fmitchell

I'd be more tempted to turn it around: the PCs are humans battling soulless vampires, and they are the ones turning into sociopaths, at least as far as the cops and society at large is concerned. (Perhaps there's no objective evidence to tell a vampire corpse from a human corpse, so anyone who didn't see the creature "alive" would think its killers were delusional.) Your references take that tack, as far as I can tell. Or, if you must have vampire PCs, make them no stronger/faster/more magical than normals ... and then send a squad of Slayers after them.

And let's not forget WotC's "One System To Rule Them All" attempt, which backfired in a couple of ways: The glut of d20/OGL material resulted in a bubble and a bust, causing some companies to retrench and others to go under entirely. (Except WotC.) The PDF market allowed many companies to sell their products without printing overhead, but that means less visibility in mainstream outlets (unlike WotC), and the dreaded paradox of choice. More seriously (to WotC's mind), other companies dared to put out competing derived works like True20 just because the license allowed them to. That's why D&D 4e's license will be more restrictive than OGL.

On the other hand, I don't agree. I think indie games will drive to simpler systems, something one can learn in 15 minutes. However, one of the points of indie systems is to push the boundaries of gaming, which almost requires creating systems from the ground up. Complexity arises when you have some sort of detailed system of modifiers, or a complex combat system ... but most indie games shy away from those. A shared language of systems might help. Let's face it, every game has some set attributes/characteristics/skills/abilities/etc with a numerical value. In most conflicts you roll dice to get a number to compare to a difficulty factor or target number (which might also be randomly determined); an applicable a/c/s/a/e, and other factors determine the number of dice, the target number, and/or the total value of the dice roll. Comparing the dice result to the target number determines the success or failure of each party. The fact that there's no consistent terminology for anything I described in this paragraph makes it harder to explain a second RPG to someone who's already learned their first.

From what I understand, psionics would fit better into the setting. On the other hand, I can't imagine how much more of a walking cuisinart a Thri-Kreen would be in BRP, unless someone toned it down (e.g. eliminated its extra attacks due to having four arms).

But he spoiled the symmetry ...

Short answer: since it's trying to be multigenre, it doesn't cover any one genre particularly well. Fantasy and Modern get most of the attention. Not sure what "decent" means. There's some futuristic weapons, a couple of rules for robots and AIs, and a few vague line-items under "Vehicles" for spaceships. If you want detail or variety, you'll have to convert from Traveller (or GURPS UltraTech, or whatever). Depends on the campaign, but it's not hard to add a skill. In this edition, a lot of similar skills have been summarized into "template" or "meta-" skills, like Knowledge (X), Pilot (X), Repair (X), Technical Skill (X), etc. No. A few token aliens: Grays, Xenomorphs (think Alien and sequels), and Blobs, plus robots. You could always repurpose some fantasy creatures as aliens, or invent/convert your own ... it's not that hard. Some misplaced page references, minor inconsistencies, missing footnotes, and the like. Hope this helps, Frank P.S. In general, Science Fiction RPGs are complicated, since there's so many different imagined futures, from old-school space opera to transhumanist revolutions. To cover all possible future technologies you'd need an entire book, if not two or three. If you like a particular subgenre, it probably wouldn't be too hard to convert existing material to BRP, based on examples in the book. There's an entire chapter on campaign genres, although science-fiction gets maybe two pages there (near-future, cyberpunk, space travel, space opera).

Once I had a similar idea: dwarfs were really short humans who wouldn't live in caves or wear armor if not for bigoted Big Folk, elves were clannish forest dwellers whose extreme physical similarity and odd naming conventions made outsiders think individuals were immortal, and orcs were seemingly peaceful village dwellers who on moonless nights donned grotesque masks and did depraved things. One thing I like about Glorantha is that the nonhumans are truly nonhuman: elves are plants, Mostali think like robots, and trolls have their own strange culture ... not to mention morokanths, dragonewts, etc.

Currently held by Evil Hat. Sorry.

