pansophy

The Perks look like fun, as long as they are not overpowering. But I would like to see this system as an option, as not every group and player might like it. One has to be very careful designing a Perk/Flaw system, as some players will try to MinMax their characters. I hope there won't be any Perks/Flaws for 'Creatures' as I always get the feeling they mess up any system. If a 'thing' has a special 'something', it should simply be described in the text. And personally I hate looking up all the 'specialities' during a game session when I game master. It wastes time I would rather spend on the story. But for Characters a Perks/Flaws system is ok. It gives a nice additional touch to the character. It would be excellent if there are perks for some more useless but nevertheless fun stuff, like 'Air of Mystery' or 'Charming' or 'Personal Hideout', etc. I mean stuff that does not directly add to skills but give other advantages. You could base the amount of points a character gets for buying Perks/Flaws as it is done for the Super Powers. These also include Character Failings, so the Perk/Flaw system could be derived from it and would be 'part of the basic rules' in a way.

Jep, if you need help, I'm in. I like the idea of adding traits and perks to the game. It will be a good addition as long as it is 'within the rules' somehow. I usually use the superpowers rules for a first idea of a trait. It gives one a good estimate for point costs, etc.

Ah! "bottlecap value" ok, makes sense Thanks for putting all this stuff together. If you need some help converting or putting rules together, let me know. The lack of mass battle rules is true, the rule book itself suggests 'looking somewhere else" for these. If you need some rules for "bigger" battles (not mass combat), have a look at my minion rules in the Download section. Maybe they are helpful, and feel free to use them.

Woooooooowww! Impressive! I was always looking for a Fallout setting for BRP, and yours is just amazing! Is the "bc value" a GURPS thing? Otherwise the systems seems very complete and easy enough to handle. It reminds me a bit on the "Settlement Generator" of "Darwins World" or the "Barbarians of the Aftermath" book. But it's excelent work, mate! I love you use d6 for random rolls, makes things easy (don't know why, I just love them )

Ah, ok. I never use the Attack and defense matrix, so that's why I missed that one. Overall, I think BRP does not have that many errors and contradictions - I have seen much worse. In fact, I like the way they repeat the rules over and over again, so in many cases you do not need to cross-check throughout the hole rule book and search for that one rule ... Anyway. Maybe if Chaosium receives a complete errata, they will incorporate it into the next printing. Same for the GM screen. I bet they would offer it, if somebody would send one to them. For me, the reference tables at the end of the book are enough, and I also uploaded the most referenced tables in the downloads section. With these, everybody can make his own GM screen. I found it very hard to do a good one, because it's just too much to place on it and it differs a lot from setting to setting. I bet whatever GM screen they would put out, someone would still complain that it is "incomplete".

Hm, I must have missed these contradictions. Is there an example?

Rosen, you made my day with this info. I did not see it until now, but NOW I am very excited about it. So tell us, when is "BRP Mecha" available?

Here the main differences: no mutated Animals more Science Fiction than Science Fantasy much deadlier plays 20 years after the Fall instead of "a few centuries" describes only one city, not a whole area is intended as a sandbox campaign I think that covers most of it ... -- cheers, pansophy

It is a difficult question. Usually I do not punish the players for being the bad guys in a RPG. It might be the way they want to play it and it might be the way they experience fun. The question is, if the way they like it overlaps with yours. So I think you should probably ask them, what their intention is and how they would like to have the way a game moves on. That said, rules wise I let the characters feel the impact of their actions. In one group it went that bad the player group was refused entry into some cities as they were well known for the trouble they attract. It was that moment I came up with this Allegiance rules and set the "Worship Evil" to 75% . They were complaining at first, but after I told them what it means they understood their actions have consequences. After a while I introduced more and more Allegiance groups (one for each major player in the world) and they could work on their ratings. It went out quite good. The Allegiance rules did a wonderful thing, because I did not need to work out relationships and detailed impacts of their actions, but I simply could roll on the Allegiance to see wether the NPCs recognise the group or not - and what they knew of them. In one adventure it was like this: The players were known for their evil doings in a city, but as they were also high ranked in an other group, the guards let them in. The players had to hand over their weapons and heavy parts of their armour to enter the city and were under constant surveillance. This caused more trouble than intended but was very useful to show them how their actions impact the world around them. Their mission was getting complicated more and more and finally they had to behave like "good citizens" - there was simply no other way. Overall, in the beginning I was ... "emotionally upset" about their actions, but after the Allegiance rules came in, I got a lot of fun out of it. It wasn't that I played against them, no, it was more that I enjoyed them seeing to get over to roleplaying the situations they got themselves into. After about two sessions they changed from a slaying group of bandits to a more or less (probably less) group of friendly adventurers. But it was fun, I did see their intention to "not care about others" changing to "I need to do this to archive my goal". That said, they sill murdered, robbed or stole from others when in the wild, but they tried to cover their tracks now. I had a nice session where they had to get rid of an other band of adventurers which had set out for bounty hunting - and the players were the targets. It was a game of cat and mouse, many many sessions long, ending very tragic for the PCs in the end. But it was a good ending, and the players (and I) loved every session of it. You can play the bad guys sometime, but even then you have to play by rules - rules of the society and people around you.

