Mister Apocalypse

Long ago I asked about the merits of low roll wins in opposed resolution rather than high roll wins. The conventional wisdom has it that low roll wins is overly biased towards the lower skilled character.

I did up a spreadsheet that does the math and gives the percentages of character A or B winning an opposed roll, and the math behind low roll wins, isn't nearly as biased as conventional wisdom. Yes, the lower skilled character's chances of success improves, but where or not this is an unfair bias remains to be seen.

For the spreadsheet, I defined the conditions of the contest as follows:

Character A: the lower skilled character's skill%

Character B: The higher skilled character's skill%

Condition 1: Both Succeed [%=AxB]

Condition 2: A succeeds, B fails [%=Ax(1-]

Condition 3: A fails, B succeeds [%=Bx(1-A)]

Condition 4: Both fail [%=(1-A)x(1-]

Ignoring critical,special successes, and fumbles (the inclusion of which would favor we wind up with:

A winning condition 2, B winning condition 3, both splitting condition 4.

The only difference between roll low and roll high is in condition 1 (both succeed).

We can break down codition 1 into:

Condition 1a: the cases where both players roll under A%, where the odds are even [%=AxA]

Condition 1b: the contested region, where both succeed but B rolls higher than A. [%=AxB-(AxA)]

So since we are ignoring specials, both players would split Condition 1a, and the only difference between the two methods is with Condition 1b.

In a nutshell, the difference between roll low and roll high is in who win during condition 1b. With roll low, A wins, while with roll high B wins.

Here are some results at various skill ratings for A and B to show the differences between the two methods:

1) A: 10%, B:90%

Low Wins: 14%/86%

High Wins: 6%/94%

2) A: 40%, B: 80%

Low Wins: 38%/62%

High Wins: 22%/78%

3) A: 20%, B: 50%

Low Wins: 38%/62%

High Wins: 32%/68%

4) A; 30%, B: 70%

Low Wins: 36%/64%

High Wins: 24%/76%

5) A: 40%, B: 50%

Low Wins: 47%/53%

High Wins: 43%/57%

Now in theory the breakdowns for opposed rolls should probably match up to the relative % in skills. That is if B is twice as good as A, he should with twice as many contents, (for a 33%/67% breakdown). Likewise a case where one character has a slight edge (40 vs 50) should result in a slight advantage (44%/56% breakdown)

According to the results, roll low is closer to that result, and roll high is unfairly biased towards the character with the higher skill.

Once you start to factor in for criticals, special successes and fumbles, the odds will shift even further towards B, with B's superior special and fumble range, giving B significant more wins during cases where both contestants succeed or both fail.

For roll low, this just about sets things to right, but for roll high, it heavily biases the results towards the higher skilled character. For example, in the A: 10, B:90 scenario A will win practically none of the cases where both succeed or both fail, as B's special success range overlaps As win range (so A must roll and 01) and A's fumble range costs him most of the both failed cases. As a result with roll high, A:10, B:90 comes out with A having a less than 5% chance of winning.

So, if anything roll high is unfairly biased, not roll low.

I think the reason behind that was because Traveller uses liquid hydrogen for fuel. Liquid hydrogen has a mass of about .07% that of water, and so would take up about 13.5-14 m3 per ton.

Be glad that they rounded off the numbers a bit. 13.5m3 is not 500 ft3.

FYI, since Traveller bases everything around liquid hydrogen, the final masses are going to be too light anyway, probably by an order of magnitude. So you could get away with a guesstimate.

What I would do is take the total volume of the structure and multiply it by a density factor to get an approximate mass. Water, for example has a density of 1 and steel is about 5.5

So if you wanted the average density of the dome to be able the same at water, you could multiply the volume by 1 to get a mass.

If you image the dome to be about as clutter as a car you could use .15 for a multiplier-that is about the same as a car.

I use .125 for BRP Spaceships, so you can just divide the volume by 8.

It can probably save you a lot of time, headaches, and will probably be close enough.

I agree. I think that is a lot of what I am seeing at the gaming table and conventions.

