maps are all well and good, but I could do with just a table showing how many jumps it takes between planets, or what the power cost is to travel, or how many days it takes to travel or whatever. I don't really want to have to work it out from the distances between solar systems.

As a GM, I would want a setting to have major planets and systems mapped out at the start of the campaign, so I can hang things off it. Each planet should have a sketch and a short history, but nothing too detailed.

As a Player, I'd like to know where planets are, who the bosses are, whether they are friendly and so on. Everything else comes from the game and what happens in a camapign.

I wouldn't particularly want, as a Player or GM, to have masses of details on every planet and solar system in a campaign. There's no real need. Nor would I need to generate masses of stats for new planets or solar systems.

However, I do understand that people who like playing SciFi games like this sort of thing.

At one time we had some information about what was then being considered about Heroquesting, and it seemed to consist of HQers having two new attributes: Will, which was an expendable resource like a souped-up Power that would allow you to make direct changes in reality, and an attribute who's name now escapes me (I seem to recall it started with a C) that represented your awareness of cosmic forces and ability to sense when mystical powers were in use, including other's use of Will. We sort of flailed around with it a little, but never firmed up rules enough to really get much use out of it.

Edit: The other attribute was called Consciousness now that I remember.

I've never liked the idea of Will as a force in HeroQuesting. I tried it and it just didn't work for me. It means that every HeroQuestor can do anything on a HeroQuest just because he has a high Will. Also, manipulating the space around you through Will doesn't appeal to me at all. It might be good for Moorcock's End of Time series but that's about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightshade

At one time we had some information about what was then being considered about Heroquesting, and it seemed to consist of HQers having two new attributes: Will, which was an expendable resource like a souped-up Power that would allow you to make direct changes in reality, and an attribute who's name now escapes me (I seem to recall it started with a C) that represented your awareness of cosmic forces and ability to sense when mystical powers were in use, including other's use of Will. We sort of flailed around with it a little, but never firmed up rules enough to really get much use out of it.

I'm fairly familiar with the various pre-Hero Wars heroquesting rulessets out there, and there are some interesting ideas in them, although the "super-RuneQuest" approach can get a bit munchkiny. I think the "Mastery" system of the current HeroQuest is a very good mechanism, and could well be applicable to BRP quite easily. I also think the "Runic Affinity" thing works brilliantly for Glorantha, and could easily be BRP'ed, as could other neat HQ mechanics such as Augments and the more "improvised" magic, skill, and trait system.

To be honest, HQ the game has not given us much in terms of doing or running HeroQuests. The only thing it really gave us was a mechanism to determine how well the HQ did, but that didn't take into account the various degrees of success on different stations.

HQ has a good skill resolution method, but doesn't do much for HeroQuesting at all. Arcane Lore is better as it covers HeroQuesting from a non-rules viewpoint. Mongoose's Jrustela supplement has HeroQuesting-101 which is excellent and explains HeroQuesting very well.

I'm not sure what I'm groping at here - the above HQ-derived stuff is clearly very tied to the nature of Gloranthan "reality", and, for example, would not work as smoothly in the Young Kingdoms - although you might be able to transfer the Mastery and Augment rules. Spiritual development being tied to one's "connection" to runes seems perhaps too Gloranthan to derive anything "universal" from, however, although I could be wrong.

HeroQuesting is very much a Gloranthan thing, at least the way it has been written in RQ.

I don't know how it would work outside Glorantha. It has never worked for me in non-Gloranthan games. Mythic Russia has a HQ stab at Fantasy Europe HeroQuests, but those are really interacting with Fairy Tales and Planes and don't really work for me.

Hmm... I'm going to lie down in a darkened room and think about this for a bit. If anyone does know what the new BRP rules say about POW gain and above 100% skills (and heroic characters), it'd be very cool to know.

If you look at HeroQuesting as a way to get powerful characters then you are missing the point. Sure, HeroQuestors become powerful but that's just a side-effect.

For general BRP games, you need a way to become powerful and that would be setting specific.

In a Gloranthan setting, POW gain and scrifice is good. In a Young Kingdoms setting, demon control might be good or dealing with the powers of Law and Chaos. In another setting, powerful sorcerers may be born and not made, so it's in the initial makeup of the PC.

I've lost track of where I'm heading, so I'll stop it there .......

Is it just me? Am I the only person not to have a problem with POW Gain Rolls?

In my game, we use Runes, each of which costs 1 POW to gain. We also have Divine Magic and people can make Enchantments. We have Cult Presence (Aform of Divine POW Pool). There is a shaman and she put POW into her Fetch. All of these cost POW.

The PCs in my game normally get a POW Gain Roll once per scenario and because we use Hero Points they can attempt to reroll a failed attempt, so they get two bites of the cherry. I've not really seen any drawbacks to this and the PCs don't have huge numbers of Divine Spells.

So, why restrict POW Gain rolls? I don't understand.

Anything by H.P. Lovecraft.

Seriously.

Xanth is funny with some good ideas.

Gor has some excellent settings and very detailed descriptions of peoples such as the Bird Riders and Nomads. They went a bit fetishy after the first 5 or 6 and ended up mostly fetish with some background, but the early ones were pretty good.