I'm interested how much of The Laundry is different from the Golden Book. I guess the magic system and some skills have changed. Is it more a game aimed to be funny, or is it a dead serious game? Somebody should do a review please

is out and can be purchased at RPGnow.com - so, who bought it and can tell me something about it?

after reading the book multiple times now (I printed it out, remember what I did say about that ), I know what you mean with "I did not get the organization perfect". Overall it is good and easy to read, but I find the background information a bit scattered in the book. I think it would have made it easier to put all the History, background and example city close together. The Risk table and "how to build a weapon" could have fit into the Equipment section (End Matter) together with the Armour part. Risk should have been explained together with armour and Trading rules in a Spot rules section and a following short example for Risk would have been nice. But that's all about it. Overall not a big deal, but sometimes a bit time consuming to find the right page. Maybe that's in for the second printing of the book ...

@vagabond: sorry, I really ignored your mentioned section as I was concentrating on the attack action only. You are absolutely right for non-combat actions. With these you can have more than one during a Turn, assuming they are quick and time would permit. Example: a character with DEX 20 could walk 5m, put his torch away (-5 DEX, DEX rank 15), ready his hand weapon (-5 DEX, DEX rank 10), open a door (-5 DEX, DEX rank 5). That would be 3 actions in addition to walking.

That is correct. That is correct. You are correct here as well. A character with DEX 20 who moved 6-15 meters may fire: A: at DEX rank 10 and 5, using Volley Fire - so making the attacks Difficult A: at DEX rank 10, shooting normal - and only once A: at DEX rank 10, shooting a burst using the Automatic Fire rules B: same as above, all configurations C: at DEX rank 10, shooting normal - and only once D: cannot shoot at all (assuming musket was unloaded), but as the character has 2 DEX ranks to do something, he could use them to reload the musket to half point of it. If the character would not do any more movement than 5m next turn, he could use his DEX rank 20 to finish the loading and fire on DEX rank 15. D) is what Vagabond was pointing out in his last post. The loading process is a non-combat action and as the character (I assume) is not in engaged in close combat, a GM could judge to allow these actions. If the conditions were a bit more "tense", the GM could judge the actions are to be used under the Volley Fire rule again, which would make the Shooting roll on DEX 15 Difficult This is a soft boundary and one should judge on a case to case base.

Ah, BTW: the difference between firing an allowing gun 3 times a Combat Round at let's say DEX Rank 16, 11 and 6 (1 is not possible as the gun only allows 3 attacks) and Volley Fire (which acts basically at the same DEX Ranks, 16, 11 & 6) is: Volley Fire makes ALL attacks Difficult. And that is the point I am trying to make. If you decide to use all 3 attacks of a firearm in a Combat Turn, you need to use the Volley Fire Spot rule. If you want to use a melee weapon more than once in a Combat Turn, you need to use the 100% Skill Optional rule. If you want to attack with 2 weapons in one Combat Turn, you would need to have both weapons at a Skill of 100% and make Difficult attacks with both of them. If you want to use Automatic Fire, you can only fire once - but at a higher chance of hitting.

