pansophy

@Rosen: Is it? Oh! Never seen it! Thanks for the heads up.

What is "miles"? seriously, about 12 miles an hour movement? That seems way too fast for me. Maybe running speed, but not walking.

. I like that rule, but then I would stick to 5DEX per opponent, and it does not matter if you need to parry or not. Makes it easy and fair. 3 opponents meand -15 DEX to your INI (yes, it will make you go last) and parries or dodges are made at 1/2 skill.

Hm, I can make one up for you. Although I think it is pretty easy to see how they relate to each othe if you look at the % column. I just realised, the PDF does have two pages. Please ignore the first one as it was just an initial comparison chart. Will fix it on Monday.

@Lexis: you could also rule that the character with the lower roll is allowed to spend a Power Point to gain a higher success level. Or two or three points for a success level, depending how heroic you want it. This also would make Power Points important for fighters or warriors or in a non magic setting. The player then could decide how important the battle is for him and the limit of PPs a character has also limits the use of them.

Hi Rosen, it was just a long shot ... Nice rule you wrote. Will we see it in a BRP supplement sometime? Personally I like your works, and if shipping to AU would not be so expensive, I would buy some more books - instead of the PDFs. But I really hope you'll put out a nice modern or sci-fi setting sometime that gets me as interested as Merry England or Rome or Crusaders.

Have a look at Operation Ulysses. It is so much more than a simple SciFi adventure, there is a lot of setting information in it. The whole appendix is 46 pages long, giving weapon pictures and stats (32 weapons), 13 playable alien races (all very well described and thought out), critters (4) and a hand full of vehicles. The setting info in the book is plenty, and it is easy to build your own around this. Sure, this is not as huge as maybe traveller, but I have seen other games with a lot less setting info which were called source books. The part I like best are the CEL clones, which can swap robotic bodies depending on the task ahead. A bit like Eclipse Phase, but completely different. For me Operation Ulysses seems to be underrated. It is one of the bigger monographs with a lot of info in it and good pictures that do not change between hand drawn and CGI (they are all hand drawn, done very well). If you like good old scifi with no more fancy supernatural stuff than in Star Wars, you should grab it. It is plain old school scifi that delivers atmosphere and mood. Characters will feel powerful but not over the top, and I can see how one can use different source books to keep a campaign running without too much difficulties. It is the best starting point for a SciFi group so far available for BRP.

Maybe. Personally I handle these situations when they come up and make up some situational modifiers, but maybe this type of rule can be expanded to simulate mass combats as well. Maybe Rosen comes up with a nice rule in his modern supplement he will be writing?

I can see this kind of rules might be valid for fantasy/historical settings, but it does nothing for modern/future ones. I would prefere something that is useful for both genres, so it would be attractive to more people. Maybe something like counting the amount of successes each side archives and after a certain amount is reached, the battle is won by a "technical" advantage. This could result in the other side surrendering, taking a more defensive stance or fleeing. This kind of rules would be more "strategical" and not as detailed, but they would represent a more realistic way a battle is fought. The problem I have with most RPG battles is, that the PC's enemies mostly fight until death. I know, this is up to the GM, but I have rarely seen foes running away. And all the combat manoeuvres in modern RPGs add tactical detail, but leave out the aspect of strategic decisions. It is mostly an all or nothing fight, where only one side will survive the battle. Just my 2 cents.

From time to time I tend to look at other RPGs, looking for "the one SciFi game" I would like to play. But I always come back to BRP as it is intuitive and easy to teach. Converting a setting is a charm and gameplay is fast. It might look a bit "old school", but then, who cares if it runs smoothly and people have fun with it. I like it the way it is.

