Old Man Henerson

39 minutes ago, Chaot said:

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Pendragon Traits. Now, personally I'm one of those people who hold that there is no light side of the force. It is the force and the dark side, but for argument's sake let's use light side.

Don't worry, I agree that there is only The Force and the Dark Side, Light Side was the only way I was able to contextualize the allegiance score opposite to the Dark Side. The whole thread idea itself was basically inspired by reading someone complaining that they had to explain The corrupting powers of the dark side to their players in a Star Wars RPG and why they could not just dip into the dip into the dark side whenever they wanted. The sanity and allegiance systems provided in BRP seemed like the perfect way to introduce consequences to using the dark side that would make players realize the danger it possesses.

39 minutes ago, Chaot said:

You've got the Dark Side / Light side and they each have a score that combined equals 20. Dark Side 10 / Light Side 10, Dark Side 4 / Light Side 16, whatever. Then when you need to make a choice you roll against that score on a d20. At or below the score succeeds, above the score fails.

If you wanted to use a d00, you can keep the same scale by measuring traits in steps of 5 points instead of 1 point. So, 50/50, 35/65, etc.

Having played Knights of the Old Republic and the MMO version, this would be an interesting way to implement a choice system like in those games. I would probably go with the d100 method since it could work with the allegiance system as well.

5 hours ago, g33k said:

Offhand, I think I'd lean-in on Passions.  Both the negative ones like "Hate (the Empire)" but also threats or harms to positive ones, like "Love (Prince Ardan)" & people who threaten or hurt the Prince.  Much moreso than simply using Dark-side powers, it's using the Force in accord with fear & hate & anger that causes corruption.

If someone has "given in to the Dark side" even once, they gain a new Passion "Dark Force User" -- the GM should invoke this to push them to use the Dark Side more.  Roll those Hate & Fear Passions to power-up the Force powers, and increase the "Dark Force User" passion.

I do like this idea as well, but I am not familiar with the passions system other than knowing that it comes from the Pendragon games. How does it work?

5 hours ago, Nakana said:

From what you’ve stated, I would focus on the temptation/seduction aspect of the Dark Side. Whereas you have the allegiance scores of light, good, dark, etc. and rather than an intentional action to increase the score, it’s a resistance roll whenever the character is tempted. If they pass the roll then they successfully resisted the temptation. If they fail then the dark allegiance score increases by 1d6. 
 

This way, resisting is easier at first, but eventually they will succumb to temptation. 
 

Perhaps whenever they hit certain milestones, specific effects come into play. You’ll have to determine what those effects are. 

This is along the lines that I was thinking, although, I will have to figure out how those sort of rolls would work. I have a few considerations such as:

Whether resisting the temptation automatically gives you points in the Light allegiance or if one can still be practicing evil and resist temptations to avoid becoming insanely evil. Whether you have to roll to resist dark side temptations/allegiance and you have to intentionally choose to make light side choices to increase your light side allegiance. And finally, whether only certain actions or using certain powers force your character to roll to avoid temptation

I do love the idea or it being easy to resist temptations at first but having it grow harder later. I also love putting milestones to the dark side allegiance. Somethings like loosing APP and CON points while gaining more POW and STR and just gaining more power points in general sounds nice. Maybe even the ability to learn some new powers like leaching HP from enemies and powerful force lighting sort of powers would be cool as well. Now I just need to think up some benefits to remaining calm and growing your light side allegiance.

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I like this idea though, you have the workings of a major “flavor mechanic” of a game. What sanity is to CoC, resisting temptation of evil is to this game. 

Glad you appreciate it! :) The only thing we would need to is include some difficult but rewarding sort of way for characters who have fallen to the temptations of the dark side to redeem themselves and reverse their dark side allegiance score in true Star Wars fashion.

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

M-SPACE wouldn't be a bad idea. Originally it was written as a BRP supplement, but was altered due to Chaosium's licensing requirements at the time. So M_SPACE might be helpful for it spaceship rules -most of which are stand alone from the rest of the game mechanics. 

In fact, considering that BRP has gone OGL, it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring the original BRP SPACESHIPS out.