Well, that is basically what I wanted to express. You usually can only do ONE action in the Combat Turn, but if you can use a Spot rule (e.g. Volley Fire in your example for the firearm or Skill>100% for one melee weapon), you could attack more than once in the same combat ROUND at your DEX RANK. Movement is an additionally thing as mentioned in the normal Combat rules further on. It definitely allows you to move and attack, DEX Rank depending on how far you moved. Other actions can be done as well, but folks should judge what is possible. What I wanted to express is, it is not possible for a character with DEX 16 to fire a Minigun 3 times in a Combat Turn at Full Auto. Vagabond's post would allow that, which makes a combat quite unrealistic and daunting to follow (you would have to further divide the combat round into smaller "-5" parts for each character, making it finally totally unplayable with a bigger number of combatants). In case this more detail is wanted, one should use the Strike Rank option. -- cheers, Vudo

Hm, I kind of disagree. There is a Spot rule for Two Weapons stating: "Using two weapons in combat does not automatically grant a second attack, or more parries than are normally allowed." and "If a second attack is allowed, it occurs 5 DEX ranks after the initial attack." Keyword here is "IF" Two weapon attacks are only allowed, when the character has a skill above 100% in BOTH weapon classes: "If your character has a skill of 100% or more in each weapon used, he or she can split the attack as per the optional rules for skills over 100% described on page 198 of Chapter Six: Combat." p.190: "During a combat round your character can perform any one of the following actions on his or her DEX rank: - Move - Attack - Non-Combat Action - Disengage From Combat" My definition of "any ONE" is ONE action of the list shown, not multiple. As the sentence speaks of a "combat round" =12s, it is pretty clear for me: one action, no more. Except you have a Spot rule you can use or a Skill above 100%. If you could attack with a light pistol (Attack:3) at every DEX rank, the rule for volley fire would make no sense. But then again, it is all about how you play it and how you like it. You bought the book, use it how you like.

Just to clear it up: - a combat round is 12 seconds - a character can take ONE action as mentioned in the rule book - movement DELAYs a characters action - Aiming and other Spot rules DELAY a character - DELAY happens within the SAME combat round The example on page 190 could give you the impression a character could act MORE than ONCE in a combat round, which is not correct. The example is part of the Multi-action rule above, only valid for Skills greater 100% and Missile weapons capable of firing more than once per combat round. Otherwise the Volley fire rules would not make any sense. BTW: Volley Fire works like it is described in the example mentioned above; first shot at full DEX rank, following shots at -5 DEX ranks. All shots are considered "Difficult" then and it is not possible to combine Volley Fire with Automatic Fire. You could Aim, though, increasing your chances a bit.

After having a quick re-read of the rules, you seem to be right. But the list of weapons allowing multiple attacks is relatively short (usually modern firearms) - and our group tends to use these for automatic fire to gain some better chance to hit. Melee weapons can only attack multiple times if your skill is 100% of higher, and you have to split up the percentage value to do so. I would keep it simple and allow ONE movement and ONE attack - at least that is what people in our group usually do. There is no point in shooting an enemy twice if you could shoot him once with a higher skill percentage anyway.

well if you have a two weapon skills, one with 60% and an other with 40% and you do not use a shield for Parry, the 20% difference implies you get a lot more hit, right?

nice idea. I think I will use that and set up a short skill list with attached specialisations. Thanks for the input!

The argument "if you don't have a shield" is the same as "if you don't have your primary weapon" - I guess one will happen as often as the other. Sure, but you could get hit a lot more often! And the first hit in combat is usually the pivotal one.

the rules as written in BRP make sense in one form: you only need ONE skill (the shield skill) to be able to parry everything a foe is attacking you with. If you use your weapon to parry, you use that skill. You would be screwed if you would need to use an other weapon you do not have a good skill in. Example: A fighter has 60% in his "Sword" skill and 60% in "Shield". If the fighter needs to use his backup weapon, a mace, he would need to use his "Mace" skill at let's say 40%. Since the fighter is still using his shield, he is still able to parry at 60%, so only his attack has dropped by 20%. I think this is pretty good. It's worth investing in the shield skill so you can rely on your parry and do not need to worry much about using an "alternative weapon". It also helps raising these not much used weapon skills without allowing a foe to harm you more than he would using your primary weapon. Fair deal in my opinion. Nothing to be changed. Maybe it's not that much realistic, but that's not the point in an RPG, is it?

Modern maps are hardest to come by. I did some maps with Dundjinni mapping software, but the problem is the initial layout. For my PA setting I use Google maps, take a Jpeg and use it as a background image within ArtRage to draw my own map of the city. Takes up a lot of time, but the end result is something I do personally like. There is a bunch of ready maps on Drivethrough RPG as well. Hard to find, but some are good: - Megacity Maps - Modern Backdrops You might also want to search for HorrorClix.

I guess it's all a matter of dressing.