g33k

Arguably, the same can be said for ALL enc-rules... ☺️

oh, ye gods and goddesses! Forgive him. He knows not what evils he risks, by uttering this word on a RQ forum. 😉 More seriously: this has been repeatedly debated and flame-warred. Stirrup, or stirrup-not, there is no consensus. YGWV.

If your PC's are moving from one star-system to another, they could experience VERY different "local" agencies... Some of which might be far more problematic to deal with than the "EvilOverlord" Bulrathi, particularly hands-off Bulrathi. But also, as you've described the Bulrathi as a "kleptocracy" I presume there's a fair bit of them just "taking" stuff; i.e. in a dispute over property, the Bulrathi just "resolve" the issue by taking the disputed property away from both parties. When the Bulrathi find they need to be active in a system (because there's a problem with administration of the laws) they tend to "resolve" the issue by taking more and more stuff until the locals settle down. Etc. And there could be very-different local Bulrathi individuals actually enacting the "EvilOverlord" kleptocratic policies. Some may be more-avaricious, and find it "necessary" more often, to be active in these ways. Others may be busier with internal-Bulrathi political maneuvering, or just enjoying the fruits of prior confiscations, etc. Finally, of course, one of the things about Kleptocratic rule, is sometimes they push the peons into desperation... "We were just trying to investigate some insurance fraud, when these MANIACS came pouring out of the asteroids in WARSHIPS, and attacked the Bulrathi Governor's Fleet!!!"

Honestly, the "community content" arena is NOT there to get rich offa! Anyone who think's it's their pathway to golden goblets and fawning servants has probably believed too much of their own fiction-writing... 😉 What it DOES represent -- why I think you very-well may be interested -- is to be a highly-visible and easily-accessible source of <system X> fan-produced content, on the biggest online RPG retail site. There's plenty of RPG players -- even BRP players -- who never visit BRPCentral, who've never even heard of it. Everyone understands that it's "fan content" -- nobody is expecting it to be "professional" quality. If you don't even want "donations," make it PWYW and -- if anyone DOES pay -- donate the funds to one of the RPG-centric charity projects. Or set a ridiculously low price (3.99?), and make accordingly-larger donations. n.b. lots of research supports the idea that people don't much value stuff they get "for free" so a nominal price might actually get your work more looked-at than making it free. Also -- Chaosium DOES get a cut of all those payments. But to your point -- "[You] only ever wanted to make the game more enjoyable for my players and help make new and veteran MW players/chroniclers jobs a little easier. Who doesnt like a plethora of new options in their games?" -- it is for exactly that reason that I think a DTRPG "community content" program would be just up your alley! It appears to be the best way to get your content under the eyes -- and into the d/l folders -- of the most gamers. All of which, of course, is entirely dependent on Chaosium actually setting up such a program. As @NickMiddleton notes, there's this little OGL(ish) thing coming... It may represent Chaosium taking a bit more interest in the line, possibly enough to open a Community Content store for it...

Hmmm. Check in with Chaosium. See if perchance they have any plans for a MW and/or BRP "community content" program on DTRPG. I think they are getting good results with CoC and RQG...

All beginning adventurers default to being 3-RP initiates of their respective deities, unless they opt for other choices (e.g. Assistant Shaman, etc). I believe the rules also allow a player to CHOOSE to sacrifice some of their Initiate's as-rolled POW for a larger rune-pool and more Rune Spells (can someone correct me if I'm wrong? I don't have a searchable PDF on this device).

