Sven Norén

That said, I think the premise of this thread is fundamentally off; while a small percentage of gamers might well have been more likely to play BRP style games if introduced to them early, for the majority, they play D&D and its kin not just because its what they were first introduced to, but because its the kind of gaming experience they want. To think otherwise is really pretty much wishful thinking.

Timing is tricky thing indeed. While an earlier publication of BRP might have caused some to pick up and try it, chances are that they would have laid it aside when a new (and big!) shiny came along. Better would actually be to introduce a new game just when the D&D4th hype begins to fade, and restless players start looking around for something else. Then we stand ready with our modest BRP books and can run a demo game or five for them. Just make sure you know the rules and can run smooth game, preferably one that highlights the spots where BRP is decidedly better than That Other Game: no limiting classes, no levels, no level caps, the "you can try anything" attitude.

RQ2: Pavis

What's this "RQ3" I see you youngsters going on about?

Do we need tides at all? It's not like they are of much use, except perhaps for restricting when larger ships can enter or leave harbour.

Am I the only one to miss the Defense ability from RQ2?

I'll fix that when I'm home after work.

Maybe putting it in the Links section? Please?

Soltakss- Would you care to elaborate on the parts of your post that I bolded? I would be interested in hearing more about what people found dissatisfactory in the current incarnation. You may want to open a new thread or just email me off list if you are more comfortable doing that.

Yes PLEASE not in a thread titled "Glorantha"! Start a new thread and call it "Comparative systemology" or something. Pretty please with a cherry on top?

:focus:

... Basically, if the defender succeeds, he succeeds, and the attackers roll and skill doesn't much matter. I could have a 200% hide, but if the defender rolls under his 25% skill, he spotted me no matter what.

...

This is still basically the same as "subtract roll from skill" method. If you have to do subtraction anyway, why not just do it once?

I do it only once; When the contest starts. If you have a 200% Hide skill anyone looking for you would do so at a penalty of -100% from their skill, so that poor sod with 25% Spot would have to roll 5 or less to see you ('cos 5 or lower is always a sucess).

The big advantage to this method is that as a GM, it allows you to resolve multiple things at one time. ... You basically have to roll for each comparison, and the fact that the GM asks you to roll three times will hint to the player that there are three things that might spot him.

With the "no opposed rolls" method the sneaker would roll once, to see if he manages to sneak at all. The GM then roll for the NPC:s (with appropriate modifiers) to see if they notice him. And maybe a couple of extra rolls, just to keep players on their toes.

I've never seen the sneak/spot situation as requiring opposed rolls, but that may be because I never upgraded from RQ2 to RQ3...

What I would do is ask for a straight roll from the sneaker. If he fails he can be spotted by anyone looking in the right direction. If he succeds it takes a succesful Spot roll to spot him, and if he scores a critical success it takes a critical Spot to discover him.

If you want skill levels over 100% to make a difference, then borrow from the (optional?) combat rules: Any attack percentage over 100% acts as a penalty to parry, such as if you attack with a skill of 120% then the defender gets a -20% penalty to his parry skill.

Here are some ideas cribbed from another thread:

I'd treat Starship combat the same as normal combat.

Starships have locations, AP and HP. They have weapons that do damage. They have forcefields that absorb damage.

Sure, there are extra things to think about. You might be able to do Precise Attacks and target particular subsystems (Drives/Weapons/Life Support) you might even have to have rules for what happens if the hull in penetrated, with air leaks and so on. You'd certainly have rules on the number of charges a weapon has, recharge rates, batteries, how much power a ship has and how much can be fed into shields/weapons.

But, when it comes down to it, you have someone with 60% Pilot Starship, someone with 55% Starship Blaster, a Blaster doing 1D10 damage and a Starship with 6 point Hull and 10 HP in every location. The opponent can't dodge a Blaster but can dodge a Quantum Torpedo using his Pilot Starship. Some Starships might have modifiers, one might be Manouverable and give +20% to Pilot Starship for dodges, another might be Tough and have extra APs, another might have resealable skin or whatever.

Anything a lot more complicated than that is going way too far, in my opinion.

You can give them stats like STR and so forth, too, like in the armies in 'Warlords of Alexandria', or ship 'personalities' like in 'Serenity'. Loads of ideas to get started, anyway.

I think you are right. But one thing you forgot IMO: sensors. To "see" another ship or not is a matter of life and death in some space opera settings. This could be modelled like spot hidden skill or on the resistance table. (eg. sensor power 23 vs. ECM 20 or so)

It's easily covered by having a Sensors skill and resolving against a Stealth skill using whatever method is best.

...

Ship design is more complicated. I'd treat ships as PCs, whether they are alive/intelligent or not. So, give ships SIZ, CON, INT (?), DEX, POW (?). I'm not sure if they need STR or CHA, but they might be useful, STR might indicate how much cargo a ship can carry.

