RosenMcStern

Check Parpuzio Game System for a solution. The key to the problem is not how to translate the matrix, which represents a single exchange, but determinitg when an entire conflict is over.

The key mechanics in BRP is that when you lose or win a d100 roll, someone loses some sort of "hit points": Sanity, Hit Points, Location Hit Points, Power Points, Fatigue or such. It is just a matter of finding a suitable solution for social conflicts (Reputation, Stability or whatever).

Any word on how this project is progressing? Just curious!

Sigh, delayed, too.

Geez! Let us just say that 15 months ago we had just one line (BRP/RQ). Now we have two, with the arrival of HeroQuest in Aug 2010. In one month, we will have four RPG lines, in two different languages.

Is this a good reason for slowing down a bit?

He did send me some interesting stuff, but this happened long ago.

There is no official ETA, as other projects have a higher priority - like, huh, Merrie England - and need attention. Unfortunately, our BRP production line has slowed down a lot. But it is still planned.

I hope I can provide more details about our planned BRP stuff after Chimeriades. I should be able to make a checkpoint with Charlie (and Jeff) there.

Yeah, separate. But there will be RQ6 books for Glorantha, too. It is just that they are not top priority.

From what I heard, Loz and Pete are concentrating on producing a good, consolidated iteration of the rules, pruning the few glitches that still plague RuneQuest II. A new edition of Gloranthan stuff* is not mandatory to play second or third age with such a new edition, once you own (and most fans do) the plethora of supplements that have been published since 1978. So their priority might well be RQ Greece (which does not exist yet) or RQ Gwenthia or whatever. Once that is done, I have no news of Moon Design wishing to stay in the way of new RQ Glorantha books with original contents.

[*] Except for a reprint of the Kyger Litor cult writeup, of course. It is not RuneQuest if it does not contain one.

For those who consider that anyway brawling and martial arts are just a different approaches of unarmed combat, without MA bringing more efficiency, they can just forget the MA skill which becomes in this case superfluous.

I do not think you can simplify the subject so much. Once stated that a good brawler can beat a martial artist, there _IS_ a difference between the two that can make MA more efficient in some cases. Few people with street experience can kick efficiently in combat, and it is hard to deny that a kick strikes harder and farther than a punch. You may wish a more precise description of what the different styles may yeld, but a MA skill is indeed necessary, even in a realistic context. What is new in the BGB is that, like many other things, it is clearly stated that it is not necessarily a single skill. It may include boxing, karate, capoeira etc..

Note that this can also debated for weapons (and especially for archery), where 1) doubling the damage may not be very relevant and 2) weapon skills requires anyway a training learning specific techniques, inclusive optimizing the damage, and are as such martial arts. But I don't want to start a new debate!

It is not a new debate. This has been discussed before. Martial Arts techniques can be applied to a lot of weapons, if your settings permits. Personally, I allow them only for kendo and fencing (light weapons designed for high precision), and would certainly not let anyone apply them to Poleaxe, but it is justa a matter of what you allow in your campaign.

Its your game and you are free to do with it as you wish of course. I just hate the separation of Brawling from other Martial Arts as if it were inherently inferior. I guess I just don't understand the reasoning behind why a Martial Artist should gain an additional combat action while a Brawler of equal skill does not nor the reasoning behind why the Martial Artist would do more damage by default. It assumes that a Martial Artist with 50% skill is always better and will typically always win against a Brawler with 50% skill because for some unknown reason the Martial Artist strikes harder and more often.

Wait.

This is not how it works in BRP. It works this way in GURPS (Karate is a physical skill), but not in the Big Gold Book.