100 for "regular" ships, 300 for military, you said? (This does beg the question of units: 300 what per what? Lighyears per year? Parsecs per day? Furlongs per fortnight?) This puts some limits on the extent of direct control, but maybe not all that much, depending on the units, and on the density of usable & desirable planets & other resources. Bear with me, now... I'm going to delve back into that medieval/feudal bit you don't like... but I have good reason, I promise! I'm really NOT trying to push this stuff. That speed/distance issue, which limits extent of direct rule, is one of the reasons that storytellers slip so often into those old-fashioned societies -- the vast reaches of space, and travel-times, mean that one can ONLY have a big empire when one goes through a series of delegations to local sub-nations, e.g. Emperors --> Dukes --> Counts --> Barons, or similar (with absolute command, including life-or-death decisions, within their own subdomains; and likely, hereditary rule...). Feudal courts, feudal duels... swords... It leads one naturally to ideas of older technologies, where such older feudal governances and "courtly" habits held sway. (Mostly, I just want this clear as the common narrative trope that it is; and to point out that if you have none-of-this-medieval-stuff, you probably want to make that clear to your players up-front -- nobody is using a sword in this setting! It's not just bringing a knife to a gunfight, it's bringing a phalanx to a panzerblitz, or viking longboats to a modern combined air/sea action). Ansible tech helps the central authority maintain control; but for real control the Empire must still be the primary source of military might, with lesser nobles only having minor police-forces & the like. Again, it pushes the idea that the high tech is reserved for the Imperial forces, and everyone else is kept intentionally backwards. Even then, of course a powerful Imperial military officer has been known to march on his own capitol and usurp the imperial throne! But the ansible is also a direct threat to that direct control: it's easy enough for the science behind the high-tech to slip out to the remote reaches, and for those distant baronies to build up their own forces, perhaps for the local Imperial Navy to defect and form the core of a new kingdom... too distant (and quickly bootstrapping to Imperial-tech parity) to be practical to re-conquer. These sorts of breakaway empires are also a well-known historical fact. Unless you keep those baronies very-backward indeed, so they CANNOT bootstrap far enough, before the main Imperial Navy arrives to quash them (cue the feudalisms and medievalisms again... damn things are like WEEDS I tell ya!) That's one way you can justify such obsolete tech's... if you want to. === You've clearly stated that you DON'T want to, which is fine. In fact, I mostly agree with you -- high tech generally tends to supersede and replace lower tech (mostly, I think I'm a bigger believer in Murphy than you -- I'm expecting things to go wrong; hence, Lost Colonies, abandoned prison-planets, etc etc etc). HOWEVER, I would respectfully suggest you should consider how and why those factors -- that might push toward such "medievalisms" and impoverished-world settings -- do NOT come into play in your own setting! Or how (when they do come into play) they lead to OTHER results than such "backwards" tropes. Gross impoverishment seems a likely outcome, to me. Offhand, I'm really liking the ubiquitous use of ansible as a key factor. If the ansible itself is outside of Imperial rule... if that tech is so widely-known and simple to implement, that it cannot be quashed... then other technologies, inevitably, will permeate everywhere the ansible does. Yeah, sure -- new inventions will stay under single-actor control for a while. But eventually they will slip out. This in turn leads to the inevitable spread of high-tech everywhere the ansible goes (and as noted above, the ansible is important for those central authorities to exert command, so the ansible goes everywhere). === So the tech is everywhere; it's a high-tech galaxy (or maybe just our part of a spiral arm). Now a question -- if everyone has tech, how do your "Bulrathi" bullies maintain their dominance? Why don't people tell them to F--- Off, the same as they tell any other EvilEmpire(tm)? Off the top of my head, it'd probably some New Invention that hasn't yet leaked. They are leveraging their Bigger BFG, or their Impenetrable Shield, or whatever -- and keeping the tech behind it as secret as they can. Another question, or maybe more than one -- if you have some High Tech Races (a) how are they keeping their OWN tech out of general circulation? & (b) why didn't they become the EvilOverlords(tm), beating the Bulrathi to the punch? Are they just pseudo-angels, Clarke-tech having led them to enlightenment? Is there some tech-singularity they see coming, and they are just ... less interested in all these silly FTL-drives and Impenetrable Shields and similarly useless childrens' toys? Or...? === Honestly, I *am* trying to help. If it seems like I'm "trolling" you, it's just that I'm trying to get you to look at some unexamined assumptions, or the same idea from a different angle. Expect your players to do the same -- mine always do so, to me!

