Aelwyn

I'm working on a post-apocalyptic scenario with a lot of surviving computers and opportunities for hacking. I'm going to try something very similar to the BRP combat system. Since this world doesn't have magic... POW for humans and other organics = mental resistance/mental health POW for computers, robots, artificial intelligences, networks, etc. = security level/resistance to hacking Computer Programming in this world is too complex for humans to do by themselves--it requires an AI library of routines. The programmer arranges these routines to create applications, viruses, worms, and to take down or take over security systems--or repair them. Not all libraries are created equal. Libraries are given a die value--1d2, 1d4, 1d6, 2d8, etc., similar to the damage done by a weapon. The POW of computers is roughly analogous to their hit points. Mutant hero Lefty with Computer Programming 85% wants to hack into evil AI Maker76 with POW 21. He uses his trusty AI Vulcana, which has a 1d4 routine library. He rolls a 70--success. Then he rolls 1d4--3 points of damage to Maker76's POW, which is now 18. But Maker76 has been alerted that someone is trying to breach its defenses. It has activated its army of security robots and begun searching for suspicious wireless networks at the point of attack. If Lefty and Vulcana can reduce Maker76 to POW 0, they will seize control of the AI. But their friends may have to fight off some security robots, and Maker76 might try to hack into Vulcana. If Vulcana sustains damage to her POW, Lefty can use Computer Programming and the routines library to "heal" her security systems. But he'll have to abandon his attack on Maker76 to do so. A hacker can decide whether reducing a system's POW to zero gives control over it or destroys it. Alternatively, you could do a POW v. POW or Computer Programming/5 v. POW roll on the resistance table. This could also be used for special moves, such as hiding the next attack from the defending system or preventing the defending system from doing anything for one round.

Aw, what the heck, it's not a radically original idea, and it will probably take me another ten years to get this into a publishable monograph, so if anyone wants to steal this idea, be my guest... Superhero Temp Agency It's the year 2080. Nanotechnology, genetic engineering, body modification, artificial intelligence, materials science, and computer-human interfaces have made superpowers available to almost anyone. The catch? All these technologies are owned by corporations and governments. You've been given superpowers by Transtech Industries Ltd., and you now owe the company US$50 million. You can start paying off your debt immediately. Your first assignment is to appear at a mall opening. You'll be signing autographs and handing out coupons. We would also like you to provide security in the unlikely event of an attack by disgruntled, superpowered former Transtech employees. You might also watch out for terrorists from Free Cleveland, the Caliphate of North Africa, and Red Tomorrow. Microfusion, which has recently been losing market share to Transtech, may also try to disrupt the event in some way. And while this is extremely unlikely, there's a remote possibility that one of our megastore AIs has become self-aware and will try to kill everyone there. Please do not manhandle the protesters. Yes, there will be a small-ish group of protesters. When you applied for the transhuman upgrade, it was right there in the fine print--all the regular humans hate you now.

They're human--but genetically engineered, with some bat DNA and a few other secret ingredients. This is a relatively low-powered world, so I'm trying to keep superpowers out of it, but I might consider that. So... something like this? This fits with how I picture the character--fast and lithe, very lightweight but long-limbed, strong for their size but not super-strong, resistant to disease and mental illness, vulnerable to physical attack. Good scouts, good stealthy characters, not great fighters but they can hold their own with a spear. STR 3D6 CON 2D6+6 SIZ 2D4+2 INT 2D6+6 POW 2D6+6 DEX 3D6+3 APP 3D6 (or maybe a bonus because they're tall and imposing?) HP 10 average db None average, but a high percentage of individuals with -1D4

I think you've got it backward--if the troll's Luck roll is 35%, the halfling's chance to kill him with one blow from his bare hands is 5%*65%=3.25%. Which raises the question-- Do you really want a halfling to be able to kill a troll with one strike of his bare hands? I'm not following the mechanics. That might be a clue that it's overly complicated. It sounds like there's a roll to hit, a roll to dodge/parry, a roll for random weapon damage, a roll for random armor, a roll on the resistance table comparing damage rating to damage soak, and a Luck roll to see if the target avoids the consequences that were just rolled. That's a lot of dice rolls for what is essentially 2 actions--an attack and a parry. My apologies if I've misinterpreted the mechanic. But I do have a suggestion if you want to make this a little more playable and realistic, and a little less deadly: make more levels of minor wounds, and include a provision that someone can die from some number (4?) of minor wounds as well as from 1 fatal wound.

