SDLeary

The example boxes and side notes have a slight parchment look. I would bet that was what SDLeary was referring to.

Nah... it was more to the general thought (hope? dream?) of a full color glossy HB. Looks purdy, save when your in the wrong lighting and trying to read it.

And to put the art into context... I don't think any of it was ever in color... at least in publication. The only one that comes to mind that might have been colored pencil originally was the superhero group on pg141 of BRP1. That was the house superhero group. IIRC, the guy in the top-hat was Sandy Petersen's character.

SDLeary

I don't know, $50?

HERO System 5th Edition Revised, 592 pages, B&W, hardback costs $49.99 while GURPS Basic Set: Characters, 336 pages, full-color, glossy paper, hardcover costs $39.95.

I have to imagine that GURPS probably had a larger initial print run, reducing the price somewhat. I'm not sure that BRP could reach that level, and thus price.

Speaking of which, looking at BRP, is it possible that some of the pictures were originally colored (greyscale in the book)? Any chance for a full-color, glossy paper, hardcover?

Ok, I am probably dreaming...

I, for one, am happy the paper isn't glossy. That was the most annoying change in terms of readability, especially if your reading locations are varied... the colored background only exacerbated this.

SDLeary

WARNING! Brainstorming ahead! Could be very messy.

OK... I was thinking about Sanity, and how to get some of the social effects out of it ala UA by adding values for Violence, Unnatural, Isolation, and Magical. Each would have been a % value that would be used rather than a straight sanity roll, the higher the value, the more resistant you are to that situation, but the more callous you are, effecting social inter..... blah blah blah.

Then I found myself reading the Personality Trait optional rules, and that got me to thinking. If both Personality Traits and Sanity are used (for PCs... yes), what about having failed San rolls directly effecting the traits? And, just to give the player a sense of control, the GM only chooses the pairing affected, the player choosing which value to check and potentially increase.

Example

The investigators stumble onto a horrible scene of all of a bunch of NPCs hanging from nooses from the rafters (Braveheart) or in various states of dismemberment (Beowulf)...

A failed Sanity roll would have the normal effects, but rather than simply have the character run away, fall into a mania, or into a stupor, it also had an effect on their personality. A check in Agressive/Passive, Extrovert/Introvert, Emotional/Calm, etc.

Potential, or am I taking things a bit too far?

SDLeary

Sounds very interesting. If I can find some of these books at a reasonable price, I'll take a closer look. Thanks!

I'm not sure they are still there, but several were available at one point on DriveThruRPG.

SDLeary

I'm puttering around with the various magic systems that have popped up in BRP games, trying to figure out what I want to go with for my homebrew fantasy setting. So far I've gotten the new BRP rulebook, RuneQuest III, Stormbringer (4th and 5th editions), and Cthulhu Dark Ages. So far it looks like BRP's sorcery and Stormbringer's magic are the best fit for what I want, but I just stumbled across a mention of Pendragon 4th edition having a magic system.

Now, from my 5th edition Pendragon book, I know it's not a BRP-based game. But what are people's thoughts on the 4th edition's magic system? How does it work? Would it be simple to adapt to BRP? Worthwhile to adapt it to a different, fairly low-magic setting?

Any info anybody can give would be helpful. Thanks!

I've actually been thinking about this as a replacement for an animist/theist system.

Broadly speaking, you have Talents (read skills: about 19 of them in the core book) that you roll against to see if you succeed. Immediate payment is in Life Force, which can be personal, ambient (drawn from the world around you), or a combination of the two. Longer term "payment" is in the form of prior preparation, sleep, or aging.

Religion plays a part. You get bonuses if you have certain Traits at a high value. This aids in magical Defense. "Holy Places" also give you additional access to Ambient Life Force. Being Impassioned (using the Passions system) can also add bonuses.

Talents are actually fairly broad in nature, allowing differing effects within the category. For example, Curse allows you to cause someone to be Clumsy (Low magic: 1-40 points of Life Force), Infertile (Common Magic: 41-80 points), or blight a field with Wither Field (High Magic: 81-200 points).