Put an Ai in a ship and you are limited by space and power.

Put an AI on a planet and you are limited only by the number of components you can put together.

So, I can see planet-based AIs as being a lot more powerful than ship-based ones.

Also, there is the overwhelming Salesman Factor. AIs are made by companies/organisations and are sold by salesmen. Now, salesmen want to charge for absolutely everything they can, so any extra modules will have a cost associated with them. This means that, although AIs could be unlimited, in practical terms you get what you pay for.

The problem with AIs is that they don't exist, so people have to extrapolate what they will be capable of.

When I use "Modules" I'm not talking about a single program. Even the simplest of modules would be a host of programs running simultaneously, keeping track of a host of devices in real time, controlling hardware and software and making intelligent decisions based on information available to it. A Medical Module consists of diagnostic hardware, monitoring hardware and software, a self-learning database, the ability to diagnose problems, find new cures and act according to the state of any patients, possibly knowing about human and alien biology.

The current white heat of technology doesn't even come into play here as adding some memory and extra storage wouldn't really have any real effect on massively parallel artificial intelligences.

These systems are definitely slaves to humans, or other species, rather than being recognised as properly intelligent beings themselves. This can, of course, give rise to interesting scenarios of self-aware actions or computer rebellions.

(The Bomb on Dark Star became self-aware and had to be talked back into its bay before reasoning that it was intelligent, it was self-aware so it could make its own decisions and live its life the way it wanted to, it was a bomb and what do bombs do? Then it voluntarily explodes in the bomb bay after saying "Let there be light!")

From a capability point of view, how many tasks can a human do at once? One? Two? Three? A handful? An AI can do many more tasks simultaneously than any comparable human can do. It has a skill in various things and can carry out its assigned tasks competently. That makes it a valuable member of the crew and it can be roleplayed as a PC or an NPC.

Some examples: Hol from Red Dwarf is definitely a PC and is self-aware; the AI in Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy was self-aware and even had a different backup personality; Star Trek computers are intelligent but without real character, they are simply tools; Asimov's AIs are fairly rudimentary (except the one that became God) and so on. Pick your setting and decide what your AIs are like.

But, I wouldn't make them all-powerful just because we haven't reached the limit of what we can do with computers. There will always be limits, whether hardware, software or imposed by their makers.

Current RQ(3ish), HQ.

Past RQ(2/3), CoC (DLI), SuperWorld, Traveller, AD&D, Paranoia (DLI), Car Wars.

(DLI) - Didn't Like It.

Hi all, I'm Bill, and reading through all the other posts in this thread I feel extremely young and inexperienced. I'm 20, and have been gaming for about two years now.

Hiya Bill

No need to feel young and inexperienced.

I started off with D&D 3.5 (still play a bit), and then moved into Call of Cthulhu (which I GM almost exclusively). I've played a bit of Star Frontiers, Paranoia, and have helped play-test a d%-based game of retro sci-fi adventure called Amazing Space Adventures.

So, you've played more games in 2 years than I have in the last 20 - so who's the inexperienced one?

One of the guys I live with has been trying to push me into playing The Fantasy Trip, or rather, GMing it -- since he wants to play and doesn't have time to run it himself. I looked through the rules briefly, but it didn't really grab my interest -- BRP has me spoiled

Sometimes you have to play it to see what it's like. I've looked through rules that looked awful and played really well and also ran a game that looked really good but played like a dog.

But, BRP has spoiled a lot of people, myself included.

Just some notes on AIs and how they could work .....

Any feedback will, of course, be met with the message "Does not Compute" and disreagarded entirely. Unless it's good feedback or can improve the already perfect ideas ......

An AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a computer system that is, at least partially, self-aware and self-intelligent. This allows it to do more than a standard or “dumb” system.

Each AI can multitask, with the maximum number of tasks simultaneously performed limited by its INT. So, an INT 14 AI can perform 14 operations simultaneously. AIs generally do not have variable INT, so a HOL-2000 always has INT 7 and a HOL_MEDI-1000 always has INT 5, unless they have been customised.

Operations are modules and a single Operation may actually be doing many different things at once. So, a Navigation Module will be checking sensors, speed, position, calculating the best route and analysing any problems that might occur en route.

Each Module may be bought at different levels, ranging from Basic through Standard, Advanced, Expert to Master Level. Generally, each Module is associated with a single keynote Skill and each level gives the Module a skill that is usable by the AI. So, Basic gives 20%, Standard 40%, Advanced 60%, Expert 75% and Master 90% in the keynote skill. An Expert Navigation Module would give Stellar Navigation 75% and a Master Medical Module would give Medical 90%. Each Module takes up a point of INT but costs more the higher the level. Costs and availability will depend on the setting.