Right with you on the enhanced vision and prehensile feet. The prehensile feet are probably going to be a given, but they're limited to picking up one small object or clinging to branches, buildings, etc. Maybe give them a bonus to Climb skill, which would be used rarely, since they can fly. Enhanced vision may be an optional mutation, but I already thought about giving it to one of the pre-rolled characters. And they've got a nice drop-kick attack from above. I wanted to keep their CON high for two reasons: to keep their hit points high enough that people would actually want to play them, and because they were genetically engineered for harsh environments and are pretty hardy despite having thin bones. Lower hit points due to SIZ, but good disease- and radiation-resistance. I agree that 4- to 5-feet tall with short legs would be more realistic for a flyer. I had two reasons for making them tall, but I'm not sure they're good reasons. One is that I had already developed a playable race that was short, and I didn't want two. The other is aesthetic--I thought they would look cooler as tall, skinny humanoids who could flare out their enormous wings, instead of waddling around on tiny legs and large prehensile feet. Not very scientific or realistic, but I want to make sure a few people choose to play these characters. An alternative might be to make these guys short and the other race taller--but I'm not sure that would work. I might decrease their SIZ a little more. Thinking about 1D4+1. That would give them an average SIZ of 6, an average db of None (but on the low end so some would get -1D4), and average HP of 8.5 or so. And there's no reason they can't be 1.7 meters/5 foot 7 instead of super-tall. That might even make them a little more appealing. I like the idea of reducing their ground movement--I think I'm going to steal that.

I'm working on a flying humanoid as a possible character race. This is for a non-magical, science fiction setting, with mutations being the only powers. The beings are genetically modified humans. Their wings are part of their arms, and they fold back behind their arms when they're on the ground. They can use three fingers and a thumb when they're on the ground, but they can't use weapons or tools with their hands while flying. I'm struggling with the SIZ characteristic, because if we're being even nominally scientifically accurate, these creatures would be extremely lightweight, but would have extremely long arms/wings. So I'm picturing them as about 2 m/7 feet tall with a wingspan of 4 m/14 feet. But they would weigh only about 30 kg/65 pounds. Those numbers may be unrealistic--I'm not an aeronautics engineer. But they're about halfway between a California condor and an average pteranodon. My first thought was to give them a reduced SIZ characteristic--this would reduce their HP and damage bonus but make them more agile and able to squeeze through small openings. (They're tall, but they're much thinner than normal humans.) Then add a special rule that when their height is being considered, double the size characteristic; when their wingspan is being considered, triple the size characteristic. (Not sure when that would be used--Aura attacks, maybe? I've already established that they can't fly indoors or in thick woods.) Here is my first stab at characteristics. The SIZ is a compromise between their huge height and minuscule weight, with some consideration toward making them a playable race. POW doesn't have a lot of game effects in this world; it's mostly for luck rolls and resistance against psychic attacks, which are rare. STR 2D6+6 CON 3D6 SIZ 2D6+1 INT 2D6+6 POW 2D6+6 DEX 3D6+3 What do you think? Is this playable? Is it realistic? Would you want to play a flying character with these characteristics?

Hmm... I was misreading your system, but I think my comment still applies. Average BRP Halfling: STR 7, SIZ 5, damage bonus 6 under your system Average BRP Troll: CON 13, SIZ 26, damage soak 20 under your system, + 3 point skin Even if he scores a critical hit and ignores the troll's armor, the halfling would need a weapon that causes 14 points of damage to do even a minor wound/harmless scratch. In contrast, if the same halfling under standard BRP rules scored a critical with a longsword, he would do an average of 1 point of damage, and the troll would start bleeding 1 point per round. That wouldn't kill the troll right way, but if the halfling had five friends, it might give the troll pause.

