LivingTriskele

Now I’m considering lowering each Power Level’s starting points by 75, in order to include Personality Types and Cultural Skills, so, for example: 175 for Normal characters + 260 (20 for each 13 Personality Type Skills) + 40 for Cultural Skills. In this way, Personality Type has less impact for higher Power Levels, which makes sense to me. The reason why I want to use Personality Types and Cultural Skills is to encourage the generation of well-rounded characters. The above plan is theoretical. I’m not sure how it would work in actual practice. I need to make a few test characters to see.

I just realized that I misinterpreted the rules for Personality Types. If I use Personality Types, that adds an extra 260 Skill points during character generation (on top of the starting amount of 250 points for Normal characters and 40 points I was planning on giving for Cultural Skills). Granted, it’s 260 points spread out over 13 Skills (20 points each), essentially raising the base chances of Skills the players may or may not dump more points into, but it seems like a lot. Even if I significantly lower the number of points for Cultural Skills, or remove Cultural Skills entirely it seems like a lot (which is a bummer because I really liked the idea Cultural Skills and Personality Types). Do you think this is too much?

Truth is, I'm trying to write something for the Basic Roleplaying Design Challenge announced last month, and I want to dial in the character creation guidelines in a way so veteran BRP players will appreciate it, but also ensure my D&D players create the most appropriate character they can, the first time around, and get a satisfying introduction to BRP. Towards that end, I’m thinking it’s worth somehow encouraging the generation of well-rounded characters in the guidelines. So far, the best way I can think of doing this is by having the guidelines require players to spend a certain number of points on noncombat skills.

Yeah, the moment they start starving because they can't find a job, I think the importance of being well-rounded might kick in. I could do something arbitrary like require players to spend at least half their default starting points on noncombat skills. So, 250 for Normal characters would be 125. Or maybe 1/3rd rounded down, so 83 points. That might make sense.

Truth! That's the reason why I like to throw the occasional foe at them that I know they can't beat in a strait fight. I think that they will have some extra points left over, after maxing out their main skills, for things that they’ll need to develop in game.

Another thing I need to navigate is how to incorporate different species/races that are on average just more powerful than most humans. Giving them more points to allocate over Characteristics doesn’t seem fair, but neither does forcing them start of weaker than the average member of their species. I suppose I could use in-game disadvantages, like being the subject of xenophobia or having unusual dietary needs.

I’m hoping (sort of assuming) that with 5 Skills maxed at 75% they’ll still have a few points left over for “hobby” skills that they can’t necessarily depend upon, but will get some satisfaction improving in game.

This got me thinking that I’d actually like to use both. The campaign setting I’ve been working on emphasizes psychological archetypes, and the Personality Types optional rule fits nicely with what I have going on here. But I also want to use Cultural Skills. I can think of two ways of doing this. Allow the players to take their 40 Cultural Skill points and use them either on Cultural Skills or Personality Type skills OR split the 40 down the center—20 points for Cultural Skills and 20 points for Personality Type skills.

It does. I was considering using that approach, but I’m on the fence. I’m inclined to give my players as much freedom in character creation as possible. I think they’ll just be happier. BRP by default is more lethal than D&D (which they are all used to), so I’m hoping a little freedom in character generation will compensate for that.

I’ve been comparing the BRP core rules with Magic World. A total of 40 bonus Cultural Skill points per character with the standard 250 Normal characters as per the BRP core rules, is the same number as Magic World’s 30 bonus Cultural Skill points combined with its 260 for Professional Skills—only without the limitation of the total points being broken down into smaller allocations (i.e., +20% x 4 over any Skills). I know my players and expect them to max out their primary Skills. With a total of 290 Skill Points, I’m guessing it’s safe for me to expect they can max out about 5 skills at 75%, taking into consideration various base chances. Also, I’m planning on using Skill Bonuses. Would you say this is a fun starting point? To be honest my impressions of BRP have probably been more idealistic than practical. Hence me coming to the veterans for advice 😄 I’ve had a great time using it to run the occasional Call of Cthulhu game, but most of my attempts at running RuneQuest were with the Avalon Hill edition, which were met with frustration by players forced to begin the game with skills at 30%, if I recall. I know that with Easy tasks, Skill percentiles are doubled. Going forward I hope that alleviates some of the that frustration (still my players haven’t stopped me from collecting most Chaosium publications out of love and appreciation).

Hi BRP hivemind. Looking for some advice regarding implementing Cultural Skills in a campaign. I’m planning on listing a set of skills for each culture, for the players to choose from. The players are going to start with an equal amount of cultural bonus skill points to allocate over their respective chosen cultural skills. My question is A) what’s a good TOTAL amount of bonus points to allow for cultural skills per character, and B) what’s a good maximum of bonus points to be allocated per each chosen cultural skill? I’m considering a total of 40 bonus cultural skill points per character with a maximum +15% per combat skill and +35% per non-combat skills. Does that seem fair?

Thank you! This is hopeful and helpful. I've meaning to reach out Green Ronin, and actually Steve Kenson himself.

Sadly, since the vast majority of this project is based on OGL rules (specifically the d20HeroSRD), it probably makes the most sense to either avoid or rewrite the BRP aspects I’d hoped to incorporate. That said, I can see applying the basic approach I’m using for this project to an entirely BRP/ORC friendly set of rules as well (which, the more I think about it, is probably what I’m going to end up doing).

I had a feeling it would come down to the game-rules-can’t-be-copyrighted conclusion. Since this all just a labor of love anyway, I’m still going to finish it. Maybe it can be a prototype for a public open-source SRD. If not, I'm okay with it just being a collection of obsessively curated house rules 🤪

I think the new question in my mind is--what exactly are "protectable expressions of game mechanics.” I've always vaguely assumed this to mean things like specific classes, monsters and spell names, but I could be wrong. For example (from what I understand) actual d20 game mechanics (i.e., Difficulty Classes) are not protectable.