KingSkin

The 'common' natives are actually fierce Dayak Headhunters, skilled warriors who use the fearsome Parang blades. They plan to use the earthquakes as cover for unleashing a reign of terror against the colonial government and immigrant settlers whom they consider to be a stain upon Dayak honour...

My kids are 15 and 5 so I'm guessing one is going to love Black Hole and the other will spend his time groaning and wishing he was elsewhere. I'm glad you reminded me of Titan A.E. as well, I loved that when I watched it (although most everyone I know hated it). The only real issue I had is that, enjoyable as it is, humans are clearly the villains of the piece. At the start we're told that the aliens attacked us and destroyed Earth utterly. We then find out there's a hidden superweapon that can defeat them. At the end the superweapon is activated and genocides the entire alien race in order to build a new planet. Which means their original attack is completely understandable. They discovered we'd built a weapon whose sole purpose was to wipe them out to create a new planet (and planets aren't exactly in short supply when you can go FTL) so they decided to attack us before we could unleash it. I can't fault their logic really.

Sorry, but that's just not true. Superman was originally conceived as an exceptional man who stood up for the downtrodden and worked to expose sinister industrialist and other standard capitalist villains as well as taking on low-level villains. Odd that a couple of Jewish guys would build a Jewish hero as a protector of the oppressed huh? They were basically creating an idealised version of themselves who could tackle the problems they couldn't. It's fairly basic wish-fulfillment and had nothing to do with juggling stars or anything near that level of power. He wasn't originally godlike or anything close to it, just far beyond the average human. Sure he could pick up a train, but not a planet. It was later tinkering (as you said, he was at that level for 2 years before he got stupid) that pushed his power level to ridiculous extremes and made him a one-dimensional cardboard cutout. As for writers (like Byrne) trying to make him more human and less perfect, that's completely understandable. An omnipotent protagonist is boring because there's no conflict or dramatic tension which is precisely why writers have to reduce his power levels or it just becomes a monthly succession of Superman punching godlike beings in the face while displaying absolutely no actual character other than "be nice, punch harder". In contrast to your comment that "depowering [superman]... is something done by hacks who don't understand the genre" I'd say that a god-like Superman is written by hacks who don't understand story-telling. A protagonist who has no chance of facing true adversity and can't be beaten is boring and leaves you with no dramatic tension. To have a character without any character other than being the best, without flaws or even anything resembling character traits, leaves you nowhere to go as a writer. Also, the idea of him as a saviour figure is laughable. Jews really don't do saviours in the same way Christians do, a Jewish saviour is altogether more human and achieves things on a human level (as Superman was originally intended to), not an extension of the godhead who displays unbeatable powers and defeats every problem by hitting it in the face.

I agree with that almost entirely, and specifically the problem with ongoing series is they tend to bloat over time. Like a soap opera that picks up successive generations of families and stupidly complex relationships that are forgotten or ignored as required by what the writer wants. And yeah, the one-upmanship of Superman being the "most super" probably plays a large part of it. It's why I think avoiding using established characters in RPGs is always a good idea. They're too open to interpretation when you try and stat them which leads to arguments between players. Also, I detest playing somebody else's character. With regards to pulling the old "I've just never mentioned I have a prehensile penis before now" trick in RPGs, they actually suggest doing that in Feng Shui but that's a very knockabout game and would just be ridiculous in most games.

There's also the whole argument that 'technology implies belligerence' as posited by Peter Watts in his painfully good novel Blindsight (if you like Hard SF I can't recommend it strongly enough, probably the best I've ever read, but don't read it if you can't get on board with a certain pessimistic/reductionist view of humanity, it will depress you). Anyway, his argument is that the presence of tools and technology suggests a psychology geared around forcibly altering your environment to suit your needs and from that basis if you meet a technologically advanced species it can be assumed that they have spent a good deal of their time struggling for survival and that will tend to breed a certain conflict-response traits into their mindset. Certainly, I wouldn't want to pootle around unknown space unarmed, just in case. As to the film, I haven't watched it when I was kid, and I loved it then. I suspect I'd find it highly cheesy to watch it now but it would be quite cool to go back and look at it through the lens of all the sci-fi I've read in the intervening time. And also my son would probably love it which would be another good reason to give it another watch. I seem to remember a fairly harsh scene where Maximilian rammed his blender hand through some dude and the clipboard he was holding scattered shredded paper into the air. When I was a lad that was about as scary as if it had been blood flying and was quite effective at communicating his monstrous nature. As to the question earlier of him having blades instead of lasers I'd suggest it could either be for intimidation purposes ("Guns for show, knives for the pro") or to avoid hull breaches from over-penetration. Thanks for reminding me of this film though. I'll have to find a copy and sit down with my boy at the weekend.