I haven't playtested it, and I'm not sure I understand it completely, but I was thinking the opposite--that it might be unbalancing and give an unfair edge to high SIZ, high CON characters. If the first 12 points of damage have no affect on you, you're not going to get hurt at all in many settings, no matter how many opponents attack you. A pack of hyenas would have no chance to take down a bull elephant by nipping it to death (feel free to substitute halflings/troll, superheros/Galactus, minions/boss, tribesmen/brontosaurus, etc.). That might be realistic, but it's kind of unsatisfying for game play. One of the (very few) things I find unsatisfying about BRP is that smaller beings have almost no usefulness in physical combat because of the damage bonus table--unless your halflings are armed with naginatas, flintlocks, and blowguns.

This thread is so close to an idea I had for a BRP superpowers monograph, I'm now afraid that if I wrote it up, I would get sued for plagiarism. And I don't want to get sued by Wal-Mart. They have extremely deep pockets.

Found this today. Dale's Web Pages: http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~sws99dsc/rpg/ http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~sws99dsc/rpg/statless/StatlessRPG.pdf http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~sws99dsc/rpg/d100/D100System.pdf

edited after re-reading rules AGAIN--I need to read more carefully before posting The Entangle rules on page 222 of BGB on deliberate entanglements being Difficult attacks seem to apply to weapons that aren't normally used for entangling. The example given is a spiked mace, which could conceivably be used to snag someone's armor, but isn't designed to do so. It should be much, much easier to make an entanglement attack using a net, lasso, or bolo than it is using a spiked mace. I think this provides more evidence that entangling-only weapons should entangle on a normal success. Halberds often have a pike on the end, an axe on one side, and a hook on the other side. I'd have the player decide beforehand whether the attack is piercing, slashing, or entangling. The piercing and slashing attacks would be normal; the entangling attack would be difficult. The piercing attack might do pike damage rather than halberd damage--but it might be easier against a charging opponent. A versatile and vicious weapon, but one that is useless at close range or in tight quarters. I would give halberd user one attack before an opponent closed--then you'd have to switch to a shorter-range weapon.

My interpretation of the entangling rules is that a weapon designed and used as an entangling weapon does no damage, but a normal success counts as a "Special" success and entangles the target. On the Primitive Weapons table, bola, lasso, and net list no damage, but under damage, it says "Special," which I interpreted as meaning that regular damage from a Normal success equals a Special success--which for these weapons, means entanglement. Compare to the whip, which does list damage, and only entangles on an actual Special success. This is intuitively how each of these weapons works--a trained net user uses the net to entangle and is as effective in that as a trained sword user is in slashing and stabbing. A trained whip user uses the whip to cause pain and only rarely succeeds in entangling someone. Admittedly, the entangling rules make it sound as if no weapon entangles except on a Special success. But if bola, net, lasso, (man-catcher, snake tongs, etc.) have no effect except on a Special success, they're nearly useless. Would someone with 90% net skill really only be able to entangle 45% of the time? This wouldn't apply to halberds, since halberds are primarily damaging weapons and only secondarily entangling weapons. Has anyone used entangling weapons? How did you interpret the rules? Were entangling-only weapons effective?

I guess the GM can say, you don't get a skill increase roll for performing a task that doesn't have potential negative consequences, such as climbing or jumping over the same small wall numerous times. That's well within the spirit of the rules. A task you can try to do multiple times, with no negative consequences, is the same as an Easy or Automatic task. In fact, the GM should just rule that it's Automatic, so no dice roll at all. I've heard some players like to switch weapons multiple times in the middle of combat to get in some extra skill rolls. But delaying the end of combat might attract guards, police, predators, friends of the opponent, etc., and there's always a chance the last goblin standing will get in a critical hit while you're switching to your nth weapon. Or maybe he just throws down his sword and surrenders?