Yeah, that might be cool, especially if I want to do any other science fiction campaigns some day.

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But I'd also say that if you don't need spaceships and an spaceship design system then you don't need M-SPACE.  In my opinion M-SPACE's biggest strength is that it covers spacecraft and spacecraft design when virtually no other BRP game does so. Th other setting stuff and tech can be replaced with other existing stuff depending on what sort of setting you are creating.

I may or may not need spaceship designs so I am torn on getting that. The other aspect I was somewhat considering getting M-Space for was for the expanded list of psychic powers that it offers since the setting I am going for is more star wars like and the psychic powers in the BGB are rather lacking for what I am looking to do. Granted I could just tweak some supper powers and magic to make it fit better.

Hi everyone!

I am planning on running a science fiction campaign soon and I was wondering whether or not it would be good to look into the M-Space books for more specific science fiction rules. I already have the Big Golden Book but I am not sure if it will be enough or if it is good enough to run a science fiction campaign as is. What are your thoughts?

Hello everyone!

I am thinking of running a science fiction campaign that has some influences from Star Wars via using the psychic powers and the allegiance system in the Big Golden Book. I wanted to add a sort of Dark Side/Corruption mechanic that would activate when players used destructive/dominating powers and I think that the sanity system is the best system to represent that sort of spiral into corruption. I am not sure how to represent this however since most of the sanity effects and the sanity rolls revolve around mental breakdowns rather than the decent into evil that I am looking for. I was wondering if any of you guys had any thoughts on the matter, and if you all had any though on how to utilize the allegiance system as well.

Thanks in advance!

On 3/10/2021 at 12:03 AM, Pnick said:

An interesting question that was prompted by a recent FB post — why, in its 40 year history, has Chaosium never published an epic modern day campaign?

Have you perchance heard the Tale of Old Man Henderson?  It's not a campaign or anything you can play, but it is certainly an epic relatively modern Cthulhu story that you might enjoy.

23 hours ago, g33k said:

Well now, that sounds like an RPG premise!   😉  👍

 

Add in the twin premises that:

(a) the mutants / ex-soldiers are (in)famous for griping about "the good old days" when they had respect for fighting the aliens, and due to various "vet syndrome" issues (PTSD/etc, addiction, and so forth) occasional bouts of paranoia/hallucinations that "the aliens are ba-a-a-a-ck!"  😵

(b) actually, the aliens are back (never really left), this time waging a completely covert campaign of psych-ops & discrediting/undermining the mutants with both general public & various government forces, until they have weakened Earth enough to make it a pushover next time they come in force ...  👽

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

how about 

(c) the mutants were really test tube babies reverse engineered from alien DNA.

 

I can't speak for my players, but these ideas sound great! They will have to deal with all the grumpy mutants while uncovering the alien conspiracy and their own terrible origins. On top of keeping up in the races!

The climax and a few other points will probably involve the players having to take their vehicles out of the track to fight their enemies head on or even on foot! Though their cars and weapons might not be the best against real war machines, to say nothing of their own armor against actual ordnance.

On 7/26/2020 at 10:01 PM, Atgxtg said:

OH, that's rather straight forward. I'm running a game where the players are spies and I was thinking of trying to adapt the High Stakes Gamble Supplement from the Top Secret/S.I. game. The supplement is set in Monaco during the Grand Prix, and I though the idea of the players taking part in a famous race might be good for an adventure. Then I had to figure out a way to run the race without it taking forever to play out, and would (hopefully, I've still got my fingers crossed) be fun and exciting for the players to play out, with driving rolls, mishaps, and the other factors that go into racing.

I wondering if I should throw in a few "key laps" where the drivers have to go through sections of the track rather than doing whole laps at a time. Especially for the last lap or two, when players would be more likely to try something desperate to move up in position. It might give a more exciting finish that just one roll for the last 6 laps.

 

Oh, sounds fun, do they get to have their martini's shaken or stired while being chances by a guy with metal teeth?

With 72 lapsto go through. key playable laps sounds like a good idea. The last few laps should be the most important ones while the others could be rolled through. Good luck on your game!