If you wanted the full effect of this in BRP, you would need to bring in the Personality Traits option from pp. 294-295. You would then have to define the worlds religions and which traits they value so you could figure religious/faith bonuses*. Expansion of the Allegiance (p.315) or importation of Passions might also be desirable.

SDLeary

* If you also have access to the Pagan Shore, Beyond the Wall, Saxons, and Land of Giants supplements, the system is expanded (Saxon Rune Magic, Heathen Magic, Bardic Magic all conforming to/adding onto the Talents system) and there are some "cults" defined that can be used as templates to go beyond the Christian, Pagan forms presented in the main book

Isn't a dagger parrying a broadsword just an unfeasible? Or would people confine it to parrying just the long weapons (SIZ 3.0+)? Also you've got v. short weapons such as sickles and cesti which can parry, not just daggers.

Maybe something like "All parries with weapons of SIZ less than 1.0 are Difficult". Alternatively, "All parries against SIZ 3.0+ weapon attacks by weapons of SIZ less than 1.0 are Difficult"?

Incidentally, in actual play I'm finding it very easy to demand that someone Dodge rather than Parry if the Parry seems unrealistic. Someone was recently trying to parry a charging mutated giant boar with a dagger - the entire concept was just too ridiculous to even contemplate!

Cheers,

Sarah

Not quite... there is much more force at the end of a hafted weapon. Thats where all the weight is concentrated, whereas with a sword, it distributed more throughout.

As for modifiers, I wouldn't really have anything universal. A dagger is really a largeish weapon. We are generally talking about something with a 12-16 inch blade. This seems to me to be more an effect of the weight distribution on the attacking weapon rather than the size of the parrying. Perhaps this should be a special effect of axes/maces/mauls. Perhaps a modifier to the parrying party of -10%/size? To offset this advantage, I would probably also reduce the range of battle axes and light and medium maces to short. They are generally not longer than a largish dagger, nowhere near as long as a broadsword or short spear.

SDLeary

Well, I am mostly interested in Qing China, at the time of the Opium Wars and of the Taiping rebellion.

Many of the rifles used at this time in China would have been musket or single shot rifle class. I would use Rifle, Musket and Rifle, Sporting with attacks of 1/4 and 1/3.

Now, that doesn't preclude something revolutionary being there at the time, but I would only give them to major npcs.

SDLeary

I've perused the code, but that's about it so far. Really, I only need to use

Objective-C for the GUI. OSX can compile C++ just fine. Their might be some

Windows only functions that I'd have to circumvent, but overall it looks pretty

clean.

As far as the spreadsheet Peter would like to use as a basis for the data so the

end user can modify the data, Byakhee uses a plain text file to add in skills,

backgrounds, etc. So, the end user can easily modify the data source or add

their own, at least from what I can tell. The real art is the generation of the

haracter sheet. Again, Byakhee takes some templates (pdf I think) and fills in

the forms. There are also stock images that can be placed. Adding images is

easy as most of the common formats are supported. Making the sheet modular

is a design goal, and might be tricky. It would entail using different sections of

the sheet, and then stitching it together, resizing some sections when others

are used/not used, etc.

Java or Mono are definitely "mostly" cross-platform, but I am not a big fan.

For my money (and time), I would strip out the core engine and make the

C++ code as portable as possible, using a Make script to catch specific

platform oddities. Then, I would keep the current Windows GUI, work on a

Cocoa GUI for OSX, and perhaps Qt GUI or similar for Linux/UNIX. Reworking

the current code for OSX would be a nice start. If I can get that done,

moving to Linux/UNIX would only entail the GUI and sheet generation.

However, as I mentioned before, copious free time is not something I posses,

neither is sparse free time. However, in the next few weeks I hope to have

some external real life cruft get resolved, in which case more time may get

freed up.

-V

If you weren't a C++ jockey, I'd suggest RealBASIC... supposed to work across platforms quite nicely.

