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First BRP game thoughts


chuckhazard

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So I've run two nights with brp so far, and wveryone seems to be having a good time. There are a few small issues...

* characteristics rolls never improve. One player likes to drink, and I make him roll conx5...x4...etc depending on how much he drinks. His tolerance will never improve. I've solved this by creating a skill Irish (he's Irish) and letting him roll that. I'm curious what other people do.

* similarly, "spot" and "sense motive" as Idea rolls don't ever improve. I haven't made skills for these yet, but I might.

Some likes:

* characteristics multiple rolls. For example, when gambling poker I make a player roll 3 fast talks. Each one bumps his multiplier by one for the gamble roll ( int ). There's a lot of flexibility there.

Just thoughts:

* there's a lot of variance in characters. Some people just rolled poorly for int and edu, and end up having far fewer skillpoints. I think this may even out as experience comes in. I know the player with 240 skill points rolled 9, 7, 3 when it came to raising skills and that made him feel a lot better. To some extent they just have to tough it out though, because I want to maintain a very low power level.

* this IS a CoC game by the way. In the first session they ran up against a pretty low power monster; it got off one critical punch to a player. 2d3+3* and max all rolls for 9 damage out of 13. They are now VERY wary of combat. They know their not in Kansas anymore!

* I've changed str bonus from a dieroll to average die roll. 1d4 is static 3, 1d6 static 4, etc. Does anyone else do something s imilar?

...what you finish.

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characteristics rolls never improve. One player likes to drink, and I make him roll conx5...x4...etc depending on how much he drinks. His tolerance will never improve. I've solved this by creating a skill Irish (he's Irish) and letting him roll that. I'm curious what other people do.

Characteristic rolls DO increase when a person's CON (or other characteristic) increases, they just don't increase from experience. As a GM, however, you could allow a heavy drinker periodic CON checks to increase their CON, or you could handle it as you've done and create a skill - which is probably the better method of the two. I've never run a game where drinking was a major feature, so it's never come up for me before.

similarly, "spot" and "sense motive" as Idea rolls don't ever improve. I haven't made skills for these yet, but I might.

We use skills for these in our game. 'Scan/Search' is used for all sight based rolls, and 'Insight' is used for 'sense motive' (sparingly, since I prefer these things to be roleplayed). We use Idea rolls seldom - the only times I use them are when a Player can't remember a pertinent fact that his character probably could, or when his character might be able to piece two story elements together but the player is drawing a blank.

I've changed str bonus from a dieroll to average die roll. 1d4 is static 3, 1d6 static 4, etc. Does anyone else do something s imilar?

Not me, personally, but a lot of people do. It's a common rules variation and makes good sense.

Your other obversations are bang on! Sounds like you got the hang of it pretty quickly!

Thalaba

"Tell me what you found, not what you lost" Mesopotamian proverb

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So I've run two nights with brp so far, and wveryone seems to be having a good time. There are a few small issues...

* characteristics rolls never improve. One player likes to drink, and I make him roll conx5...x4...etc depending on how much he drinks. His tolerance will never improve. I've solved this by creating a skill Irish (he's Irish) and letting him roll that. I'm curious what other people do.

Characteristics can be improved, see p. 186 in the rulebook. You might want to consider a "bounus" if the character has a high SIZ stat.

* similarly, "spot" and "sense motive" as Idea rolls don't ever improve. I haven't made skills for these yet, but I might.

No need to make a skill for Spot, its there already under Perception. Sense Motive can easily be inserted... I would suggest under Mental, but would fit under Perception too.

* this IS a CoC game by the way. In the first session they ran up against a pretty low power monster; it got off one critical punch to a player. 2d3+3* and max all rolls for 9 damage out of 13. They are now VERY wary of combat. They know their not in Kansas anymore![/QUTOE]

OH OK... is this an actual Cthulhu game or one using the BRP core rules? If a CoC game, spot is already there, inserting Sense Motive should be just as easy.

This has been done by various groups in varying BRP games for ages. It was sort of codified in the unreleased RQ4:AiG.

SDLeary

GAH! Beaten to the punch!

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Gah, I was typing out a response, but Thalaba beat me to it.

Anyway, I'm glad you are all having fun.

One thing I'll add about character generation. I've stopped using random generation because of how much the Stats effect various aspects of the rest of the mechanics. I prefer to allow the player to decide if they want to loose out on Skill points for a higher damage bonus, etc.

When I do use random character generation, I allow the players to place their roles where ever they want. Then I allow them to redistribute up to three Characteristic points.

70/420

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So I've run two nights with brp so far, and wveryone seems to be having a good time. There are a few small issues...

* characteristics rolls never improve. One player likes to drink, and I make him roll conx5...x4...etc depending on how much he drinks. His tolerance will never improve. I've solved this by creating a skill Irish (he's Irish) and letting him roll that. I'm curious what other people do.

AS pointed out, when CON increases, Stamina will increase. As far as tolerance to systemic poisons like alcohol go, I'd look at giving such characters a a "tolerance" score - depending on how you calibrate it this could be the number of standard drinks before they have to start making Stamina rolls; or it could be the amount of POTency the character ignores when matching their CON vs the POTency of the drink (poison) on the resistance table...