That's true enough, but the downplaying his powers/investigative side of things was largely because he was ripped off from the novel Gladiator by Philip Wylie but as time rolled on he became more and more ridiculous and, simultaneously, more bland (in terms of character) and less interesting to read about. This is the major problem with any ongoing series. The need for added spectacle and more impressive stories means successive writers have to contend with decades of narrative baggage as well as trying to make their stories more incredible and earth-shattering than what has gone before. It inevitably leads to things becoming ridiculous. Another example of this is Wolverine who apparently in his past has done everything the latest writer thinks is cool. I swear if modelling balloon animals becomes a popular hobby this year it will turn out he used to do it for the CIA in the 40's. The point where I gave up with him (although his Mary-Sue traits have left me utterly uninterested in him for a long time) is when it was revealed that if he ever actually dies (as in, his healing factor can't save him yet again) then he gets to fight the angel of death for another chance at life...

Going back to the superhero thing, the problem with trying to use any rules system for established superheroes is that their power levels are wildly inconsistent, depending on the needs (and, to be honest, abilities) of any given writer. The glaring one that springs to mind is when Grant Morrison decided that to make Aquaman less of a joke his ability to control fish extended to anything descended from sea-life which obviously includes pretty much all life on earth. He used this new ability he'd apparently always had to give someone an aneurysm. Even if you accept that this was a reasonable extension of his powers you have to question 1) why he hadn't done it before and 2) why the hell someone who could control the minds of pretty much anything on the planet would choose to specialise in fish-based crime. In my opinion that makes him more of a joke, not less. And is also shit writing. With regards to Marvel's power levels the Hulk has held up an entire mountain range to hide a bunch of heroes under it (during the Secret Wars) which makes a mockery of later attempts to rationalise his strength level to something more reasonable. Although DC's characters are far more guilty of this. I think that's largely down to the fact that their stories and characters have spiralled out of control and every time they decide to reset everything with some universe-shattering event all they do is muddy the waters even more by producing new versions of all their characters, trying to make that tie in with the 4 or 5 other versions of each character and then find they're in an even worse state than they were before. Especially when they realise a lot of fans really don't like some of the new versions and so revert them to how they were before. I think it's unfortunate because I really like some DC characters, and I think they've got an interesting universe which contrasts nicely with Marvel's. It's just been screwed around with too many times but they do have some cool characters. Except Superman. He can die in a cancer-fire as far as I'm concerned, the single most piss-boring pointlessly overpowered character in comics. All he does is hit stuff, or occasionally neem it with his laser-eyes. That's his thing. And it's boring. Having all the character depth of a slice of unbuttered toast doesn't help. And he's an arsehole. Like when Doomsday 'killed him' except he just went into a healing-come thing and left everyone to grieve over him like a second-rate soap opera villain. Classy move, dickface. Sorry, rant over. With regards to Batman and his whole "I don't have any powers" Schtick, I've long been convinced that Batman's greatest superpower is convincing everyone that he doesn't have any superpowers. No matter how you cut it, his abilities go so far beyond what is possible for any normal human that he should just come clean and admit he's a metahuman with the ability to learn anything and everything to a frighteningly competent level. There's no way someone could even master all the forms of combat and gymnastics he's done, let alone leaving time to become the world's greatest detective when he's not working out. I do like him as a character though, more-so when he's played as an exceptional detective than a more generic crime-puncher. Although at some point someone's going to have to get him to explain what he did with all the bodies of the contractors that built the Batcave and that he subsequently murdered to ensure its secrecy...

For this whole debate I think you generally have to accept the old "It's a game thing" as the reason behind it. For the same reason you'll see a weapons table listing 8 different types of sword and players will sit down and work out which set of stats they like best. The list will probably cover 200 - 300 years worth of technological improvements and most of the blades would never have seen service in the same time frame because of changes to the requirements for warfare as well as tastes and fashions. The idea that a smith in a fantasy world has racks holding everything from a gladius through an arming sword to a rapier is ridiculous. It would be like walking into a car dealer today and being expected to choose between a Model T Ford, a 70's hatchback and an electric car. As others have said, it's mostly general ignorance of the specifics that mean people tend to conflate them all into a single ill-defined epoch of 'swords' and the same goes for armour. Also, everyone loves a shopping expedition and they all want their own characters to wear and wield what they want, whether it makes any sort of logical or historical significance is largely moot. realistically there would be two or three styles of sword available in a given era (and swords are not really the most popular of historical weapons, but spears are less flashy) and most game systems don't have enough detail to make it worthwhile determining the difference between several different makers of the same weapon, if there is even a meaningful difference to extract. I think what you're doing is focusing on a single aspect that personally irks you when the same problems are inherent in pretty much all areas of a fantasy game. You've just got to accept that it makes for a decent game and get on with it.

