NickMiddleton

When I was bloody minded teenager, the combination of angst and excessively obscure words hit the spot for me and I absolutely adored the Covenant books. But I haven't re-read them in many years.

But I can forgive Donaldson an awful lot for teh short pieces: "Unworthy of the Angel" and "Reave the Just", both of which I think are brilliant.

In contrast, thanks to a recent thread at RPGNet (following one here) I started trying to re-read The Verdant Passage, first volume of Troy Denning's Prism Pentad novels in the Dark Sun setting - and god, I'd forgotten just how flat and turgid the prose was...

Cheers,

Nick

Hmm, so currently (as of 457 votes), we have:

• Fantasy 99 / 21 %
  
• Historical 55 / 12 %
  
• Horror 64 / 14 %
  
• Post Apocalypse 80 / 17 %
  
• Pulp 51 / 11 %
  
• Science Fiction 103 / 22 %
  

457 total votes

SF has pulled back out in front (by a narrow margin), and SF / Fantasy continue to head the field by some margin. Although Post Apocalypse has surged back ahead of Horror again...

Interesting. I must confess I assumed that Fantasy would lead the field easily, with SF/PA second spot and Pulp / Horror and Historical brining up the rear...

Cheers,

Nick

Chaosium updated the BRP Character sheet on the 24th of May, so they may have sorted out the problem Chaot was having...

Cheers,

Nick

Fortunately, my last job was in an office with an A0 printer/scanner...

One of the (very few) benefits of my job is having access to a suite of A0 colour and black and white scanners and plotters... I'm still working on justifying the company buying a wide format laminator though, although we do often have A0 width self-adhesive clear film (sticky-backed plastic to UK gamers of a certain age...), which is how I made several hand crafted dry wipe battle mats with square and hex grids.

Cheers,

Nick

I'm a great fan of the "Urban" supernatural type of Genre (if it is a genre on its own)

Things like Eden Studios Armageddon or the NWoD.. that sort of thing.

Has any one tried running something like that with BRP? How feasable do you think it would be

(I dont have Zero Edition yet... eagerly awaiting the Full version )

Yes very easy - tone done the Cthulhu Mythos stuff by tweaking the SAN mechanics, and Call of Cthulhu could do it now, but the new BRP will give you more options (including a psychic powers system that would work very well).

The biggest challenge with "urban supernatural" / "modern fantasy" is getting the atmosphere right - I think the new BRP's powers system would need tweaking out of the box to help with that, but the core system is a boon because it's so straightforward and fades in to the back ground so elegantly. If you can get hold of Chaosium's Nephilim, and especially the Liber Ka supplement about western magic that would be a very useful resource and compatible with BRP in the broad sense.

Cheers,

Nick

Funnily enough earlier this year I took a run back through Mythago Wood, Lavondyss, the Bone Forest and the Hollowing - and I must get round to reading Gates of Ivory as well. I love the Mythago books - I'm still not entirely sure that Lavondyss is as successful as it could be, and the Hollowing, for all it's by far the most approachable volume is also perhaps the least profound; but a wonderful series of books, well worth reading.

Cheers,

Nick

Hmmm, I'm using a Powermac G5 running Panther. It's coming up blank in Preview.

It's in PDF 1.7 format (Acrobat 8.0+), which Panther may well not be able to render. I'll email to Dustin tonight about a conversion back to PDF 1.4 (Acrobat 5.x+) which most peopel should be able to use.

Cheers,

Nick

I'll email the copy to work and have it look at it in the standrd version of acrobat I have there, see if I can spot anything odd about it... For reference - I'm using Tiger on an Intel Core 2 Duo.

Cheers,

Nick

Right now it appears to be two links to the same BRP 0. One for $39.95 and one for $25.95. Did I catch them during an update and they're changing BRP 0's price to clear out inventory? Did they forget to take the second link down?

I think the $25.95 page is for the PDF download, but they haven't amended the text as yet to say so.

Also, when downloading the BRP Character sheet from the free downloads section, I get a pdf with two blank pages. I doubt it's my set up, since I've downloaded this file before.

Rendered fine in Preview on my iMac when I downloaded it just now...

Cheers,

Nick

I'd like to start up a far future BRP campaign. I need to find some source material for weapons, equipment and skills. Is there a resource for this on the web somewhere?

