Shaira

I second that. Stickied list, Triff? It'll also help us to not report things multiple times, etc, plus compile a basic errata list, etc. I've kind of assumed that Zero Editioners are kind of a last-chance bug-catch snagging team anyway!

Yup, Compleat Arduin is not bad as a game, doesn't have too many creaky bits, and "makes sense" of a lot of Arduin stuff. I think they were written (or at least completed) after Dave Hargrave died - I think you'd have to get those first three little books to get the Arduin Vibe proper. Sit there with them in your hands, squinting and trying to work out what the hell they are...

I think on the whole Arduin has still managed to keep its sense of intense amateurish enthusiasm and gung-ho Sauron-is-a-wimp spell & blaster gaming which got it going in the first place. In no sense can it be said to be polished! To some extent the rules have been laid out to make sense, but even then this is no great gaming conglomerate - you still get the sense it's a bunch of fans making it all keep going. The World Book though is still completely out there - clunky, quirky, and full of mad ideas, very much the flavour of the old stuff. On the downside, you do end up with some rough spots. Sometimes the artwork's a bit lame, and some of the ideas don't quite come off, or some of the eagerness becomes a little _too_ earnest, and some of the writing quality truly is very, very limp, with lots of crummy grammar and b-movie styling - but the good ideas and the bloody nature of the Arduin beast still keep shining through. Plus it's nice to find out just where the Mountains of Madness and the Great Grass of Forever actually _are_, although sometimes I wish Dave knew a bit more about geomorphology. >:-> As ever, I use it for inspiration, laughs, plundering for ideas, and, for the world book, hammering in nails. I've never played a "straight" Arduin campaign, but I doubt there's many who do.

I think personally the films - and really the first and second ones - had the most original and interesting backgrounds. Quite some distance into the future (what was it - 3000AD or something?) with humans having regressed to high animal intelligence. Remember "humans" in the first film had lost the power of speech, and were pretty much clothed for film-decency's sake - but you got the message they were basically animals, so herdmen is probably a pretty good comparison. I liked the open-ended feel of the first two movies. It was clear that the world was in a mess - there was no huge empire over the hills anywhere - and that more or less anything was possible. Given the worshippers of the bomb guys underground, who weren't human but all Hideous Mutants, it's certainly possible there are other sentient groups out there. All nicely weird and strange, with the Apes being the most "human" of the groups you could find. For me, the later films degenerated a bit too much into thinly-disguised racial rights allegory and lost some of its universality and became a bit dated. Still fun, but nowhere near as weird and disturbing as the first two films.

Arduin is just great, I have a very soft spot for it's blood-curdling chaotic mayhem. Marvellous. I think Chaosium & Hargrave had quite a bit of truck with one another in the late 70s / early 80s. Lots of Hargrave's stuff turned up in Chaosium's "All The World's Monsters" series, and I remember somewhere (Wyrm's Footnotes?) the main personalities of the Dragon Pass campaign (Harrek, Leika Ballista, Londra, etc) all turning up with Arduin Grimoire game stats, which was fun. As far as Chaosium actually _publishing_ Arduin, I think there were discussions in the early days, before even RuneQuest, but they fell through and Dave ended up going it on his own (which gave us those marvellous little books - still have mine!). I could be wrong on that score though. A new edition of the Arduin system is due out this year - I forget the name, but you can probably find it on the Emperor's Choice website (Emperors Choice Games and Miniatures Corp. - Home) which releases all the Arduin stuff these days. They also produce the incredible Arduin world book, which despite some very creaky cartography and annoyingly bad English, is an amazing piece of RPG stuff as a single hardback something like 800 pages long and heavy enough to fell a Vroat at ten paces! As far as using BRP for Arduin gaming, I think you'd only really have one issue to cope with: character power. Arduin campaigns are - traditionally - hell-raising affairs of 50th level paladins felling acres of blaster-armed demons whilst wading through the 21 planes of Hell, or some such. The rules cope very well with high-level play, with some awesome spells and powers that allow characters to approach superhuman levels. It's a similar issue to Gloranthan hero-level, only with a lot more chrome! But, if you can somehow use the BRP rules to deal with that, then, hell, yeah, you could have a ball. Arduin, Bloody Arduin. I join the thousands in raising a tankard of Rumbletummy's Ale to the shades of your glorious dead! Mad old game.