I also agree personally with Rob about the more detail the better, but I'm running into problems with this dichotomy (I want more, the readers of today's gaming tables want less) in my own setting work.

Give the the detail and the GM can use what he want's and cut out the rest.

I think the trend among gamers is to move towards computer RPGS, where they don't need to reach much of anything nor need very detailed stories. But then, I think the trend towardsa less reading is the same as the trend towards less math.

Gee, if you make Varun much more inhospitable, the PCs would be better off asteroid mining.

Re: dolphins. Keep them as NPCs only but perhaps they're a lot smarter than they've been letting on. They've had thousands of years to study humans and learn to resent humans at this point. Now they're on a water world where they have every advantage and the humans have every disadvantage. Payback time!

Resent them for what?

What if the "trained dolphins" are quietly staking out colonies of their own and dealing with the locals in their own way. Maybe those "lost" Terran fish stocks weren't gobbled up by native predators. Maybe the dolphins are setting up their own aquatic herds and plankton farms. When they're ready, they'll abandon those despicable (if useful) land-dwellers to their fate, maybe performing a little well-informed sabotage along the way. >:->

Why should dolphins act like humans and be sneaky and hostile? It might be better storywise if they were friendly and helpful, but the dumb humans never listen.

For example the dolphin could advise strongly against adapting the environment to suit humans, warning of bad repercussions. The humans don't listen and end up introducing some Earth lifeform that grows unchecked, mutates and threatens to wipe everything out.

For instance, kelp. Only it turns out the local life forms can't eat Earth Kelp, and the Earth Kelp is wiping out the native equivalent. This threatens the survival of the creatures that rely on it for food, and the predators that rely on them, and so on up the food chain.

Or the humans deliberately wipe out some local predator only to get drowned in the local herd fish, who breed like rabbits and now have no natural predator.

It would be funny if the dolphin just kept shaking their dorsals and saying "We told you so."

Ah, my setting's "flippers" tend to have a high damage bonus and an impres-

sive number of attacks when angered or mistreated, and I promise never to

use such an incredibly silly title song (at least the German version was a

textbook example of "rhyme or be eaten").

In English the title song may have been the best part. It was saccharine sweet 60TVs stuff, but it was usually better than the stories.

You'd think the father would have banned those kids from going into the water. It's almost as bad as telling Timmy to go play with Lassie over by the old well.

I think they will have INT 6 or 7, but centuries of using trained dolphins as

helpers for aquaculture farmers, underwater construction teams and other

divers have improved the training methods to a point where dolphins seem

to be more intelligent and versatile than that - think of a very well trained

border collie.

"Flipper goes to Varun"

Or you could pull a "World of the Worlds" and have some local bacteria wipe out the whales, or vice versa. It would be funny if Earth whales carries some bug that wipes out the native lifeform that they were supposed to feed upon.

BTW, How smart are dolphins in this campaign? If they are fulling intelligent as opposed to fixed INT, they could be core members of the resarch team.

Like one of the gods syphoning it off for his own needs, and a once-in-a-milennium eclipse is coming when he passes between the earth and the sun, blotting out all energy and dropping the earth into an abyss of chaos from which it can only emerge if our heroes finish a complex ritual before the hour-long-eclipse is finished? And they only find out about it a day before the cataclysm is about to happen?

That kind of something?

Or someone forgot to play the electric bill?

Why do I get the feeling that Atgxtg is going to end up as a Great Old One?

He that sleeps upon a cot

measured only in megawatts

-The Arkham Electrician

However, it would be surprising if this life would be too similar to that of our

Earth in its biochemistry.

It depends on how similar Varun is to Earth. Generally speaking form fits function. LIfe forms would evolve in a fashion that would that would suit the enviorment. So the more a planet is like Earth, the more likely it is that the biochemistry would be similar.

Note that I'm speaking of tendacies here, not absolutes. Obviously, none of this has been proven.

Therefore humans and other animals from Earth will be able to eat Varunian

animals, but unable to digest them and gain any nutritional value from them,

and the Varunian predators might find creatures from Earth tasty, but useless

as food (although they are slow learners and will eat them anyway ...).

