pansophy

hm, Nick's list seems pretty good. But it is nearly all the things you have in the Appendix of the Golden Book. I printed them out again, on parchment paper and put them into a 20 sheet clear PVC map. It is easy to handle and every player is able to grab it. I am not sure if the all the stuff on Nick's list will fit on the GM screen and the Reference sheets. I will have a look if I can do a quick and dirty GM screen by simply "cutting out" the tables of the BRP book and put them together in a DTP program.

Oh, I did a map as well. Did I say I love these cloud computing solutions? It brings us further towards destruction, day by day ... Rubble & Ruin Map

Hi all, I was a bit in writing mood this night and thought I should share the results. Maybe you find something interesting in the background or will use it by your own. Please let me know if you find it interesting, boring, mindless or bad written I am happy to correct things. The setting itself is a Sci-Fi Post Apocalyptic one, using parts of Rubble an Ruin, Outpost 19, Fractured Hopes, Eclipse Phase, Terminator Salvation and many more. Lets see what you have to say! ----------- //Transhumanism// In the not too far future two new major forces evolved on planet Earth: the TransHumans and the BEPs. In the beginning the TransHumans were scientists doing research on uploading a human brain to a computer mainframe. They succeeded with their goals and a new generation of people was born - the TransHumans. The group of scientists around Dr. Holger Brenner was giving people with handicaps a new chance and the technology was generally welcomed. It soon became clear that the TransHumans became nearly immortal as their brains were stored in a computer mainframe and could be uploaded to a new sleeve anytime a person dies. Of course this received huge interest by the military and soon the first tests for combat sleeves were made. Mostly Mercenaries and Elite or Special Forces soldiers became the first volunteers to sleeve into a combat sleeve. TransTech, the company formed around Dr. Holger Brenner and his staff, soon faced the problem of multiple active personalities in different sleeves, as backups for assumed dead persons were loaded into new sleeves too early. TransTech did invent a so called nano tattoo that holds information about the sleeved person, his sleeve date, version number of his upload and other general information. The process for older uploads was easy: the older upload was captured and the newer upload could decide wether to delete the old version or to merge the older upload with the newer one. Not an easy procedure, but possible. Sleeved Bounty Hunters became very popular as they were the ones ordered to capture older uploads. In the meantime some one other important thing happened. A small group of government scientists were working on the possibility to mix human DNA with animal DNA. The results were impressive and promising. They soon succeeded in growing animal limbs on artificial human tissue, of cause all in a secret lab and without the knowledge of the general public. They also started to research how animal instincts could be enhanced and how animals could be modified. An other side project was to separate animal attributes from their DNA, so they could be easily mixed with other kind of DNA. Dr. Holger Brenner was one of the first daring to undergo the brain upload and resleeve process. Knowing he will be nearly immortal and comprehending the power he can gain through this technology, he tricked the people around him. Instead of a full resleeving he uploaded a copy of his mind to the dedicated sleeve. His brain was transferred to the mainframe as usual, but instead of storing it, his brain was activated and he regained consciousness within the computer mainframe. It was a very daring task that was prone to fail. Everything was completely automated and nobody else was aware of this. But he was lucky. Everything went like a charm and regaining his consciousness, he was able to use full advantage of the mainframe and his human mind. His "real world" sleeve was controlled via the wireless network. It limited his range to the TransTech science buildings, but that was no longer a problem. He had full control over everything TransTech was doing now. Over the years more and more people followed the temptation to upload their mind to the TransTech mainframe. The technology became cheaper by the month and TransTech built subsidiaries in many countries. Each subsidiary was connected to an assembly line so the most common unisex sleeves could be build fast and on site. The more enhanced military and mercenary sleeves were produced in only a hand full of the countries, but they were very expensive and too specialised to be constructed anywhere. It was the moment of anger Dr. Holger Brenner was thinking about creating an own city for all the sleeved people, as more and more mortal humans began to protest against the new TransHumans. The mortals had different reasons why they protest against transhumanism, some thought of it as being a sin, others were simply jealous. After a long time of mortals objecting against TransHumans, Dr. Brenner made a public proposal of building a mega-city for the new race he had created. He thought people will see his good will and will yield to reason, but instead he earned laughter and mistrust. Dr. Brenner knew, no country will ever tolerate his wish to settle a piece of land with TransHumans, so he decided to do prepare himself ... The governments of the mortal humans began to discuss secretly after the public announcement. They were now facing a dangerous situation, as the TransHumans were numerous and the public was objecting. Dr. Brenners announcement also made clear he was proceeding his plans further - and no country would stop him. To add fuel to the fire the information about Dr. Brenners mind being part of the mainframe leaked through to the government leaders, as the Secret Service was able to access some log files created during the upload and storage process of