Jason's mentioned the new BRP itself and Cthulhu Rising, so I'll name check a few other possible resources:

The files section of this yahoo group: brpsystem contains several files you might find useful - the RQIII Technical Expansion (fan conversion to RQIII of GDW's T2K, 2300AD & MegaTraveller weapons and tech), Striker Weapons for BRP, and a few others.

If you can track it down, one of the volumes of the Worlds of Wonder set is Future*World, an SF BRP game. Also worth looking for, but potentially pricey are FGU's Other Suns, Chaosium's RingWorld (painfully expensive unfortunately) or Other Worlds Games Worlds Beyond.

Cheers,

Nick

Nephilim makes extensive use of the resistance table, and I'm sure I remember someone in the playtest (possibly even Jason) talking about a variant they'd looked at where everything was resolved via the resistance table...

I actually find that one of BRP's trengths is that it has multiple resolution systems - it provides me as GM with flexibility and the different mechanism emphasise raw capability (Stat rolls), the oppoistion of raw qualities (resistance table rolls) or training and experience (skills).

Cheers,

Nick

Is Call of Cthulhu a licensed setting? I had the impression H.P. Lovecraft was in the public domain.

From wikipedia: ((SNIPPAGE))

If it's from wiki its probably wrong... Or at least, if it's from wiki and involves any significant amount of opinion, it's probably wrong. The HPL copyright situation is complex and I'd be wary of assuming stuff was public domain...

But even if Chaosium were to follow Marcus L Rowland's example and do a setting based entirely on intellectual property entirely in the public domain, would that be a good thing? From a commercial point of view IP is a valuable asset, and is worth defending. If it's not PD it costs to use someone else's IP (both in raw fees and time to publication for approvals etc) and if it IS PD, there is no easy way to defend your particular IP.

I remain firmly convinced that unless an RPG company is set up to deal with licensed IP (as Mongoose clearly are, and Green Ronin) it's really not worth tangling with, and given how many RPG publisher's have had grief from licensed IP (FASA, ICE, AEG, SJG, Mongoose, Chaosium off the top of my head) I'm sceptical that, especially for Chaosium these days, they are worth it. YMMV.

Cheers,

Nick

Do you mean the 'anti-parry' rules that RL got, or were there other abilities detailed somewhere else? If so, where were those rules detailed?

Err, yes! (Couldn't actually remember for certain earlier!) Hold on, I have a copy here..

RQII page 55 - Combat benefits lists 4 advantages / "powers" of Combt Skills of 100%+:

• You can reduce you opponents Defence score by the amount your skill exceeds 100
  
• An opponents parry is penalised by the same amount
  
• your special and critical chances are increased (note - for a skill of 120 this means that your opponents are penalised -20 from Defence AND Parry against you, AND you get specials on 24 or less and crits on 6 or less..
  
• Splitting Attacks or parries down in to blocks of 50 or more.
  

Non-Fighting skills help you using the RQII opposed skill mechanic - so Hide 120 penalises Spot Hidden attempts against you by 20 points...

I don't know the best way to implement tricks yet, but I'll probably use Characteristic vs. Characteristic. Otherwise there would be too many skills, thus defeating the point.

Why not use existing skills? The appropriate weapon skill or Dodge for feints, Fast Talk or Perform for verbal bluffs / intimidation (with perhaps bonus for high stats or flashy skills, depending on the specific tactics), Throw for tossing sand (or a bowl of gruel or a handful of food scraps) in someone's face (and that's surely simply a thrown attack not intended to cause direct damage?). Reading the deception would be a matter of Insight, or Spot, whilst avoiding the stuff in the face is a Dodge.

As I suggested earlier, I'm really not sure BRP needs anything adding to do all these things - it just needs spelling out for players and game masters to see how to use the existing rules and skills to achieve the same effect.

Cheers,

Nick

... or maybe even Space Opera (now that *was* a psionics system!).

Ah me! Lens and force swords and powering a ship in to TISA or FTL all by ones lonesome... Happy memories....

Oops! Sorry!

:focus:

I have somewhere some half finished notes on re-jigging RQIII Spirit magic / Shamanism as a psionic powers system (for a DArk Sun conversions). I'll see if I can find them tonight.