This is why the colonists will have to import the livestock for their aquacultu-

re in order to produce the food the colony needs.

It reminds me of one of the old Traveller: 2300 settings. It was a world where the amino acids were different and it made all the local food indigestible by humans.

Have to decided how this will affect plant life? Are the native plants edible to humans or to eath marine creatures? Or will the colonists need to raise plankton?

I'd be leery of making things completely incompatible, or else the humans will just wipe out all the local flora and fauna and replace them with imports from Earth.

If on the other hand, the local life forms have some desirable characteristics (like maybe their natural armor plating has a very high tensile strength, better than the synthetics available) but that the creatures are difficult to deal with (they keep eating the scientists, or excrete a chemical that is poisonous to plankton or some important Eath fish, or maybe they just keep clogging up the equipment), then the humans will have to suffer and find a way to work around it.

Since I have already mentioned the finances of the colony, a few more words

on how I imagine this part of the setting.

In the Traveller universe it is easy for a small group of people to use their sa-

ved money, some ship shares and the skeleton of a business plan ("We will do

profitable interstellar trade and get rich") to get a bank loan of several dozen

million Credits to buy a spaceship and go gallivanting through the galaxy as

free traders.

If one accepts this as plausible, a much bigger group of people (about 560)

should be able to use their saved money, their colony shares and a detailed

business plan ("There is this water world in the Demidov Cluster ... crystals ...

mining ...") to get a bank loan of several hundred million Credits for a coloniza-

tion and mining project, I think.

Actually, just that in itself makes it extremely attractive. Building a realistic setting by extrapolating what we know about the universe, it turns out that 'habitable' planets are extremely rare. The fact that it has advanced indigenous life makes it even more unusual.

Yes and no. A habitable world would be extremely attractive in an of itself, but odds are if a planet is capable of supporting life, it probably will. So it would be odd if such a habitable world didn't have some sort of native lifeform.

Indeed, and I really hope that Atgxtg will put it up here to the forum when

he is satisfied with its results, it is a very interesting and useful - and easy -

way to design BRP spaceships - most probably easier and faster than Mon-

goose Traveller and similar systems once it is finished.

It does need more play testing through. It spits out numbers but we've got to see how those numbers look for actual designs.

Maybe I should try to recruit some more testers?

Hmmm, I always thought the thing that shone about Traveller was its vehicle rules. But I played Classic.

I agree. But Mongoose Traveller isn't the same thing. I saw rust's sub design and immediately realized that it would float. Apparently whoever designed the new vehicle system was not aware that a ship must weight as much or more than the water it displaces to be able to dive.

So all the subs written up in the rule book would float.

If GURPS is too complex, there's always HERO System. Buy your vehicle characteristics and powers just like you would for a character.

STAR HERO actually has a system for creating starships. It a bit simplier than the HERO power system.

There is also something for BRP that rust has acess to that hopefully will work for his spaceship designs.

DC comics needed 12 comic books (and George Perez) to get rid of this kind of "fun" when it went out of control.

And even more books to bring it back.

The problem wasn't with the concept, but in DC's execution of it. DC used an alternate Earth as a way of making it's Golden Age heroes concurrent with it's Silver Age heroes. All at a time when it's heroes were the most powerful, and the writing was at it's most silly.

In contrast Mavel has used multiple Earths, including one in our solar system but on the opposite side of the sun (ala Doppleganger) without any more problems than otherwise exist in a long going franchise.

One kinda neat idea would be if these were parrale universes but that some damaged/malfunctioning gates that send people to the "wrong" universe.

That would make both setting possible in the same campaign.

Or maybe there could be a second Earth in an identical solar system somewhere out there is deep space, or even two fairly identical milky way galaxies but separated by such a vast distance that no one knew it until they had a gate mishap (perhaps the world they were going to was right at the midpoint between the two Earths, and during the time the PCs were on the world it's yearly rotation was enough to place it closer to the "other" Earth.

It could be fun to have to similar, but not identical Earths now able to interact with each other.

