KingSkin

I'm not saying you're all emotionally unstable, narcissistic misogynists... ...but science is.

Reality Checks (for when a game gets too weird) and the two most essential spells for any player: Protection From GM Rulings and Kill All Enemies.

There's only one guy in my group who's particularly bad but he's new to roleplaying anyway. He's played about 20 sessions of a medieval militia game using the Karma rules and that's it so we tend to cut him some slack.

Wow! I go on a team away day and miss all the fun. Lee Van Cleef would have been cool though. I didn't think it was getting particularly heated though, but I'm glad it's relaxed a bit. Anyway, I've been reading the deadEarth system and anything that isn't 'punch the GM in the face when you want to act' is better than that.

I prefer that way of doing it too but the Karma rules don't have anything really based around timing. The rules in Karma basically state that by taking various penalties you can either ignore all damage for a round by casting defensively. There are 2 or 3 versions of it but we worked out that one of them allows you to avoid all damage and if you couple it with a weak spell then the penalties aren't very high at all. Almost yeah. I think the SR system is better than the basic system in BRP but I prefer to count down and just found it a bit counter-intuitive in a few places so I'm going to port over a system I've already written and used. Also my system is a bit more detailed than the SR system. But yeah, if I was going to run it straight out of the book I'd go for SRs. It's similar but not the same. Anyway, I'm just tinkering at the moment. I've also got to write up some equipment rules and some bits of background too but we're not going to be starter for a few weeks yet. And I've agreed to run a one-nighter of deadEarth fueled by as much alcohol as we can consume to help get us through the insanity of that game. So I've got to get that out of the way first.

Maybe it is, but I don't mind the abstraction for the ease of play. Or just abolish special successes so it's only 5% of hits. That's still probably a bit too high so you could just drop crits to a straigh 1% regardless of skill. I don't mind it as is though. But several broken ribs and internal haemorrhaging is easily enough to kill someone. It may not be immediate but when I run games I don't assume 0 HP means you're in a come or outright dead, just that you're incapable of taking any action. Whether that's due to shock (which can kill all by itself), pain or physical damage is for the GM to describe to the players. If you read the earlier description from the guy getting hit, imagine if he'd been by a 3-round burst. And remember that because the armour can't absord all the energy the 2nd and 3rd hits will effectively be a lot harder than the first one.

Yeah but those modifiers are usually things like -10, -20 etc which is easy to figure out on the fly. Certainly easier than dividing 73 by 5. Or for Difficult and Easy rolls it's just halfing and doubling your numbers which is piss easy.

Two other factors that haven't been mentioned but play a big part in the amount of strength someone can bring to bear: 1) Knowing how to use your strength. I used to work as a labourer on building sites and you learn pretty quickly that you can carry a lot more if you know what you're doing. 2) Pain threshold. What usually stops someone bringing more strength to bear is the fact that it hurts when you stress your muscles. That's why you get stories of guys on PCP lifting much more than they should be able to. They tear their muscles apart but can't feel it. Likewise, if you've got a higher pain threshold you can lift more than would be expected for your frame.

In which case the bullet has also avoided the body armour, just like the knife did in your example. As far as I can see the damage ranges for each weapon coupled with specials and crits are more than enough to take into account how well a given round hits you and how much of an effect it has. The both mental stress and physical trauma are accounted for by the hitpoints. Maybe it was a .22 and you rolled a special. Looking at real world statistics it's easy to say, no way could that do 12 points of damage, that's enough to kill a health man. But when it happens in the field maybe it just hurts like **** and there's claret everywhere and you've decided you really don't like getting shot so if it happens again you're going to sit this one out. That's how I'd explain any problems on that side of it. Not that I can point you too. It was a few years ago I read it. Perhaps I chose my words a little hastily as well. I don't mean they'd literally tear the jacket apart but it won't be able to absorb enough of the kinetic energy to save you. They may not actually penetrate but that energy has to go somewhere and Kevlar plates have a limit to how much they can handle.

In those cases it would be directly opposed, the spell is cast or the attack hits, the two rolls are directly opposed and the various magic types are skills same as weapons. The mage does have some other options like taking penalties to their roll to avoid damage. I actually have a bit of a problem with those rules because a decent caster trying a low-level spell can basically automatically succeed and thus avoid all damage for a round. I've pointed out to the GM that this is a very effective shield and actually means the mage can last longer in a fight than me even though my meat-shield have got about twice his HP (and the HP levels are similar to BRP as is the weapon damage).