SDLeary

Never mind... didn't read the post

sdleary

US did not use bolt action till end of century true. But the US did use lots of Lever action rifles such as the Spencer, Henry and Winchester starting in 1860.

I can fire faster with a lever action rifle then I can with a bolt action rifle , but bolt action is more sturdy then lever action.

Only in certain units, and then it was ususally purchased by the trooper themselves. Certain units were outfitted later on with Henry and Spencer lever action (Rifle, sporting??), but by far the Sharps Rifle (single shot, drop breech) and Carbine were the weapon of issue.

THe Sharps, because of caliber, I would class with Rifle, Musket in the rule book (yes, even though its a percussion cap), but would adjust the number of attacks to 1/3 or even 1/2, and increase range to 100.

SDLeary

Er... So any suggestions as to what I could use for a 19th century colonial campaign? in terms of weapons available to the Europeans vs weapons available to the natives.

If you are starting at the beginning of the century then use the listing for Rifle, Musket. Further in, I would modify this to attacks at 1/3, as cartridges came into use. Around the middle of the century Rifle, Bolt-Action would be a good choice for Europe, but the US didn't adopt these till near the end of the century.

SDLeary

Wrong way round. Matchlocks required the musketeer (or whomever) to carry a burning match which he applied to the pan to ignite the powder. Flintlocks, using a striking flint or similar material to produce a spark, replaced Matchlocks starting (in Europe) around the mid 17th century.

I think he was thinking of caplock/percussion lock.

SDLeary

Bolt-action rifles showed up at the beginning of the century, and played a strong role in the Civil War.

This is true. The early models tended to be single shot though, and mainly available in Europe, though some were used as sharp-shooter weapons in the US Civil War. In the states, the drop-breech lever action tended to fill this space, also as a single shot.

SDLeary

Just picked up my copy from my FLGS (Endgame). Have pulled off the shrink wrap, and begun the trek thru the pages

SDLeary

To some degree I found RQ could get a little "Lopped off another left arm, one more for he collection" after a while.

And this is the reason to always include a Troll in the party!

SDLeary

The question was in reference to a concept that came up in the MRQ playtest, but was later discarded.

Yes....

Basically, you figure hit locations as normal, but rather than us these values as points in the location, they are threshold values. Anything under the threshold in a single blow is a minor wound, over a major wound, 2x the value or above, a critical wound... effects to be as per RQ 3.

Now, at this point there were two suggestions...

Just track wounds, which is very quick and light, or...

Apply points to general hit points, thus still giving a way to track overall health, and a way to apply poisons and other things that track on the general HP list now.

SDLeary

So this is the cover I have done for Newt for the first issue of 'Hearts In Glorantha'.

I am pleased with it, especially the letters in the main title as they are my own design from many years ago. I hope to make them into a proper font once I have found a font making software package for the mac.

I am by the way the un-official Art Director for HiG so I will be producing more artwork and trying to source new artists for the future issues.

Now thats vera vera purdy!

SDLeary

But, if you score a critical success, you don't "roll" your damage (normally)!

OK, though, I hear what you're saying - it's like I suspected at the start: Martial Arts give no benefit to critical hits. Which seems odd

(But this is a debate for the Difficulty Modifiers thread... )

Even with Jason's clarification, I still don't read it that way. You would still add in the MA damage. Or, perhaps the MA damage should be rolled, as with the characters Damage Bonus.

SDLeary

Not quite a generic BRP generator, but I just noticed on Yog that a gent has created an add in for Byakhee that brings CDA goodness to the program. Linkage below.

SDLeary

Pacman's WonderPage!

I agree that the EDU stat certainly makes most sense with sentient beings. In fact it's probably best (and easiest) to rule that a fixed INT creatures never has any EDU. They might be cunning, act with a plan (as some RW spiders seems to do) and be able to learn things (dogs being good examples) but Knowledge is, at least in-game, defined as a sentient being's reflections on the world around them.

