Smoking Frog

Of course! Steal with impunity.

Hmmm. It is making me post my post twice. It must be my fault, but I can't make it stop. Someone get me off this thing.

All excellent and helpful points. Your comments about engagement and disengagement gave me the "epiphany" that probably what I have been bothered by was the combination of the "5 m rule" and what I described as BRP's "loose" concept of engagement. On p189, under Action, the BRP rule book defines "engagement" no more precisely than "close proximity" and states that "Usually, anyone in the same fight can take actions against any other character in the same fight without penalty or requiring any movement." That combined with the discussion of the Option to use maps and miniatures on p.202, which refers to the option of actually knowing the relative positions of the combatants, makes the concept of being "engaged" look abstract enough to be sort of like the two sides are all occupying the same space and so you just pick a target and start chopping. But the 5m movement rule (see "move" and "engage in combat" p.190) make clear that the description on p189 is ambiguous (or perhaps a bit misleading). The reality is that it, as someone above described it, you can attack anyone within 5 m." That is a much more precise statement than what p.189 says. Since I prefer combat where we know exactly where characters are, I think you absolutely have to have something like the 5m rule. (Pace, those who disagree with me on this point.) My criticism would be that 5m seems too large a distance for an I-go-you-go system, especially, as you say, where one blow can end the day. For example, for two swordsmen facing each other, the distance between them where they can take one step and strike is going to be about 2m (so a bit less than half of the 5m rule). Even someone with a long spear will give my character a lot of time (for combat trained people; most of us would stare and be killed) to react as he rumbles forward to cover the 5m. So when you say that the engaged character can be speared faster than he can just run away, I would say I don't see that as likely, if the spear has to go 5m before it gets me. This is also a problem when BRP has a "loose" system of movement speed, so everyone sort of moves about the same speed and we can't really tell how quick my character could get away versus how quickly the enemy could close on him. All that being said, I think you can consider the BRP way of doing things, even the way SR work, and the 5m rules as a reasonable system that "collapses" a lot of these issues. The "itch" I have about how it works is just a personal tick. I think, in fact, it would be easy enough to address the "too large" distance of 5m by making a house rule recognizing a mid-point between "engaged" (5m) and "close combat" (sort of knifing distance). Perhaps at 2m you are "proximate" or something. Of course when combatants have asymmetrical weapons (like spear versus sword) what each can do at 2m is different. And of course I have to wonder at the end of the day if you did the work needed to make that rule, would you really be enough better off that the effort was worth it. And apropos of where this thread started, it seems that going in the opposite direction of what I've been thinking about (like you can Shazam! from one side of the room to the other without penalty and start chopping or whatever) could obviously work, but it seems a lot less satisfying to me than limiting people to some sort of movement in time and space we could relate to. Or something.

Since you claim ignoramus-hood, at the risk of being pedantic, here's some of the big technological advances that took place in the 19th century. Essentially firearms went from primitive to basically modern over the course of the century. There's lots of info on the web about what exactly these things were, but here's just an overview so you can track down the details. Prior to the middle of the century, the smooth bore musket was the normal rifle for "modern" armies. By the 1850s, the Minie ball allowed the rifled musket to have the same rate of fire as smooth bore muskets and so this became the standard military rifle. (The US Civil War featured rifled muskets on both sides.) By the 1860s and 70s, the muzzle loading muskets were being replaced by breech loading rifles, which had a lot of advantages. And the development of metallic cartridges made them even more effective. The British Martini-Henry rifles were examples of this. The last part of the century also saw the development of bolt-action rifles, which became the standard for the world's armies all the way through WWII. The Mauser G93 is probably the most famous example of this type of rifle. Since at least some units in the Qing armies were starting to get modern weapons during the Taiping Rebellion and afterward, at least by the 1860s, you would have started to see the latest firearms technology in China, at least in some units. The Beiyang Army that figured so prominently in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, was the culmination of these modernization efforts. Probably if you can find information about what the Beiyang Army and its predecessors were getting for weapons, you'd have examples of the best military technology available to the Chinese. Also, you would expect that in the areas that Western nations occupied or controlled (Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc etc) there would have been modern weapons. How many of those might have ended up in the hands of, for example, gangsters or other Chinese, would be an interesting research topic. Sorry if this was something you already had a handle on, but I thought it might help you to at least start to track down the details.

Excellent contrast between the Rancor and Jabba. Of course, if you keep your scantily clad presents, I mean prisoners, on a short enough chain, you don't really need to move much. I was reminded of the question my friends and I debated after we first saw Return of the Jedi: How does a giant slug become an inter-galactic criminal kingpin? Who was the competition?