"Hard" sci-fi has the specific meaning of "reasonably extrapolated from current tech & current science" and "violating few (preferably none!) of the currently-known laws of physics." Discworld isn't "hard" in this sense. Neither is Star Wars! 🤣 My main point, actually, was that there are a bunch of other sci-fi-isms that are ALSO essentially "magic" rather than "hard" sci-fi. Even when I was 10 years old, I was like "WTF is a photon torpedo??? Photons are light, that means light-speed, but they are being fired between starships moving at warpspeed???" It's something you should be aware of, and be ready to work with your players -- we never know what particular tech might be going to "NOPE" somebody's suspension-of-disbelief right out the window ! Yes; it's... hmmm... so far as I know, at least, it's one of the two (alongside some ideas of wormholes) "least-soft"(?) of the FTL drives currently proposed. 😉 Speaking of wormholes: it's another solution to consider for an Imperium, with different constraints on "realistic" growth, and possible steady-state. But not (I think) very MOO-flavored. Your game, your call! Maybe even both? I'm not beating on the Star Wars premise; but please realize that it's NOT limited to "Star Wars" -- the basic idea of such grossly uneven technologies (even to the point of swords & other medievalisms existing alongside starships and blasters) neither originated with Star Wars, nor ended there. ERB's Barsoom was one of the older ones. It's a HUGE trope & sub-genre within sci-fi, that Lucas decided to adopt for his story. Nothing says you have to adopt these tropes for your own setting, of course !!! If your vision is all gleaming & high-tech throughout, that's just as valid!

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

If you want extreme but rare variability, borrow the "exploding dice" concept from other games. Roll 1d4 for damage, EXCEPT that on a "4" you re-roll it as 1d4+3, re-rolling each "4" with a +3 until you stop hitting 4's, but upping the "+plus" by 3 each time. So a roll of 4-4-4-1 is 3+3+3+1 = 10 points of damage, but only gets so high (into double-digits of +fire bonus damage) on 1 in 4^3 = 1/64 of the time. Why add "3" instead of your rolled "4"? Two reasons: historically, RQ has often stepped up to the next die (usually a d6, but whatever, we're into new-rules territory anyhow) at +3 Since you are adding another die (which has a minimum roll of 1) your rolled "4" is simply the minimum on the next die; if you kept +4 as your add, you couldn't roll any of +4, +8, +12, etc as damages. Just an idea, FWIW. Computer geeks may already have spotted the recursion.

The Tragically Hip WAS a Great Troll cover band, but Great Trolls aren't so great with articles, so Tragically Hip. Or adjectives, so Tragic Hip. Then they got hungry, and ate the nearest joint, so Tragic. Also trullz dunt spel so good, so Trajik. Everyone's happier that way.

I look forward to seeing you reversing that:. attending with the idea of playing... 😉 (I wish that I could attend)

Good Barbarian!!! See, @Chaosium? See how good he is??? (Modiphius has the RPG licenses for Conan, JohnCarter/Barsoom, Dune, & StarTrek, iirc) (I,, in contrast to the sweet innocent Barbarian above, am clearly some sort of faithless Gaming Slut, winking and flirting at every Hot New License... How's that RoL project, btw?)

I may be mistaken, but I don't believe PureSpec is anything like "the con for/by OnSpec," they just cite OnSpec as a valued & longtime sponsor. Modiphius seems to have a strong presence there, with the 2d20 system.

Do we know the foundations of Tatooine? Maybe 500 years ago, it was somebody's prison-planet... for generations... Then that kingdom died. But who would pick up the tab for evacuating the thousands of people on that miserable sandball? And why would the people there opt to LEAVE (when they ARE scraping by) only to become ignorant and unemployable peasants in the high-tech galaxy? At least at home they can afford to eat... Or maybe it was a crashed colony-ship. Or both... crashed prison-ship? Did you ever watch Pitch Black? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6hCTcwNKsk (ok, that one didn't end with a viable colony... but on a different planet, it could have!)