That being said, one still has to decide what EDU score's people from various cultures have. In imperial Rome the children of the wealthy went to school, in mediaeval times the monks had access to lots of lore, but as we all know formal education is still even in these days reserved the wealthy (I here treat all who live in the developed countries as "wealthy"...).

Another thing one have to decide is how to interpret the EDU stat. The rules mention one point of EDU per year in school as a benchmark. Informal education does count however. So what EDU would an average peasant in mediaeval times have? It would depend on what the EDU score means. Lets say we give the peasant 3 points of EDU. Would that mean that he would only have a 15% chance of knowing the name of the King? If reasoned that he would have, at least, a 50% chance of knowing such a fact - would that mean that the EDU stat should be generated by rolling 3d6?

I think, but I'd like to reach some consensus here since I want my spreadsheet to be useful to more people than my self, that you need to keep the EDU score down until you get well-developed societies (in the sense we put in the word "well-developed") and instead award the mediaeval peasant a bonus to his Know roll when trying to remember the name of the King and other well known facts.

I would grant a 50 percentiles bonus to a know roll for well known facts (such as the name of the King), a 25 percentiles bonus to less well known but still widespread knowledge (Is the King married?) and a normal Know roll for things that a peasant might know (what is the name of the King's eldest child, is this herb poisonous?). In effect what we get is a bonus to the Know roll that depends on either the distance between the object and the character or how widespread the information is. I would use the terms: local, regional, distant and very distant.

[table]Region|Modification

Local|+50

Regional|+25

Distant|0

Very Distant|-25[/table]

So my solution for a fantasy setting would be to grant a base EDU of 1d6 and then grant extra points of EDU depending on background and profession. As an example one could rule that a child of a noble that enters the clergy would have an EDU of 1d6 + 3 +3.

Something you might want to look at is that Edu is NOT necessarily book learning. Its a stat that could easily be renamed Wisdom. Its accumulated knowledge, and thus really doesn't need a formalized structure to reflect how much someone has "learned".

Using your Roman example, who would have "learned" more about farming? The child of the Roman noble, or the child of the freeholder or farm slave?

SDLeary

Honestly, I'm not sure that you would need it for every creature. Dragons, yes, they are "sentient"; a dog or lion on the other hand are not and probably shouldn't have Edu at all.

SDLeary

A few suggestions gathered from the net and other sources that, IMHO, may improve BRP:s conflict resolution system.

1) Change the way of reading ...

<snip>

This would be good for a new game, or for those of us that like to experiment a lot with different rules, but somehow it strikes me as MORE difficult for a noob to grok. I think this feeling comes from the fact that you are adding in layers... or seem to be adding in layers... to rules that really don't need them.

SDLeary

EDIT: And, as has been pointed out above, it doesn't really work unless you restrict to an absolute scale of 0-99 or 1-100.

(Re: Major Wound Table)

Text is the same.

Nope... look carefully. And not just at the tables, the way Jason mentioned. The overall book is about 15 pages longer.

SDLeary

Anyone else got that patchy black line running down the page on pg. 331 of their pdf (page 329 of the book)? I think it may be a remnant of a black edge on the left side of the image used on the page (in which case it may well be something that will appear on the print copies as well).

Colin

Not seeing anything here. Running on a G5 with OS X 10.5.3. Preview doesn't like the PDF, but Acrobat seems fine... haven't seen any anomalies on the pages yet.

SDLeary

Just downloaded. Delighted to have it. But in Preview on my Mac (OS X 10.4.11) nearly all of the graphics come through as photo negatives and the tables and option boxes are unselectable black text on black backgrounds. Stinky.

Same file works fine in Adobe Reader. Though the images take an extra second or so to resolve to their proper resolutions.

All in all, though, I'm glad to have the game in a PDF.

I noticed that. Its probably encoded using a newer Acrobat version... it looks good in Acrobat Reader though. I'll shoot off a message to the Chaosium Crew about it.

SDLeary