On 7/26/2020 at 10:01 PM, Atgxtg said:

I did something like it before in another RRPG, and RQ3 did something similar with Monster Coliseum. The different number of spaces per lane with modifers forces the players to choose betten a shorter but more difficult path, or a longer but safer one. 

Design wise, you want the strait aways to have the same number of sections for each lane, but the turns to varry from inner to outer. You might want to have near successes just slide to the outer lane rather than roll on the chase trouble table. 

Did you draw and or print out the courses and give the players a miniature or hotwheels car for the races? I am not sure how to do it otherwise so that is what I am thinking of doing for this game.

On 7/26/2020 at 10:01 PM, Atgxtg said:

If might help to know that if you treat POW as horsepower or kilowatts and put it on the same scale as STR or SIZ, it will take 24 points of POW to double a vehicles speed, or each +1 POW multiplies speed by about 1.03. If players have to buy POW instead of just snagging levels of superspeed, it might be manaagable.

This sounds good as well. I think if I take this and replace many of the superpowers with weapons from the artillery section of the big golden book, and or BRP-Mecha it would make an interesting way for the players to have a point-buy system to customize their cars using the sportscar, sedan or one of the other vehicles as a base to build on.

On 7/26/2020 at 10:01 PM, Atgxtg said:

Okay. Just wondering how many "laps" is a typical race? If you want to run round by round combat then you will need to decide how many melee rounds you want a race to last., and plan accordingly. For instance, in my Monaco Grand Prix situation, the drivers have to make 78 laps, and drive about 160 miles, with the race lasting close to two hours. I didn't want to play all out in melee rounds or else it would end up taking a full game session or even longer.  So I came up with the idea of rolling for every so many laps to see if the player improved his position. 

If you want to have the race last ore than a couple of laps then you might want to restrict the weapons allowed, or what areas they can be used in, or during what laps or some such, so you can squeeze in some racing. For instance, what if weapons could only be used in the turns but not in the straight ways, or what if different "zones"" on the track were color coded and every so often the active zones changed?

My original idea was to have a standard 3 laps for the racers to go through, though I am thinking 5 might be more optimal to allow for pit stops  and repairs. Still, you are right that it could take a while for the race to finish if all the players had to play through every part of the track. So perhaps only 3 of the laps should be playable. (Granted, this is time that the players would normally spend traveling in a standard game so it might not actually matter in the long run.)

As for changinging active zones and only allowing weapons in certain places, that could easily work too. The racing would be a lot like Mario kart with different parts of the track constantly changing and most of the weapons being discharged right after going through a space with item boxes. You could even have it so that only certain weapons could be used in certain track zones, like all weapons are useable on straightaways while things like homeing missiles/mines (red shells and green shells) would be the only accurate weapons on turns. Then you could have zones where no weapons are useable like you were saying, except for wildcard specialty weapons or personal mutations or superpowers (blue shells).

Something cool you could also to is have a "shortcut zone" that only activates on certain laps.

16 hours ago, clarence said:

Extended Conflicts in M-SPACE are designed to handle situations like that. I run regular races (both in sci-fi and in the 1920s) with Drive as the main skill and DEX+POW as Conflict Pool. Depending on the vehicles, the Conflict Pools might be affected by the vehicle’s stats as well.

I have heard a lot about M-Space on these forums and it does sound pretty cool, like Traveler but more unique. (And less dying in character creation LOL) What are the pool things about? How much does it's rules differ from the one found in the Big Golden Book?

16 hours ago, clarence said:

If you want the vehicles to attack each other, I would run it as a regular vehicle fight (also in M-SPACE) in parallel with the Extended Conflict. For every round in the race, drivers get a chance to attack/evade as well. 

I like that idea a lot. If you add an option for moving forward to try and get ahead that would be about perfect. Thanks!  

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I've done a bit of work along those lines. Here are some of my suggestions:

1) Break up the track into a number of spaces that the vehicles can move through. You might want to have lanes with the inner lane having fewer spaces to get around the board, but be harder to drive on., and maybe an outer lane that has more spaces but is easier to drive on. Doing up some sort of drawn or printed track makes it easier to  note relative positions, where any traps or weapons are, and put in special condtions and turn that might modify the driving rolls, like a frozen patch of road.