Dr. Brenners mind. Chinese scientists revealed their experience with artificial intelligences and confessed to have experimented with that kind of technology. The result was all the AI's went mad in the end and had to be shut down - or maybe killed is the better word. One AI -the last one they invented- was able to lock out the scientists before they had the chance to kill it. It took 5 days to hack into the system and feed in malicious code (aka virus) into it. The virus reproduced and shut down the system part by part. The good thing was they had build the mainframe and knew how to shut it down. For shutting down a system like TransTech, something similar but then completely different would be needed. The Earths governments worked together and developed a daring plan: they would send a force of 400 men, each one trained for special missions, straight into the core of TransTechs headquarter. There they will upload a computer virus directly into the system. The mainframe will have no chance to counter the malicious software and it will grant the governments computer hackers access to the core system. There they will shut down TransTech, step by step. The main concern was not to harm the uploaded minds of thousands of people, so an automated virus would not work here. Operation Cold Storm began very promising. The first line of defence was taken down fast and easily. But it was the part after that worrying the generals. The areal of TransTech was massive and the now evolving battle was taking place between, in and on top of buildings. All in all it was kind of a death trap and many soldiers got slaughtered on the way to the main research labs. All that was left of the battle force were 3 dozen men in heavy armour and nearly out of ammo. The Combat Sleeves have proven to be tough enemies and TransTech seemed to have build many more than initially expected. The Cold Storm was never gaining the upper hand of the battle, but they weren't meant to. All that mattered was the successful placement of the virus. It was only minutes after the virus spread over the network when the last men were killed. But they archived their goal: the hackers were able to infiltrate the mainframe and shut down the system without harming the uploaded minds. It was a good time and the world governments celebrated. They have been successful. For exactly 2.586 minutes. Dr. Brenner had seen this coming. Early enough, long before the public broadcast, he had transferred the main systems to other parts of the mainframe. Putting up faked virtual Servers he had build a trap that was good enough to protect his core system. But that was not enough: he also separated the core system from the fake system, so any hacker was unable to access the core systems over the network. There had been some deadlock switches (hidden in the fake servers) that would cut off the core system from the network in an emergency. And it worked. For nearly 3 minutes Dr. Brenner lost the control over TransTech. Then the backup network kicked in and slowly rebuild its functions. As the virus had eliminated itself by deactivating the last fake system, there was no risk of being detected or infecting the new network. The cheering leaders were totally unaware of this. They started a huge party all around the globe, too busy with themselves to recognise TransTech was not defeated. Dr. Brenner in the meantime planned his move. No longer caring about the mortals he started his all out war. The forced brains he uploaded into the new and carefully hidden Combat Sleeves MKII were his willing slaves to fight his war for his perfect future. Two hours after the last soldier of Operation Cold Storm was killed, the Immortals walked through the gates of TransTech subsidiaries. The war had begun. Their first step was to conquer and hold strategic structures like power plants and Communication nodes. It was an easy prey for the Immortals as there was no or only minor opposition encountered. After gaining access to these points, Dr. Brenner cut the power and shut down the communication hubs. Civilisation was crippled. Without power and without being able to communicate, it was no longer possible to coordinate forces to battle the enemy. In fact, they did not even realise what hit them for the first hours. The second step was to crush enemy military bases, giving priority to nuclear weapon facilities and bases as well as airbases. This would prevent Earth forces to start bombing runs against the TransTech HQ. Without any orders the units were all on their own. They fought the enemies as good as possible, but it took huge effort to bring down a single Combat Sleeve. In fact, they were doomed. It was an unfair fight, and losses on the mortal side were extreme. Where ever the Immortals stroke, they were victorious. Not a single exception was made. Then something unpredictable happened: the Combat Sleeves went stiff. At first the human soldiers were cautious and approached the sleeves with extreme care. After it was clear they went 'dry', the units started to dismantle or destroy them - as long as they were able to. What happened? That was the big question ... During Operation Cold Storm the virus was released over the network. It spread itself over it in a fraction of a second and was soon to infiltrate the mainframe. But that was not all. It contaminated all the active sleeves as well, as they possess a very slow but still capable Computer. The virus was not able to spread to the new network due to the lack of CPU power, but it was able to spread over the sleeves own network that acts as a relay during the initial attack. After many hours these infected sleeves finally were overpowered by the virus. It was not capable of harming the actual sleeve computer, but it was able to fry up the CPU resulting in a software crash. Without the computer the sleeve was literally brain-dead. // End of Relay// I will write the second part soon. It will make use of the BEPs, the Biological Enhanced Persons. What would Post-Apo be without mutations?! -- cheers, pansophy