My programming job is actually pretty busy ... but there's always compile & deploy time, and sometimes I just can't stare at log files and code anymore.

I've been toying with the idea of Hollow Worlds a/o Dyson Spheres for a while. The idea of a steampunkish/low-tech version grew out of a) my disdain for single-city worlds, the old Flash Gordon serials with a "rocket" that goes to other worlds, and c) pictures of a steampunk Star Wars with Prussian Stormtroopers and biplane X-wings/TIE fighters. The basic set-up is that each "world" resides on a disk (dish?) with high walls; each world has its own climate due to cloud cover, albedo, atmosphere, etc. (The dim sun is always overhead, and each disk is always perpendicular to incoming sunlight, so disks generally don't have seasons or even days. Yeah, I'm still working that out.) Sufficiently advanced natives have discovered rocketry to get them over the walls. (Maybe a thin atmosphere exists above the disks, so lighter-than-air craft with their own oxygen and heat can cross over too.) The most advanced nations have empires ... which leads to abuse of the natives, military conquest, and all that other nastiness. Some are less nasty than others, and perhaps one is worse than the rest ... You could actually get a number of campaigns out of this: First Contact: The rockets of the Empire land in your medieval world. What do you do? Soldiers of the Empire: Your mission is to seek out new worlds and new civilizations ... and exploit them for the good of the Empire. Clash of Empires: You, a member of the Good Empire, more a Commonwealth really, fight the Evil Empire. You know you're good because you want to enlighten the natives and bring them to Civilization, while the Evil Empire wants to teach the poor natives their heathen ways. Rebels: Either there's only one Empire or a bunch of equally Empires; you are the brave Resistance, trying to free yourselves and all enslaved peoples. (Naturally, some peoples are more primitive, so you, the Civilized ones, will have to enlighten them and bring them Civilization, but it's all part of your Five Year Plan.)

I honestly don't know how to answer this poll, since I'm trying to decide among several possibilities: low-magic "low fantasy" a la Howard and Leiber, "hard science fiction" where interstellar travel still obeys the speed of light, "planetary romance" (after Jason Durall's thread), steampunkish "space opera" inside a Dyson sphere instead of through star systems (so rockets and even zepplins can go between worlds) ... argh. My head a'splode. A few constant principles are, though, that 1) Magic, if it exists, is mysterious and not an alternate technology, 2) Nonhumans are seriously non-human, 2a) NO ELVES! (of the Tolkien/D&D variety, anyway), 3) 3 * 10^8 m/s isn't only a good idea, it's the law. Maybe I'm just sick of point-and-chant magic, funny-looking stereotyped humans, and one-city planets.

Maybe not the best example. The Blair Witch Project wasn't scary to me because the plot was nonexistent and the sound wasn't clear. (Although I did see it in a theater full of chattering teenagers.) The only reason it was scary to initial audiences was that they thought it was an actual documentary until the actors came forward after the premiere.

Uh, none of those are dead and gone. Trust me. You're just not moving in the right circles. The Windows PC is alive and BSODing (for the forseeable future), dungeon crawls are the bread and butter of Goodman Games, and flame wars are as immortal as political doubletalk, human greed, and COBOL.

Actually I did too. This "Jeanette" was active on Pen and Paper Games until we banned her there.

Right. I just thought that was one of the options, especially considering HeroQuest adopts it. (The Mastery mechanic compensates somewhat, but it's still counterintuitive.) Hence the Big-Endian vs. Little-Endian reference: if probabilities work out the same, I say choose the one that requires less thought. Yes, it's only one measly subtraction, and even those of us who are slow at arithmetic can manage it ... but it's one more mental step at the gaming table, when there are more important things to use brainpower on.

Wait, so the only argument is between "highest without going over" and "greatest difference in the same success level"? "Absolute lowest in the same level" was never a consideration? Can we argue about something more relevant, like whether we crack open our morning eggs from the big end vs. the little end? (BTW, I like my eggs scrambled.)

