Questbird

16 hours ago, NickMiddleton said:

My own list of identifying characteristics would be similar to Vile's above:

1. Magic pervades the world but actual spell casters are rare and strange.
2. Allegiance matters - it affects the world in both the general and the specific. Characters get mechanical effects, it shapes the feel of the world.
3. It's a BRP game in the classic mode - whilst default PC's are distinctly more heroic than in some BRP games, violence is a dangerous option and the feel tends toward the gritty and brutal.
4. The world is fey and strange and varied - no race is _explicitly_ "evil", any creature can plausibly be a PC, or at least an ally.
5. Ships feature heavily.

One of the missed opportunities of the line never getting off the ground was the possibility of explicitly expanding its horizons - one of the things I noodled away at one point was a series  of alternative settings - worlds that one could run with Magic World alone and which still cleaved to those core characteristics but were quite different from the Southern Reaches.  Ah well.

Nick

 

I agree with those 5. I've run an Elric!/Magic World campaign set in Fritz Leiber's Nehwon for many years, a classic sword and sorcery setting. That setting fits all but one of the list above (no.2) perfectly. There are many gods in Nehwon but none of them are very powerful. There isn't really an obvious good vs evil or law vs. chaos. But I really like the Allegiance system so I use it anyway.

I like most things about BRP. I wouldn't be a regular at these forums if I didn't. My favourites are the skill mechanic, so easily explained, the complementary skill improvement mechanic; and the relatively lethal combat.

However if pressed to mention one thing I don't like so much, it would be that characters can take a long time to make. You have to allocate skill points and that takes some time. I guess you could randomise things, but it doesn't work that way out of the box.

It's not the Whitaker monograph, but there was a printed Hawkmoon game using Mongoose's Runequest II rules. It was by Gareth Hanrahan I  think and it wasn't bad. You might find second-hand copies of that around, though Mongoose no longer has rights to either Hawkmoon or Runequest.

18 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I like this!

Would you mind giving its pedigree in a bit more detail for an encumbrance fan who figures “things" might just be the way to go but is seriously disappointed with how it is implemented in RQ G. Oh, and as a bit of a thread necromancer myself, do not apologize. From a search perspective it makes a lot of sense to revive rather than reboot. Thanks in advance whether you care to expound a little more or not.

Cheers 

 

 

The most recent place I read about this idea was in a science-fiction role playing game called Shadows Over Sol. The idea of using numbers of items instead of absolute weights struck me as a great balance between realism and record-keeping. Shadows Over Sol also had the idea of a container which can hold X items of a particular type (like a backpack or ammunition case). A similar idea was used in gamebooks like Lone Wolf and Fabled Lands. Lone Wolf books had 'backpack items' (max 8 ) plus a weapon, plus so-called 'Special Items', various plot-related things which were the rort of the game because they effectively weighed nothing. Fabled Lands also had a limit of 12 items, though you could stash items in boats and houses you could buy. In that one (and in most RPGs I think) cash was the fudge; you could carry as many Shards as you could find.

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

This last post of your seems more relevant!

I will have 3 answers....

First, what I was really wondering (and to show how it differs from the answer so far):
Ok, say the player are private detective, or insurance investigator or something like that, and my initials games center around some shop being vandalised or shop owner being assassinated, what kind of (scifi hitech) setting would allow the player instead of the police be the one to investigate?
And I am not talking about some rare occurrence, I am thinking of this to be a common occurrence.. what would this society look like and still be a believable scifi society?

But hey, one can argue that the real word is not so heavy development oriented that Civilisation and Master of Orion, so perhaps this whole approach is wrong. Ultimately it could be a pure literary choice and both approach might perhaps be realistic outcome. But I already chose my outcome. Save for the nagging question at the top.... "what kind of, preferably developed and dystopian yet successful scifi, society would rely on private investigator for solving many of its crime"?