One strength of BRP no one has mentioned is that the combat system pleasantly recreates things that actually happen in a swordfight. I started RPGing back in the 70's, and I never understood D&D's Armor Class. It didn't make any sense to me that someone in full plate armor was harder to hit. Someone stumbling around in full plate should be easy to hit--but hard to kill. What did the Armor Class of a black pudding represent? Was it fast, slippery, rubbery, or hard? I had no idea... I think FATE is a great system, and it encourages more narration than traditional RPGs, but it feels very abstract and not very realistic to me. My indie gaming friends would say, so what? Why do you want realism at the expense of narration? The answer is, I don't want realism at the expense of narration--I want both. But BRP feels real to me. You swing your broadsword at someone--it's a good attack, but your opponent parries it with his shield. He counterattacks, and his blow slides under your parry. Fortunately, it's a glancing blow, slight damage--and your armor absorbs the blow. BRP has a mechanic that elegantly captures all of these events in a way that is very easy to understand, but doesn't force you to constantly consult a manual or a results table. There are more granular systems that are more realistic but that sacrifice ease of play and narration. There are indie systems that are easier to play and emphasize narration, but they sacrifice a sense of realism and the feeling that the mechanic reflects what is actually happening in the game world. BRP for me is the happy medium between the two. Disadvantage: It's easy to die in BRP, but you can mitigate that by setting up scenarios where the bad guys aren't actually trying to kill the good guys. Maybe the heavies are just trying to capture the PCs for interrogation, religious deprogramming, human sacrifice, imprisonment, or as a living food source for their young. That gives the characters an opportunity to lose a battle, be captured, escape, rescue their compatriots, turn the tables on their captors, and win in the end. Sound like a good plotline? I think so!

Actually, I had some success with both--apparently there are a lot of Call of Cthulhians in the D.C. area. Thanks!

Right... if you're doing a historical simulation, or a fantasy campaign in a conservative society (in the sense that there is little change). But what if you're doing a post-apocalyptic or cyberpunk campaign, where there is either a lot of technology and knowledge that can be recovered or a high degree of innovation? Meh... I'm not even sure it's a great idea in those cases, either... unless you're ready to deal with players saying, "Okay, I know how to make rails, and a gun... I want to make a railgun!"

I'm looking for fellow BRP enthusiasts in my area--anybody know a good way to link up with people? Most of the game shops in my area are full of D&D, Warhammer, and indie players. I'm willing to GM and play. I'm looking for fairly low-powered, realistic games, but I'm willing to try anything. I'm in northern Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C. Which by the way, would make a great Secrets of... book.

Pthphtt... no work. It was fun. Plus, I'm trying to get some newbs into the system, so I needed to do something like this anyway.