I also think DEX and SIZ don't correlate, although, I suppose if you have a SIZ hugely out of proportion to your STR, you might be hampered in moving around at all. Maybe Jabba the Hut falls into this category. His DEX would only be effective against things close enough to reach with his hands or tongue.

According to Wikipedia, for what it's worth, katara had broad blades that were usually 1 to 3 feet long. The BRP equipment chapter describes weapons as follows: Dagger: up to 40 cm Short sword: around .5 m Broad sword: around 1 m The katara would then range in size from dagger to broad sword. The "easiest" thing would be to just use the stats for those three weapons, depending on the length of the katara.

I only have data on the average heights in the past, so I was just going to assume that someone who was SIZ 10, for example, would use both the height and weight ranges on the BRP chart. Good point about the dice rolls. I guess I need to decide what is the maximum and minimum SIZ. The SIZ chart in BRP is obviously not designed for Heian Japanese. SIZ 5 has a height range of 3'7" to 4', which is short even by their standards. And a "meager" SIZ 13 is still 5'10 to 6', which would make your character really, really tall. Maybe an "optimal" solution would be to "redo" the ranges for each SIZ. But then I suppose I would need to alter the relative SIZ for objects as well. Certainly in BRP terms, a SIZ 8 man with STR 11, is identical (in that regard) to a SIZ 8 woman of STR 11. I suppose to be totally "realistic" you would need to account for women on average having lower upper body strength than men, but I don't know how you'd do that under the game system, or whether it would even be useful. My memory of the reflexes advantage of women was that it was irrespective of size. I think this was why Heinlein made pilots mostly women in Starship Troopers (if I can remember back that far.)

Perhaps the close combat and closing options with the ignore SIZ Strike Rank rule would address everything I was yammering about in my last post.

When I was crunching through the SR option, one complaint I had was simply that the SR system collapsed SIZ and length of weapon as factors of who gets to act first. To use Kairos's example of the cave troll with the long spear versus Frodo, I mean, a halfling, with a short sword: If the halfling is "faster" than the troll because of a higher DEX (or whatever you think makes him act first) it would seem that the halfling should get to "act" before the troll acts, but that would not necessarily mean he could just run up and stab the troll. Unless the halfling does something about there being a sharp point between him and the troll, he probably should not get to attack at all, rather than lamely waiving his sword 10 feet from the troll. Unless the halfling does something like jump and roll to get closer to the troll without being skewered, it would seem that the troll could just hold him off by brandishing his long spear, which I'm remembering is an option someplace. (Or maybe I dreamed it . . . ) And if the halfling is "faster" than the troll, maybe the halfling should get a chance to run away, brandishing his yellow stripe, before the troll could attack him. The base BRP rules leave position and engagement a bit loose, and that might not be to everyone's taste. But on this sort of issue, you may just need to "pick your poison": Since you can't make the players actually try to shoot a real werewolf with a real shotgun, you have to "approximate" it with some rule system that will unavoidably have pluses and minuses. What you and your players like best, or at least can live with, may be the closest thing to "optimal." (I have a feeling something like that whenever I go into a voting booth . . . )

I was recently monkeying around with SIZ values and sex differences for characters in a Heian Japan (794 to 1185) fantasy setting. Any comments on the following attempt to model this? Japanese men averaged 160 cm and women 150 cm. So the average SIZ for men would be 9/10 and for women 7/8 -- yeah, Heian Japanese were SHORT. But they were taller than the later Edo Period (17th to 19th century) Japanese (156 for men and 145 for women). I have not yet figured out how to roll a range for SIZ that averages to 9/10; I will probably just "cop out" and create a chart where you compare a roll like 2D6 or 3D6 with various dice result ranges assigned to each SIZ. Contemporary Chinese and Koreans were taller than the Japanese, so I did not want to just ignore the obvious differences between their average SIZ and those on the BRP tables. My solution for sex differences was that females would have -2 SIZ but +1 POW and +1 DEX. The POW increase is setting specific: most mediums were women, so I assumed women had more POW to channel kami and/or dead guys. Since extra damage is based on SIZ and STR, I don't think you need to penalize women on STR. Their smaller size already means they are shifted down the table. (Perhaps not entirely realistic, but there are period stories mentioning women warriors, so I wanted to leave that sliding panel open at least a bit.) The DEX increase is based on my, perhaps faulty, memory of reading somewhere that women on average have faster reflexes. ("Maybe I dreamed it . . . ")