Cheers,

Nick

I'd rather see a fantasy world that got a reasonable distance away from D&D, one with its own character. Glorantha was a little too strange and convoluted, but maybe something with its own distinct flavor

The mass market is in broad high fantasy still though, and BRP did do that. Glorantha might well have always had more depth than Greyhawk (and these days spends interminable reams of paper lovingly caressing every minutia of how different it is, *yawn*), but originally it's popularity was that it was a fun and different place to kill things and take their stuf, with a system that actually made trying to kill things feel as risky and heroic as it ought...

I think what BRP needs is a new Glorantha, as Glorantha was in 1978 - somewhere with distinctive flavour, but not opaque and unapproachable. Somewhere that someone who has just read Lord of the Rings, or Conan, or Until they are Hanged could get to grips with quickly, but which DOESN'T feel like Greyhawk / Forgotten Realms-lite...

... or maybe a neglected sub-genre, like:

[*]Sword and sorcery (admittedly already handled by Conan)

And BRP used to do well with Elric! / Stormbringer. But to be fair, S&S is at one end of a sliding scale with Forgotten Realms style High Fantasy at the other and AD&D used to adapt reasonably well between them, and BRP still does. I'd favour something more towards the S&S end of the scale, but I think being too dogmatic about it would restrict it's appeal.

[*]Non-european fantasy (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Arabian Nights, Ancient Greek, Indian, African, Central/South American)

I think these are lovely ideas for supplementary settings, and certainly blending more influence from these non-European sources can add flavour - but as exotic settings from Glorantha onwards have discovered, stray too far from the European paradigm and sales (which are to a largely European descended demographic after all...) aren't so good.

[*]Modern or historical fantasy (e.g. Mythago Wood, Neverwhere, the Lord Darcy series, nearly everything by Tim Powers)

This to me is the obvious direction to take a "revival" of Nephilim, or rather, a revival of Chaosium's interest in modern occult / fantasy gaming (as opposed to Horror)... The challenge is in building a setting that isn't blatantly obviously "Neil Gaiman" the RPG without Gaiman's permission, or Buffy / Angel -lite. I think one could do something building on what was in Nephilim, but it would require such a radical re-imagining that it would be a different game in most respects.

[*]Pre-Tolkien fantasy literature (e.g. Oz, Gormengast, the worlds of Lord Dunsany)

And I eat my own words.

Anyone heard of JAGS?

Here, I'll post the pictures here for your viewing.

...

Compare the guns. Look at the tentacle compared to the tail. I am aware that the Vetruvian Man is a popularized image... but the similarities here are so much more than a little suspicious.

I have a copy of JAGS and Wonderland somewhere in PDF and I have read them both but hadn't made the connection to it until you posted but beyond the suggestion that DaVinci's heir's might sue (albeit I'm pretty sure that his original is out of copyright anywhere in the world, what with it being a bit more than seventy years since his death) I don't see anything to be suspicious of - so two people independently came up with the idea of using Da Vinci's "Vetruvian Man" as the basis for an image promoting a multi-genre RPG - big deal. As Jason rightly alluded to, BOTH could be construed as copying Hero games Logo, which itself clearly echoes the DaVinci pic but was around before the JAGS illustration and the BRP cover.

And whilst the JAGS and BRP images are more closely derived from DaVinci's original than something like the HERO Games logo, they are clearly different executions of a similar concept, nothing more. They have different numbers of limbs / appendages, the weapons are different (the JAGS chap appears to be holding some sort of revolver), the armour is distributed differently, the BRP has a tentacle coming in...

*shrug* I really don't see an issue here...

Cheers,

Nick

BRP already has many of what 4e thinks is new: Brutal critical hits, knockback with bludgeon weapons, impales with piercing weapons. All it is missing is simple mechanics for feints, or to borrow from Savage Worlds 'Tricks'.

A 'Trick' is any maneuver in combat that is meant to lower someone's defenses. It could be anything from the classic [looking over opponent's should] and saying 'Glad you finally showed up', to throwing sand in someone's face, or an intimidating shout.

Tricks can be Agility tricks (feints), Psychological (POW, eg: intimidate), or Intellectual.

This is resolved with opposed rolls on the resistance table. Dex vs Dex, Pow vs Pow, or Int vs Int. If successful, you lower your opponent's defense by 10% until the beginning of your next turn. Optionally, crits could lower defenses even more.