Well, have fun with BRP! Don't forget to have a look at the Errata (link in my footer). I'll try to answer some of your questions: 1) Can you use the Aim spot rule in conjunction with Autofire? Yes, nothing in the rules is saying different. Although, the GM may rule otherwise depending on circumstances. I personally would allow a "Burst" fired, but not "Full Auto". A "Burst" would add +15%, aiming for 10DEX would add 20% of the shooters skill (e.g. Firearms Skill at 75% divided by 100, multiplied by 20 is 15%). So the character with a skill of 75% would add 30% to his roll, resulting in a 105% chance. This seems unnecessary, but if the target has cover (making the roll Difficult), 105% divided by 2 would be 53%. And usually in a firefight everybody takes cover. This process seems a bit high on math, so I usually calculate the values upfront (Single fire, Burst and Auto Fire), as well as Aiming for 5 and 10 DEX ranks and write them on the character sheet. 2) The rules for autofire seem to differentiate between burst and autofire, but no weapon is listed as autofire, only burst, does this mean any weapon listed as burst is also capable of autofire? Yes. The Weapon table actually only lists the amount of bullets that can be fires during a combat round. Some weapons can be fired on different settings, e.g. the Machine Gun. It can fire 1 or 3 bullets, or bursts. A burst can be anything between 1 and the full load of the magazine. Since the rules for Autofire limit the amount for the bonus you receive (up to your skill rating), this is the natural limitation of bullets you want to fire (e.g. a character with a Skill of 49% would not want to fire more than 49 divided by 5 = 9 bullets, giving him a total of 49%+(9*5)=94% chance. So, what is the difference between 1 and 3 attacks or a burst? The difference is in single fire mode the character makes three attack rolls (using the volley fire rules, but make sure you read the Errata first. Basically Volley fire allows you to make more than one attack with a ranged weapon, paced by 5DEX, but all of them will be "Difficult") which can be made against three different targets. A Burst, though, gives the character a) one shot and a skill increase or, if fired at an area, a chance to hit multiple enemies without the need of using the Volley Fire rules. So, that is the difference between having a Submachine Gun (being able to fire 2 shots or a burst) or having a Medium Pistol (being able to fire up to 2 shots). 3) If a character with 50% in rifles is using an assault rifle and chooses to shoot 10 bullets, they get +50% to their role? Is this correct? Correct. And if he choses to fire 11 bullets, he will still only get +50%. Sometimes it is good to shoot a lot more bullets at a target, even if you do not get a higher bonus. More bullets fired increase the chance of killing something, as more bullets might hit the target. 4) Do negative and positive modifiers effect the threshold for a special/critical success or is that based entirely on the "raw" rating? If you have a skill at 50% and circumstances add 20% to that (for a total of 70%), specials and critical's are based on the new rating (70%). Have the "Skill Results Table" (p.172) at hand. Be aware, this table is "simplified". It rounds up all skills first, before calculating Specials and Criticals. It does the job most times and I personally prefer it. the "real" table is a bit different. You can get it here: Complete Skill Results Table Hope this answers your questions. Firearms do have the most rules in BRP and although they are all linked, there is no good example how they work together. I hope I was able to provide an example that covers most of the circumstances.

Updated the file, so it now shows RQ3 Movement to BRP. But be careful, RQ3 movement is not as granular and can give ridiculous values. Use them as a reference only. I think some creatures in RQ3 were just not done right. Nevertheless, the RQ3 table is quiet useful and speeds up gameplay. Have fun with it!

I have to verify, but I think RQ3 gives Movement in meters per Strike Rank, which would be 30m for a human, which would be the same as in BRP. But you are right, I could add a table for RQ3 to make things easier. Tomorrow.

Don't know if people recognise it at all, but MW and CoC use different Movement rates. I like to use some creatures from both of these settings in my BRP game, so I came up with this easy movement table. CoC to BRP Movement

only 10h to go ...

Well, I could do some more 2300ad conversion, say, the main rules books if people are interested. But does it help in the long term? Are people even interested to rectify the time it takes? Don't know ... Convince me!

Just a thought: weapon penetration is shown by the number of dice one would roll for damage, e.g. 2d6 would ignore 2 points of armor. If a player wants to use AP rounds, he couls roll a higher number of dice, but is not allowed to exceed the max amount of damage - in fact he also loses all "hard" damage modifiers. So a 2d6+2 could dor 3d4 points of damage AP. a 1d10+1 my roll 2d4.

last contact: 21st of June2012 ...

Hm, I got that wrong in some way cheers for clearing it up, Jason.

Now I am a bit scared: would that mean that I have to create and build every alien I introduce to the story? I do not like the idea of having a ruleset that tells me how a natural weapon will work in BRP, if it is not the way I want to use it. It also creates a lot of loop-holes players can exploit. For me the best part of BRP always is that you can come up with everything you like, describe it and give it some stats - and no "build" system gets in the way by telling you how to do that stuff rules-wise.

I guess I cannot qualify to say anything here ... it looks just strange to me. Are these Mecha compatible with cars and stuff from other BRP products? Is there a design rule for other vehicles? These are the questions I have in mind ...

looks good! I like to see there are some options of the BRP BGB used. Will there be a lot of new rules in the book? Or will they be just setting specific?

Depending on situation I would suggest a character doing a Knockback attack will forfeit his chance to make his first "free" Defense roll. He might do a -30% Defense roll, though (either Dodge or Parry).

Looks like it Futura Family does indeed look much more pleasant than Century Gothic - at least to me