I'm thinking of running a game which will allow both mages and sorcerers so I've been re-reading the powers section. There are a couple of things I'm not sure about though. One is to do with balancing characters and the second is about Grimoires so I'm hoping you guys can give me some help. So, balance first of all. I'm planning on running my game at Heroic level for standard characters. If someone wants to be a mage they create a Heroic character but obviously have to spend some of their skill points on spells. That's fine and balances itself nicely. For sorcerers, because they buy spell levels out of a pool based on INT I was thinking of shifting their skill points down to Normal level, otherwise they'll have all the skills of a Heroic character, plus spells on top. That seems fair enough to me, but the sticky point now is whether to give them Normal or Heroic levels for their sorcery. Which is best balanced against Heroic characters/mages? I want the power levels about equal but I don't have enough experience of using the two magic styles alongside each other to judge this. I'm sort of leaning towards Heroic level sorcery but I don't want either of the two magic classes to overpower the other (nor standard characters for that matter). Secondly, I'm a bit confused by the rules for grimoires. Now, when talking about the number of spells known (i.e. in your grimoire) BGB pg 122 states: Normal: Your character begins with up to 1/2 of his or her INT (rounded up) in levels of sorcery spells known, and also marked in his or her grimoire. For example, if your character has an INT 17, he or she knows nine spell levels. Heroic: Your character begins with his or her INT in levels of known sorcery spells, also marked in his or her grimoire. For example, if your character has an INT 17, he or she knows 17 spell levels. Fair enough. But when talking about the spells in memory (i.e. available to cast) it says: Your character’s Intelligence (INT) characteristic is equal to the maximum number of spells he or she has immediate access to. Sorcery spells are cast from the spells your character has in his or her memory. If you want your character to cast some sorcery spell not in memory, he or she must first dismiss some other sorcery to make room. (BGB, pg 123) If I'm reading this correctly it seems that the grimoire is largely useless to a starting character at Normal/Heroic level, simply because the number of spell levels known in total is the same as the number they can hold in memory (for Normal level they've still got half their total capacity free). Now, I understand that higher level characters will have more spells known, at which point the grimoire is essential, and that as soon as a Heroic character starts finding more spells they'll need to use their grimoire, but for a Normal character they won't need one for possibly some time. The reason I'm worried that this is an issue is that I assumed part of the balancing of sorcery against standard magic is that the grimoire effectively acts as a limitation on how flexible the sorcerer is, compared to a mage. Maybe I'm miss-reading something though. Anyway, all thoughts and suggestions appreciated. Cheers.

I've never really had any trouble finding what I need, but it helps that I've played Call of Cthulhu and Runequest variants for years so I know a lot of the rules without needing to reference them. If I was new to it I could see it being a problem as lots of the different rules are spread over various chapters. One thing I do love is the Spot Rules chapter. It's so useful to have one place to go to for all the 'non-standard' stuff, especially during combat. I've got the PDF version but I've only ever used it when I'm writing up a game and can't be bothered to balance book, laptop, coffee and ashtray on and around me.

I'm not sure if anyone else is getting this but I've noticed today that when I come to www.basicroleplaying.com (i.e. just that address) I find myself on the forum index rather than the homepage. I'm not sure if this is intentional or something that others are having just a problem I'm getting but it's happened both at work and home today on 3 different machines in total.

I see, it all becomes clear. Actually it doesn't really. But I did ask. Oh, and I thought Trifletraxor was some sort of Scandihoovian vehicle for pulling large puddings.

OK, I'll bite. What's the joke? And what's with the beetles? Is that something to do with the numbers some people have in their sigs?