2) Each turn a vehicle can move a number of spaces equal to it's rated speed (see below) modified by their driving roll (Critical: full value, Special -1 space, Success: -2 spaces, Failure: Half Rated Speed, Fumble: Quarter rated speed,). For instance a sports car with Speed 15 would move 15/14/13/8/3 spaces depending of the driving roll. If you rather have the average distance be the rated speed, just shift the success values up 2 points each.

3) You can and should scale the speeds up or down depending on the number of spaces on your track and how many rounds you want it to take to get around. For instance if you track has 30 spaces and you want it to take an a Speed 15 sports car to take  4 rounds to get around it, then divide the move rates by two. 

3) On a failed driving roll you can have the driver roll on the chase trouble table on page 217.

4) Since the progression for Rated Speed in the BGB isn't known, if you build any new vehicles,  I suggest going with Speed = 1/10th MOV (down) for vehicles with a MOV of 100 or less and Speed = the square root of MOV for faster vehicles; It seems to be close to the actual values of the existing vehicles and keeps the relative speeds nice for game play.  

5) If you don't want to play out the entire race in combat rounds, but would rather handle several laps at a time, then I suggest you have each racer roll, in order of last place to first. On a success they maintain their position, on a special success the move up one position, on a critical two. A failure means the drop back a position (and have to make a track trouble roll), and a fumble means the fall back 1D6 positions and have to make a track trouble roll.

I REALLY like the spaces and track set up you suggested. I will have to save it for my material. the success rolls and speed rules are another great idea for the game.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

6) For your vehicle designs, unless you are planning on making this a reoccurring thing, I suggest going with the sample vehicle stats in the BGB, then tack on weapons and armor. You might give each design a budget to spend on powers based on it's SIZ. The only thing is, once you open up super powers you wind up with super vehicles..You can give characters points to build vehicles use the super powers rules, but then you will end up with super vehicles. So you will probably have to restrict or ban certain powers, maybe tie some others to the vehicle's SIZ and so on. Without some limits it gets easy to make a semi truck go faster than a sportscar, because it has more points to work with. In real life a vehicle needs eight times the power to move twice as fast. If you want to make this a regular thing, then you will probably need a bit more to work with that what is presented in the BGB.  I got a couple of real world formulas converted into BRP terms such as working out MOV by (POW-SIZ)/3 but you probably don't want or need that. 

7) Optionally, you could base all the cars on one stock model and then given them some points or options to choose from. For instance they all could get a sportscar or standard sedan and get points to modfiy the speed, handling, armor or whatever.

8 ) Depending on on the course, you might want to track fuel in some way, and allow for pitstops.

Yeah, the super power thing in retrospect does not hold up as well as I had hoped. I was intending to limit usable super powers for the cars, (I actually got the idea for using super powers from The Big Golden Book where they used them to create a mecha suit and though I could do the same for battle cars. I was also planning on not allowing things like altering weather conditions/gravity, alternate forms or other inappropriate powers) like I said about the setting in my last post, however, the players would be genetically created super soldiers with some low to mid level powers and I was planing on a way for the players to use their super powers/mutations/psionic powers though special weapons ports on their cars to attack their opponents, so their cars would actually not require too many powers beyond a few gun emplacements and specialty weapons.

As for fuel and pit stops, if they run out or their cars are destroyed, the repair drones will helpfully take the safety pod they ride in to the pit stop for repairs and refueling at the cost of loosing a few rounds of racing.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

BTW, Good timing! I've been working on some rules to let my players play through the Monaco Grand Prix, so I sort of had something to work with already. I had it a bit easier as the race cars are all Formula One cars, and the racers don't shoot at each other, at least not normally.

Indeed, how serendipitous! I would love to hear the story of how and why your players got into the Monaco Grand Prix. Has Nyarlathotep suddenly come down with racing fever?

17 hours ago, g33k said:

Honestly doesn't sound like a RPG, as such.

Is there a reason you don't just grab SJG Car Wars?

