pansophy

Interesting setting! I welcome the use of the BRP system and I hope to read more about this

Savage Tales of Solomon Kane with BRP? Nice, that sounds like a lot of fun. Any chance we can get some insight here?

Ah, sorry, the sentence is wrong: "think I read somewhere that BRP is more meant to simulate the kind of extreme powered humans" was meant to read: "think I read somewhere that BRP is more meant to simulate the LOWER kind of extreme powered humans" So yes, I wanted to say that BRP is not able to simulate Hulk and Superman ... but it was not intended to be that way.

nice, I love dice - I'm a mad collector. While we are talking about dice, I think you guys know Q-Workshop: the do sell the best most durable, high quality dice I have ever seen so far - and in a beautiful variety. And most important: They ship them overseas (Australia!), for nearly no postage&package costs. It's really worth a try. Q-Workshop

Welcome to BRP, bardic. As for the Power Systems: You have to be aware they are not balanced against each other. This does not mean you cannot use them all in one game, just be careful and think about how they influence your game. As a beginner I would recommend to concentrate on one Power system and occasionally throw in parts of the other systems just to add flavour or to see how they would interact. Don't make it too hard for you to get a grasp at the system. The monograph "Fractured Hope" makes use of all Power systems in its setting and it works out very well - but sometimes you might find some Powers are more powerful than others (in terms of cost). It depends on your group if you are comfortable with that. The Monograph "Basic Magic" points out how you could describe magic in your world and gives some hints to integrate it. It does not offer any Power rules though, just some new options. If you are looking for a way to find a description how Powers in you game world would work, where they come from and what the benefits are, the monograph might offer some help. It covers spirit, divine and sorcerous magic, but again, it does not tell you which magic system you should use. Be aware, Basic Magic is a reprint of the older Runequest magic chapters. So if you already own RQ, you might have a look in there before buying the monograph. I would use one magic system as the main way to go. Occasionally I would introduce one or an other system, maybe for different cultures or maybe just to have a change. But the players should all use only one power system, to keep things simple. The way the types of magic differ is just a descriptive thing and nothing different rules wise. So Magic, Psychic, Sorcery would all use the same Power system. Mutations and Superpowers are completely different in my opinion, as they have a "on" "off" characteristic - you either have them or not, they either work or not. I use Mutations sometimes to vary creatures in a fast way - so not every two giant snakes, scorpions, dragons, etc. are the same. It is a fast way to make encounters different, even if the basic creatures are the same. Superpowers are a good way to let the players (even the non magic users) have some special features. But you have to limit these powers (read: do not allow every superpower) and every Superpower a PC takes has to be approved by the GM. Ah, and they cannot 'buy' more Superpowers after character creation (but maybe the GM grants some after a while of adventuring, like Sidekicks). That's my take HAve fun with the game and again, welcome to BRP :-D

My take is, it would not break it. In fact it's the way I use it, although I have a few Allegiance skills a character might possess (but does not have to). My rules simply simulate their commitment towards a company/employer, and that score can indeed go up and down. And it does not have a Tick Box, because it can only be raised/lowered by actions the character did. It's a bit like the Status skill.

I think I read somewhere that BRP is more meant to simulate the kind of extreme powered humans (Spiderman, Batman, Iron Man, you name it) and not the extreme side. I have never seen a game system that simulates all power levels in one 'ladder'. Most of them lack on one side or do the trick of 'shifting' the power ladder to a new default value, e.g. 'STR 10 SuperPower' would equal to 'STR 300 Human Level' or something like that (numbers picked randomly here). In my opinion BRP simulates everything from gritty realistic to light super heroic, while falling short of a 'pulp' or 'heroic' feeling by default. But everything in that scale can be simulated - super heroic like Hulk or Superman are definitely way out of the scale. It does not bother me though, as I am not feeling the urge to play a super heroic setting. If I would want to, I think I would use a story telling system instead of a percentile one.