There cannot be any fight between a 50% martial artist and a 50% brawler in BRP, because the Karate user cannot use his Karate to strike. He must use his Brawl to strike, Karate only increases his damage. As the Brawler can parry, and there is no longer any rule that limits the amount of damage he can parry with a fist, Martial Arts will not be more effective aganst a really experienced thug than good Brawling would. The chance of taking an opponent down with a SINGLE blow increases with martial arts, but MA alone cannot decide the winner of a fight: the basic Brawling skill will. Well, I think this depicts reality rather well: I expect the one with the longest experience in real fights to win, but I do not suppose he will do so by hitting the "secret spot" that a guy who attended a dojo will

The rules differentiate between:

a) your ability to "handle" melee correctly, which is learned in street fights rather than dojos: this is the Brawling skill

your ability to apply secret techniques that rely also on concentration and knowledge of anatomy, which are learned in formal training rather than street fights: this is the MA skill

is useless if not coupled with a)

These are the rules. They work fine. You may add extra effects to MA to represent the various styles, but the basic concept is ok. I really cannot understand this "Martial Arts vs. Brawling" argument, as long as BRP is concerned. They are different skills, it is like discussing "Driving vs. Repair (Car)".

Therefore, in a "realistic" setting, WE DON'T NEED THE "MARTIAL ART SKILL" at all. Just use Brawl and Grapple and change the name. Over.

I have seen several of these comments about fighting techniques. After clarifying that it is your game and you are free to adopt any rule that you desire, I have yet to see such a statement come from a person who actually knows the fighting techniques we are talking about. It is perfectly possible that a Karate Black Belt ends up on the losing side of a street brawl (it happens rather frequently) but this does not mean that "Karate" and "Brawl" are the same skill. In fact, it would suggest the opposite!

I would really like to read an opinion about "imaginary and Wuxia" coming from someone who has trained for a long time in "real life" martial arts. Are you a Black Belt of something, Zit?

At the end of the day, the mantra is always the same: you can play your supers game with BRP (although I would try and replace armour with some sort of SW-style toughness), but with HeroQuest available, there are few (er, no...) things that BRP does better in a supers game. BRP can be a good option for a Victorian era superhero game in the mood of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Ooops - as a matter of fact, there is already such a monograph. Not a surprise, huh?

Dragon Lines has several suggestions about the effects that Martial Arts have on Grapple. They are heavily dependent on your style - the serpent style, for instance, has a particularly effective Grapple technique.

Although BRP can do superheroes, it is not exactly its sweet spot.

Consider that, except for Chaosium and Mongoose, _all_ other parties that produce d100 stuff also make bits and pieces for HeroQuest (d101, Alephtar, Design Mechanism, etc.). And superheroes are exactly in the middle of the HQ sweet spot.

So, if one of us wanted to make a superhero game (and I have discussed this possibility more than once during the last months), his goto system would probably not be BRP.

The problem is that most of these frontier areas were not under the control of organised states, as it was the case for England or France or the Holy Roman Empire. Their rulers were petty princes who in turn recognised higher princes, possibly switching sides when it was more convenient for them. For instance, you have references to Lithuania in both Crusaders and Mythic Russia, but the reality was that Lithuania was at the time a bunch of squabbling small duchies that sometimes united under a Grand Duke. The same goes for Christian colonies, as they were in fact ruled by their Bishops, so an accurate map should refer to bishoprics rather than nations. Denmark and Sweden were the exception, as they already had a king with centralized government.

Hi jeger.

First of all, these details were all made up by me. The Vilkacis is one of the most peculiar creatures of baltic legends (Urban thinks that the legend of werewolves as we knnow them now originated in Prussia), but the details about their transformations are blurry.

The spirit stage cannot be entered after the creature has achieved a higher level of transformation. Please note that the spirit vilkacis is the equivalent of a veli, a spirit of the dead, that is an inhabitant of the spirit land. It has the same limitations as physical beings, i.e. it cannot cross walls, and blows just leave it unharmed, they do not pass through its form.

The only advantage the spirit form has over the later forms is that it cannot be harmed by fire. But it does not fear oak, either (I cannot remember if I wrote it in the description, but it should be so). Think of the spirit form as a nature spirit, the equivalent of a wolf in the land of the veli. As such, it is not inherently evil and it does not fear oakwood or lightning (these are the weapons that Perkunis uses against the Devil in baltic folklore, so they work against evil creatures). Later, the creature achieves a higher level of consciuousness, but becomes corrupt: it is more powerful, but it is also inherently evil and becomes the target of Perkunis' "attentions".

A Vilkatis in human form is not immune to mundane weapons. However, a really high ranking werewolf can have some surprises in stock for unwary players, as shown in the CotAC campaign

Be careful: Allegiance is for the supernatural only. Your reputation with the mundane hierarchy of a cult is better modeled by Status (cult) .