There is also the difficulty of trying to decide when the differences between two swords (or any other sort of weapon) are enough for them to be treated differently in game terms. If you have a European historically based setting, you could use general terms that encompass more than one subtype recognized by Oakeshott. I'm stealing the following entirely from Wikipedia (arming sword and longsword), so to the extent it's not right, please, no one impale me, I'm just using it as an example. From 1000 to 1350, the most common sword is the one-handed war sword or "arming sword," Oakeshott's Type XI, XII, and XIII. From 1250 to 1350, in addition to a war sword, you can also get a slightly larger hand-and-a-half "great sword," Oakeshott's Type XIIa and XIIIa. From 1350 to 1550, arming swords become rare and the "great sword" develops into the hand-and-a-half "longsword" for which Wikipedia lists 10 (!) Oakeshott subtypes. If you want to distinguish a 14th c "longsword" around 34 inches [Type XX or XXa] from a 14th c "longsword" around 39 inches [Type XVIIIa], you can just call one "longsword" and one "bastard sword," or something else, and give them slightly different stats. My point is that you can probably use this system and "shield" the players from the underlying details. They need never know that you've tried to impose an historical basis on them.

The many comments regarding how things were done in different cultures at different times seems to be an important point to remember when trying to figure out what is "most real," if realism is something you want. I happen to like historical based settings because you at least start with a combination of things like weapon and armor choices that, however unlikely, actually happened. Pete Nash commented above about using great swords against pikes in the late middle ages. As far as what was going happening on the other side of the world, I would point out that Tsukahara Bokuden, a "sword saint" from the 16th century, was famous for having one time been able to cut through the shaft of a naginata in a duel. If Bokuden was famous for having done it once, you can be sure it was rare in the extreme. [One problem with trying to cut a wooden shaft or staff is that your sword could get stuck and then the other person may be able to twist his weapon to break your blade or at least pull it out of your hand.] As far as how effective a parry could be, I think this again depends entirely on the particular setting: what sorts of sword is parrying what. The sorts of swords you describe may not be very good. But again to use the example of Japanese practice: The traditional Japanese sword has a razor sharp, very brittle edge on one side and using that edge to parry would be a disaster. But the unsharpened edge is thicker (and the blade is less brittle away from the cutting edge) and so you could twist your blade so that your unsharpened edge contacted sharpened edge of your enemy's sword. And unless you're a knucklehead, you parry by using your blade at an angle to deflect your opponent's blow rather than trying to block it. I have driven myself half crazy by trying to tinker with the combat system for "realism." But, as many have pointed out many times, the 12 second combat round is a very long time, and the various skill rolls must represent numerous movements of body and weapon rather than just one attempted strike to be countered by one attempted parry/block. Trying to inject "realism" by worrying too much about what actually happens during a real strike and a real dodge or parry, may be doomed because it is trying to inject specific detail into an abstract approximation of something. But that does not stop us from trying, of course . . . It just occurred to me that this "abstract" long combat round is a factor favoring RosenMcStern's Celestial Empire solution of combining weapon and shield skills (if I understand him rightly): The rolls resolve a more abstract question like "did I get the better of my opponent" rather than something like "first I do this, then he does that, then I . . . )

Implementing an elegant solution that perfect suits the particular needs of your particular players strikes me as utterly PERVERSE! If they are too short for the bed, mercilessly stretch them; if too tall, chop off their legs! Remember: people are made for the bed, not the bed for the people! Wait, forget all that. I had just critically failed a sanity check.

Nice! What optional rules did you use to help build the charactes up?

I'm sure I'll buy your video games too! I bow to your greater experience with BRP in getting characters to improve dramatically. I see that in a game like RuneQuest this could be done with things other than "levels," but I missed the RQ boat when I was a youngster. Most of my experience with the BRP system has been in Call of Chthulhu, so I guess I never think of BRP characters becoming the sort of killing machines my D&D hoodlums would routinely become. I've been thinking about character progress a lot lately because I've been working on a heroic fantasy setting for the Bronze Age Aegean/Near East. I don't want to have characters becoming Achilles and be able to mow down armies without breaking a sweat, but obviously there needs to be something to play for. I think using better magic items and the like as a way to "beef up" the characters could work well.

To borrow a cliche from Field of Dreams: if you publish it, they will play it. All the advertising in the world won't help if the available product line is not appealing. I would think that the popularity of BRP the system is primarily limited to the popularity of any good quality settings through which it is implemented. Creating interesting adventures within a reasonably fleshed out setting is much more practical for most GMs than creating the setting. Although we may find the BRP system most to our tastes, I don't think that you can objectively say it is so superior to other systems that it should really be driving them out of the market -- the way cassettes did to 8-tracks and CDs did to cassettes. It's not even the only universal system available. Although we generally enjoy bashing games with "levels" and experience points, that sort of system works well for games where the players want their characters to become progressively more impressive so that they can defeat increasingly nasty monsters. That is, the fun of that game, if you like it, is that you husband your little guy along from the time when he struggled to beat a bunch of goblins to the point where he routinely slays dragons and is not afraid of facing demi-gods. If you like that sort of game, BRP is not a good system for you: your characters just don't improve in quality all that much; you don't go from "normal" to "heroic" to "epic" etc. I don't see how BRP or any other system can be popular without a dedicated pool of creative talent putting out quality settings and adventures. Most settings won't sell like hotcakes, but that's the nature of the beast: I think Crusaders of the Amber Coast is one of the best, if not the best, setting I've ever seen. But I love historical RPGs and I have had a long interest in the Baltic crusades. I know there can't be too many people like that. If you're in this to get rich, though, you really should be selling video games.

