Jason D

Sorry I'm so slow to respond, but I can feel your pain. I lived in Japan for six years and it was mostly a big time-out for gaming. Several others on this forum were former Japan residents - a thread or two got derailed by our reminiscing.

As long as it occurs naturally, I'm certainly in favor of sub-boards. Right now I think there's not enough out there, content-wise, to make sense of splitting up the boards, but in another half-year or so I can see a point in sub-boards for the various monographs and other products, with a main section for the core rules, and another for general discussion and whatnot.

This is probably the most playable means of dealing with this issue.

I'm trying to find the page where I wrote a warning to the effect of "Not all optional rules work well with one another." I am wondering if it got edited out, and am wishing I'd put it in boldface in the intro block of text about them.

You've half-answered your own question. Some types of attacks are Difficult or Impossible to Dodge, but might be easier to parry. Similarly, having a shield in hand gives you a weapon if your primary weapon breaks. The GM may also rule that a shield allows you to partially or fully parry an area of effect attack (depending on the size of the shield), whereas a Dodge may have no effect. It's a limitation on actions per round, essentially, and a holdover from Elric!, I believe. Some of these rules I'm not 100% sure I agree with, but I did want to break as little as possible with the core rulebook. Those are the rules as written for shields parrying missile weapons. I've seen it houseruled that you can parry them at full skill, and wrote the rules to accommodate that. Base value. If you feel like being generous, then you can add the optional skill modifier, but those shield values are really based simply on the relative sizes of the shield and an average PC. If we wanted to get really complicated, there would be some modifier based on a ratio of the shield's SIZ versus the character's SIZ, but striving for that level of detail is a step towards madness... To me, the rules are more severe to someone attempting to use a shield against missile weapons. The way I play is that I allow full shield parry skill vs. thrown weapons if you can see the attacker and the weapon (make a Spot roll if it's not obvious), Difficult vs. archery or equivalents (see above for conditions), and Impossible vs. firearms or energy weapons. The average damage for a disintegrator pistol is 8-9 points. The dice for the rifle version is 12-13 points. They are admittedly a bit underpowered, mostly because the outright disintegration of a target is often a serious game balance problem. If the numbers are problematic, I'd suggest altering the dice to pistol (3d8+1) and rifle (3d12+2). That's crazy-high, but might be more to your liking. True... random armor values don't really stack up against fixed armor values. The "missing aspect" is that random armor values aren't really usable with hit locations, where fixed armor values become much more important. It's one of those cascading design issues, where one option creates a series of issues that ripples across multiple options. If backwards-compatibility weren't a goal of the book, I'd probably adjust most of the random values upwards, or rather, their minimums upward, so it'd be more like 1d4+3 rather than 1d8-1. I'll admit that hit locations are, next to fatigue points, my least-favorite aspect of prior BRP games, and if not for the vociferous cries from the playtesters when I hinted about losing them entirely, they'd be gone. I agree completely that applying damage equally across all hit locations is pretty brutal. As an alternate house rule, I'd suggest one of the following: For every die of damage done by the area attack, roll a d20 for hit locations. Divide the total damage rolled across that number of hit locations (rounding down or up, depending on how fierce a GM you are), applying doubled hit locations double damage. Divide damage equally across all hit locations (rounding up). If you have more hit locations, there's (theoretically) more surface area and damage is applied less intensely to each location. Note that none of these answers are holy writ, and I fully expect BRP to both inherit legacy house rules and accumulate its healthy share of new house rules. I wish it were otherwise, but such is the nature of the beast. I remember joking during the playtest that some of the system's house rules are older than some of the playtesters.

My wife got to meet him a few times at the Austin Film Festival a few years back. She said he's definitely a strong personality, and can see how people might run into problems with him in a high-stress environment like a big-budget film shoot.

I'll try to get to these questions tonight... I don't have a copy of the rulebook here at work with me. If anyone else wants to chime in, please be my guest! (and let's try to keep this thread on topic!)