Hm, OK, after a long time being present in this forum, I think I should say something about me as well, as so many people here do. I'm a RPG gamer since 1987, starting with a german RPG called "Das Schwarze Auge". In the beginning it was similar to AD&D, not really rules heavy and fun to play. We played that game in a group of up to 9 players plus GM and had years of fun with it, until 1993. I love to remember these days, the atmosphere and the social fun. Anyway, an other group of friends and I tried the game 2300AD - it was a blast. Since it was hard to get the rules in Germany somewhere We desperately photocopied everything we could find and even put cash together to order one or two books from oversees. It was one of our most favoured games ever. Then there was Call of Cthulhu, a german version as well. It was pretty close to the english original -unlike the german versions you can but nowadays- and since our fantasy "Das Schwarze Auge" group wanted to switch to something 'mature' we started playing CoC. What can I say: it was mind blowing ! Horror and investigation haunted our dreams (well, not really, but ...) and we enjoyed playing it in a dark part of our attic, frightening everybody. After about 5 years our group fell apart and only occasionally I got a chance to play any RPG - life changed and other interests came up. Since then I was a collector, my bookshelf grew steadily and my harddrive needed to be extended once a year. A recent scan shows my RPG PDF folder is about 12 GB now. Nearly all of them I did read, but only a few left a memory. Most of them were bland or average stuff - nice to have, fun to read, but not particularly impressive. And as many, I was on my hunt to find "the one set of rules for everything". Since 2001 I have found a new group to play RPGs with. It is mainly a setting that you could describe as Suzerain - a setting where horror, magic, technology, time trave, space travel, everything you can imagine, is possible. This gives our group the possibility to nearly enjoy any genre while keeping the same characters (or their relatives) active in the stories. It is the one setting where I actually had to 'retire' some characters because of their age. And the first group is now about to reach their end of lifespan. During this Suzerain setting I changed the rule system many times. SOmetimes because we got bored of one system, sometimes because one system did not work for us. And sometimes, because it was a one-shot game for an evening (which translates into a dream within the setting ). It's really fun to do it if the players are with you, but so far we always enjoyed it. A good reason to do this was to keep the group together. Whenever I heard players talking about "ah, it would be nice to try that system / game", I took advantage of our freeform setting and threw the players into a new world - with changed rules. Doing this, I never lost a player because he got bored or because he wanted to play something else. Oh, and no, I am not the only GM in the group - we rotate that position every once and then. Over the time, we found the BRP rules the most flexible, customisable and sturdy ruleset. You literally can throw anything at it and it will be able to handle it. That said, BRP is by far the one with the most realistic feeling. My take is, it's because of the percentage rolls. Barbarians of Lemuria is our one-shot system of choice. Easy, fast, not too realistic and rules light. It is a perfect "Dream World" simulater where everything is a bit foggy and unfathomable. There are many more systems we tried, but these two are the ones we use on a regular basis. Others were given a try, but they did not hook us. Mostly every system that has lists for "Perks, Advantages, Stunts, etc" which keep increasing as part of character advancement and these "ever increasing hitpoints" rules are systems we do not like and put aside without trying them after reading the rules. Our house rules incorporate a lot of rules taken from other systems, using these ideas to introduce them into our BRP world. Every once in a while there is something good out there which ideally connects to BRP in a way, like Minion rules. Recently I put together our 2300AD rules for BRP which we use for a few years now in our setting. It was a collection of loose notes scattered through the original box from GDW. It got me thinking to write them down in a more usable way and make them public, so I asked Marc Miller and two of the artists if they are ok with that. To my surprise they were very friendly and helpful, especially Richard Spake who offered to give me even more artwork to make the book a bit nicer - and all for free. That was an amazing aspect and I hope some people find the rules and the SciFi character sheet useful and get their own ideas running. OK, that's my story.

unfortunately the shipping costs are a killer. so it was even cheaper this way.

there are many ways to use the Allegiances. In my SciFi setting I use one Allegiance skill for each company to represent the characters standing within that company. I can fully see to have a fixed number of Gods and to divide 100% between them to represent where a character stands. But there is no need to do that, if these gods do not interact with each other (e.g. come from different religions). So it could be totally fine a character has an Allegiance Skill of 40% with the god 'Ra' while having 80% with 'Zeus'. If that character also could have 60% with 'Hades' and 40% with 'Poseidon' depends purely how the gods work in your setting - and what your aim is to use the Allegiance skill for.

wow, I tried the Aspects thing - and it really breaks the system a bit As Atgxtg said, it came out to be "just an other Powers system" and that's all. It might be different if you include scene aspects,etc. but with only character aspects, it's not gaining anything. Switched it to 'characteristic skills' - and it was better. Players tried to invoke the complementary rules with these new skills and things went smooth. I don't know, maybe it's our group too satisfied with the BRP system, maybe I just did it wrong, but eventually we found an idea how to incorporate 'odd' skills into play. So in this regard it was worth buying the FATE books. Printing 600 pages was something I should have thought over twice, but there's lots of interesting stuff in it that can be used in a different way.