Compliments of the Season

The first thing needed to make BRP more popular is to get more people to pick up the book in the store. First step would be to up the eye candy value; better cover, better interior illustrations, etc.

I think the first thing is to get the book into the store. None of my local gaming shops carry BRP. I've been working on talking one shop owner into doing so, in place of MRQ2 (I was his only sale for MRQ1, so he's listening), but it's all but impossible for someone to encounter BRP without having already made a conscious decision to do so.

As for upping the eye candy and such, that would require Chaosium to print a new book/edition. I doubt they will, but either way it is not something that we can do much about.

Second is a good price point so the people who picked it up are less inclined to put it back down. Easiest way to accomplish that. especially since color is going to have raised the price, is to streamline what is in the basic book and that means pulling the gamemastering material. Separate gamemaster books work for other roleplaying games so why not BRP.

Or maybe just keep the current rulebook and supplement it with a "Player's Book"? Pendragon did that at one time. It was a book than handled character generation, and the basics of game play. IMO a small but pretty book like that wouldn't hurt. I don't know if Chasoium would do it, but again, there isn't much that the rest of us can do about that-except maybe for the third party companies. And they would have less chance of getting it into a store than Chaosium.

Lots of RPGs have used a "pick a path" adventure format. I think it would be a good intro for BRP too. But the nature of such adventures make them larger than the standard format.

As for trimming the rules, some suggestions:

-Trim down the your life of adventure and introduction sections to a couple of paragraphs.

-Drop the It's Fun section. It the intro hasn't gotten them interested, this isn't going to help.

-Trim down the Name you Character section. Greg had 16 pages to fill out. Just have "Name your character" on one line should be enough.

-Reduce the Resistance roll section. One example and a smaller chart. In fact you could even delete the example, if you were to use Resistance rolls in a soloadventure.

-Likewise if you did a soloadventure then most of the examples could be shorted or deleted. The rules could then be taught in the solo adventure.

I thing stuff like the intro can be trimmed and the "Its Fun" can be dropped.

Some related ideas:

How about a character sheet with a 1 page rules summary on the back? That could kill 2 birds with one stone, and a character sheet is essential.

If the fyler were printed on 11x17 paper (or the European equivalent), it could be folder into a four page booklet. That might be enough for a mini-adventure.

Tuck the character sheet into the flyer and you have an instant intro.

Challenge is right. I don't think it can be done. Not if it is going to give a character sheet, character creation and an adventure.

Maybe a quick run down of the basic rules, but anything more than that will take more space. Especially if it is intended to teach the basics, since that means examples.

I went through an exercise like this a while back when I wrote and RPG for a friends six year old daughter. She was feeling left out when "Daddy and friends" went off to play RPGs.

What worked for me was to put all the data on the character sheet, and cut down on the number of attributes, and skills by combining similar skills into groups (about 20 skills total). It seems to have worked, but she is very bright, and had the game designer on hand to teach it to her.

In contrast, I've gamed with a guy who after six months, still didn't know what dice to roll or how many.

Good luck Froggy!

If I were going to try a 2 page BRP Intro, I'd look very carefully at the original 16 page BRP booklet.

I don't thing a 2-page flyer will cover enough. I think the UltraQuickStar would need:

1 page character sheet

1 page for all the tables (resistance, weapons, armor)

1/2-1 page for character creation

1-2 pages for rules (how to play, skill rolls, etc.)

2-4 pages for a intro adventure (with some sort of map)

1-2 pages for sample stats (simplified horse, bear, dragon,etc.)

So probably around 8 pages.

Is there a Horror genre RPG you do like? It sounds to me like you don't care for the genre, period, not CoC specifically.

I'm quite fond of Pacesetter's Chill.

However, I think non-Horror RPGs are better for running Horror adventures than Horror RPGs! What I see happen is that people who are playing a Horror RPG are expecting, monsters, gore and other scariness, and it becomes sort of routine. On the other hand, when I run a horror adventure in a non-Horror game, it has a lot more impact.

CoC worked because it was unique when it was launched; there really was nothing like it out there. These days - there's lots of horror RPGs (although nothing does it as well as CoC).