 

So your Bulrathi overlords are mostly peaceful. They have established their Pax Bulratha* across their ruled systems. Their systems are comprised of many races, living under the same controls if not necessarily cheek by jowl with other races. The Bulrathi are technologically superior and have military might. There is no point in rebellion.

The control exerted by the Bulrathi on their minions may be slight:

1. Pay your taxes/tribute/DNA samples/work allocation duties to the Empire
2. Don't cause Trouble (Obey your overlords):
   1. don't kill Bulrathi
   2. don't stop anyone else from obeying the other rules
3. (maybe) Don't travel beyond your colony/Bulrathi space/an arbitrary limit in space

Other than these, the Bulrathi don't particularly care about local laws or government. In return for obeying these strictures, planets are given access to Bulrathi technology and generally allowed to get on with their lives. The Bulrathi masters don't care how sub-species regulate themselves as long as the strictures are met. But of course the governed species will care; they will want to enforce their own cultural practices or laws. So at the very least you will get species or regional-specific factions springing up to do just that. So your investigative agency can come from there, a not-quite governmental sub-group. It's in their interest to solve the local problems without getting in the way of the interstellar government rules (principally #1). And such an organisation doesn't need to be an ethical one like the IPCC or EPS either.

Maybe the Bulrathi are particularly ruthless when it comes to enforcing those simple rules of empire, to deter future offenders. Maybe their 'legal' system is impossible to understand for their underlings, but its outcomes are all-too similar for the 'punished'. Either way, having a local organisation to investigate local crimes is likely to be useful to both a planet or culture and the interstellar government, because it helps to contain dissent and Trouble (rule #2).

* Of course I am referencing Earth's Roman Empire, which was multicultural, technologically and militarily advanced for the time and generally prosperous (if at the expense of surrounding cultures) until rot set in from within. Particularly the Roman's non-interference in religion until the Christians came along and demanded exclusivity. Also the Romans were particularly punitive of rebels, who would be destroyed without mercy and their lands salted to discourage such activity.

4 hours ago, g33k said:

FTL drive is its own form of unbelievable; ansible is another.  There is very little truely hard sci-fi (not NONE... but very little!)

😉

 

Many 'hard' sci fi writers and game designers have given up on FTL drive plausibility and now focus on intra-universe wormholes (plausible) naturally occurring but usually technologically augmented so as to be permanent and large enough to transport a spaceship containing live beings. Sometimes this technology is invented by humans and sometimes by handwavium ancient alien civilisations. Dan Simmons' Hyperion books has those portals so common that you can have your living room in a different part of the galaxy to your kitchen (though that has bad consequences in the books). I can think of at least two game sci-fi settings where oldskool generation ships and portal-using ships meet up after thousands of years.

The ansible device is somewhat plausible with known science for interstellar communication only (not transport) because of the entanglement principle, the 'spooky action at a distance' which even Einstein didn't want to believe. And we have teleportation of photons now. If you can imagine scaling up technology to control spontaneously formed wormholes between points then you can probably also envisage scaling up teleporting photons to more complex information and even atomic and more macro structures.

In Charles Stross' Accelerando, some humans encode their personalities into a box the size of a slab of coke and accelerate it via high powered laser beam from one of the outer system planets so that it can get to a nearby star. Their encoded personalities have various interactions with the AI culture they find there. I guess that's not what you're after (the transhuman AI-only interaction with the rest of the galaxy).

4 hours ago, seneschal said:

So, the PCs are essentially members of a private security service.  Or bounty hunters.  As long as they stay out of interstellar politics (perhaps difficult to do) and help the weak local governments maintain order (for a modest fee) the local warlords might welcome their efforts.  The problems (and adventure seeds) begin where there are conflicting agendas and priorities among the adventurers' potential clients.  What if the gangsters/drug dealers/kidnappers/smugglers the heroes are trying to stop turn out to be hirelings doing dirty work for a government faction, just like the PCs?  What if various subscribers have jobs that present a conflict of interest?  Can the PCs manage to satisfy multiple sides without betraying one or the other?  Do they follow the money or some higher moral code?