I have a copy of the MAC program called CoCC 3.0. It was created by Simon Janich in 2004. You can create a CoC character with it (German and English), Ruleset 5.5 and earlier. Printing Character sheets does work as well. Unfortunately since it is a binary you cannot change the skills in it, so it does not work well for BRP in that case. I wil try to contact him, maybe there is a newer version somewhere or he is willing to provide the source code so I can adapt the software. If there is interest, I can put it in the downloads section of BRP.com -- cheers pansophy

Hm, looks there are some paragraphs missing in the PDF. Anybody else having problems with it? EDIT: looks like Chaosium has removed it from their website at the moment ...

One question to the Author: would it be possible to see these nice Character Sheets in the Download area? Because the Chaosium Imprint is within the sheet and makes it kind of less usable.

You made my day, Foen. Along with Chaosium releasing Rubble&Ruins ... Wow!

Muahahahaha! YESSSS! All mine now ... Thanks for that! Since I have a long long long flight just starting in a few hours, this will keep me busy! Awesome!

One might discuss now it the rule applies for all Firearms, but that depends on the setting and the GM. For 'real world' I would allow this rule only for smal arms like pistols and may be SMGs. @Trifletraxor: thanks, it will helt new players a lot, I guess.

I think it is just a matter of taste and how you want a character to be. In most cases you can also simply parry with your attacking weapon as long as you do not use the split attack/parry option. It just looks like flavour to me ...

Yes! Thanks for that, mate! Just bought it. My wife will hate me ruining her Saturday now ... LOL :-D

Nothing serious, but I just wanted it to be posted as the Quick Start rules include the only basic combat example and helps a lot of players to understand how it works. --- Explanation --- There is an error in the Combat Example. A shot with a Firearm in Close Combat is unmodified. The Attacker gets 'Easy' for being at Point-Blank Range and 'Difficult' for being in Close Combat, so both modifiers negate each other. This is explained on page 224 in the BRP rules book: "while firing a missile weapon while engaged in combat is considered Difficult. However, if the attacker and the target are both within close combat range, the attack is Easy due to the rules for “Point-Blank Range” (page 229), meaning that the skill chance is unaffected." --- EoE --- I sent this to Chaosium, maybe they change it one day ...