The AI may use its own skills, or those of slave AIs, at the stated rating in the absence of crew, or without crew intervention. So, an AI with Expert Navigation has Stellar Navigation 75% which it can use to program a series of Hyperspace Jumps to reach the intended destination. An AI’s skill may be used to augment a crew-member’s skill, or vice versa. So, Bones, a generic name for a Ship’s Medical Officer, has Medical 80% and can use the ship’s Expert Medical unit’s Medical 75% to augment his skill, but Fingers McCathaty can use his Medical 40% to augment the ship’s Medical 75% when Bones is not around. If the system you are using has augmentation rules then use those, otherwise add 1/5th of the augmenting skill to the main skill, so Bones has his skill of 80% increased by 15% giving him a Medical 95% and Fingers would add 8% to the ship’s Medical skill giving it Medical 83%.

Inactive Modules can be swapped out for active ones at a rate of 1 Module per hour, during which the swapped modules are out of commission. So, if the Captain wanted to change his Starship Combat Module for the Medical Module, this would take an hour, during which neither the Starship Combat nor the Medical Modules can be of use.

An AI may use the facilities of another AI, but doing so takes up a Sub-System slot. The Master AI uses a (AI-Module) Sub-System slot and the Slave AI uses a Master-AI Sub-System slot. All skills belonging to the Slave AI are available to the Master AI.

For example, the HOL-2000 has INT 7 and comes pre-programmed with the following modules: Standard Life Support, Standard Jump Drive, Standard Navigation, Standard Medical, Standard Sensors, Standard Communications, Standard Starship Combat, Standard Entertainment, Standard Engineering, Standard Planetary Traverse and Standard AI Personality. Normally, it has Life Support, AI Personality, Engineering, Sensors, Medical, Entertainment and Communications loaded, but when it needs to make a Hyperspace Jump it unloads Entertainment and Medical and loads up Navigation and Jump Drive.

A little later, the ship obtains a HOL-MEDI-1000 medical unit which has INT 5 but has Expert Medical and Standard Sick-Bed, so the HOL-2000 drops its Standard Medical and uses HOL-MEDI-1000 Subsystem instead and uses the HOL-MEDI-1000 with Master Sub-System, Medical, Sick-Bed 1, Sick-Bed 2 and Sick-Bed 3 Modules, giving the HOL-2000 access to Expert Medical as well as 3 Standard Sick-Beds.

Alien AI technology can be used to augment an AI only if the two AIs are compatible or can get a compatible route. So, a HOL-2000 uses the HALO (Human AI Linkage Object) system to communicate, but the Mindani MIN-2385 uses MINDA to communicate. However, the ASLN-5000 system has HALO and MINDA as Sub-Systems, so as long as the HOL-2000 and MIN-2385 systems include an ASLN-5000 Subsystem Module, the ASLN-5000 has a HOL-2000 Master Subsystem and an ASLN-5000 Master Subsystem, the HOL-2000 has a MIN-2385 Subsystem Module and the MIN-2385 has a HOL-2000 Master Subsystem Module installed, then the HOL-2000 AI can use the MIN-2385 AI as a Slave. Easy, really.

You might ask what the point of using different AIs together is. It introduces greater capacity than would normally be available. It allows new Modules to be used that are not designed for the normal AI. It allows alien technology to be used to do things that normal technology cannot. Finally, it allows people to design cool networks.

What advantages does this approach have:

• It is modular
  
• It allows complicated systems to be built up using simple rules
  
• It is flexible
  
• It allows a ship to operator on its own or to assist/be assisted by its crew
  
• It allows alien technology to be incorporated into a ship
  
• It is fairly simple

What do you think?

Top ContributorsTrifletraxor 2 Atgxtg 1 technoshaman 0 Sylvre Phire

How come technoshaman and Sylvre Phire are equal third with 0 contributions?

I've made 0 contributions as well and DEMAND that my lack of contributions be equally applauded.

Guns of the Wild West era were fairly inaccurate. I remember seeing a cowboy series (film?) where there was a gunfight and everyone grabbed the womenfolk and kids and pulled them off the street because the fight was full of wild shots that smashed nearby windows.

So, I'd give handguns an Accuracy score/Penalty. You could even have a special gun that was less inaccurate than normal guns of that model.

As has been stated, you need professions, skills, weapons, but also equipment prices and travel costs (pre- and post-railroad).

If you wanted a mystical approach, then look no further than Kung Fu, a series that combined westerns and eastern mysticism quite nicely. You could also throw in Native American religion as well, if you wanted, for a more RQ-style take on magic.

Have to agree with Kloster here. Western can work as a setting of its own. No need to make Cthulhu out of everything.

No need to make Cthulhu out of anything.

Regarding Einstein, I would say that he had a very high INT and EDU and a math skill of maybe 110% or so. Normally I regard 45%-65% as standard.

Actually, Einstein wasn't that good at Maths, apparently. He apparently had a Mathematician, whose name escapes me, who did a lot of the maths for him. Of course, I was told this by a mathematician at University whilst on a Pure Maths course, so I might be a little biased.

He certainly had a Theoretical Physics skill of over 100%.

Only a few extraordinary people ever reach skills above 100%.

Now, there I would disagree.

I don't know the penalties in BRP for doing something difficult, but if you had a problem that was difficult (-50%) and a very skilled person could do this just about every time he tried it, then he would have a skill of 150%. It's difficult to generalise about these things without concrete examples to back them up, but I would say that a lot of experts would have skills way above 100%.