If the folks at Alphetar Games don't stop putting out awesome historical supplements, I may just get completely giddy. Cheers, guys.

Excellent! I'm a huge fan of the Republic era in general and the Punic Wars in particular. Caesar, Schmaesar, give me Scipio anytime! Good to hear there won't be rules for running from one trunk to another shooting the poor pachyderms. As I recall, the Romans developed all sorts of anti-elephant techniques like drums and horns to scare the nasty beasts. No need for elves, no matter how fleet-footed. Do you think there will be any coverage of the Pyrrhus campaign?

I started playing Traveller in 1977 when it was just three little books in a box. In the beginning we had to make up our own campaigns until they started publishing a vast amount of material on the Imperium and you could just buy a pre-made sector and use it. But that was in the halcyon days when Traveller was basically the only game in town -- so to speak. That was also the time when we didn't think twice about having a different game system for every game that we played. We didn't even blink when all the TSR games we bought had incompatible rule systems. As Bob Dylan might have sung "Times, they have a-changed." Now there is a superabundance even of generic game systems and of sci-fi settings. I would think that given the current market there's not much chance that an original elaborate setting -- meaning that the detailed work of creating the background of the setting, planets, ships, races, and so forth is done by the publisher rather than the GM -- will be a financial boon to any publisher. But I also don't see why someone could not create such an original elaborate setting as a labor of love with the understanding that the thousands of hours of work put into it will not be compensated monetarily. Perhaps a team of dedicated authors . . . When you are the only game in town -- like the Imperium when Traveller was in its infancy -- you don't have to be spectacular to be very popular. (Reminds me of DOS, but that's another thread . . . ) Now, I would think that you could not create a setting -- whether original or licensed -- that would so blow away gamers that it could make big dent in the RPG market. But as I said, that is no reason why one cannot be produced as a labor of love . . .

Nice. I love the Seventeenth Century, and during the Thirty Years' War is a fascinating, if particularly inhumane, time. One suggestion for research I would make is to look at the Chinese from Fujian province. While most Chinese didn't seem to like traveling around, the Fujianese couldn't stop sailing places. Most of the "overseas" Chinese until recently were from Fujian. Also, there are some very interesting unique cultural aspects of Fujian: such as a type of round, fortified house you don't find anywhere else in China. (My father-in-law's family were tea merchants from Fuzhou, so this area has a special place in my heart.) Good luck with this setting; it sounds like a beauty!

That's correct. At first, there was a policy of reaching out that led to Zheng He's ventures, and then a change in policy that forbid precisely that sort of venture. If I'm not mistaken, Chinese merchants nonetheless were sailing around the Indian ocean; I think Singapore was settled fairly early by some number of Chinese merchants. In an alternate Earth, you could even have a Singapore-like trading base set up on Sokotra; or even reverse the historic flow: Instead of Dutch and English East India Companies, have an Imperial Western Barbarian Company that sends fleets all the way to Europe and back. Another interesting twist is that the Ming Dynasty -- a native Chinese dynasty -- fell to the Manchus in 1644. You could make the struggle part of the politics of any merchant base on Sokotra.

Very cool map. What program did you use to create it, Rust?

I'm also tinkering with a 17th century setting where most of the action would be in England and the Netherlands. I'm trying to collect comments by foreign visitors to various English and Dutch cities so that I can find elements that are notably English or Dutch about those cities, hence the reliance on what foreign visitors thought was worth mentioning. You might try looking at foreigners' comments about French cities to try to capture what was "notably French" in them. Just a thought. --Karl

I would also add that in a game where there are many possible types of scenarios/campaigns possible, it helps if the GM and the players at the beginning agree on the concept of the game to be played, which dictates what type of character concepts would work well. It's different if your game is always going to be "enter underground ruins, chop up all monsters, steal treasure" or something like that. A game emphasizing exploration is going to favor different sets of concepts from one emphasizing combat -- like space pirates, or something. I'm a big fan of the concept of character concepts.