First imagine a character with a 90% skill vs. a character with 30% skill. Basic probabilities are as follows, ignoring criticals and fumbles: Ninety wins, Thirty loses => 0.90 * 0.70 = 0.63 or 63% Ninety loses, Thirty wins => 0.10 * 0.30 = 0.03 or 03% Ninety loses, Thirty loses => 0.10 * 0.70 = 0.06 or 07% Ninety wins, Thirty wins => 0.90 * 0.30 = 0.27 or 27% So the question is really about the last case, which is either second-most probable or most probable (e.g. if both characters's skills are above 50%) BTW, "Roll high but not over" is mathematically equivalent to "Roll under for the largest difference", and requires one less subtraction. I'll crunch some numbers for percentiles, but in the meantime take a look at my HeroQuest probability table. HeroQuest uses opposed d20 rules, with 1 a Critical and 20 a Fumble; if both characters succeed or fail, the one with the lower absolute roll loses. The "Marginal Victory" and "Marginal Defeat" columns represent the last case; the 18 vs. 6 row is roughly equivalent to 90% vs. 30%.

Leaving aside the stuff I played yonks and yonks ago, I've played Midnight (d20), a homebrew BRP derivative, Truth & Justice (one-shot), Call of Cthulhu (one-shot), and (currently) Spirit of the Century. I haven't GMed in a while, except for a one-shot using PDQ, but I'd like to run some unspecified game based on BRP, FATE 3.0, or GURPS 4e. Mythic Russia sounds tempting; so does Tales of the Caliphate Nights, although maybe I'd transpose it to FATE or BRP. Stuff I'd like to play or GM once, just to say I've done it: Savage Worlds, new World of Darkness, True20, Primetime Adventures, Burning Wheel, Zorceror of Zo, and a bunch of indie games.

No, I'm pretty sure Tolkien's elves were from Nordic/Saxon or Celtic lore. He based one of the Elvish languages on Finnish, and some story elements of LotR came from the Kalevala. The concept of elves, though, was firmly rooted in the British Isles, and the various conquerors thereof.

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of the Tolkien "races", and so if I ever run a game again I'd either cut them out entirely or do something interesting with them. Here are examples of what I call "interesting": Elves are, in fact, a race of secretive, very physically similar humans, whose unusual naming traditions lead outsiders into thinking they're immortal. Or perhaps they're otherwise ordinary humans who live in zones of high magic and extremely variable time, leading to the stories about Elfland. DwarFs are merely a variant of real-world dwarfism that breeds true, and has few or no innate health risks. For fun, I'd have a Dwarf born to random "tall folk" once every so often; ignorant peasants would call their child a changeling and demand their "real" child from the nearest dwarf settlement. Dwarfs often run orphanages of "big folk" kids for exactly that purpose. Elves physically resemble Tolkien's version, but not mentally. They hate humans and want to enslave them, they're more into metalworking than woodcraft, they're psychic sociopaths (c.f. Pratchett's Lords and Ladies), and/or their good looks hide their stupidity. Following a depiction in Questers of the Middle Realms, Dwarfs are really animated metal or earth, made by other dwarfs, all the way back to a mythical First Maker. While not as hive-like as Mostali, they have a hard time relating to "organic" beings. Similarly, "Elves" are really Aldryami or a variation thereof. Dwarfs are close to Norse "dvergar", extremely powerful magical beings who appear as small, ugly, misshapen humanoids. Meddle not in the affairs of Dwarfs, for they are subtle and swift to anger. Elves are spirit beings who take on corporeal form occasionally. Perhaps their SIZ correlates to their POW ... minor elves are flying pixies, while High Elves are taller than men, perhaps giants. And there's no reason they have to appear human, or even close to human, when they manifest. There are no distinct "elves" and "dwarfs", only a diminutive but magically gifted species with pointy ears that dwells in wild places and really just wants to be left alone. "Move one place": goblins/orcs/trolls are builders and craftsmen, dwarfs are guardians of nature, and elves are the beautiful but deadly scourge of mankind. In particular, I'm really enamored of making "dwarfs" the powerful, good, perfect ones, and "elves" kind of an afterthought, in an inversion of Tolkien. Why not raid other mythologies? Djinn and Peri, shapeshifters, talking animals, whatever ...

