soltakss

I was going to say that vehicles have vitals - tyres, brake cables, hydraulics, fuel tanks etc - so specials/impales have their place. But you've covered that. Presumably, criticals can still ignore armour. What about indirect damage done to occupants of vehicles? If a shell penetrates armour, will the excess damage go and hurt the occupants? If so, is it on a 1:1 basis or should we use a scaling factor?

If you made it viewable as a Forum, but only editable as a Wiki, then that would be ideal. Viewable as a Forum means it is easy to view and has topics organised together. Editable as a Wiki means that people won't just post responses willy-nilly and it will stay focussed as a usable resource. When BRP comes out officially, the Wiki should take off.

I don't really see the point of EDU in such games. All it seems to do is to give points that can be allocated to other skills. That, and having a base Characteristic for a Knowledge Roll (EDUx5%) to see if your character knows about something. A Points-based Character Generation System doesn't really need any extra ways of generating points, so you can skip EDU for that. You don't need a general catch-all skill to see if you know something - you can use various Lores/Knowledge skills to reflect knowledge - RQ had General Knowledge, for instance. Also, EDU is not necessarily related to skills. Someone who went to University and studied Classics/Archaeology would have a high EDU but wouldn't know the first thing about techie skills, so you can't even use EDU as a catch-all as it is going to be specific to an area or general field. So, no EDU for me.

I don't mind elves and dwarves. Even Orcs have their place as a fantasy species. You have to fit them in, though, and it does depend on the setting. Discworld dwarves are interesting for a bit, their elves are really great (cruel, unfeeling, haughty Lords and Ladies). If you can have trolls then why not elves and dwarves?

Think fast? :confused: My lot couldn't think fast if their lives depended on it. Even with Statements of Intent, when it comes to their SR, they: 1. Have to work out their attack chance again, even though it was the same as last round 2. Take 5 minutes to decide which combat tactic they are using (ignore armour, strike a location, disarm etc) 3. Rework their attack chance, depending on the tactic chosen 4. Spend 2 minutes finding their dice 5. Spend 2 minutes shaking the dice 6. Spend 2 minutes working out their special chance EVEN THOUGH THEY ROLLED 70 7. Spend 2 minutes finding damage dice and shaking the dice 8. Spend 2 minutes painstakingly adding up the damage We get through, on average, one combat per session. :mad:

My players love them. It's all a matter of taste, I suppose.

It just goes to show there are far nerdier people out there than me, I'm glad to say.

Have a look at Federation Starships and Alpha Fleet Simulations Group's Federation Starship Directory for Star Trek ships and Federation starships - Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki for mind-boggling detail. http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_huge.png for a comparison of different spaceships from different settings. B5TECH.COM - The Babylon 5 Tech-Manual. for Babylon 5 stats, again in mind-boggling detail. Battlestar Galactica: Technical Manual for Battlestar Galactica statistics. So, there are websites that give length, mass, drive and weaponry information for a whole host of SciFi ships. Now, all we need to do is to collate them into a single spreadsheet, decide on relative sizes, allocate SIZ to them, then work out other stats. Easy, really.