...

AP/HP might be called Hull Quality/Spaceworthiness, but you'd need something like this. Weapons, propulsion systems, power sources, battery stores, cargo holds, shuttlecraft and so on need to be included as well, so you'd need some way of limiting the number of things you can include in a ship, possibly based on SIZ.

soltakss is right, for the most part vechile combat can be handled like PC combat. Just cut & paste the "flavor enhancers" you need to fit the setting.

BRP actually does that through Superworld. Many superworld powers are built in a manner similar to Chanpions. While a laser blast, Ki Strike, Disintergrator beam, and magentic rail gun are all differernt, the most important game effect are the range, skill% and damage. Much like a RQ hatchet and shortsword are fairly similar in a functional aspect in BRP.

I think the reason why we don't have any rules for statships is just that Chaosium has never released a successful Sci-Fi RPG. Ringworld and FutureWorld were barely blips on the RPG radar. It isn't that Spaceships are tougher to work out than Magic or Superpowers.

I think the best way to handle it, and along the lines of how BRP is being organized, would be to work out a basic Hull/HP, MOVE, weapons, skill based system along sotakss idea (and workable along with the old sailing ship rules), and the work up some SPOT RULES for types fo SF settings. Stuff like different methods of FTL propulsion and all that could be in the SPOT RULES.

Come to think of it, the superpower rules could probably handle spaceships. Just limit the powers availably by the setting. For instance, Star Trek gets teleportation, energy weapons, and forcie fields.

BRP does need some decent SCi-Fi stuff it is is going to attempt to cover the genre, and definitely needs some sort of spaceship rules to do so (hey, they put a spaceship on the cover, right?).

STR is engines. High STR and low SIZ makes for an agile ship that has a good chance to dodge incoming missiles or feint enemy artillerists, the reverse - less so.

INT could be the 'intelligence' of the shipboard computers (how advanced they are), while POW could be the robustness of those systems. HP would represent physical damage, and POW Pts./MP could be used for Electronics damage (computers, sensors, etc).

Electronic Warfare or Sensor tech (or even shield systems) could be the 'Magic System' of starship combat.

Maybe he meant that PC:s in his experience ususally are NOT very sucessful, and by and large DO end up eaten or naked in a ditch?

INT as the capacity for collecting, analysing and evaluating information, a.k.a. Intelligence... meesa like!

Should we start new thread for brainstorming spaceship construction rules?

Ship design is more complicated. I'd treat ships as PCs, whether they are alive/intelligent or not. So, give ships SIZ, CON, INT (?), DEX, POW (?). I'm not sure if they need STR or CHA, but they might be useful, STR might indicate how much cargo a ship can carry.

STR is engines. High STR and low SIZ makes for an agile ship that has a good chance to dodge incoming missiles or feint enemy artillerists, the reverse - less so.

Cargo is just part of the overall SIZ.

I have always heard the advantage of the Mace and the war hammer was that they where better against people in heavy armor . I saw a show on the history channel where they put a dummy in chain then had a man on horseback hit the dummy first with a broadsword then with a mace.. The dummy suffered no damage from the broadsword but did from the mace. Perhaps you could have a rule where metal armor provided less protection versus crushing weapons.

Not metal armour; flexible armour. What maille does is turning a cut from a sword into a blunt hit. The mace is already blunt so loses nothing, and is usually heavier.

BTw I remember reading one ta tic the Romans came up with when fighting Pike formation was to chop the heads of the pikes with their Short swords.

That is not a Roman idea, it came up during the rennaissance. German Landsknecht used two-handers to deal with Swiss Pike blocks. The guys hacking pike heads got double pay (doppelsoldner) for the risk they took getting in that close.

And as far as Axes versus swords. I have understood the Battle ax was much cheaper then the broadsword and was very good at delivering a killing blow. I'm wondering if anyone knows the exact cost of Battle Ax versus Broadsword in say 13 century Europe for a real comparison

Yes, it is much easier forging an axe head than a good sword. The weight and balance makes the axe hit harder, at the cost of a slower recovery.

As far as costs go, this list gives the price of an axe as 5d in 1457, while a "cheap sword (peasants)" cost 6d in 1350.

Still, blunt weapons get less dangerous in human hands that way (compared to max weapon damage + ignore armor, or wait, are we talking special or critical damage here?)

In RQ2 specials did extra damage, criticals did the extra damage AND ignored armour. Either way, why do you think maces and mauls are preferred cultural weapons for trolls while humans use swords and axes? Perfectly good in-game reasons!