Dorcas and Doofus are fighting. Dorcas is STR 10, CON 10, SIZ 10, DEX 15. Dorcas is armed with a saber, 1d8+1 damage. She has 65% skill, which means she causes bleeding at 13%, criticals at 4%, and fumbles at 99-00. She is wearing 2-point hard leather armor. She has 10 hit points (average of SIZ and CON). Because she has average STR and SIZ, she has no damage bonus. Doofus is STR 13, CON 10, SIZ 13, DEX 10. He has a damage bonus of +1d4 due to his STR and SIZ. He is armed with a heavy club, 1d8+damage bonus, or 1d8+1d4. He has 52% skill, so he crushes at 11% or below, criticals at 3% or below, and fumbles on a roll of 98-00. He is wearing 1-point leather armor. He has 12 hit points (average of SIZ and CON rounded up). All of the above information should be written on their character sheets for easy access. 1st round: Dorcas, because of her higher DEX, goes first. She rolls an 88, which is higher than her skill of 65, so it's a miss. Doofus doesn't have to parry or dodge this attack. Doofus rolls a 10--a Special hit! Dorcas rolls a 90 for her parry (which is the same as her skill with the saber), so she fails to parry Doofus's attack. Crushing damage means Doofus's damage bonus goes up one level, to 1d6, so he rolls 1d8+1d6 for damage. He rolls a 2 and a 3 for 5 points of damage. Dorcas's armor absorbs 2 of the 5 points of damage and she takes 3 points of damage and is now down to 7 hit points. Second round: Dorcas rolls a 33, which is a hit, but Doofus needs a 51 or less to parry, and he rolls a 47, deflecting her attack with his club. Doofus then swings his club, but he rolls a 99--a fumble! He then rolls a 52 on the fumble table. He throws his club into the next room! Third round: Dorcas has no mercy. She swings her saber, rolling a 02--a critical hit! Doofus has no weapon or shield to parry with, and he didn't train his Dodge skill, so he only has the base percentage chance of his DEXx2%, or 20%. (This is also on his character sheet.) He rolls a 25, so he is unable to get out of the way of Dorcas's saber attack, which because it is a critical hit, slides between the grooves in his armor and cuts deep. Dorcas rolls 1d8+1 for damage, rolls a 7+1 is 8. Doofus is suddenly down to 4 hit points, and he has a major wound, and he's bleeding, which means he will lose 1 hit point at the end of every combat round, starting with this one. He'll be unconscious at the end of the next combat round, when he'll be down to 2 hit points, and two rounds after that, he'll be down to 0 hit points. He will die at the end of the following round if he doesn't receive medical attention. At the end of the round, Doofus bleeds onto the floor and goes down to 3 hit points. He also rolls an 84 on the major wound table--a punctured lung. He will lose 1d6 CON and MOV, and he can't fight any more. He rolls a 4, so his CON and MOV go down to 6, and he loses 2 hit points as well due to the reduced CON. The poor guy screams, "Double-yoo tee eff, man!" and falls on the floor, unconscious. Fourth round: "My bad," says Dorcas. "I'll get the Neosporin." Fortunately, her First Aid skill is 75%. She rolls a 68, and heals 1d3 points of Doofus's damage. She rolls a 3, which brings him around. The first aid also stops the bleeding. On the next round she will use the same skill to heal the wound Doofus gave her. But he's still going to need to rest up for the rest of the week. I'm not fond of using the fumble and major wound tables--consulting tables tends to slow things down. On the other hand, they have fun, interesting effects. As with anything in BRP, use what works for you, and don't worry about the rest.

Daxos, we can fix this problem... at least for you. I didn't find the rules confusing, but maybe that's because I'm an old RuneQuest 2nd edition player. Don't use Strike Ranks. It just slows play down and it's too confusing. Don't use Hit Locations. It just slows play down while you consult a table. Characters attack in the order of their DEX--highest DEX first. If you roll your attack skill or less on D100, you hit the target. If you roll 1/5th of your attack skill or less, you get a Special hit. If you roll 1/20th of your attack skill you get a Critical hit. If you roll 96 or higher, you might have fumbled. Check the table on p. 384 until you get the math down. If you hit the target, the target gets a chance to parry or dodge. If they succeed, they can modify your hit result up one. (Critical becomes Special, Special becomes Success, Success becomes Failure) If they get a Special, they can modify it up two. If they Critical, they successfully parry or dodge any hit, including a Critical hit. If the target misses their parry or dodge, roll for damage. (See the weapons table, or your character sheet.) Subtract the AP of the target's armor from damage. (See the armor table, or your character sheet.) Then subtract the final damage from the target's hit points. If you take more than half your hit points in damage, roll on the major wound table. (or not, if it's slowing play down too much) If you have two or fewer hit points, you're unconscious. If you have zero or fewer hit points, you will die if you don't receive First Aid or a Heal spell by the end of the next combat round. Special hits: Pointed weapons impale=roll twice for weapon damage (but not your STR bonus) Blunt objects crush=increase your STR bonus by one level Edged weapons cause bleeding=target loses 1 extra HP every combat round until they're healed Critical hits: the same effects as Special hits, plus it ignores armor (your weapon found a soft spot) Fumble: roll an effect on the fumble table, or just let the GM pick one of these: accidentally hit yourself, accidentally hit a friend, throw your weapon in the bushes, break your weapon, fall down. That's pretty much it! Example coming.