Some Cruisers from the excellent Star wars DatabankStar Wars: Databank | Starship Archive: Star wars Federation Cruiser Size: 1,088 meters long Manufacturer: Free Dac Volunteers, Pammant Docks Type: Carrier/destroyer (Providence-class) Weapon: 14 quad turbolaser turrets; 34 dual laser cannons; 2 ion cannons; 12 point-defence ion cannons; 102 proton torpedo tubes Affiliation: Trade Federation; Confederacy of Independent Systems Imperial Star Destroyer Size: 1,600 meters long Manufacturer: Kuat Drive Yards Type: Cruiser Affiliation: Empire Associations: Daala, Admiral; Imperial Navy Troopers; Isard, Ysanne; Needa, Captain Lorth; Pellaeon, Gilad; Ren-Cha, Gir Kybo; Screed, Admiral; Thrawn, Grand Admiral Dreadnaught Heavy Cruiser: Size: 600 meters long Manufacturer: Rendili StarDrive Type: Dreadnaught heavy cruiser Weapon: 10 turbolaser cannons, 20 quad turbolaser cannons, 10 turbolaser batteries Affiliation: Galactic Empire Associations: Bel Iblis, Garm Republic Cruiser: Homeworld: Coruscant Size: 115 meters long Manufacturer: Corellian Engineering Corporation Type: Cruiser Weapon: None Affiliation: Jedi, Galactic Republic Republic Attack Cruiser: Size: 1,137 meters long Manufacturer: Kuat Drive Yards Type: Cruiser (Venator-class Star Destroyer) Weapon: 8 heavy turbolasers; 2 medium dual turbolasers; 52 laser cannons; 4 proton torpedo launchers; 6 tractor beam projectors Affiliation: Galactic Republic; Galactic Empire Associations: Republic attack cruiser Super Star Destroyer: Homeworld: Fondor Size: 19,000 meters Manufacturer: Kuat Drive Yards Type: Star Dreadnought Weapon: Over 5,000 turbolasers and ion cannons. Affiliation: Empire Associations: Imperial Navy Troopers; Isard, Ysanne; Ozzel, Admiral Kendal; Piett, Admiral; Vader, Darth Dreadnaught: Size: 600 meters long Manufacturer: Rendili StarDrive Type: Dreadnaught heavy cruiser Weapon: 10 turbolaser cannons, 20 quad turbolaser cannons, 10 turbolaser batteries Affiliation: Galactic Empire Associations: Bel Iblis, Garm; Dreadnaught heavy cruiser Correlian Gunship: Size: 120 meters long Manufacturer: Corellian Engineering Corporation Type: Mid-sized anti-starfighter starship Weapon: 6 quad laser cannons; 8 double turbolaser cannons; 4 concussion missile tubes Affiliation: Rebel Alliance Dornean Gunship: Size: 90 meters Manufacturer: Dornean Braha'ket Fleetworks Conglomerate Type: Anti-starfighter gunship Weapon: 8 double turbolaser canons; 8 concussion missile launchers Affiliation: Rebel Alliance Trade Federation Battleship: Size: 3170 meters diameter Manufacturer: Hoersch- Kessel Drive Type: battleship (converted freighter) Weapon: Turbolaser cannons Affiliation: Trade Federation Associations: battle droid; Gunray, Nute; Haako, Rune Trade Federation Gunship: Size: 1,088 meters long Manufacturer: Free Dac Volunteers, Pammant Docks Type: Carrier/destroyer (Providence-class) Weapon: 14 quad turbolaser turrets; 34 dual laser cannons; 2 ion cannons; 12 point-defense ion cannons; 102 proton torpedo tubes Affiliation: Trade Federation; Confederacy of Independent Systems Mon Calamari Star Cruiser: Homeworld: Mon Calamari Size: 1,200 meters long Type: Capital ship cruiser Weapon: Laser cannons, turbolasers, tractor beams Affiliation: Rebel Alliance Associations: Ackbar, Admiral; Mon Calamari

True. Once you have decided on a scale or framework, then it is easy to slot different types of ship in. You just have to decide where a particular ship fits into the scheme of things. If you have a set of relative values for each SciFi Setting, you can slot other ships in according to their relative ranks. That's the problem with having numbers for starships. 4.5 Megatonnes is a hell of a spaceship and is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to build, except in a SciFi game/film/series/novel. Each class of spaceship will be different - the Star Tek ships have different classes to Star Wars Imperial Cruisers or Mimbari Cruisers or whatever. Agreed. While it would be useful to know if Mr Strong can lift and throw a Starfighter, it would be less useful to know that he couldn't lift a Battlestar. Mile-long starships are probably just too big to be picked up by anything.

I've never seen a good character sheet in any roleplaying game rulebook. I know that people will say "Look at so-and-so or such-and-such a game" and point out some examples. But, I've never seen them.

Are you aware of the RQ Alternate Earth site? Not much happening at the moment, but it might kick back to life at any time. alternateearthrq : Alternate Earth and Alternate Earth RQ Have you written anything up? I'd love to hear about anything related to Ancient Earth .....

Oh, yes, that's probably right. See, as I paraphrased "Yah! Boo! Sucks to you!". So, where's the official one with hit locations, then? >:->

Generally, if you have rules for spaceship design, then you are focussing on the SciFi element of the game. The rules may be generic, but other rules will be setting/genre specific and may well contradict rules in the BRP rulebook. So, I wouldn't worry too much on how spaceship design affects a Supers game. Also, I'd tend to split out aircraft design from spaceship design. Sure, have rules for aircraft and ships, but don't mix them with spaceship design.

We went there in the Playtest Group. I pointed out that the basic character sheet didn't contain Hit Locations. Jason pointed out that Hit Locations were an Optional Rule and so shouldn't be in a generic sheet. I pointed out that EDU was an Optional Rule and shouldn't be in a generic character sheet. Jason said "Yah! Boo! Sucks to you!". Or something like that, anyway. Obviously, I paraphrase But, any character sheet that has EDU and no Hit Locations screams COC to me (and not in a good sense).