This has not been my experience. It takes more than a ‘step’ to close the distance. Using a 6-9 foot spear when I have realized that I have missed, whether by my own fault or my opponent parrying, I am finding a new zipcode. He will need to rush me hard to close the gap. The rigid ‘his turn-my turn’ game rules may support your point but it is not what actually happens since, with real people, both can keep on moving while doing other things. Even when the opponent gets to his ideal sword range I have seen many spearmen clock them with a small mace or short sword that they drew while retreating. The haft of the spear is used to deflect blows or tie up the sword arm.

Two points here:

1) The spearman has to be very nimble to run backwards nearly as fast as the swordsman runs forward, while blocking with the spear haft AND drawing a backup weapon, and

2) if the spearman can reach the swordsman with a small mace or short sword, then the swordsman is NOT at his ideal range!

Are you talking about using a spear one handed with a shield or two handed? If two handed I would like to know how you are going to move the spear out of line while it is being held with two hands?

Not a problem; I've done it myself and had it done to me more often than not. Basically, push the spear point with the shield while winding up with the sword. On a 9 foot spear you get much better leverage than the spearman can get since his hands are at the most 3 1/2 feet apart. (Unless we are fighting orangutans?)

If he does close jam the haft into his arm so that he can’t swing his arm forward enough to get to you. Throw him to the ground or pull your own dagger and get inside of his attacks. Works for me.

Where have you done your fighting? My experinces are from the SCA, where throwing an opponent is not permitted (safety reasons).

Do spearmen get clobbered by swordsmen? Yes but not by a simple effort. They need to commit to a rush, which has its own problems if they muff it. In close order the front ranks need to concentrate on parrying blows and tying up the offense. The second and third ranks should be killing. In loose order give ground to maintain the distance and poke, poke, poke!

When fighting as a unit yes; rushing a close order unit in two or three ranks is suicidal. When fighting one-on-one a spearman is at a definite disadvantage against a sword-and-shield fighter of similar competence. I have seen very few spears in the lists, and even fewer used successfully (though a short spear-and-sword combo has been popular hereabouts recently).

As for specials, I've been using Impales/Slashes/Crushes for years, as RQ2, but with ... Crushes doing Damage Bonus Twice rather then RQ2's Max damage Bonus which makes trolls and giants incredibly over-powered.

Doing that actually increases the average damage for a Crush. I.E: 2D6 average 7, vs. 6 for a maxed out d6.

what have you got?

What haven't I got? Let's see:

> Boxed sets:

- Runequest DeLuxe 3rd ed.

- Gods of Glorantha

- Glorantha: Genertela, Crucible of the Hero Wars

- Elder Secrets of Glorantha

> Softbound books:

- Dorastor, Land of Doom

- River of Cradles

- Sun county

> Booklets:

- Shadows on the Borderlands

- Apple Lane

- Gloranthan Bestiary

In addition to this is a number of Tales of the Reaching Moon and Wyrm's Footprints. I'm just trying to figure out how to put this on eBay with the least hazzle.

I personally prefer to keep both a special and a critical result; the former provides more of a tool for weapon type differnces (since it can trigger the various special results for bashing, slashing and impaling weapons) while it doesn't overly gust really severe results, which are reserved for criticals.

The only thing I _do_ wish is that there was a more consistent way to handle criticals; treating it differently against armored and unarmored foes is ugly, but you get border conditions where crits mean less and less the less armor the target has.

One idea I saw on a discussion of BRP houserules on RPG.NET (see, it's not all bad!) was to have a short list of special effects, like:

- Do extra damage (impale/slash/crush)

- ignore armour

- choose hit location

- do knockback

- disarm

-

All are taken from the RQ3 combat rules, some of them optional. When you roll a special hit, pick one of the above. On a critical, pick two. Gives the players (and NPC:s) a bit more control over the fight, without adding an extra layer of rules. I'm going to try this next campaign.

Hello, I'm Sven Norén and I am based in Uppsala, Sweden.

I started playing, like so many else, AD&D in the early 80:ies. After about two sittings I found the system somewhat less than satisfying. I went down to our FLGS and found the new and shiny RQ2 hardback on the shelf, and the rest is history. I have tried some other games: Fantasy Hero, TFT, T&T, Cyberpunk, and Space Opera, but always came back to RQ and other BRP games.

I have done more GM:ing than playing though. My players still talk about some special moments in our games, like when Punchem the troll wrestled a were-tiger while the others magicked their weapons to gut it (made a very hard-wearing rug.) Or the famous line: "The dragon opens one eye and says 'Think fast!'" Or when the duck with DEX 18 was the only one to fall from a slippery bridge - repeatedly. (Poor sod had played Roll Master the night before and his %dice were set to roll high.)

Over time I have collected almost everything there is to collect for RQ2, and lots of the Glorantha stuff for RQ3. I am contemplating selling the latter, look out on eBay....