Part of the problem with X1 was that the studio scheduled it for an insanely short production-to-release cycle, and cut the budget before filming (which is why the climactic fight takes place in an unconvincingly crappy looking gift shop). I remember an interview where Singer claimed that in the summer of 1999 when he'd heard the release date of July he went "All right, two years of pre-production, production, and post-production... that's good!" and was told "No, we mean July 2000." I'm sure, though, that none of the cast were too sorry to see him gone for the third installment. It's always going to be one of those big question marks... if Superman Returns had been excellent, people would assume that X3 would have been equally incredible. Instead, Superman Returns wasn't the film it should have been, and now there's an even bigger question mark...

The fiasco regarding X-Men 3 was far more complicated than that. When Tom Rothman, a head at Fox, kept dragging his heels about X3 and wouldn't commit to making it, Brian Singer packed up and took his team with him to go make Superman Returns. Matthew Vaughn stepped in with an extremely edgy, alternate take on the franchise. He had a new script written, and worked with the production team in casting, etc. Then for reasons of his own (various reports say budget issues, lack of confidence, etc.) he stepped out of the production just before it was going to go before cameras. Ratner had been the front-runner for the new Superman flick before Singer came onboard, and as he has a "dependable" reputation at Fox, they got him to take over X3 so close to shooting. So most of the story problems with X3 can be laid primarily at Vaughn's feet (and the screenwriter whose name escapes me... Zack Penn, maybe?), but the lackluster direction and sloppy presentation of the film are entirely Ratner's fault.

We're wandering all over the original topic, with talk of movies, REH horror, Hellboy, Elric, comely authors in Almurician battle-dress*, and whatnot, but I should mention the absolutely fantastic Michael Chabon novel Gentlemen of the Road, which is as close to a Fritz Leiber F&GM pastiche as is legally possible. * No offense intended, Shaira - I've no idea if you are in fact comely or would resent such categorization, but it's genre-appropriate.

I can think of absolutely nothing appropriate to post in reply to this comment.

There's a new Hellboy computer game that looks pretty cool, and there's the old Hellboy Roleplaying Game and Sourcebook using GURPS Lite. I ran a BRP/BPRD game a couple of years ago that was a lot fun. Maybe I should post those character sheets as well.

An Elric film (or rather, the first in a trilogy) was announced around four years ago, to be directed by the Weitz brothers (Chris and Paul). They've since done The Golden Compass. Michael Moorcock said a while back that an initial draft of the screenplay was complete and was acceptable to him. A year ago yesterday Moorcock posted that Universal had paid for another 18 months of rights to make the film. I'm skeptical anything will happen, mainly because of the lukewarm performance to The Golden Compass. If it had been a huge hit, the Weitzs would be stuck making the second and third film in that trilogy. If Compass bombed, there'd be little chance anyone would put them at the helm of yet another big-budget fantasy trilogy. Instead, it performed in that grey area that can alternately be called a disappointment or a moderate success. There isn't much other news floating around, though the fans haven't let that stop any speculation.

As far as I have heard, part of the arrangement between Chaosium and Mongoose with the transfer/sale of the Michael Moorcock Eternal Champion license involved Chaosium getting the rights to do a game titled Robert E. Howard’s World of Horror. I really don't know much about it, other than that. It does not require the core book to play - it's standalone. Here's a pretty long list of REH horror stories. I'll wager that Almuric will not be a part of that, but if it's any consolation, Almuric is a primary source for Interplanetary.

You are correct here.