You'd probably like Stupor Mundi, then. It's for RQM but could be used with BRP with no problem at all.

I wouldn't necessarily be too slavish about +8 SIZ doubles mass. If you have super-massive ships then you have to work out mass, engine thrust and so on. I'd keep things relative and rough. Well, yes and no. If you have power drain through equipment use then you need to track it. You either have enough power to do something or you don't. Perhaps, but how would you model a situation where the generators are dead and you only have enough Life Support for 4 hours (Standard Star Trek Episode Number ???)? That's why I think you need some kind of power requirement for Life Support, it causes you to make life or death choices. Do I cut the power to Life Support so that I can charge the batteries enough to make a Hyper-Jump even though it means some of our crew members could die? That makes sense as well. I think we'd need to hack out some rules, then build some spaceships and see how the rules go. You know, almost like a playtest I've never played Star Fleet Battles, but it sounds like the kind of thing you might need to do. That's how Star Trek always did it, anyway. Star Wars doesn't really track power but does track system damage. [sIZ Table] Whatever the scale is, it needs to be consistent and needs to look reasonable. Also, we need to be able to put together some sample spaceships from other games/films/TV series to see how they work. That way, if we need a ship like a Battlestar then we can get a template, if we need something like a Sun Hawk then we have those stats. Has anyone got rules for Babylon 5/Star Trek/Star Wars ship stats? It doesn't really matter what the system is, things should be easy to convert as long as we have relative values. What kind of FTL/Interstellar travel do we have examples of? Hyper-Jump - Jump between two points in normal space through Hyperspace, instant travel, limited range/aiming. Hyper-Point - Opens up a Jump Point into Hyperspace and allows the ship to travel through Hyperspace faster than normal. This needs a Jump Point back to normal space. This has durational travel, with a cost for each jump and navigational skills, perhaps each ship has to be of a certain SIZ/Power to create a Hyper-Point. (Babylon 5) Hyper-Gate - Fixed Hyper-Points that allow for travel between these fixed gates. This gives durational travel, but the ship doesn't need to create a Jump Point. (Babylon 5, Buck Rogers) Warp Speed - Warps space and allows for Faster Than Light travel. Each Warp is a multiple, or perhaps a power of normal light speed. (As Star Trek) Worm Hole - Opens up a worm hole between 2 points in normal space. Allows travel between the two ends of the worm hole. (Farscape, Star Trek Next Generation) I'm sure I've forgotten many types. You should all go out and get Pirates! Ya-har! It is really goodf and captures the feel of the setting. It's not very Mongoosey either. Ship Design has templates for Barge, Barque, Brigantine, Canoe, Corvette, Fishing Boat, Fluyt, Frigate, Galleon, Indiaman, Raft, Rowboat, Schooner, Small Trader, Sloop, Snow and Warship. Each ship has hull, Structure Points, Seaworthiness, Length, Draft, Capacity, Crew (Minimum/Average/Maximum), Speed, Weapons and Skill (Shiphandling/Boating). Ship Qualities can be Agile, Battleshy, Clumsy, Cursed, Defiant, Distinctive, Fragile, Foul, Good, Ill, Lucky, Nimble, Reliable, Slow, Sluggish, Stealthy, Sturdy, ZSweet, Swift or Unreliable. Each one gives a bonus or penalty to certain skills/attributes. So, Fragile gives -1 Hull, but Foul gives +10% to all Crew Resilience Checks (+10% to CONx5% Rols in BRP). Ships can have Modifications, such as Aft Guns, Bulwarks, Copper Bottom, Chase Guns, Full Repairs, Hidden Cargo Space, Lighten Hull, More Cannons, More Cargo Space, More Sail or Reinforced Hull. These changfe the characteristics of the ship. Temporary Measure include Bail out the Bilges, Batten Down the Hatches, False Colours and Partial Repairs and each gives a temporary bonus or has a temporary effect. There are rules for crew quality, crew numbers, random events, plunder, crew combat, ship to ship combat, sighting and chasing ships and more. It's all very modular and seems easy to use. I reckon it wouldn't take more than half an hour or so to come up with a workable ship using these rules. That's the kind of thing I'd like to see in a BRP Spaceship design - modular and easy to use. Not very technical and modelling exactlky how a spaceship works (after all, we don't know how proper spaceships work). Is it worth summarising them for those of us who don't have them? I got a lot of fre stuff from Drivethrurpg, but haven't gone through them yet, some of them may have ship design rules.