I've recently been reading W. H. Prescott's "History of the Conquest of Mexico" and "History of the Conquest of Peru", and have been amazed by the depth and drama of the situation. That's a period which is rich for RPG pickings yet which has been (AFAIK) neglected so far. Here's how I would do it: - Timeline 1520s, after which you can veer from the "historical" timeline if you wish. - The Inca and Aztec Empires are still at full power. - The Spanish have just arrived in the New World, and are beginning to realised what they've discovered. - Then I'd "supernatural it up" with magic and monsters, with 16th century Christianity, alchemy, demonology, etc, on one side, and Aztec / Inca deities and weird sorcerous powers, plus groovy mythological monsters on the other. There is heaps of background to be researched, with alternative weapons, armours, beasties, not to mention myths, social structures, religions, and so on. Prescott gives exhaustive descriptions which can be pillaged, Campbell et al provide the religious back up, and then you've got lots of hardware in the form of ships, trading rules, political intrigue, inquistion, lost cities, weird cults, all sorts. Could be a cool setting. Would need some very thorough research to pull off a sourcebook though.

Happy New Year to everyone! Ringworld's skill system was BRP with a few smallish differences. There were no "criticals"; the highest skill roll result was the Special , at 20% of skill score. Because of longevity, skills above 100% were quite common. Skill improvement was broadly BRP, although you were also able to train using the "Simweb", basically a VR environment which gave you skill checks. There was also a research system. There was also a Root/Branch system for some skills, where a parent Athletics skill includes Swim, Climb, Soccer, etc: your Root skill score was capped by your characteristics (in the case of Athletics, an Agility Skill, this was STR + DEX), which meant you only had to choose to specialise (ie take Branch skills) once you'd reached that cap with the Root skill. Worked well in practice. The Combat round was different, with an "Impulse" system replacing RQ strike ranks, which was a bit tricky to get hold of but again worked okay. It allowed you to get into position with your rifle and then just keep plugging away with loads of bullets, which was nice. It was a very elegant system, IMHO: short and sweet. The reason why I don't think it took off is because it catered for charging around on the Ringworld with guns, but little else. There were no starship rules, no space travel or space combat rules, no item construction rules. I still think it was a milestone in game design though - from the POV of lovingly crafted background material, minimal but elegant rules, and a physically very attractive boxed set with some stunning artwork. Shame it's never been able to resurface. Hope that helps!

Regarding Traits, I've generally been better disposed to the HQ view of them than the Pendragon one. Pendragon Traits are, for me, too much of a "system"; whilst it's a very elegant one, it occupies a very central role in the game, which is appropriate for a game like Pendragon. But, personally speaking, I think it's too heavy duty for less "emotionally structured" games. The HQ "system", on the other hand, is so lightweight as to hardly be a system at all - you basically think of one or more personality traits you want your character to have (it could be a straightforward "Brave", or something as specific as "Hate All Trolls"), and give it a score. Then, in circumstances where it's appropriate, you use it as a direct ability, or use it to get a bonus to another skill (it'd be reasonable to up your attack roll against trolls if you have "Hate All Trolls" (nothing personal Triff )). Anyway, I'd be inclined to go with the very lightweight version - so, to answer your question, it's not integral at all, it's something you can use as much or as little as you like, if at all. You could even say your Orlanthi all have "Hate Lunars" at 50%, which gives them a +5% in attacks on Lunars, and be done with it. Happy New Year all! Sarah

Influences? Now that IS tricky - it's a pretty wide field! I'd say the things that primed me for getting into RPGs in the first place (I was 12 when I started) were, in no particular order: - Lord of the Rings - The Narnia books - The King Arthur stories - "A Wizard of Earthsea", Ursula Le Guin - Beowulf (the Rosemary Sutcliffe version) - Star Wars - Star Trek - The Time Machine - Marvel Comics (esp Hulk, Fantastic Four) - Doctor Who - Enid Blyton (I know - incredible to cite, but I'm sure her "Adventure" series gave me a yen to go charging off into the blue in search of danger and adventure, and her "Enchanted Wood / Faraway Tree" books gave me a liking for elves, fairies, and Things That Live At The Bottom Of The Garden!) Since starting RPGs, my influences have been (and this works two ways - my reading & movie-going influences my RPGs, and vice versa): - Tolkien in general - Conan - Moorcock - Cthulhu - HG Wells - Joseph Campbell - Dune - Gene Wolfe - Larry Niven - Blade Runner (the movie) - history of ancient world, roman empire, mediaeval europe, Japan - more Star Trek - readings around religion, occult, etc - interest in astrophysics - interest in languages That's all kind of weird when you try to write it down :happy:. I would definitely say though that RPGs themselves - and the inquisitive approach to world culture that they inspire - have been a very large influence in themselves in my life. Those funny little dice have a lot to answer for!