I think that was true of most of the early Chaosium stuff, not just CoC. Back in the late 70s and early 80s Chaosium was putting out a lot of stuff that was unique in one way or the other. RQ was unique in that it had Glorantha, and wasn't class based; Stormbringer was unique in that it was (one of) the first RPGs based on a licensed setting; Worlds of Wonder was Unique in that it was really the first attempt to put a multi-genre RPG into a single game box.

Today, lots of RPG have a unique setting, many licensed settings have appeared, and multi-genre RPGs are common.

So yeah, you're right about BRP not being able to follow in the CoC mold.

I think CF is as good a place to start as anywhere. It is in full print and it shows how to do D&D-style dungeon-bashing with a more effective rule-set. I'd think most roleplayers can relate to that and for demo purposes, it should do the trick.

But yes - as Paolo says, two settings is better.

I think CF has something else going for it. It is the only fantasy supplement for BRP that exists at present. So for better or worse it is the only option. Personally, I think a D&Dish style is the wrong approach for BRP since D&D does that already, and it will probably give people the wrong impression of what the rest of BRP is like. But, it's still the only option we've got.

I think 3 options are even better. Say CF, Rome (it exists; it is good; it can catch the historical crowd) and a third option that would be a modern or SF setting. It's nice to have something for the folks who don't want to go the sword and spell (or sandal) route.

But what else is out there now, or will be in the near future?

I am not sure that debating the merits of CoC is relevant to this thread. (And, of course, I'm no fan of seeing one of my favourite games piled upon. )

I think it is entirely relevant, because...

The fact is, for whatever reason, Call of Cthulhu is popular.

And...

The question is how to make non-CoC BRP more popular.

So unless we know the reason why CoC is popular, we can't know if it would apply to BRP, or even how to apply it.

Personally, I think that something like a 'CoC' approach would be best. I'm repeating myself now, I know, but I think that a 'complete' BRP fantasy rulebook (perhaps CF will be this) and a 'complete' BRP science-fiction rulebook -- both 'complete' in the same way that the core CoC rulebook is (i.e., self-sufficient for playing the game) -- is the way to go.

Probably not a bad idea, but I doubt Chasoium is going to go with that approach, since it would essentially mean abandoning the BRP core book format in favor of multiple books.A neat compromise would be if they sold bundled packages. Something like gettig a "semi-complete" sourcebook along with the BRP Core rules.

I'm a bit leery of the "it's CoC without the Mythos" approach. While that might attract some CoC players, it will also alienate some CoC players who won't want to see their game "stripped down". Also, a strong emphasis on CoC will discourage those who dislike CoC.

I think BRP needs to be promoted on it's own merits. What makes that tough is that it's merits don't make it stand apart from the crowd as much today as in years past. In fact, BRP actually lacks some of the merits of it's predecessors. I doesn't have the richly detailed settings that RQ and CoC have. That will (hopefully) change over time, but at this point in time, it doesn't have that.

In case the joke went over your head (I'm guessing not a Lovecraft fan), one of the running themes within the mythos is there are things men should not know, learning of them drives one insane.

I got it. But I don't think that it makes for a good RPG. In my own experience, the most successful character I even saw, was a character I had who never read a mythos book, and somehow managed to avoid a direct encounter with anything "unnautural". I think he saw something like a Mi-Go or Byakhee once, but it was dark, and two barrels from a Holland & Holand Nitro Express didn't leave it much fight.

It is sort of a sore spot with the GM that such a character did so much better than all the investigators.

In fairness to CoC in my experience the insanity bit gets overstated by those who don't play the game or only have a few experiences with a bad GM. In most of the games I've played in insanity is a threat that keeps you from delving any further than needed into forbidden texts.

I've played the game. Our GM used to run CoC for years. Thje thing is-

1)see a nasty make a SAN roll and loose some SAN (most creatures cause some loss even when you make the roll)

2)read a tome in order to get an idea of what is going on, loose some SAN. Not that the Mythos knowledge will do investigators much good.