If you use a battleboard, you need to make it 3D and that's a pain, you need multiple 2D grids and hexboards don't really work in 3D. I'd go for the second, unless you want the "Well, you try and use your Forward Blasters but you are just out of range and they fizzle out" approach. For energy weapons, range is pretty irrelevant anyway, I'd give them damage that reduces with range as the beams become unfocussed. If you're the kind of person who uses hexboards in combat then hexboards will be useful for spaceship combat.

.gbx files are Game Boxes from Cyberboard. Go to the Cyberboard website CyberBoard or the download site CyberBoardfor an excellent program to model board games. I draw all my maps in Cyberboard now.

I wouldn't go down that far into detail. As long as people aren't being silly, I don't think you need to relate character SIZ to ship SIZ. By all means have a recommended capacity and a maximum capacity, after all if you fit too many people in a ship, the life support systems become overloaded.

I'd limit the number of external devices to SIZ, the old hard-point (?) in Traveller. POW gives the recharge capacity of generators etc, but I'd allow batteries to store PPs (Power Points). Guns, Shields, Warp/Jump Engines, teleport devices, life support etc would all use PPs. This means that your tactics are determined in part by the amount of power you had available. So, perhaps, each gun would use a number of PPs, depending on its damage, basic ship functions might use a set number of points per hour, shields could run at 1/hour or Shield rating / 10 per hour, or something similar. You could even say that some types of shield use extra PPs to absorb big hits. Movement would take PPs depending on the SIZ of the ship, INterstellar travel would be similar, but depending on the mode of travel might be single jumps, costs per hour or whatever. Ships would have skill bonuses, as specified, but also semi-intelligent ships would have skills of their own. So, a ship might have Blaster 50% and be able to engage in combat itself, but a Weapons Officer might have Blaster 75% and take control in combat situations. You'd probably need some guidelines on SIZ to show what SIZ certain types of ships would have. Off the top of my head, and completely arbitrarily: Escape POD: SIZ 1 1-man Fighter: SIZ 10 2-man Fighter: SIZ 15 Shuttlecraft/Runabout: SIZ 25 Small Merchantship: SIZ 40 Small Cruiser: SIZ 50 Medium Cruiser: SIZ 70 Large Cruiser: SIZ 100 Battlestar: SIZ 200 Death Star: SIZ 300 That way, you could design your ship and refer to the standard templates for comparison. STR - Use this for propulsion, by all means, but this would probably be normal propulsion, not Warp Speed/Hyperspeed/Jump/Interstellar-Drive. I know this is BRP not RQ, but there are good rules for ship design in the Mongoose books, Pirates has a couple of good ideas.

I couldn't even try and point to a single influence of even a group of them. I've always loved fantasy, even as a small child, reading Fairytales, then Narnia and so on. We read the Hobbit in Junior School, when I was about 8, and I loved it. Then I read all the fantasy books in the school library at the next school. I loved Moorcock and bought everything I could find of his, read a lot of Tolkein, went through series after series of fantasy and Science Fiction and so on. There were two series of books I read that really gripped me, one was about a Mongolian boy who kept to the old faith rather than the new Islamic one, the other was about a Viking warrior which was very moving in parts (He was attacked by a berserker at some docks, the berserker threw off his shirt and charged him, but recognised him as one of his closest friends at the last minute, he came out of the berserk rage to greet his friend when his friend went into a berserk rage and cut him down. ) As for films and TV series, I've watched so many it's unbelievable. Robin of Sherwood was important becasue it had a mystical/magical element and was more thoughtful than most. There was a very gritty Arthurian series in the 70s that influenced me and I prefer grittier settings. But, things like Xena, Hercules, the the Ivanhoe series (Dark Knight?) and even the moderen Robin Hood series are all good fun and show that you needn't be serious all the time. The Water Margin, and later Princess Wu, were fantastic and opened up a whole avenue of historical fantasy. Jason and the Argonauts was really good, there were also a host of Italian swords-and-sandals movies that were very gritty. Princess Bride was a RQ scenario written as a movie, in my opinion, and I still watch it when it comes on TV. So, too many influences, all merged into one.

It looks a bit old-fashioned, but hey - I like old-fashioned.

We always played that time spent on a cross counted against the 7-day limit for resurrection, so 3 days hanging, then dead meant that you had to be resurrected within 4 days. So, taking him off the cross is probably a good idea.