I think the setting could work, asside from raceing the setting involves the players being the product of a mutant super soldier program that was key to defeating an alien invasion. After the war, they were out of a job so the players and many other out of work mutants start up the vehicular combat and racing racing industry. They will have to deal with underworld crime syndicates infiltrating the races, corrupt mega corporations and government agencies seeking to regain controll their former assets, and even perhaps a resurgent alien threat.

Also, Car Wars sounds interesting, I will have to look into it some time. Thanks for the suggestion.

Hi.

My latest game idea has the players being part of a vehicular combat and racing circuit where they race armed to the teeth through death courses and try to shoot down the other racers and win in first. The chase rules in the big golden book seem pretty nice, but I don't think they are quite up to the task when it comes to using weapon systems or simulating an actual race between competitors. So I was wondering what you guys would do in this situation. Would you just write up the cars as gadgets using the supper power section and "play" it as a character with the players using their piloting and weapon system skills? or something else?

Thanks in advance!

On 7/14/2020 at 9:23 PM, SDLeary said:

Why, on Chaosium's website!

SDLeary

On 7/15/2020 at 8:07 AM, rsanford said:

Yeah SDLeary has it right. Its for sale at Chaosium. A couple of things to know about Enlightened Magic. FIrst it's written by John Snead a practicing WIccan Priest. Second he added a lot of umph to the spells but they are still far from flashy. Using an Enlightened Magic spell it wouldn't be too hard to have your enemy slip on some steps and break his neck (something thats plausible but unlikely) but creating a fireball would be hard. The magic is VERY subtle. THe third things to know is that most of the magic is ritualistic. Highly recommended if you want something to model what we think of as today's occult.

Ah, thank you both. I don't think this is actually what I am looking for, I was looking for something more akin to psychic powers or jedi type force abilities, both for inspiration for my book I am writing and for some games I want to run. The psychic powers in the Big Golden Book just seem rather lackluster to me and could use some fleshing out.

Anyways, thanks for the help.

7 hours ago, rsanford said:

I recommend Enlightened Magic. With it I have always wanted to duplicate the magic in The Craft.

Where can one find enlightened magic?

The party won't do, only money!

4 hours ago, seneschal said:

Banks?  Loans?  Why, we've evolved beyond such things.  The Party, er, Starfleet says so.

The ferengi want to know your location.

1 hour ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Mmmm.. thanks for your input....

Now.. I am sad to report I haven't followed either much! 😕 
But hey I liked the latest Star Trek on Netflix might have a second look., And maybe I could find some starcraft guide hey? Actually I quite like that one  

 

They are actually giving away the first and second Starcraft games for free now, so you should definitely check them out. I got them a while ago, but recently I have been playing more Star Wars Knights of the old Republic. Starcraft is basicaly Warhammer40k lite with less grimderp chaos gods and more realistic sci-fi with some psychic powers thrown in for good measure.

11 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

The point or question of this thread is not clearly defined, it's a bit like, please pitch in.
Also sorry if I might be difficult (with contributions), I noticed that I have quite a different approach to some people here. Sometimes it's a matter of different taste (fair enough ) sometimes.. I noticed I have idea which are not conducive to adventure though... but hey I do change my mind (slowly...). 😮

Anyhow, after that preamble, what prompted that post?

As some of you might know, I am working on a scifi setting / adventure / ruleset (will share when I am happy )  and I am at the equipment and vehicle list design stage now....
I am trying to be.... "relatively" plausible, though it's a Master of Orion setting and I have a number of space fantasy tech already:  FTL ship all around (arguably plausible alcubierre dive), psionic powers (pure fantasy), and "repulsor fields" (total nonsense tech which enables to reactionless propulsion, which enable landing spaceship in town, also flying cars, forcefield and, why the hell not when use indoor, pseudo antigravity), (arguably plausible using quantum entanglement) ansibles.
So.. mmmmm.. maybe not so realistic after all...