Would they avoid this by eschewing government contracts and working for wealthy private patrons instead?  But then we're into justice only for those who can afford to pay for it.  Lots of Westerns with that theme.  "Who was that masked man?"  "I dunno but he gave me a bill for 50,000 credits."

 

The Mandalorian has these themes. It's basically Sergio Leone with Star Wars dressing. No spoilers but the Mandalorian works for an organisation of bounty hunters (called The Guild) on an otherwise lawless planet. He's also not-so secretly a member of a coven of fanatic warriors, but the existence of the coven itself on the planet is secret. On Guild business he encounters agents of the Kleptocracy (the former Empire). And then those three organisations come into conflict.

Jack Vance's Gaian Reach was a very disparate swirl of planets with no central government. It nevertheless had an organisation called the IPCC (Interplanetary Police Consortium something). They were a mostly incorruptible organisation which enforced law on a whole lot of disparate planets...to varying degrees. Some planets had an IPCC office, others had nothing. There were some parts of the galaxy that were too dangerous for them to have a presence. They were basically a private corporation which had taken on fighting crime as its remit. They were usually welcomed by local planets because they represented the only interplanetary law enforcement organisation.

The online game Pardus, which uses elements of Masters of Orion and Elite has an analogue of the IPCC called the Esteemed Pilots' Syndicate (EPS) which cuts across the three political factions of the game (the Federation, Empire and Union). You need to have high reputation to join it and you need to stay pretty clean in reputation in order to remain in it. (In the game that means not being a pirate, buying from black markets or using drugs.) The organisation is devoted to freeing slaves and shutting down drug stations and black markets, tracking down pirates and body-part traders.

The IPCC and EPS are like the earliest police and fire departments: they were spontaneously formed due to need, but were nevertheless private organisations. It wasn't until later that their functions were taken over by states. But in a galaxy where central control has broken down, perhaps a return to such 'private good' corporations is warranted?

On 4/29/2018 at 12:29 PM, dieselpunk said:

The encumbrance rules seem like a big omission from BGB since it also effectively makes the Fatigue Point system only half implemented as well. It's also harder to come up with some rule because there's no real benchmark for how STR maps to lifting capacity except for some muddy translation to real world weights through SIZ or by comparing it to relatively few equipment examples.

Anyway, I took a look at the above and also took a look at how GURPS 4e handles this. I like the basis on strength as shown above so I'll go with something like the Outpost 19 rules as a basis.

Most of the time I just ignore details like this, but I was considering making an adventure where survival and hauling stuff became a factor and became interested in this topic. 

 

Maybe poor form of me to revive this topic, especially since I was the last poster. However one idea from lifted from other RPGs which makes Encumbrance more palatable is: use number of items carried as a measure of encumbrance.

each Item carried is worth 1 ENC with the following exceptions:

• 2H weapons are worth 2 items
• 100 negligible weight items are worth 1 item (if in a suitable container)
• 4 normal items in a suitable container (like a backpack) are worth 1 item
• the backpack also counts as an item in the above example it would count as 2 items (one for the container, one for the contents)
• carrying a body or bulky thing counts as SIZ items

Then use a system like the great Outpost 19 one above,  same effects but simpler (as in fewer stages of encumbrance):

STR/2 items: Light encumbrance

STR items: Moderate encumbrance

STRx2 items: Heavy encumbrance

STRx3 items: Maximum encumbrance

It's a lot easier to ask a player if they are carrying more than 5 items than it is to keep track of every single kilo. As with hit points or sanity, there's no particular benefit for a player to rigorously track their weight, so they don't. And it's also usually one more detail for the GM to monitor, hence these things get ignored a lot during play.

Armour

The Armour table on p. 259 of the Big Gold Book lists a 'burden' level for each type of armour: None, Light, Moderate or Cumbersome (ie Heavy). You could say that wearing those types automatically gives you that level of Encumbrance as a minimum, even if you are not carrying many items.