* similarly, "spot" and "sense motive" as Idea rolls don't ever improve. I haven't made skills for these yet, but I might.

These are skills in BRP - SPot is under Perception (pg 78) and Sense Motive is largely covered by the Perception skill Insight (page 63 "Your character will use this skill to evaluate another person’s character, emotional state, and motives based on body language, speech patterns, and other intangible factors. Insight allows a gambler to sense a bluff, or a detective to sniff out a lie.")

* characteristics multiple rolls. For example, when gambling poker I make a player roll 3 fast talks. Each one bumps his multiplier by one for the gamble roll ( int ). There's a lot of flexibility there.

Indeed. You'll also find that BRP is more forgiving of tinkering with this flexibility than many RPG's as well.

* there's a lot of variance in characters. Some people just rolled poorly for int and edu, and end up having far fewer skillpoints. I think this may even out as experience comes in. I know the player with 240 skill points rolled 9, 7, 3 when it came to raising skills and that made him feel a lot better. To some extent they just have to tough it out though, because I want to maintain a very low power level.

This can be the hardest thing for players unfamiliar with BRP to cope with - others take it entirely in their stride. If, further down the road, you or your group are really unhappy with the random nature of character generation don;t forget their are other methods you can use.

* this IS a CoC game by the way. In the first session they ran up against a pretty low power monster; it got off one critical punch to a player. 2d3+3* and max all rolls for 9 damage out of 13. They are now VERY wary of combat. They know their not in Kansas anymore!

:D Provided the players take it in the right spirit this can be the most gratifying thing about introducing BRP to new players: combat suddenly has an edge it can all too easily loose in other games.

* I've changed str bonus from a dieroll to average die roll. 1d4 is static 3, 1d6 static 4, etc. Does anyone else do something s imilar?

I don't - flat adds are VERY powerful in BRP, and it eliminates the possibility of glancing blows from larger opponents. But this is an area that many BRP fans tinker with (you'll find several existing threads on this topic).

My personal preference, if I can be bothered, is to use a flattened weapon damage table (that reduces all melee weapons to one or at most two die rolls with NO flat additions) and a DB table that steps up the DB by die type (d2, d3, d4, d5, d6, d8, d10, d12). Usually however I can't be bothered... :o

Cheers,

Nick

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This is straight up CoC. I guess you are talking about spot hidden? We had been reserving spot hidden for spotting things that were actively hidden, as opposed to noticing something non obvious. However I suppose if its not actively hidden, it could be considered to be obvious.

Actually... What I think I'll do is treat it as an easy spot hidden roll. I think it defaults at 25% so that's 50 off the bat to spot something regular.

...what you finish.

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AS pointed out, when CON increases, Stamina will increase. As far as tolerance to systemic poisons like alcohol go, I'd look at giving such characters a a "tolerance" score - depending on how you calibrate it this could be the number of standard drinks before they have to start making Stamina rolls; or it could be the amount of POTency the character ignores when matching their CON vs the POTency of the drink (poison) on the resistance table...

These are skills in BRP - SPot is under Perception (pg 78) and Sense Motive is largely covered by the Perception skill Insight (page 63 "Your character will use this skill to evaluate another person’s character, emotional state, and motives based on body language, speech patterns, and other intangible factors. Insight allows a gambler to sense a bluff, or a detective to sniff out a lie.")

Indeed. You'll also find that BRP is more forgiving of tinkering with this flexibility than many RPG's as well.

This can be the hardest thing for players unfamiliar with BRP to cope with - others take it entirely in their stride. If, further down the road, you or your group are really unhappy with the random nature of character generation don;t forget their are other methods you can use.

:D Provided the players take it in the right spirit this can be the most gratifying thing about introducing BRP to new players: combat suddenly has an edge it can all too easily loose in other games.

I don't - flat adds are VERY powerful in BRP, and it eliminates the possibility of glancing blows from larger opponents. But this is an area that many BRP fans tinker with (you'll find several existing threads on this topic).

My personal preference, if I can be bothered, is to use a flattened weapon damage table (that reduces all melee weapons to one or at most two die rolls with NO flat additions) and a DB table that steps up the DB by die type (d2, d3, d4, d5, d6, d8, d10, d12). Usually however I can't be bothered... :o

Cheers,

Nick

This is an interesting point. I had set the flat DB mostlythinking of the players - roll less dice, and have some gauranteed damage output. I did think it was a little wrong for db to ramp so suddenly from 0 to 3. Taking encounters into consideration, though. The players might get a little banged up. I remember once in dnd we were pushing for a rule that two 20's in a row was a coup de gras until someone pointed out the DM made about 4x as many rolls as the players.

...what you finish.

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This is straight up CoC. I guess you are talking about spot hidden? We had been reserving spot hidden for spotting things that were actively hidden, as opposed to noticing something non obvious. However I suppose if its not actively hidden, it could be considered to be obvious.

Actually... What I think I'll do is treat it as an easy spot hidden roll. I think it defaults at 25% so that's 50 off the bat to spot something regular.

Most groups use Spot to notice things, however one CoC GM I know, used to use an Observation skill with a base of 30%, for noticing things that weren7t necessarily hidden but which players might not recongnize as being signficant. Like noticing that small stature of some creature with an octopoid head that is sitting on the alcove.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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