I like the idea of tricks, and started roughing out some ideas for a BRP system - then I thought again:

So the lucky farm boy (POW 18) is better at Intimidation than the veteran Soldier (POW 12), the smart kid (INT 18) better than the average adult hustler (INT 12), the graceful apprentice (DEX 18) better than the normally co-ordinated Guard (DEX 12)?

I concluded after some thought that a) a lot of this stuff is covered in the new BRP in the Spot Rules and they are functions of skill (i.e. experience and training) not raw ability (i.e. stats).

If I was to implement a generalised mechanic for non-combat skills aiding in combat I'd use a variant something like this: a character with a sufficiently high skill (e.g. Fast Talk 50+) can use it in an opposed test vs. an opponents appropriate skill (e.g. for a bluff, or taunt use of fast Talk, probably Insight) and if they win either penalise the opponents defensive skill or add to their attacking skill an amount equal to their special success chance with their winning skill e.g. in the Bluff example, one fifth of their Fast Talk could be applied as either a penalty to the defenders parry or Dodge, or as a bonus to the Attackers weapon skill.

Feints force your opponent to move 1m in any direction. If this would cause them to fall off a cliff or into lava, they get to make a DEX or Luck roll to fall prone.

There are Entangle and Knock-back rules in BRP already - I think the issue is as much getting players to THINK about what their characters options are in a combat as it is a rules issue. And, funnily enough, I know of at least one Savage Worlds GM who has had problems getting players to engage with SW combat properly because they didn't know or understand the options available...

To summarise, tricks and manoeuvres offer more combat options without excessive rules. Use tricks when you cannot overwhelm your opponents defences. Use feints to control the battlefield. Optionally, Feints could be a skill.

I think much of this is, as I said, already covered in the BRP spot rules, and that the vast majority should be skill based... But I still want to sit down with a copy of SW and the BRP Spot Rule chapter as I think I think a "Guide to BRP Action Sequences" with suggestions for both players and GM's on how to implement and exploit the Spot Rules stuff might be useful.

No, BRP doesn't need feats and powers. It might be able to use a method for players to exert some narrative control through spending temporary POW, such as temporarily improving damage, skill competencies, or just damage soaking. Very minor things, IMO.

For 1 pt. Temporary POW =

+5% to Skill Check

+1 damage

Soak 1 HP

Be Heroic

Or something like that. You get the picture

This is covered in the optional "Fate point" mechanic in BRP. I've yet to try them in play, but I know Jason and others have used these sorts of things a lot and think well of them... I think it's worth looking at skills over 100% and considering how big a deal it is: in an SB style game, skills over 100 are sufficiently common that they don't nee extra rules. In a RQII/III game where skills over 100 are theoretically possible but rare and noteworthy then I think some extra benefits of exceptional skill would be good - whether something like Land of Ninja's ki skills or MRQ's Legendary Abilities done right.

RuneLords in RQII got specific unique abilities for weapon skills over 100, which might be a source of inspiration.

Cheers,

Nick

.(SNIPPAGE).

Err, care to condense that a touch? Or at least break out the key things you think MIGHT be useful / relevant to BRP?

I'm afraid I don't particularly rate Mike Mearls as a designer (most of his d20 work I've read I find overly fiddly and poorly thought through) and most of the rules ideas in 4e seem aimed at taking the game even further back down the "tactical skirmish wargame" road than 3.5 - a shame as the flavour text and such has been a marked improvement over 3.0/3.5 - but frankly, if I was to run something in a 4e style "points of light" setting, from what I've heard so far 4e is pretty low down the list of possible systems I'd choose to use...

Cheers,

Nick

It's a bit of a quick straw poll effort, and I suspect one would need to get in to some rather lengthy discussions to clearly define Modern Horror and Modern Fantasy as distinct from each other - AND explain how both aren't already to some degree addressed by Call of Cthulhu.

But I'm sure Chaosium would listen to / read a pitch on either one - and they might revise the poll in response to an email.

Be interesting to see what the results look like when it has more respondents...

Excellent... now, next question.. is there a system to permit you to extend durations, expand area of effect, and other "Meta-Magic" options?