On 1/23/2020 at 5:40 AM, SDLeary said:

So, we have an epic comedy (or tragedy depending on perspective) going on publicly on this side of the pond. After the rains began to hit you folks Down... there ( 😉 ), press has tapered off. Have the rains made much of a dent or allowed any progress?

SDLeary

 

The rain has helped a bit in Victoria. There are still out of control fires burning in Gippsland (eastern Victoria) and on the border of New South Wales south of Canberra. Other fires are being brought gradually under control. Yesterday a water bomber plane (C-130) crashed in southern NSW while fighting fires, killing three US crew members.

On 1/3/2020 at 7:25 AM, seneschal said:

Haven't heard a peep about these in the U.S. news.  Sorry you're having to go through it.  Our reporters are too busy trying to un-elect a president to let Americans know what is going on overseas.  Worked as a reporter in rural Oklahoma where small volunteer fire departments and dry conditions are the norm.  I sympathize.

 

There are bunch of US and Canadian firefighters down here to help us out. The fires across regional NSW and northern Victoria (the two most populous states in Australia) have been prolonged, destructive and lethal. It is true that the major cities where most Australians live are not on fire, but Sydney has come very close and Canberra has been surrounded by fires, even if they didn't come into the city. Both have been wreathed in smoke and haze for weeks, with air quality worse than Beijing at times. These fires are unusual because they started months before our traditional fire season (normally January and February) and have been burning out of control in nearly every state at once.

The Orville is a great Star Trek parody/homily show. I like it more than any Star Trek series I've seen recently.

With Star Wars and FN, I really didn't mind that he wanted to defect from the First Order, who were a sort of lame Empire wannabes anyway. I figured that such things could happen were part of the 'Awakening' of the Force which might have happened in the (temporary) absence of the Emperor. But Phasma and the rest of the stormtroopers were still just as evil and I didn't care at all about them getting shot up.

The scenario published 'Ripples from Carcosa' by Oscar Rios takes place across three times: in the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages and in space in the near future post 'End Times' when Earth has been taken over by the Mythos. Different Investigators are used for each adventure, but they have some sort of 'past life' memories of the others. I've not run the adventures though they seem interesting.

The sci-fi scenario is good but involves some human co-operation with the more 'benign' of non-aligned Mythos creatures (Yithians/Elder Things) which reduces their horror factor a bit.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Generally you wouldn't. Part of  the fun of the BRP system is that  players get to see their characters improve a little after each adventure or game session. So rather than adventuring for a cmonth or two and then leveling up and getting a bunch of bonuses at once, like in D&D,   n BRP the characters improve  a couple of skills after each adventure and overtime wind up in the same spot.

In fact, advancement in BRP tends to be a bit quicker than in D&D, since each level is usually only a 5%  increase to attack  and possibly skill scores, so a BRP character can get the equivalent of 2 or 3 levels worth of improvement with a weapon in under a month. 

 

 

It also depends a bit on which system you use. In BRP, skills increase by 1D6% if you succeed in a skill check. In Elric! it's 1D10%! I suppose characters in Elric! need to develop quickly before the End of the Young Kingdoms. In Fire and Sword I think it's 1 point on  a d20, which translates to 5%. However Fire and Sword is like Mythras in that you get 'improvement points' to improve a number of skills, not limited to the ones you used in the adventure (though maybe guided by those). This is supposedly to avoid adventurers becoming too alike over time (eg, search, sneak, hide, combat skills etc.)

I also use the house rule of an automatic on-the-spot increase of 1% if you get a critical success or a fumble.

I bought into an earlier One Ring Bundle of Holding, which had the rules and a few adventures. However I don't think I got around to reading it. Unfortunately with me and pdfs it's a case of out of sight, out of mind. At least it isn't filling up my bookshelves.