Yeah, I think crits and specials are the best way of dealing with the upper lethality range of hits, that's exactly what they're there for. Something I was reminded of when you mentioned multiple simultaneous hits it that most types of modern body armour can't do a damn thing about them. The kinetic force is just too much for them to spread over the armour all at once so they'll tear straight through. I think the best way to model that would be to use the idea of Threat levels from Rich's Modern Firearms Guide (which I've now read and really like) and assume that multiple strikes automatically reduce the armour's value to 'below the Threat' so they're much less effective. In fact, if you check the warranty on a bullet-proof vest some of them only cover manufacturing defects and not damage and even those that do specifically mention getting shot point out that the warranty is voided after taking a single hit. That's also something that could be worth taking into account if you want to get hyper-detailed although it would probably jar with most people as we're used to armour reducing damage directly which isn't how it really works.

That's exactly it. It's a beautiful system because it's simple, clean and it works. The options are there because you're supposed to play about with it to fit it to your own playstyle and the preferences of your group. In addition to the options they give you, it's such an easy system to understand that writing your own mods to the rules is a piece of piss and means you can totally tailor it to do exactly what you want. That's a strength and is exactly what the author's intended. @Rosen: I'm not sure what your problem with people tinkering is? I don't doubt there are optional rules you don't use (unless you've decided to run BRP/Rifts and you've just turned everything on) but you won't hear me giving you shit over the bits you don't like but I do. That may seem a bit more confrontational than I intend it to be but there's a fair amount of hostility floating around here which seems to be coming out the fact that people are using the system to do what was intended. I just don't get that.

Yeah, but Jabba's low DEX is more of a result of the fact he's a slug than his SIZ itself. Using the same theme, the Rancor is huge but probably has a fairly decent DEX. This is always the problem when DEX has to cover both gross body movement and fine motor skills. The Rancor is fast and fully capable of throwing attacks at whatever is in front of it and looks like food. I wouldn't trust him to unwrap a gift though. Jabba is almost exactly the reverse. When you only have a single score to try an cover both types of movement you have to kind of kludge them together. I thinks it works for BRP though, the rules for skill bonuses factor in your SIZ for physical skills which helps to balance it out.

I'm not talking about calculating it during the game. I'm talking about adding boxes next to each skill for Crits, Specials and Fumbles and then filling the boxes in before you play. It means a bit more admin at the front end but saves time during the game. Personally I wouldn't put the table on a character sheet because it'll take up too much space.

I'll have to have a look into that. Thanks for the tip. I was probably going to base AP either directly on DEX (on a point for point basis) or make it derived stat of DEX + something else. I'm just not sure what to use. SIZ would be good but POW seems to feel like it should be used in some way. I'm not sure why I feel that, maybe it's just a game balance issue ticking over in my back-brain, subtly trying to avoid loading all the bennies onto people that have gone for high DEX characters.

I'm pretty sure women and children were wanted in textile factories because they could work cheap and men were better used doing physical labour. Certainly once the machine looms came in they specifically wanted children because they could crawl under the machines while they were still running to collect the chaff (and often lose hands and arms in the process). I don't think it had anything to do with their DEX scores and I honestly don't think there's much correlation between small SIZ and high DEX, other than received wisdom that big guys are slow and small guys are fast that years of absorbing various media has given us.

Narl, why not modifiy their character sheets to include that info already? Unless you're using it to subtly get them using maths it makes more sense to go for that sort of shortcut rather than the chart.

See, for me the declaration phase doesn't add enough benefit for the time it takes. If I was going to use the declaration system I'd do it completely differently and lose initiative altogether. I'm playing in a game using the Karma system and in that everyone declares their action and then all rolls are made at once. The GM then takes all the rolls in, applies them to what they were attempting and figures the results. This means parries become part of your attack (two characters declaring attacks against each other are making opposed rolls) and you don't have to worry about everyone's relative speeds (which are already figured into your attack scores). Personally I favour the AP system though. That way you start off at the highest AP and count down. When your current AP number comes up you state your action, spend the appropriate AP (it's helpful to have tracker sheets for this) and make your roll. If you want to have the delay between declaring and acting then you rule that the role doesn't take effect until your new AP score (at which point you will also declare your next action). This means that you don't get to stab your opponent 4 times before he can act (something I also hate) unless you're really fast and going for 'snap shots' against a much slower opponent. Which makes sense. If I'm Lightning Hopkins, pumped on combat drugs and fighting a sleep deprived Octogenarian then I can probably ram my knife into him 3 or 4 times before he can react. Which is fairly realistic, all the stabbings I've seen have been over obscenely quickly. Even accounting for getting in close and then moving away again 6 seconds is a long time to be stabbing someone. It does mean the extra legwork of assigning attack speeds to all the weapons but I think it's worth it. It's a nice balance between SR and standard actions. Also, you can play about with the action costs for whatever game you're running. A harsh military simulator is going to make you spend AP to change from prone to kneeling whereas a pulp action game is going to make it a free part of movement. Anyway, once I've worked my system up I'll post it here so you can have a look.