I'm a little late to the party but I'm currently running a post-apocalyptic sci-fi game. I've put the character sheet and a new initiative system in the downloads section. I've also got the weapons written up. The document isn't finished yet so I haven't posted it but if you want, Loki, I can PM you a copy of what I've got at the moment. I wasn't keen on the idea of energy weapons for my near future semi-hard SF setting so I went for a mixture of traditional chemical slug throwers (albeit using caseless ammo, etc) and coil guns which use magnetic coils to accelerate the projectiles. The weapons are fairly detailed with 8 to 10 or so of each class, from a range of manufacturers with their own design ethos, naming conventions, etc. Oh, and there are catalogue-style writeups for all the weapons to help expand the background and give them more flavour. I've also changed a few of the existing weapon categories around so shotguns have been replaced by flechette weapons known as flak guns (with corresponding pistol versions) and SMGs are now known as chain pistols and are very popular close-quarters weapons. I haven't written up any heavy weapons but the main guns and melee stuff (which is intentionally basic) are all done, as is the armour. I'm not sure how much help any of it will be to you as you may well be aiming for something completely different but you could mine it for ideas. If you want a copy let me know and I'll send it over.

They are both optional systems, but then so is the idea of non-lethal damage by the looks of it so if people are adding one system in they may as well combine the two. That being said, adding a K-type damage to weapons would be fairly easy to do as well. @Gollum: I see what you're saying about the difference between Fatigue Points and Hit Points but the easiest way to deal with that is to make them equal. Either double the HP (which is what I tend to do anyway, for slightly more robust protagonists) or half Fatigue Points. I don't think fiddling with the Fatigue Points value is going to make much of a difference to the rest of the game, I'm not sure too many people use them as is anyway so I doubt it would raise many problems.

I was having similar thoughts earlier, how best to fit it in. The quick and dirty way (as I said in the other thread) is to let use the Fatigue system to track non-lethal damage. That way you can put somebody out of action without killing them. To represent the lethality you can just rule that any damage taken that exceeds your Fatigue points becomes standard HP damage. If you use the Hit Location system then it becomes fairly easy to knock someone out with a decent head hit (or temporarily incapacitate a limb) and also edges over quite quickly into lethal damage. Smashing the back of someone's skull for 16 or so points of 'non-lethal' damage is easily enough to kill, no matter what your intent. I'd rule that Special successes do max damage and Criticals do max damage and ignore armour. Otherwise you have to rewrite the critical hit categories for the different weapons, while Knockback makes sense, Impaling someone on the flat of your blade would be a complete cock-up if you want to take them alive. For Fumbles I'd suggest a weapon built for subduing (like the blackjack or a fist) would suffer a normal Fumble result but if someone's improvising with a sword then it would be fitting (plus amusing) for them to accidentally get a bit 'stabby'. The advantage of that is that it avoids having to rewrite all the weapon stats. I'd probably impose a -20% penalty to non-lethal attacks made with lethal weapons. Hitting someone with the flat of a blade to knock them out is harder than just belting them with it. The only real problem I've got with it is that it doesn't appeal to the tinkerer in me enough. Part of me really wants to start pulling the weapon tables apart and working out how to do it properly. @Rust: I agree with what you're saying but I think that's better represented by fiddling with the Medicine rules for settings. Give failed checks an increasing chance of causing the wound to get infected or otherwise worsened by the bumbling barber-surgeon rather than changing the damage values for weapons, after all, what you're talking about is a setting-specific difference in medical technology rather than the damage output of weapons or the fragility of the human body.

I like that idea, as it also allows for stunning a location which is entirely apt.

That's why I like non-lethal damage rules. Reallistically, if I get in two or three good kicks on someone, that's going to end the fight. It probably won't kill them or even do any serious damage but it'll be enough to persuade most people to stop fighting.

@Gollum: Yeah, that would make sense. I've just read the entry for Blackjacks on the weapons table and I'm sure they meant to put something like that in, otherwise it just looks like a very powerful (if short) weapon. Another option could be to have it deal damage to Fatigue Points (if you're using that system) instead of HP. @Rust: I agree, the difference in pressure required to kill someone rather than knock them out isn't as large as you may think. Even if you don't kill someone you can easily do some serious nerve damage or just crack their skull. But, a blackjack isn't a very good weapon, not in the way that RPG fights work at least. If you're going toe-to-toe it's really not something you'd want to be stuck with. In the real world I'd rather not get hit by one ata ll, even if I did have a knife. They bloody hurt and taking a solid hit to the form is enough to kill all the feeling and make it useless. But that's not really how RPG fights work, they're more cinematic so a blackjack shouldn't be a really good weapon for that paradigm.