You know, you are right. The Combat example is not that good. It's actually on page 210, page 198 is about the Strike Ranks. There really should be a better example for basic combat. The one they have in their Quick Start Rules is a good one (p.29). Actually they seem to have noticed that lack of explanation and solved it in the Quick Start rules at least. Hm, there is an error in the Example. A shot with a Firearm in Close Combat is unmodified. The Attacker gets 'Easy' for being at Point-Blank Range and 'Difficult' for being in Close Combat, so both modifiers negate each other. This is explained on page 224 in the BRP rules book: "while firing a missile weapon while engaged in combat is considered Difficult. However, if the attacker and the target are both within close combat range, the attack is Easy due to the rules for “Point-Blank Range” (page 229), meaning that the skill chance is unaffected."

Awesome! Count me in to buy the PDF :-D ! I am looking for a good Post Apo Setting for years now and yours sounds just right for me!

Hm, my suggestion is to start without all the Options in the book and then, after getting a good hold of the standard rules, adding these. I know it is tempting to use everything in the book, but honestly, it is not for everyone. I personal do not use the Strike Rank system as I do not feel it would add anything to our group. But even that depends on everyone's taste. If you want combat rounds to be more dynamic, it will certainly add flavour. Anyway, keep things simple and stupid in the beginning, then try to add the Options. And I must say in my opinion the rules are written quite well. Sure, there is a lot of information in them, but try to get the whole picture. Do as they say, step by step and use one of your characters as an example. It's quite easy then. More examples are always good. But I must say, they already did a good work and put in lots of examples. A complete one, where everything is covered would be such a monster, that nobody will read it. But some smaller ones for each major setting might be good. But that is what this (unofficial) forum is for. You will always get an answer for your problem, and sometimes so many, that you don't know what to do with them So what can be done better? I think the graphical presentation. If you compare the BRP book with other products like Eclipse Phase, Dark Heresy, Realms of Chthulhu, Solomon Kane, Slipstream, etc. BRP looks plain and dull. Somebody mentioned "uninspiring", which might be true in a first glance. I personally love well done colour printed rule books and yes, I am willing to pay 20$ more for that. If the art and the layout is well done, it's well worth my money. What else? Some more supporting products directly from Chaosium. Doing reprints of the old products produces a nice range of add-ons, but does not enhance BRP when these reprints are not even extended for it. For example the Basic Creatures book. It is nice for Fantasy, but completely useless for a modern or even futuristic setting. I would have loved to see some new creatures in that book, the BRP core rules book made a good start with that. It's like the basic Savage Worlds rules book. Good at all, but can be totally useless as well. SW would be nothing without the settings Pinnacle put out. And now imagine these settings all done in black&white ... not really a burner. I mean, CoC is done well in b/w as it catches the mood, but Realms of Cthulhu for SW showed how I would have expected a new rules book or add-on. That's me.

Thanks for the replies. Actually they work out great and do not alter the BRP rules in any way - they only "leave out" some things that are not visible to the players anyway.

Haviing BRP I do not need anything else - it is complete enough for me to get players running any kind of game they want. And I love the choice Chaosium did not include an Advantage/Disadvantage system. It always feels incomplete to me when I'm playing other games. If somebody has an advantage, there are other ways to put them into a character concept. Thumbs up for this most complete edition of the Chaosium rules!

Hi guys, I wrote up some Minion rules and posted the PDF in the downloads section. Any suggestions, comments, ideas? Minion Rules

Hm, to me it looks like the Core Book horse is a more gritty version of it and the Basic Creatures one is more the Fantasy genre one. They do not differ that much, so I would not see that as a problem. Depending on your campaign style, use the one or the other. There is also a line in the description of the Core Rules "Warhorses are usually bred for rugged- ness (add +2 to STR, CON, and SIZ).". So after you add these values to the written numbers, both come very close.

Good news! Thanks for the hard work. It looks the BRP ruleset for FGII has a lot of options and is flexible enough to support any game type. I really cannot await it...

So, when is the ruleset coming out? It looks I really want it!