I've actually done some writing for the Battlestar Galactica RPG, which uses the same Cortex system Serenity uses and I've run about a dozen or so sessions between the two games. My gut feeling is that while it would be an immense amount of work to try to "translate" the Serenity RPG to BRP, it would be rock-bottom simple to just play a Serenity/Firefly game using BRP, if you get the distinction I'm making. For example, if you were to pick the professions for the crew of Serenity, here's how they might match up: Mal - Mal's a seasoned Soldier, skilled with weapons and command, extremely tough (like an 18 or 19 CON) Zoe - another Soldier with some stealth type skills Wash - a Pilot extraordinaire Jayne - a Warrior with a lot of gun skills, high STR, SIZ, and CON Kaylee - an Engineer with mad Repair and Technical skills Inara - an Entertainer with a few other skills, high APP and Status Book - a Priest with extensive experience of some unknown type, perhaps (as theorists will spin) as an Assassin or a Spy Simon - a Doctor with high Status for his privileged upbringing River - a "create your own profession" character most likely ("Test Subject"), with a wide variety of military and physical combat skills, and some Psychic Powers. I'd give her the following: Danger Sense, Eidetic Memory, Intuition, and maybe Precognition. Her DEX and POW would be extremely high. If I were using Sanity as an optional system, hers would be fairly low from her past experiences. I'd probably use the Total Hit Points option to separate the heroes from the mooks, and would everyone's weapons would likely just be standard firearms with a few extras and the occasional laser pistol or energy weapon showing up for variety. Serenity herself would be a Space Vehicle, Transport as described on pages 270 and 271, though without FTL or energy shields. Depending on how you want to play them, Reavers would be the equivalent of Orcs (p346), Maniacs (p363), or I'd make up a set of stats for them. Note that while I'm not saying you'd need to copy the show's characters, this is just an example of how you'd translate it to BRP.

Chaosium.com: News - July Happenings This one is seem highly relevant to BRP, so I'm cross-posting it here:

It's a lot of fun. If I had more free time, I'd be running it using BRP, but the combination of work, a toddler, freelance, and family stuff has kept me from being able to devote much more than an hour of prep time to games... and I regard researching other systems as an essential part of the work of a game designer. I'm quite looking forward to seeing what Chaosium does with their Robert E. Howard horror license, as well.

Currently, I'm not running any long-term campaigns with my group, as we're all to unreliable to depend on a regular campaign. For the past four sessions (spread out over around two months), I've been running Savage World of Solomon Kane for fun, as we're all REH fans and I'm using the canned scenarios. As more than half of us are also in the game industry, we're always interested in trying new systems, so there's a lot of mini-campaigns with new game systems. Now that copies of BRP are actually available, once we settle down and get more reliable with meeting, the GM duties will either switch to someone else, or I'll run BRP. One of the players has mentioned using it for a supernatural horror WW2 campaign, with him GMing. When it comes to a "first genre" to get familiar with the system, I'm of the "start small/shallow/simple, then get bigger/deeper/complicated" as required sort of mindset. I'd pick a genre that doesn't necessarily use powers, or ask that starting characters don't utilize them. I'd keep optional rules to a minimum. If the group likes fantasy, then go for a setting where they're mostly human mercenaries or non-spellcasters. If they're into historical settings, emphasize how it can be used for anything from prehistoric cavemen survival scenarios to modern tactical military games. A good old-fashioned Western might be a neat intro to the setting, as well.

The gist of the advice I provided was for the GM in coming up with new powers, not letting players decide how those powers worked on a case-by-case basis.

I'll look at it this weekend, but it might be a simple glitch - it should do the special result.

I wish I could tell you that there was a universal rule that applied, but there wasn't. I did little playtest scenarios where I pitted two characters against one another using either method, and determined which made more sense to me. The general rule of thumb for what resistance rolls were POW vs. POW or power points vs. power points was as follows: - If the offensive or defensive value seemed to be intrinsic to the character, rather than situational and based on current state, previous power use, etc., I went with POW vs. POW. For example, no matter how much spellcasting he's done earlier that day, Merlin will never be hypnotized by Dracula. - If the offensive or defensive seemed to make more sense being based off a situational condition, such as previous power use, etc. then I went with power points vs. power points. For example, Elric may be overcome by one of Theleb K'aarna's spells that opposes power points if the albino sorcerer has just spent most of them on a big summoning. In every case my preferred choice was to make things more playable.

dustin@chaosium.com is the guy to talk to. I know from him that Chaosium has the rights to reprint WB, but I don't know what other rights they may have or be interested in procuring.