Generally if the PCs actually go up against a greater mythos creature it is because they blew it somewhere and missed the opportunity to stop the evil cultests from summoning a major mythos baddy or similar. A GM intentionally putting the group physically up against Cthulhu or one of his ilk has pretty much decided to start a new game. The regular use of major mythos creatures is essentially letting James Bond cut the wrong wire while disarming a nuke.

Except with CoC, sooner or later the "stars will be right and the "nuke" is going to go off anyway. So anything the PCs do, in the long run, doesn't matter.

As for the "minor" mythos creatures, all are more powerful than humans are many are either invulnerable to conventional weapons or highly resistant.

The common suggestion that CoC is just about killing PCs or driving them insane is kind of like condemning D&D because some GMs don't see anything wrong with forcing 1st level characters into situations where they have to fight ancient red dragons every week.

Except in D&D every monster isn't as tough or tougher than the PCs, and with experience a PC can take down a red dragon. Also D&D doesn't put the player into things "blind". They usually know what a dragon is and that they should avoid them. In CoC the investigators typically are encounter new and unknown horrors, with some of the group spazzing out of freezing up at the crucial moment.

I think most of the surviros are the ones who ran while they buddies plied "feed the shoggoth."

Like some of the others some of my best games were more of a lost worlds / Raiders of the Lost Ark setting with only occasional mythos involvement.

I'm starting to think that of most the people who play I think that it proves my argument. It's not a merit of the game, but a solution for dealing with a flaw. I don't consider such groups to be playing CoC so much as using the underlying BRP system for a modern (or nearly modern) RPG.

I's like someone running a Superworld campaign, sans superpowers, and saying what a great game it is.

Thank you, a very interesting idea.

I am not sure whether the weather (hurricanes, etc.) would make such a

kind of dock possible, but on the other hand a dock floating on the ocean

surface would be in an at least as bad environment - unless it could sub-

merge deep enough beneath the waves without destroying the ships that

are docked at it at the time.

The way to deal with the weather would be for the airdock to use lift to rise above it, or move away from it. Assuming that they have some technology for checking out the weather (anything from radar, to satellites, to little transmitters scattered through the globe), they could get some sort of advanced warned and move to avoid the storm.

The killler technology for something like this would be advanced ceramics and polymers. The structure would need to be light enough so that it could hold enough hydrogen to lift it (and any docked craft).

It could probably use a hose and pump to draw up water for fuel from the sea.

The submersible dock is also a reasonable idea. You don't have to go very deep to avoid the strom, either. The trick here would be to make sure that the craft is light enough to be able to surface in order for the ship to take off.

It might even be possible to design a spacecraft that is submerible. It is already most of the way there. If it were only going to dive below strom depth, then it wouldn't need too thick a hull, and the ship could draw off water for fuel.

The big advantage of the dock would be in reducing the fuel a ship would need to take off or land on the planet.

The funny thing about the dock is that I got it from an airship design that you mentioned awhile back. The high altitude weather craft.

An airdock is technically possible with current technology, but it isn't very practical, or economical. But on a waterworld with a lot of volcanic activity, the sky would be a good place to live.

Of coruse, without some form of antigrav the thing would need to be huge. I mean really huge. If I recall my airship notes, the volume required is something like 1000m3 per metric ton of lift. So a 1000 ton dock capable of supporting a 500 ton ship would need 1500000m3 oh hydrogen to support it. That would be something like 1km long, 100m wide, and 15 meters thick.

There are several concepts I am playing around with, and you have added

another good one, but all of them will become possible only after the colo-

ny has already been established and has begun to start some major con-

struction projects.

Until then I see no really good way to avoid the "antigrav magic", but it al-

so does not really worry me - if I use a faster than light drive that is some-

how based on the manipulation of gravity, I can just as well add this fea-

ture to it, I think.

Well the submersible ship would solve the antigrav concept. Another possibility would be if the ship had balloons on board that it could fill will hydrogen gas (from it's fuel) to provide lift to support the ship.

Of course once you have antigrav, it kind of become the proffered solution for a lot of things.