PureSpec? They seem to have (at least a little bit of) RPG'ing... CalgaryExpo also has RPGs, maybe the same-ish proportion(?) but they're enough bigger to have "more" games in an absolute-numbers sense.

I'd think it's more the intense energy signature that you'd detect, rather than the "metal microbe" 🙂 If your sensor-tech is lightspeed, I think it may be possible to lay "FTL Traps" where the ship cannot see the trap in time to avoid it -- the light from a bomb-explosion, for example, being slower than the ship approaching it. Obviously, you need to be able to know when&where the ship will be, to lay your trap... What's to prevent c-charged masses from becoming WMD's? Put an FTL drive onto a big rock, accelerate to outrageous velocity, FTL it (so it's faster than lightspeed sensor-tech), and when it drops back to sublight (without warning the target, because no STL warning is faster than FTL) it becomes an autokill on any planet. What about a wrecked/lost colony-ship, crash-landed where it's b-a-r-e-l-y survivable? Then imagine a few dozen generations before rediscovery... What about an intentionally-hostile prison-planet, like Salusa Secundus or Rura Penthe? What about a planet settled to extract some valuable resource despite hostile conditions... then abandoned (alongside the colonists, too expensive to evac!) when a better/cheaper source was found? Etc...

You could have a Lunar who feels so wronged and betrayed by their culture (saw their whole family killed & fed to the Bat, etc) that they become more anti-Lunar than the most hardcore Orlanthi. You could have someone who has seen One Too Many Atrocities, and feels the Lunar forces need to be opposed, even if they wouldn't be happy with a strike against the Lunar heartland or anything similar. You could have (as per the exemplar) the Lunar who's more a "political exile" (on the losing side of as larger conflict) -- happy to strike against any of the Lunar elements who attacked his old patrons/allies/etc, but not a general/overall anti-Lunar sort. You could have the "embedded" Lunar, trying to understand the Orlanthi so they can better bring them into the Lunar Way. You can get entirely out of Dragon Pass, and have Lunars and Sartarites both in the group operating up in Pent, or looting Old Pavis, or off on the far side of Esrolia somewhere, etc etc etc ...

planting contraband eggs in the unsuspecting players' luggage? <heh> There could be a fair amount of weird contraband rules... A family friend of ours (travelling by train) was detained at the border of <unnamed nation> for "pornography" (it was a normal newsstand fashion mag, such as Vogue or Elle, that they used to pass the time as they travelled).

I think you're referring to the modern jaded POV. 😉 Nothing's shocking anymore. Nobody loses SAN. Oh, Dread Cthulhu has surfaced in the Atlantic? Errr... drop a bunkerbuster nuke on him. Pity about the environment thereabouts (but DC was probably pretty toxic anyhow, so... even-steven?).

I love this idea, though I agree that the double-variable on fire damage (roll a d6 to see what die you roll for fire-damage) is an unneeded complexity. But the following is particularly inspiring... This makes me picture the target/victim who ALSO knows how this spear operates, who catches it and throws it back! Then the original attacker has to "catch" the spear to re-throw it... etc...