So it's a bit like Obsidian Portal or something? An online organiser for campaign notes?

This thread is related, though more about tropes in a psi campaign than mechanics of the powers (though it started off that way):

12 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

It sounds like an interesting system, but it sounds like rolling a fumble might be mor lethal than having hit points.

 

Not really.

In both systems, I am assuming you failed a parry and your opponent succeeded in his/her attack roll.

In a normal hit points system (let's say a non-hit location one for simplicity), here's how to die:

1. They roll damage, you subtract armour. If the total is more than your hit points, you are dead.

In the hitpointless system in order to die 'on the spot':

1. You must fail a Resilience check (which factors in the damage of the attacker's weapon and your armour) -- that takes you out of the fight
2. After the fight you must roll a Fumble on a CON x5 roll. If so you are beyond help. Otherwise you are alive, for now.

If you want to go the other way from hit locations and beyond even general hits, I tried a hitpointless system based on Ray Turney's Fire and Sword for my Swords of Cydoria campaign, which is a science fantasy campaign. I wanted a system where carrying swords and blasters was practical. It does cut down on management of NPCs in combat because you only care about one thing: can they still fight? (Morale is a different matter). You don't track hit points at all, and it's only players who you care if they are alive at the end of the fight. It worked pretty well for that system. It works quite well for guns because shock from a ballistic impact can knock someone out of a fight even if it doesn't kill them.

Ray's design notes for Fire and Sword are gold, by the way. They are in the download section.

Well, modern weapons are deadly and a successful ambush on unarmoured/shielded targets is probably going to be deadly. However in a sci-fi campaign the ways to detect ambushes would also be advanced. Sensors, cameras, drones, we already have them now. Augmented reality can give you social and psychological readouts about everyone you encounter. You could tell if someone had elevated stress levels, for example. It could be multi spectrum, face-recognising, energy-detecting, linked to all manner of databases, able to spot people beyond the visible spectrum. These technologies might be smaller, more reliable, more ubiquitous, maybe even biologically implanted, depending on your campaign. How much control do governments exercise over their populations? How much monitoring? In space, it's likely to be a lot, which means more sensors everywhere. PCs with combat experience are likely to be extra alert/paranoid too; scanning all situations instinctively for danger (might not be good for their sanity or PTSD, but keeps them alive). There would also be technologies to evade or misdirect these sensors, and sensors for those technologies too. The prevalence of detection technologies would probably make ambushes most successful when there has been a human failing, ie. betrayal, a set-up.

So if you are going to ambush players:

1. Assume a successful ambush will kill at least one PC
2. But give the players plenty of chances to detect first, using background technology, clues, psychology and personal attributes
3. Or failing all that, Hero/Fate points to avoid instant death

On 11/24/2019 at 12:10 PM, g33k said:

Huh.

To me, the androgynous look seems spot-on.  I remember all the covers showing a rather badass & masculine Elric never matched the vibe I got of him from the books.

 

I agree, but even our dear Tilda is getting on a bit.

On 11/24/2019 at 3:36 AM, Bill the barbarian said:

Shit, it’s obvious! Iggy Pop! Circa: early 70’s China Girl era!

 

The show is (maybe) being made in the 2020s not the 1970s. Iggy has too many wrinkles now. You could also suggest David Bowie, but he's dead already.

On 11/23/2019 at 10:47 AM, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, but that doesn't really tell us how the show will come out. I have hope but often when a book series is turned into a film or TV  show it gets changed and doesn't come close to the original. Especially with Science Fiction and Fantasy. And these days...we could have a Black gender swapped lesbian Elric, in the name of cultural diversity and inclusivity. Not that I have anything against a black lesbian, just that she wouldn't be Elric.

 

In the multiverse anything is possible and indeed probable.

If your energy shields are like the ones in Dune, they render ballistic weapons obsolete.

It's nice to have a picture of your character. But the more detailed and elaborate the picture the more likely your character will die horribly during the session you complete it.