Hi Sverre - hope you had a good Christmas! I'm waiting for the BRP rules to arrive at the moment, and looking forwards to seeing what's written about opposed skill rolls and 100%+ skill scores before attempting to write anything up, but my (unrefined) thoughts on Masteries in BRP are roughly: i.) Ignore a direct 1-for-1 skill point conversion between HQ and BRP. ii.) Following (i), arbitrarily decide that anything over 100% is a "Mastery", over 200% "Two Masteries", and so on. iii.) If you have, say, 150% in a skill, use the HQ mechanic and read this as 50% with 1 Mastery, ie calculate all your specials, fumbles, etc, from a base score of 50%, not 150%, and use that 1 Mastery to "bump up" the success level of your roll. IE, you roll 55%, your failure is "bumped up" to a success; you roll a 01%, your critical (impale, whatever) can't be bumped up any further, so you "bump down" your opponent's opposed roll. iv.) Loosen up the skill definitions a little, and allow Personality Traits a la HQ too. If a player can argue a certain skill / trait / spell use, permit it. v.) Allow Augments equal to 10% of the Augmenting skill. In this, I would also allow Traits to be used to augment; a Bravery 60% could give a base +6% to your attack chance. So that's the bare bones. Clearly there are other things to look at - the multiple attack rules, opposed skill rules, Mastery use in unopposed rolls, variable augments, runic associations, spell definitions and spell scaling, etc. But possibly there may be something quite usable in there for high level characters. My first task though is to read the rules as written - it's possible they may work fine out of the box, or as near as, plus the Superpower rules may lead me in a different direction! Happy New Year to all! Sarah

Darn... where to start? First, check out the 100%+ skill rules. Then, the Occupations / Professions templates. Then, the magic systems, followed quickly by psychic powers and mutations. Then, read and weigh up the major wound vs hit location rules to decide which to use - currently leaning towards the latter. Oh, and then, pick up the cardboard packaging from the pavement, close the postbox, and go back indoors

Hi all, Just got an email myself saying that the order had shipped - looks like things are moving! Sarah

Bummer. So it's very likely my copy hasn't actually shipped yet... I'm in France too - this could take a while... :ohwell:

Did you guys get an email acknowledgement that your copy had shipped or anything? Mine's still saying "Pending Shipping" on the Chaosium order page and I haven't heard anything from them since the 14th (I ordered on the 13th, 2 weeks ago). :confused:

Agreed on the skill resolution method - the Mastery concept of bumps up and down is something I'm going to experiment with in BRP to see if it's a go-er. Probably not as a central mechanic, but as one of the arsenal of effects (along with multiple attacks and parries, increased critical chances, etc). I'll take a peek at Jrustela - I didn't know they had a load more HeroQuesting stuff in there. Well, it's sort of a "Joseph Campbell RPG", I guess. I'd always thought of Ancient / Mythical Greece and the Kalevala / Eddas and Arthurian Mythos to be all ideal genres for HeroQuesting too. My point is not so much that HeroQuesting produces powerful characters, but that the HeroQuest rules are excellent at expressing powerful characters. Indeed, "transcendent" characters, those on the verge of mixing with deities & demigods in the Mythic Greek sense - individuals who have somehow become "more than human". That's the sort of concept I'd like to be able to express in the BRP rules. I think the "bolt-on" approach of MRQ's Legendary Abilities is very D&D clunky, but there may be a kernel of a good idea there. Overall I'd prefer something more integral to the rules - which is what HQ does well. Yes and no. Certainly "power" is expressed in terms of the setting, in social / political / temporal terms. But the rules also clearly need to be able to keep pace. This is a key point - and is probably a matter of personal preference. I've always been keen on games where "the PCs" start off with reasonably modest abilities (positively primitive in some cases :-)), and then gradually work their way up to positions of competence and power, positions which are by necessity heavily tailored to their life stories. For me, that's part of the fun - seeing the characters grow, the continuity of a campaign. I did find that RQ sort of petered out into "more of the same" rules-wise after you got to reasonably high level (Rune Lord Priest). I do that all the time :happy: It's quite a rarified topic; possibly the new rules with their "levels of power" differentiation may help pin this down a bit!