According to the hardcover they're calculated using 'normal rounding' so it'll either be rounded up or down depending on the size of the fraction. It's not a straight 'always round up or down' situation although that would possibly make it easier to do on the fly. I wanted to avoid players having to do all of that during the game though as my group are of somewhat mixed mathematical ability and some people just struggle with it. To get around it I just added in sections on my character sheet for players to enter their special, crit and fumble scores so they've always got the info there in front of them.

Personally I'm not a fan of the BRP initiative system, it's the one area where I really think the rules don't work particularly well. I'm not a big fan of the SR system. At the very least I'm doing away with the declaration phase because I bloody hate extra steps like that in combat that slow things down with out adding an appreciable benefit. Combat is generally long-winded enough anyway, for something that's supposed to be lightning fast. It reminds of the hideous damage staging rules in Shadowrun. I'm thinking I may adapt my old Action Point system to BRP, it could fit in easily enough and I've always preferred to give people more options for tactical play. That way they're more likely to think about what they're actually doing. The current initiative system almost uses AP anyway but every action is assigned a cost of 5. I'm just going to rewrite the costs to give some extra granularity and reflect the fact that it takes a lot longer to tiger crawl under a fence and snipe at someone than it does to vault a table and slot them with a rusty butter knife. Once I get it to a state that I'm happy with I'll post it up here and let you guys pick apart and destruction test it.

In my game females get -2 to STR but gain the gender-specific ability to bear children. Seriously though, I tend to favour the view that Stats are abstracted broadly enough from reality already that they don't need the granularity of varying between the sexes. I think your system seems pretty reasonable though, if that's what you want to do.

@ Rdeluc: That sounds like a good way to go. I downloaded the rules but haven't had a chance to read them yet. I don't mind complex systems but don't like it when they get in the way to little appreciable effect. Unfortunately I think the Sword system fails that test. In my own (non-BRP) system I use D100 skill rolls and the 10's dice gives the quality of the attack. All weapons have damage multipliers that are applied to the Quality to determine damage. That way you can include both how good the shooter is (better shooters can hit with higher quality attacks) and also how powerful the weapon is. It also uses an Action Point system like the X-Com games which I like because it makes tactical choices a lot more important. Anyway, point is that I tried to keep it relatively simple because you can get too caught up in the details of combat (especially guns) and it rarely adds that much to it. While I do like a healthy dose of abstracted realism I also love Feng Shui's approach because it suits the source material. I think your system sounds like it strikes the right balance though and I bet if you get a bit clever-clever you could use the Risk to model a lot of different variables. I'm wondering now if I can tie it into my Fear system... @Nightshade: I know what you mean, everyone you speak to has a different answer and a lot of the evidence contradicts itself. Problem is that there are so many variables and it's so generally such a traumatic event for the body that it's hard to correlate cause and effect. For instance: My mate Kenny the Commando once told me what happens when you fire a heavy machinegun into someone and from what he said the phrase 'total limb disablement' would seem to fit. I remember reading somewhere that with an HMG it's the air cones that come with the rounds that do the real damage. And I've heard so many different things about hydrostatic shock that I tend to ignore more things concerning that these days.

That sound like exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. I like it when individual firefights can risk killing people, it encourages tactical play and more realistic reactions to danger. But I also hate the amount of downtime that can be taken if a character gets badly injured. I know it's more sensible and I don't like the D&D healing potion style for the games I want to run. But realistic healing rates can make it a bitch if the players are up against a time limit but 3 of them can't get out of bed for a couple of months. I had a look at Edge of The Sword yesterday. His 'Sword' system is one of the most convoluted things I've ever seen. To work out damage you have to do something like six stages of multiplication - taking into account things like muzzle velocity, round type (hollow points, lead slugs, glaser rounds, etc), diameter of round, thickness of limb hit. And loads more - Then you apply that number (about an hour after you started I reckon) to the targets body. There are something like 28 separate hit locations if you include both hands, etc. And it looks like anything more powerful than a rubber band hitting you in the head will kill you outright no matter how many hit points you have.

That sounds pretty cool. I think this has just become my next gaming purchase. I'll have to talk to my group about playing though the campaign once we've had a chance to play through my survival horror game. Peter: I'm glad to hear it's going to continue, even if it doesn't switch to BRP (although that would be perfect). It's just looks likes far too good a setting to wither on the vine because od Mongoose's licensing decisions. For m it looks like proper fantasy, as in a semi-historical setting with fantastic elements thrown in. Unfortunately most games treat fantasy as Tolkien fanfic and think their own take on Orcs and Elves counts as original fantasy. Sory, rant over. I just love fantasy when it's well done (like C&C looks to be) and hate it when it seems like a mod for Middle Earth.

I may shoot them an e-mail just to let them know. Although I'm becoming quite attached to it now. I've just had a thought. Maybe it's like the Wicked Bible. It's probably got a conduit to hell in there or something, I just need to read the pages in the right (wrong?) order...