Zit

After reflexion, "martial art" is simpy another way to say "fighting skill". As such, grapple is a martial art, and the rules state that this skill is used for example for judo - a "martial art" if any- or for any other grappling technics. And Brawl is the skill to hit with punches, kicks, head... this is all what Karate, Wushu, kick boxing or Savate are about. Therefore, in a "realistic" setting, WE DON'T NEED THE "MARTIAL ART SKILL" at all. Just use Brawl and Grapple and change the name. Over. Unless... Unless you want to play with an imaginary or fantasized conception of martial arts like in Wuxia or Bruce Lee films. Then you have to make your own rules according to what YOU expect from it, like special effects, special powers, special skills or combination. A generic rule about martial arts is therefore not feasible: martial arts belong to a genre.

You're right, the rules are indicative and cannot cover all the situations. I find the martial art skill in BRPS is very limited and unfinished and even sometimes irrelevant : the authours wanted probably to stay as general as possible for a generic system. Doubling damage is ok for skills like melee weapons or brawl (kick, punch…), but quite irrelevant for grapple, where the goal is mostly to neutralize a foe. Martial art could be used for increasing speed, fighting in the dark, dodging, ignoring some circumstances or allowing some special effects or deeds, like the Japanese blind archery. It is not always about doing more damage. You could simply state that the grapple effects (p. 61) succeed automatically, or increase their effectiveness, or allow to combine two of them. Or invent some new effects: have a look at the China-settings like The Celestial Empire or Dragon Lines.

The Trollpack from Chaosium's RQ2 and 3 of course, which contains lots af spiders and other gigantic arthropods.

or may be there: http://gelweo.free.fr/zeta/index.html for her Mecha setting

Try this, if you can read french : http://gelweo.free.fr/jdr/adj/mechabasic.pdf I haven't read it. From Gaelle, who was an active member of the www.basicrps.com community. She developped a fantasy setting for Basic and some rules for Mechas. She's also an illustrator (you can see her artwork on her web site). Zit.

Hi, For my Mesopotamian settings, I did the following for the prostitutes, the goddess Innana (love, but not the castrated love of our judeo-christian culture) and the god Shulpa’e (youth vigor): Skill erotism: how to arouse and satisfy sexual desire: body and voice language, make-up, sexual practices…and how to guess the hidden desires. Allows psychological domination (e.g. INT vs. APP to resist any request) Spell Innana’s grace: charm all present creatures, wanting to help. If APP vs. INT (or only APPx5% for non-intelligent animals) is a success, the creatures fall in love (animals of opposite sex want to mate) Spell Priapism. As in the tittle.

Hi Ebi-Il Well, I tried to tanslate into rules the understanding of the World of very ancient Mesopotamian (at least as I understood it). Everything is granted (or caused) by the gods and "magic" is not a kind of manipulation of natural forces like in classical fantasy magic. All surnatural deed are obtained through proper rituals and sacrifices, taking the piety into account. No "battle magic", no "divine magic" with POW sacrifices: sacrifices are very real, like food, animal or money, just as the gods are very real, living in temples as statues. All the rituals are written on tabletts: mesopotamian "magic" is a science, as they understood it, requiring years of studies and of course to know how to read Sumerian. Almost all the "magicians" are actually priests and scientists, which may sound weird in the XXIst century (AD!). Divine help is gained in temples, every God helping in his domain at a level depending on the piety and the amount of sacrifices. A big part of "magic" is the exorcism, which is not seen as a magical power but instead as a science of chasing demons away from the victim, again with rituals and sacrifices: almost all the troubles and diseases are caused by demons sent by the gods, who also teached the humans how to chase them. Any exorcist may deal with any demon, like a doctor can try to cure any disease. Exorcists may call demons for their proper use, but not without danger. Sumerian magicians are like demons summoners. This recalls the older times of Sumer when all the demons and rituals hadn't been recorded on the tablets : the science of exorcism was at the begining and much more limited than later. There are also a special chapters for necromancy and divination. Note that I wrote this setting for Sumer and Akkad in the 3rd millenium, not for Babylon or later empires, even if many things stayed relatively constant in time.

Hello ! I'm very new in the community. I did this modest mesopotamian contribution to the BRP: if google translator gives weird and hardly understandable sentences, just ask me, I'll try to help with my poor English.