I think the key point is that a blackjack deals non-lethal damage. It's a knockout weapon, not a killer, also it's very short (think of a short truncheon, maybe 5 or 6 inches long) and best used against unsuspecting or defenceless targets. The classic method is to cosh (another name for the blackjack, and also the verb for its use in England) someone across the back of head/neck to either knock them out or at least stop them fighting. Getting hit there with anything is bloody painful. These days you get things like rubber truncheons that do the same thing but the classic design has been simply what could be described as a leather condom filled with lead shot. A sock full of sand has roughly the same effect. A proper blackjack can be used to inflict serious amounts of pain as well, without causing much damage, smack someone's knees or kidneys with it and they won't be happy. So no, it's not a really hardcore weapon. It does non-lethal damage, has bugger all reach and no defensive capabilities. In a fight, you'd want a knife instead, but if your target is tying his shoelaces then a blackjack is the way to go.

I've built something similar into my own homebrew system which uses D100 as the base dice roll but isn't BRP-based. The way I work it is that your base damage is equal to the 10's digit of a successful attack roll (which limits low-skill characters to low-damage outputs and ties your overall skill level into how good you are at hurting people). Then, each weapon has a damage multipier so a fist is x1, a knife x5 and an assault rifle x10, for example. It actually cuts the damage roll out of combat (and I use the units dice to determine hit location so to-hit, location and damage are all covered by a single roll) so speeds things up quite nicely. I keep thinking about porting it over to BRP properly but I'm too busy fine-tuning my overall system to bother at the moment. Anyway, hope that helps.

I much prefer Hit Locations in general but for my current game I've dropped them because I didn't like the globabl HP + location HP system, just too much fuss for me. Someone on here did mention using global Hit Points but then using location HP as a guage of whether a major wound had been scored which I like quite a lot. I may have to add that into my game once we're a bit deeper in. The way I'm running it at the moment is that we're not using hit locations but the players are tracking individual wounds and any healing must be applied to a wound rather than just the HP total. It helps that I'm running a reasonably hard SF game, if I was running some sort of fantasy game with healing potions and spells then I'd have to try something else. I quite like the way it's working at the moment though, each first aid type item has a number of HP it can heal, plus an indicator on whether or not it can be used on major wounds. For instance, SpraySkin stops a wound from bleeding and heals up to 3HP to a single wound but can't heal major wounds. It's reasonable to use it to patch someone up if they've had their arm gashed open but if the same arm's been torn off at the elbow it's not going to help. Basically it's an attempt to get away from the idea of an abstract HP pool while still using one for the sake of convenience. I do miss not using proper hit locations though.

I think the problem is that art costs a shitload more than words do and for a small publisher putting out a big book the art expenses can easily spiral out of control. When you consider the amount of full page pieces you typically get, plus all the smaller incidental pieces. At least, that used to be the case but with the rise of sites like Deviant Art I'd be surprised if the cost hasn't dropped somewhat. Certainly, I see more evidence of godawful writing in books than dire art these days so it's probably still the case that more money goes on art than writing. But even if you're spending a fortune on art, there's also the question of getting thematically appropriate art. For instance, I prefer the black and white art in the original WFRP books to the stuff in 2nd Edition. While the 2nd Ed stuff was really nice, it didn't evoke the same feel as when I look at that of the original. So it's not as easy as just finding someone who can deliver it on time and under budget. If you really want the work to look complete then the art should help reinforce whatever tone the game setting is supposed to have.

I remember playing Dragon Mountain under 2nd Ed D&D first time round. It's a cool adventure and absolutely enormous but it is very high level. There's the initial defence of a village against a few hundred kobolds then the mountain itself which is filled with hundreds of nasty traps and about a fucking million kobolds. And they all have poisoned arrows that require a hideously difficult Con save to avoid instant death. Our 12/12 mage/priest died 5 times going through it (out of 14 times total before the end of the campaign. He always favoured a slightly 'bold' approach to the game). Lots of fun though, but may need a lot of tinkering to make it work for BRP. Or you could just play it as a heroic level game to avoid a near-continual PC turnover rate. I'd be interested to hear how it goes, I've got some really good memories of playing through it.

Never heard of Afrofuturism but I read the wikipedia entry and there's some really cool shit in there. Parliament, Bootsy Collins, George Clinton and Herbie Hancock all rock (Herbie's Headhunters album is awesome). Also, Samuel Delaney's books are cracking. Dhalgren, while not strictly SF, is one of my all-time favourite books and is so well-written I just marvel at his ability to combine words. Another cool SF hip-hop track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quqlpDpqtiU. Haven't listened to EON for ages. There was a time back in the 90's when there were some sweet rave/sci-fi fusions. Like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKduhUXa0rg. Not his mosty overtly sci-fi influenced piece but I listened to it obsessivelyback in the 90's because of the Running Man/Monty Python samples. I've a feeling this is veering wildly off-topic now though. Just time for me to say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsV500W4BHU. (Oh, and the lead singer is Rob Zombie's little brother).