Anyway watching Isaac Arthur talking about hollow rotating asteroid as space habitat. It's a time where ingenuity and science produce some really cool ideas.
But now I am thinking pseudo antigravity as mentionned above kind of throw to the bin all the ingenious beauty of those space habitat.
If I scrap it, I should scrap my repulsor fields too, hence no forcefield, no hoverbike, no landing your spaceship in the city.. losing some fun here... and also witout forcefield bullet become much more of a problem... (arguable this might be desirable for some.. but I happy to have a tech mitigating the deadliness of future weapons..)

So.. I have a tech conundrum, or mmmm, agonising choice? between cool scenic space fantasy tech or cool ingenious real ones?
And also, since I am going to have FTL... maybe the choice is already made? mm...

What I am trying to say.. I am trying to maximise cool space fantasy fun, while also maximising real science ingenuity and I am not sure how to have both sometime...
in that particular case I was thinking space habitat!

I am also still wondering whether spaceship will use the pseudogravity tech outline earlier (which would help doing acrobatic manoeuvre) or they should be the rotating type... 
I know, it's clearly a matter of taste here... but what would be the most science friendly space fantasy kind to your taste here?

My awnser would be Star Trek, eventhough I like Star Wars better for fantasy space. Most of the stuff in Star Trek like laser guns and warp drive is based on current scientific theories, yet it also has plenty of "fantasy" elements to it as well like teleporters, psionics, and Q.

Another good example might be Starcraft, with the human faction at least having plausible technology. As for the Protoss and Zerg, that is up to you. Hope this helps.

1 hour ago, seneschal said:

No spoilers, but there is also an obvious "Scooby Doo On Zombie Island" connection that could be made.  Or a link to the Stephen King movie "Sleepwalkers."  An ancient, global religious organization could have a lot of forgotten branches, dissident groups and heretics.

I have not watched either of those, though I can get the zombie island connection. I am actually working on a globe spanning cult of my own for the book I am working on based heavily on a cobination of Cthulhu and Giygas from Earthbound. Hints of this cult can be found throughout world mythologies where the cult had interacted with indigenous peoples in ancient times.

How would this cult of Ubasti have spread so far and gained so much popularity to begin with?

24 minutes ago, seneschal said:

I had visions of Julie Newmar while writing it.  😸

My original plan was to have the PCs battling both cultists and a certain supervillainess (DC or Marvel, take your pick).

That is a rather fun game idea. Lee Meriwether's Catwoman kept floating through my mind while reading the story hook.

I have always loved the feel of pulp games, though I have never tried one, nor have I read any. Perhaps I should try it out sometime, and perhaps bring in The Shadow and Doc Savage for good measure too.

2 hours ago, seneschal said:

In preparation for an important holiday the Cult of Ubasti is stealing cat-themed artifacts from museums, private collections, and art galleries around the world.  No item is too precious or too small to avoid being targeted.  Jeweled cat statues or mummified feline remains from ancient Egypt?  Sure.  Original 35mm prints of "Cat People" or Felix the Cat cartoons?  Why not?  A giant fiberglas Hello Kitty effigy from downtown Tokyo?  Absolutely!  The World's Largest Ball of Yarn?  Eh, maybe as an afterthought.  Where is the cult storing all this stuff and what does the group plan to do with it?  Enquiring minds had better find out, quickly.

Holy cat people Batman! This sounds like it's right out of Adam West Batman... I love it! I wonder if holding up cat nip would have any affect on the cultists, or using a giant laser pointer for that matter. Good work on the story idea.

9 hours ago, g33k said:

With enough power, lasers become the snipers' weapon of choice.  No windage, no drag, no overshooting for gravity, no delay between firing and impact...

They just need power enough to generate a kill (i.e. put a hole through the target).

Yeah, lasers would do better for long range combat, but setting-wise, my technologically challenged Imperium of Man knockoff can't develop personal use laser weapons, unlike their Tau expy nemesis who have perfected laser weapons.

7 hours ago, g33k said:

I don't think the heat will matter much.  It isn't in contact with the target long enough to "burn" anything; heat-transfer by physical contact is relatively slow, particularly in regards to hypersonic rounds.

Imagine taking a sword, heating the tip to white-hot, and stabbing someone.  The danger is actually STILL the sharp hard blade, the heat doesn't really aid penetration or damage (if anything, it may be LESS damaging, as it cauterizes when pulled out).  A classic simile is a "hot knife through butter," but that's a slow, studied slice, tabletop cooking & serving speed.  If you just CHOPPED the butter, hard and fast, you would get almost no melt (heat "damage").