Yes - basically you can add more levels to a spell and for spells where it makes sense, those additional levels can be applied to different aspects of the spell. So a level 6 change spell could last 15 minutes and affect one SIZ 18 individual, OR affect TWO SIZ 9 individuals (six levels of it's basic effect, split between two targets) OR one SIZ 9 target but for a duration of one hour (3 levels of basic effect last 15 minutes, and three levels of additional duration).

Also, I found the "Magic World" system very functional, but found the spells a bit too broad in scope in many cases. A slighter larger selection of spells than in the original "Magic World" set would be welcomed too. Specifically Demon summoning and Undead creation. If not already created, the system is so intuitive it should be easy to create and add.

The spell list is virtually unchanged from Magic World, but there is a Conjure Elemental spell, and as you say, it would be very easy to improvise additional spells.

I'm also hopeful that an early supplement for BRP will be some sort of "magic system anthology" based on the RQIII Magic Book but also including material from the Bronze Grimoire, Nephilim, Liber Ka, Land of Ninja and some new ones...

Cheers,

Nick

...But then I came across the flat bonus from RQ4, and that seems to solve the problem. Has anyone used that? What are the feelings about it versus the bonus die method?

I dislike the fixed damage bonus approach, as it removes any possibility of a glancing blow from exceptionally large creatures. The increasing die size damage bonus seen in MRQ (and earlier in the things like the Elric! effect die table) is a better solution, addressing both the lack of variability in the fixed system, and the bias towards average (and thus large) damage adds of the traditional d4/d6/2d6/3d6 DB progression...

But I thought long and hard about it during the BRP play test and to be honest, at the point at which things get a 2d6 DB in BRP , I don't think it's an issue. Before I'd re-jig the DB table I'd re-jig the weapons damage tables to remove the flat +'s, as I think they distort things far more. YMMV.

Nick

The "DEAD (-___)" part above the hitpoints seems to suggest dying at a certain number of negative HP, like in D&D or GURPS. Is that the case?

Not exactly.

BRP 0 defines a condition "Fatal Wound" - where the character receives an injury that does them more hit points damage than they currently have hit points"

Fatal wounds obviously lead to death, though they may be averted with the successful application of immediate medical assistance. If you fatally-wounded character receives medical attention (through First Aid, Medicine, a power, an item, or some other means of hit point restoration) in th eround he or she recieved the fatal wound or the round immediately after, and his or her hit points are brought up to 1 or more, your character has almost died, but will survive that particular injury.

So, in theory, a character could go to -157 hit points, and if some how a companion character could administer 158 points of healing in the round on which the fatal wound occurred and the immediately following round, the character would survive - which, given eth necessary power level of any campaign in which 158 points of healing over two rounds is even possible, doesn't seem unreasonable.

In a "normal" level campaign with First Aid, a character5 might make it back from going as far as -5, but it's not likely, and any more severe is irretrievable.

I've used variants of the D&D "dying rule", where a fatally wounded character loses a further hit point per round until -CON, at which point they are beyond treatment - it depends on the genre and setting.

Cheers,

Nick

I'm in the process of adapting BRP 0 Sorcery as a system of Divine magic for Priests in a fantasy setting i'm writing up, and basically all I've done is replace the POW 16+ requirement with an Allegiance requirement (To gain spells a characters must have Allegeiance (Specific Deity) 50+ and be allied to that Allegiance) and renamed the spells to remove the word Sorcery / Sorcerer.

Cheers,

Nick

Before I get thoroughly diverted from what I should be doing (which is finishing off the thumbnail sketch of the setting so I can get back to writing up this bloody scenario for publication), has anyone worked up the Optional Rules checklist from the back of BRP 0 as a electronic document (doc / pdf / odt)?

Cheers,

Nick

Too limiting for my purposes, everyone is to be inspired by patron/ancestor spirits in this setting so each "Inspired" individual will be just that, an individual.

The idea would be that each character is trying to live up to the ideals of those of his line that have come before, but there are as many family lines as characters.

So each family line has it's own set of "ideals" from the traits list? And perhaps each family / line has an Alleigance (family / Line) that works as per the BRP Allegiance, but each family / line has different sets of actions / behaviours that add allegiance? So you have both a set of ideals for a family / line that the character would strive to live up to, AND a set of specific behaviours that family tradition / loyalty would define as "right action"...

Cheers,

Nick