If you play Dragon Lines and there are Heroic Abilities from MRQII that you like, I see no particular reason not to introduce them as additional Powers that some schools of MA can teach. That would avoid the confusion generated by having two different ways of acquiring powers. I do not recommend using Hero Points to buy these abilities, if you use Hero Points in your games.

I can send you the playtest version of BRP Mecha. It is currently only tested for 6m tall, non-flying mechas, but it should be able to do battletech-sized mechas efficiently. The only two things that the rules lack atm are flight and rules for superobots. Just don't expect rules for overheating and autocannon/20.

It will include some "generational" aspects. I cannot give you more details at the moment.

Due to a general slowdown of our production process, and personal issues on the part of the assigned writer (IndianaKen), it will not be published in 2011 as planned. But it should be out in 2012.

And also, my gaming group is going to travel quite a bit, its an exploration type of game, developing a world simultaneously as it is experienced so to speak. A sand-box world kind of, but not entirely, as the "sand" stays in place once has been moulded, for future reference and new campaigns. So staying in one place and being tied to a community is not really going to happen, perhaps a short-term commitment, staying for a couple of months perhaps (depending on weather and seasons), but no more than that really.

This was a problem in the original RQ(1-3), too. The necessity to go back to a temple to regain magic, although it is a great tool to keep you tied to your community, greatly hampers your ability to face very long adventures in the wild. If this is your goal, then it is absolutely necessary that your runes can be recharged while in the wilderness.

There must be some more tweaking for my player to refill his rune and make runes last longer than a one-use affair, but that should work out somehow I guess.

A one-use affair is only a problem if the user does not know where to refill the rune. As a matter of fact, this is a trick that can be used to keep a player in touch with his or her community - something that has been traditionally a distinctive feature of RuneQuest along the ages.

Remember, runes are not the Real Thing, they are the human representation of the Real Thing, how they trade knowledge to the generations to come - so they are intimately connected to traditions: not really fit for reclusive sorcerers who have little or no contact with other members of humanity. If your PC wants to become the classic "sorcerer-in-a-tower", he has little use for runes: he should seek the actual sources of magic, not their representation.

Actually, the rules for Baltic Pagan magic in "Crusaders of the Amber Coast" do exactly what you are looking for. Since only gifted individuals can learn true Sorcery, but warriors definitely need magic to stay alive, the Wise Women can inscribe a rune on an object (usually one of some mythic significance, like oak bark for the Thunder God Perkunas) and make it magically powerful by embuing it with one use of a sorcery spell. Once the spell is cast, a Witch or Shaman may empower it again with a new casting, for a price.

A list of the common sorcery spells and the corresponding Futhark rune is included, too. The spells detailed in "Crusaders" are connected to the Baltic deities, but it would be rather easy to adapt them to the Norse or Celtic pantheon.

It should be ready sooner. The PDF will be out with the physical book, as usual.

Congratulations - another Alephtar games award.

Er, no, it is a Cubicle 7 only production. We had no games in the competition this year. But Cubicle had, and again one of their winning products is a d100 game.

Ladies and gentlemen, another Silver Ennie for a BRP game. The Laundry gets its well deserved award. Well done, Gareth, Jason and John!

Well, I suppose it is now the time for an "official" announcement, as several people are wondering what will happen and I do not like leaving questions unanswered.

The already announced "BRP Mecha" and "Rome: Generals and Senators" will be released as Chaosium BRP supplements, as planned. They will, however, be delayed till 2012, whereas we hoped to have theme ready in 2011. Unfortunately, both writers (Ken Spencer and me) are rather busy and I really do not want to rush any product. Better delayed and good than on time and so-so.

Stupor Mundi Second Edition and VOD (d100 Steampunk) are planned and undergoing playtest, too, but they have no ETA. Moreover, it is not yet clear which incarnation of d100 they will use. The announcement of RQ6 has opened new opportunities, of course, and Alephtar Games is considering them all.

Apart from this, I have another couple of submissions that I am currently considering, but nothing else will be planned until we have a clear plan for all of the above.