The best current anti-armor (anti-tank) rounds are either HEAT or some version of sabot rounds.  Both rely on kinetic impact, not heat (the "HEAT" round (High Explosive Anti Tank) doesn't use "heat" to do damage -- it uses the shaped-charge to force a physical/kinetic penetrator into the tank's armor).

Edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_anti-tank_warhead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabot_(firearms)  &  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armour-piercing_discarding_sabot

 

Now this I did not know. I will have to take a look at these links, thanks. My only question here is how is this different than an arc welder that can cut through metal with ease?

16 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

I admit to overthink it...

It started with "Fireball", whichever way I approached it (trying to give Fireball to my Dark Elves) I was always unhappy with the game mechanic one way and another (it was not BRP though, I think I can make it work in BRP now). And then 8D6 of instant pure elemental Fire started to also hurt my physics training and memories on heat diffusion equation....

It is always good to stretch the game to its limits and find your own way of doing things. I still need to play and test the system myself before I see if anything needs changing. What I have found is that psychic powers in the big golden book are rather lacking, so I am trying to flesh them out by either converting other powers or by finding inspiration from games like Earthbound.

16 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Anyway, written on my draft now: Modern Weapon with Advanced Bullet (additional Fire, Cold, Shock, Acid damage, like Borderland, just increase dice 2 step for an average +2 damage and more special damage option), Laser (bypass forcefield), Plasma (space only), Disintegrator (Antarian only), Stun weapon (bypass armor, stop by shield, non lethal damage, i.e.using CoC Critical Wound mechanic, they never cause one).

Anyway you make me think about Blaster again... They do set a nice scifi tone.. and your sounds almost convincing.. plus I got idea for propulsion! How about a gas gun? The magazine contains many sliver which have 2 part, the phosphorous head and a tail of an unstable chemical substance. Which got vaporised by the propulsion mechanic (need an internal battery too), and push the head. It would have shorter range, but still good enough... And it wouldn't be 100 ammo per magazine either (more like 20?).

Your weapon selection is pretty cool. I especially like the different effects and bypasses you worked in. I should try that for my own games. Alternatively, you could make it so lasers explode when hitting forcefields like in Dune, that would keep the players on their toes.

Also, I am glad you liked the blaster idea, and thanks for the idea about the gas population! I was actually thinking about adapting the my setting into a book one day so this idea will really help me a lot. A low clip and shorter range will create a good variety of arms and equipment. It would be easier to use bullet shooting guns with more amo now that I think about it, and bullets would certainly still be the amo of choice for snipers, but I guess that bullets would not have the piercing power of ultra-hot phosphorus. Good stuff to think about.

On 6/6/2020 at 1:15 AM, Lloyd Dupont said:

Another idea I had reading star wars lore (though mine is definitely NOT a star war settings), is the blaster are made of a special reactive gas... so maybe they could fire some tiny bit of solid unstable matter which turn to burning gas on hitting solid obstacle, i.e exploding. But the original propulsion issue remain, it should still be a bullet, ie. with contemporary magazine size and a big bang when fire, wouldn't it?...

I know you said that you were not going the blaster route earlier, but for a warhammer  40k/star wars test game I am running for me and my brother I used blasters and came up with a way for them to work using ultra hot phosphorus pellets fired out of the gun. I am not sure how they are fired, but I think I like the rail gun/bullets idea @g33k suggested.

I also made a "lightsaber" called an arc-blade that works by using a magnetic field to extract plasma from a reserve or generator build into the hilt and wrap it around a blade made of heat resistant metal. It can cut through nearly anything and even block the aforementioned blaster bolts, by virtue of the phosphorus vaporizing upon contact with the plasma. What it can't cut through, however, is another arc-blade, since their magnetic fields repulse each other, allowing for flashy lightsaber dules to occur.

Now I just have to figure out how my arc-blades react to bullets and actual lasers. I did not know that being a game master required so much scientific knowledge.