That's why I have the slogan "man is the most dangerous animal". I prefer adventures where the goal is to stop evil cults, corrupt elites, or some mysterious uncanny thing; slaying a whole bunch of beasts doesn't interest me, and in the BRP system it's likely to get you killed for no good reason. So, if I truly need a "monster", I'd rather design a one-off suited to the adventure or campaign. Otherwise, I'll draw my enemies from opposing organizations, nations, and cultures. (Last year, I played in a d20 Midnight campaign where 90% or our enemies were orcs, goblins, and evil humans ... but each had enough personality, and importance to our actual goals, that we players never felt bored. Except during combat, but that's d20 for you.) Even in a science fiction game, I'd rather decree that humans brought Earth creatures with them rather than start cranking out alien beasts (although having generic Grazer/Chaser/whatever templates would be appreciated). I'm even parsimonious with sapient alien species, since most "aliens" in fiction could just as easily be genetically engineered humans with a cultural quirk.

I'll grant that trying to "balance" encounters exactly is a pipe dream. However ... The point of this hypothetical book is not to hand the GM a pre-made ecology, but to present ecological niches and let the GM fill them as he sees fit. So, for example, if the GM creates a carnivorous species, he doesn't forget to create enough prey of whatever species to sustain the carnivorous population. If the GM wants to create one-off monsters, or magically summoned species, or a species with a bizarre or unbalanced ecology, he's also free to do so. In that case, a discussion about monsters in literature might provide some useful guidance to make sure the creature thematically fits with the GM's intent. Finally, notes on playing creatures would also help. Natural animals (and sapients!) would run away from a superior aggressor, not attack mindlessly. Semi-intelligent or intelligent creatures would use strategy and their innate abilities instead of a full-on assault. I'm sure someone who did the research could find behavior patterns in nature to supplement common sense, for the GM who wanted realistic animal behavior.

What I would like to see is not a "monster book" but a "monster construction book". More than just a "one from column A, two from column B" approach, it would analyze how creatures fit into an ecology, or unique monsters fit into a narrative. It would then give tips on how to balance a creature against the the PCs. From what I hear A Magical Society: Beast Builder takes this approach for d20, but in the BRP we have to guess how characteristics and special attacks affect the deadliness of a creature. Such a book could have wide applicability. Fantasy GMs could create whole new encounters to surprise their players. Science fiction GMs could create plausible alien flora and fauna. Horror GMs could move beyond standard Cthulhoid monstrosities to create their own terrors. Then again, in games as in real life, I believe the deadliest creature is man, so I think a GM can do pretty well by pitting human(oid) societies, kingdoms, and organizations against the PCs.

First, I'd like to thank Jason for answering questions. Now on to mine: - You mentioned EDU as an optional characteristic. Are there any other optional characteristics or attributes in the book? Are there any guidelines for adding new characteristics, or perhaps taking them away a la Pendragon? - A friend of mine who GM'ed Beyond the Mountains of Madness reported that, as the campaign wore on, all the characters had developed really high Listen and Spot Hidden skills. Assuming he wasn't handing out improvement rolls like candy, does the BRP book include a way to slow or cap the progression of skills? Has that even proved necessary in long-term play-testing? Sorry if these questions are a little off the wall, but I'm a compulsive game tinkerer, and everyone else asked the good ones. Thanks in advance.

The last bullet point was porting the Truth & Justice method of handling powers to BRP. That is, rate powers on their narrative effect, rather than their practical effect. Tossing around buildings is easy; hurting another super is hard. (The tricky bit is interfacing normals and supers. I haven't really worked that out.) Since T&J, I think, does the best job of handling wildly different power levels of any superhero game I've seen, that might be the way to go.