I own heaps of MERP supplements, and generally thought they were great, if a bit "un-Tolkieny" and overly real-world derived from time to time. Maps were super. As far as the rules were concerned, they were fine in their own way - but I guess were just too un-Middle Earth for me to get into for Tolkien roleplaying, and for FRP I already had RQ going strong. I remember some amazing critical and fumble charts, though...

Princess of Mars et al are classics, particularly the first three books (including Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars). I join Carl Sagan in doubtless being one of the many thousands who spent their early teens gazing arms outstretched at Mars and wishing to be taken up to Barsoom...! (I guess in my case strictly speaking that would entail a life of getting kidnapped by evil scientists and slobbering monsters and wearing a chainmail bikini (if that...), but I suppose at that age you don't think about it over much... ). Although ERB's plots in both the Mars and Venus books tend to be basically the same (Princess or close family member gets kidnapped, hero has to go and save them from BEM), I still find them marvellously evocative and rollicking great fun. There's been talk of a movie for absolutely yonks - there are even some scene rough sketches from a projected 70's film that never materialised somewhere out there on the web. Plus I believe there are renewed discussions for a John Carter movie in the next few years - though I wouldn't hold my breath ;-)

Actually, most SF RPGs manage to map 3d space quite successfully on to a 2d piece of paper - basically the conventional X and Y axes lie on the paper vertical and horizontal axes, and the Z axis is marked as a number next to the stellar body in question. Straightforward pythag allows you to calculate the distance between 2 bodies. Space Opera, Ringworld, 2300AD and Alternity all use variants on this system perfectly well. My beef with the Traveller system is that it claims space is ACTUALLY 2d! Flat, completely. There is no Z-axis, and no attempt to provide one. You can navigate forward, backward, left, and right from a star system - but not up or down. It's the single most unrealistic thing about the whole game, and is a crying shame IMHO. It requires a massive amount of suspension of disbelief, especially when all the other tech stuff is pretty hard SF. Basically, space in Traveller is a 2 dimensional disc, with four dimensions - effectively N, S, E, W. There is no attempt at all to cater for above or below that single 2d plane. I believe this dates from an abstraction used in the early GDW boardgames which more or less preceded Traveller (Imperium springs to mind - I can't remember what it's very first incarnation was called), when simple tabletop gameplay was the goal. Unfortunately the whole Jump Number system is pretty tied in to space remaining 2d, so it's more difficult to fix than you might think (believe me, I've tried...).

The APC looks great - very nice indeed! I have a few queries. Firstly, HP of the APC - why so low? Even at 1/2 SIZ it should have 35, not 25, as far as I can see. 25 feels a bit low, somehow. Second - the "Crew" hit location. Do you mean by this "Crew Quarters", or some such, and that a hit here will do damage to the APC's overall HP as well as the Crew themselves? Perhaps that each Crew Member gets to make a Luck Roll to avoid taking damage? Or do you mean that the attack does no actual damage to the APC, but just to (one or more?) members of the crew? I can see cases for both, but I wonder if that would be the same for a pressurised vehicle operating in a vacuum, ie would it be possible to injure the crew without damaging the vehicle? Thirdly, the "Facing Armour". Great concept! Can I play devil's advocate? Imagine you're shooting at a James Bond's Aston Martin with the rear window bullet guard raised. Your "Crew" hit has different armour depending on your facing, but it is different from the "Overall" facing armour - ie a Front Crew hit would be Windshield (ie no Armour) whereas a Front Engine hit would be Hood (ie maybe light armour). I realise I might be pulling holes in this just for devilment, though - this feels in general like a really good system, and GM fiat can probably cover any anomalies. All in all, looks very neat, BRP-elegant, and workable!