Hmm. How closely are you adhering to the "feel" (and particularly the comms & drive tech) of MOO? As I understand it, MOO players are essentially "realtime-omniscient" about their own empires: C3 (Communication/Command/Control) isn't an issue, galaxy-wide communication is ubiquitous. This is sometimes called "ansible" communication (after an old LeGuin story, adopted by other users). This has some notable implications! MOO FTL travel is via "warp drives" (like realspace travel, it's a continuous journey from any one place to any other, with ability to "drop out of warp" en-route, to swerve off-course, and otherwise to change your mind as you go), as opposed to gate/wormhole or "jump" tech, which is point-to-point (and sometimes instantaneous). === Take Traveller, as a counter-example to MOO -- the OTU (Orig. Trav. Universe; I'm less familiar with later settings) had no FTL communication, and FTL travel only via "Jump" drive, following specific mapped jump-points; each Jump lasted about 1 week, with different drive powers from 1-6 travelling (up to) that number of parsecs in a week; so 1pc/week for J-1, 6pc/wk for J-6 (and ships needed another engine to move in realspace, instead of Jump'ing). The very fastest a message could travel through the OTU Imperium was by way of a courier-network of Jump-6 ships, which would jump into a system and transmit their data (via normal-space / lightspeed radio/etc) to a new ship, which departed again on Jump-6 to the next step, where the process repeated until it got to the destination. Because couriers were re-fuelled at every stop, and pre-fuelled at each stop to jump out as-needed, the URGENT communications could outstrip any physical fleet (which needs to refuel)... but not so much in advance that a military (or criminal) operation couldn't get substantial advantage by hurrying! By the same token, if someone departs from the network of courier'ed stations, they can sometimes go weeks or months before getting any new information from the more-connected parts of the galaxy... Because of the lack of FTL, and the relatively long duration of journeys, Traveller adventures have often been likened to "age of sail" adventures. I believe this was an intentional design goal of author Marc Miller: with ships (and players) regularly operating beyond the easy reach of any possible "High Command," the players had much more freedom to come up with their OWN solutions to problems, face challenges with their OWN reactions, etc. === But with open & instantaneous communication, someone can control forces ahead of an oncoming fleet as soon as the fleet moves in that direction, someone can call an "All Points Bulletin" about fleeing criminals, etc... the "feel" of the setting becomes very very different. NOTE that this implies your own players MAY sometimes face oversight from their organization (if any), and generally thus have less "freedom" ... but more safety (in the form of backup), presuming they and/or their mission are important enough. There's also the cyberpunk notion of freelancers doing "plausible deniability" missions for anonymous (usually megacorp) "patrons" via Mr.Johnson-cut-outs; obviously, no backup (and sometimes even the patron will try to end the freelancers, afterward). And as @seneschal says, there's also the "Western" -- Magnificent Seven, etc. -- and the "divided loyalty" of working for a consortium; etc etc etc... There's an interesting M-Space setting, Elevation (https://www.enworld.org/threads/stay-on-budget-search-for-new-life-in-elevation.666520/, http://www.frostbytebooks.com/elevation ) that seems like it could be highly relevant and/or useful to you. === MOO is a 4X game (in fact AFAIK "4X" was coined for MOO) -- eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate... Would your RPG be pursuing all of these? Exploration of unknown worlds/systems, expansion into newly-explored ones, exploitation thereof, and extermination of rival races/empires/etc? From a "realism" and/or "suspension of disbelief" POV, I would mostly expect those activities to be carried out by different organizations, or at least very-different divisions/departments of a larger org. Where (which of the 4 X's) would you see being the focus of your campaign? Or would you try to generalize & do multiple, or all?

Rather famously, one of the early proto-Yakuza groups was doing law-enforcement... Itinerant peddlers, when they set up markets, often found the local law-enforcement didn't adequately protect them and their goods. So these peddlers paid a few of their own to serve as de facto law-enforcement (instead of pursue sales on their own behalf).

Here's the problem with that approach: how MANY different kinds of bite do you want to model? We have already mentioned wolf & sabre-tooth in-thread, what about venomous snakes? Shark bites? Huge bites like from Allosaurus or T.rex? Beaks like a parrot -- big ones can snip off a finger! -- or Huge beaks like on a Triceratops? Each of these, it seems to me, could be treated as different kinds of Special damage, if one wanted to. Nature's methods of mayhem are more varied than humans' more straightforward habits of combat...

Cool! If it's possible, could you share a bit "how much / if / in what ways" Ben A. is going to be involved? I mean, I get it, that he's not an RPG designer -- mechanics &c are outside his wheelhouse. But I presume his input could be very valuable! TYVM.