OK, Version 1.3: some typos corrected http://dl.dropbox.com/u/529658/2300AD%20to%20BRP%20V1.3.pdf

the thing is, you can simulate this by a -let's say- characteristic skill: A character has the skill : Guardian Angel at 40% The GM could ask for a skill check in that situation and the result shows how the scene evolves. And if the character makes the roll, although it adds trouble to the situation, he is rewarded because he can tick the box next to the skill. I am a bit biased to introduce a new concept into the BRP rules, when the existing system could simulate it.

I am currently reading my printed copy of "Starblazer Adventures", a brick of a book. I like what I read so far but I think it will take time for anybody coming from other RPGs to get used to the idea of aspects. Anyway, time will tell and it seems to work. Initially I thought FATE is more rules light than BRP, but SA proofs me wrong, it has at least as many rules as BRP does. The completeness of the system is much appreciated, you get everything in one book. And I mean everything. It is a big "wow" effect. @Sarah: I am looking forward to your article in the next Uncounted Worlds issue. The +/-10% seems to be a good idea to me and gives a nice start to play around with. Currently I'm only planning to use the aspects for the character creation process. So an aspect called "Air of Mystery" or "Ugly as Hell", "The Parrot of Eta Bootes" would really mean something - a 10% bonus to an action that can be activated with two points of "Power". With this rule characters are able to use Power Points in a setting where no magic exists - and more important to me, they start to involve things they usually do not think of. I have seen many nice character backgrounds, but when it comes to play, mostly all this information seems to be put aside and only the Skill section and the Health track is what counts. With other modern games I have the problem the "Effects" (or "Perks" or "Advantages" or whatever they call it) have a direct impact on skills - boring. I love these unfathomable effects like "Air of Mystery" or "Guardian Angel", they do not relate to a skill directly, but can be used on some, depending on the situation. The invention of these "fun" skills like "Stamp Collecting" or "Cheerleaders" are ok, but I feel guilty to let a player spend Personal Skill Points on these while they could use them for something better. OK, I could allow them to bring in 1/5 of its rating to skill rolls, as a complementary skill, but is it worth spending points on these kind of things? On the other side ... now that I think about it ... hmmm. AHHHH! I will try both and see how it works out.

I recently tried (!) to get my head around the FATE rules. Due to lowered prices at DriveThroughRPG I am now in possession of some shiny FATE PDFs, one is printed (600 pages) and resting next to my table at the moment. I tried. I really tried it. And I do not quite get it. FATE is different and all, but why is it they need 600 pages to explain the rules over and over again? Jeeeez. I am not complaining, but sheer overwhelmed. Ok, but now the question: anybody thought about bringing in these FATE Aspects for player characters into the BRP rules system? I hear my players complaining there are no "specialities" a character can have, and only a description in his background story does not grant him a benefit during play. So I am thinking about including these describing -but usable- aspects into my character creation process. Nothing fancy, but a nice way to sex-up the BRP rules. Any comments? MAybe Sarah, as I think she was a writer for one of the C7 FATE games? -- cheers, pansophy

OK, Version 1.2: errors fixed (some Aliens listed wrong DB and HP), money calculation included (Step 9), pictures cleaned up, prices included and Character sheet included. Download: Here

hmm, I could do that. I need to update the file anyway as I want to include the prices in the weapons/armor list.

I can recommend these sites, though there might be others: Etranger 2300AD One Man's Views

Thanks for that. At the moment there is only this sheet and I did a post-apocalyptic one (somwhere in the threads here). Tell me what you are looking for, I might come up with something you need - as long as it's not Fantasy :-D Thanks for that, feedback is much appreciated. I never played Traveller, but I might check it out sometime in the future

Here's the Character Sheet. In fact, it can be used for any BRP Space Setting - as can the 2300AD rules. It really is that generic ... Link to Character Sheet

splendid! Thanks for that!

It's there! Since I got the initial 'go' from Marc Miller and the artists, here is the link to the PDF. As soon as I get the possibility, I will upload it to the Downloads section of the forum. I hope people find it useful. If there is enough demand, I maybe can convince the right people to enhance it further and put in some work towards supplements. Dropbox Link to PDF

I also got permission from Richard Spake a few hours ago to use some of his artwork, new ones too. That currently delays the layout, but the end product will be a lot better! In fact, it really looks good now. Due to some spare time I included the colonies of earth and the languages into the document as well. That gives it a more complete thing and character creation can now be done without needing the 2300AD book. One still needs them for the setting and descriptions - and that's a good thing. 8-)

At the moment it is a one time thing. I am trying to convince Marc Miller to allow me to include all the setting information into the book - but that won't be a free download then. Maybe he allows to have the current free PDF for character creation and gaming and a commercial PDF with all the setting information in it. As for T2k: no plans so far, and I am not that familiar with the rules.