I'm fairly familiar with the various pre-Hero Wars heroquesting rulessets out there, and there are some interesting ideas in them, although the "super-RuneQuest" approach can get a bit munchkiny. I think the "Mastery" system of the current HeroQuest is a very good mechanism, and could well be applicable to BRP quite easily. I also think the "Runic Affinity" thing works brilliantly for Glorantha, and could easily be BRP'ed, as could other neat HQ mechanics such as Augments and the more "improvised" magic, skill, and trait system. I'm not sure what I'm groping at here - the above HQ-derived stuff is clearly very tied to the nature of Gloranthan "reality", and, for example, would not work as smoothly in the Young Kingdoms - although you might be able to transfer the Mastery and Augment rules. Spiritual development being tied to one's "connection" to runes seems perhaps too Gloranthan to derive anything "universal" from, however, although I could be wrong. Hmm... I'm going to lie down in a darkened room and think about this for a bit. If anyone does know what the new BRP rules say about POW gain and above 100% skills (and heroic characters), it'd be very cool to know.

I think we're actually touching on a topic with RQ in particular and by extension with certain BRP genres in general (particularly fantasy / heroic ones) which I don't think has yet been satisfactorily dealt with in rules terms by any game other than Heroquest, which is a shame, as the pure mechanics of BRP are certainly capable of it. The issue, without putting too fine a point on it, is "transcendence" - how do you model a human being (or whatever) passing from the human into the superhuman / transhuman state. RQ when you got to Rune Lords and Rune Priests (and Rune Lord-Priests) just began to model superhuman levels of power, but unfortunately (for me, anyway) sort of "froze" at that point, and there were never any clear guidelines of where to go next. Heroquest was always touted as the "next step" in character progression, but when it finally turned up had moved out of the BRP sphere entirely - and into a space with is far less "crunchy" (I prefer crunch). That's why I'm hopeful that BRP with its apparent "levels of power" definition for characters might start to touch upon what we can do with higher power characters, hopefully differentiated by genre - a Gloranthan high-power character is going to be significantly different from, say a Ringworld or CoC high-power character - and we should be able to model that in the rules. There's probably a good case to be made for a "Epic Level" sourcebook for BRP at some point. (Sorry to use the "E" word, but you get my meaning - maybe we call it "Hero Level" :innocent:) BTW, one thing to remember in discussions of "flattening out" is that BRP has never been about some nebulous "game balance" that seems to afflict A Certain Other Game, nor IMHO should it be - issues like that are the domain of the GM. BRP in its various manifestations (RQ, SB, and CoC spring immediately to mind) has been able to create some very "unbalanced" characters, and I personally think that's okay. *switch to Bernard Hill voice* : "death! Death! DEEEEEEAAAAATH!!!!" :happy:

I think this sounds cool. BTW - I'm getting a bit confused with the use of "Impale" and "Critical", probably because Stormbringer uses them one way round and RQ3 does them the other - lord knows what BRP will do! I'll refer to the 20% of skill score or under as "Special Success" and 5% of skill score or under as "Critical Success" - the old RQ3 jargon, I think. At least then I know what I'm talking about ;-) I was looking at Ringworld again. They don't have Criticals, just Specials, and no Special Attack automatically penetrates armour. However, the following Special Attacks exist: - Unarmed Special: Either choose Hit Location, or do Double Damage - Archaic Melee Weapon Special: Does double damage - Archaic Ranged Weapon Special: Either choose Hit Location, or do Double Damage - Handgun, Projectile Special: Choose Hit Location - Handgun, Energy Special: Do Maximum Damage, or choose Hit Location - Heavy Weapon, Projectile Special: Choose Hit Location - Heavy Weapon, Energy Special: Do Maximum Damage, or choose Hit Location - Ship-mounted Weapons System Special: Choose Hit Location So, a bit clunky, but essentially working to even out some anomalies (ie in Ringworld it's impossible for a pistol to shoot through a tank). Ringworld did a certain amount of damage reduction with range, depending on weapon, which effectively results in reduced penetration. For example, the "Pneumorifle", effectively a high-powered airgun which does 2D6 damage per bullet, suffers a -3 to rolled damage for each 100m after the first 300m. Again, it's a bit clunky, but does allow you to manage penetration drop-off on a per weapon basis, which is useful. Absolutely! Definitely looking forwards to seeing these rules - especially if you can scale up to Starships too >:-> As per the Ringworld stuff above, it's nice to have the fine-tuning of a "Special Success" without the unreality of armour-avoidance. Just up the AP of a vehicle so you can't saw it in half with a pocket knife This is good. You could also reduce the effective armour for an AP round for a similar effect. I think this is crucial. Cribbing shamelessly from Ringworld again, they had a Hit Location chart for each vehicle in the same way they had for creatures, exact same format with D20 roll, AP/HP. Also, some of the locations get an asterisk: this means if you hit them, "make luck rolls to see if the crew is hit" - if you're hit, you take the available damage to on of your hit locations. Needless to say, this could wipe out a party very neatly in some cases... Yowza! That's gonna hurt... I think you'd have to define this as a "High Explosive" type ammo, that sort of thing, though - it does sound very lethal! I'm a bit less enthusiastic about this, to be honest. I think you need to keep the Hit Points so you maintain the overall BRP paradigm and modularity - and minimise any learning curve. Regarding the penalties you mention, perhaps you could tie those into how many HP are lost in a given Hit Location - sort of equivalent to the old "Functionally Incapacitated" rules for going to negative HP in a leg, etc. Just my two-penn'orth!