My guess is it means this: If your command roll is successful, you can modify the result of the Aura resistance roll up one level. Critical becomes Special, Special becomes Success, Success becomes Failure, and Failure becomes Fumble. That seems a little powerful to me, but I would guess Aura attacks are mainly used in Superhero, Pulp, or Space Opera settings where saying things like, "Submit or face the wrath of the Man Outside Time, Cowards!" would actually demoralize a whole bunch of minions. A Special roll on your Command roll could modify it up two levels, and a Critical could modify it up three if you want to get really crazy. It's similar to the way a parry affects an attack. (Think of the Command roll as the parry and the resistance roll as the attack, even though in this case, Command is the aggressive move that is done first.) Aura attacks don't seem particularly useful to me unless the target fumbles. The attacking character must take a combat round to make the attack, and the main effect is that the target can't attack back--for one combat round. So using Command skill to induce a fumble makes sense.

I've been thinking about a related issue. How would you handle invention? Can a primitive character invent a crossbow or cuirbouilli armor? I was thinking a Difficult Idea roll followed by a Difficult Craft roll. Or maybe a Critical on a Craft roll, then a Difficult Idea roll. Failure on either means you can't try again until your skill increases. GMs would have to determine what the limits of this are. Maybe there is a logical sequence to invention--self bow > composite bow or long bow > light crossbow > medium crossbow > heavy crossbow > arbalest > repeating crossbow? So you wouldn't be able to go from a self bow all the way to an arbalest with one invention roll.

Blurb for getting playtesters or Extra! Extra! Chaosium to publish new manuscript by unknown author? It's a little early for the second one... but soon. I have been in touch with Dustin. I'm pretty sure they're going to publish it, but I don't have anything in writing, so I don't want to make too many assumptions. Also, my brother is working on cover art, so it would be great if you hold off until I get something from him. It's 55 pages and growing by the day. That's with two columns of 10-point type... 36,000+ words. Probably going to be around 65 pages when I'm finally done. Working title: Ah Keen: The Book of the Ghost I'm not crazy about the title, because it makes it sound like a horror campaign. Which it is, a little, but the ghost in question is a nice ghost, not a scary one. It's a fairly hard sci-fi setting, nothing really supernatural, but a few pieces of high technology that seem supernatural to a primitive culture--including the Book of the Ghost. It's a short campaign, with many sub-scenarios to the main arc. An original setting. A rack of new monsters. Some new skills, too--anyone interested in Technical Skill (Implants) or Craft (Butchery)? They might come in handy if you need to repair a wireless machine with self-diagnosing A.I., or if you want to save the paralysis venom from the quetzalcoatl you just killed. Working on this gave me a real appreciation for the Big Gold Book. Most of the time when I thought I needed to create a house rule for a special situation (disease, fighting in cramped quarters, judging whether someone is a liar)--a second look at the rules showed there already was one.

I like the BRP way of matching effectiveness of dodge against effectiveness of attack, but I've got a question. Is there any reason for a player to choose Shield skill over Dodge? In the rules, shields are clearly superior to weapon parries in some very reasonable instances (mostly it's easier to parry thrown and missile weapons with a shield). But I can't find one advantage in having a shield rather than simply dodging. (Okay, there's one--if you get a critical or special parry with a shield, you damage the attacker's weapon--but not very much.) There should be some other benefit to carrying a shield. Anybody have a good nerf for this? Or did I miss something in the rules? I'm thinking a successful shield parry turns aside even Critical and Special attacks--but maybe the shield takes damage in those cases. I do like Dodge better than the old RQ2 Defense skill--which I always forgot to subtract from the attack percentage.

I don't know if it's appropriate to post an east coast U.S. mini-con here, but I'm going to be running a BRP scenario there. Three days of cabin camping plus board and role-playing games in a beautiful park. 0 Camp Nerdly 2010. Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Virginia. Friday 21st - Sunday 23rd May 2010. http://www.campnerdly.org/