Ah. I see your point - that is annoying. Clearly as you say some sort of penetration rule is in order, not directly linked to damage done. Do you know what the new rules say, out of interest? Anything? I had a quick look at the Ringworld rules to see what they did, and they take a very drastic tack: no attacks, not even special / criticals, bypass any armour. Some do double damage, but it depends on the weapon type (archaic, personal energy weapon, heavy energy weapon, etc). Whilst that solves the problem in the Ringworld era, I doubt even that would model the real-world example you give above. And I guess that's the issue: how close to real-world modelling do you want to get? If you want something that's extremely accurate, I think you may have to go down the "penetration rating" route - I very much doubt there's any close analogue between the BRP rules and real-world penetration and armour resistances. Things can get pretty complicated very quickly doing that of course, which may dampen some of BRP's innate elegance. I guess it's the old playability vs realism conflict. Perhaps you could achieve a quick and dirty win by simply saying that "personal weapons" do not ignore "vehicular armour" on a critical? You could even define "personal weapons" as "melee weapons and firearms with less than .50 caliber, or some such. It gets ugly quick, though... I think I'd personally go for playability over realism, and chuck in some GM fiat at moments of creaky "unrealistic" moments.

Ah! My stinginess can NEVER be satisfied! Nya-ha-ha-haaaaaah! (etc) Thanks for trying though Yes - what is the new BRP take on POW gain rolls?

I haven't got my rulesbooks handy, so I may be mixing up some RQ2 with RQ3 here, but in general my players have always disliked the skill caps imposed by becoming a Rune Priest first. Also - isn't there some time requirement for belonging to a cult before you can get a shot at the priesthood? A year or something? Or is that just me - could well be a houserule. In any case, my players have tended to want to go for the path Initiate - Rune Lord - Rune Priest, that way keeping their skills cap free. And it takes a LOT longer to get there, what with all the skill requirements (I've always kept the 90%+ requirement). Regarding my own Chronicles of Future Earth campaign, permanent POW gets used a LOT in the binding of Demons and Holy Powers into objects and holy symbols, so there's a constant trickle-out of permanent POW there too, which more or less matches the RQ Divine Magic use. So, personally, I'm with Simon - I've got no problem with the BRP POW gain system as it stands (haven't seen whether the new rules do the same - assuming yes). If the progression Initiate - Priest is too fast, impose some time restrictions. Indeed, I've always liked to start characters as Lay Members (a hangover from RQ2, I know), which slows things down even more. Plus, initiates SHOULD have plenty of 1-use magic, and Priests SHOULD have plenty of Rune Spells (sorry - Divine Spells) - it's what they're good at! However, if it's too fast in the mechanics, like I say - impose some time restrictions. I seem to remember one character actually going wayyy beyond the minimum req for priest (or rune lord - can't quite remember) because he had to wait until the next high holy day or some such. :thumb: Cheers, Sarah