Show us your homemade BRP settings

[albesias]

While waiting for my brand new BRP leatherette edition I would like to talk about a couple of settings for my table. No boring business stuff here. Just DIY fun.

Makondo is a post-apocalyptic setting in the Latin America that never was. It mixes elements from science fiction, cyberpunk and magical realism. New Tanelorn is a failed city project dropped somewhere in Brazil. Jungle has regained some of the land lost since the collapse of the city. The characters will face neon beasts, ancestral cults and emancipated AIs in frenetic, action-packed adventures.

Kybernetike is a setting located in the Tanaraiko archipelago. It´s a mythical place influenced by recent readings like Robert Graves' Golden Fleece, Nancy Peña and Blandine Le Callet's Medea, or Joseph Campbell's Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine with a twisted vision of situationist psychogeography.

So, what settings are you preparing for your BRP games

[Stan Shinn]

A Hyperborea setting (essentially Conan / King Kull).

A Star Trek setting in the original series era.

[KPhan2121]

I have an unnamed Victorian fantasy setting that is trudging along in the a 50 year aftermath of a failed demon invasion which nearly destroyed the world. The players are part of a several independent groups that hunt down the surviving demons and their cultist worshipers who are bidding their time and looking for ways to weaken and subvert the forces that defeated the demons before.

I have this super powered Sci-fi setting called "The Golden Path", which is a schizo-mishmash of all of the sci-fi properties you love in one place. Literally, this universe has the phenomenon of "Traveling" or "Travelers", where characters, technology and even ideas from other sci-fi universes can transport here. It's a place where you can find the 40k Boltgun right next the the Star Wars Blaster, where Picard can cross words with Yang Wen-Li as they find themselves trapped in a ship full of necromorphs. The players are Travelers from any IP that they can choose, from the Earth or from a completely made up setting with it's own rules and power systems. They must carve a path through this intricate web of factions that want to use the Travelers for their own ends.

[Gwyndolin]

I have been putting together an "SCP" inspired setting where each of the sessions is a mission that the players are sent on to investigate anomalous artifacts and deal with the surrounding problems. Kinda monster of the week with the campaign built up with one shots.

 

The other setting I have prepped is dark fantasy, based in a kingdom that has taken refuge underground while the sun has gone out. Essentially adventures in the underdark with some political intrigue. 

 

As soon as I saw that the BRP was getting a new edition I know I had to use it for these. 

[Ravenheart87]

29 minutes ago, Gwyndolin said:

The other setting I have prepped is dark fantasy, based in a kingdom that has taken refuge underground while the sun has gone out. Essentially adventures in the underdark with some political intrigue. 

So it's literally dark fantasy. Sounds a lot like Arx Fatalis.

[Gwyndolin]

Oh and I want to run a space setting at some point but have no idea what yet. I am way too busy 🤣

 

Edited April 22, 2023 by Gwyndolin

[Gwyndolin]

8 minutes ago, Ravenheart87 said:

So it's literally dark fantasy. Sounds a lot like Arx Fatalis.

 

Yeah thats where I got the inspiration from. That mixed with the underground areas from Elden Ring 😁  

[PoppySeed45]

I've got a setting in my head, something like:

Napoleonic France. The Revolution goes much further than it did in our world. There was, briefly, a push by women in Paris for more rights. In our world it failed, but what if it didn't? Or only partially failed, but made some headway?

Like, I have this image in my head of Napoleon going off to Italy, realizing his army is too small to win, and deciding to raise and train women soldiers (maybe as so called "Light Infantry"). PCs, of course, would command this new unit, this test run. I can imagine all sorts of scenarios and the unit is raised, trained, and used in action for the first times.

Obviously, such a game would need actual mass combat rules (which don't really exist in BRP, which I've always found weird, since battles are a big part of Glorantha; why can't we fight in them with a decent system behind us?). And maybe a more robust system for social things (like, I don't know, arguing with The Directory). Maybe even faction rules or the like.

It's been in my head forever and I'd love to do a straight (or like I've outlined above) Napoleonic game based on BRP.

[albesias]

In a battle context, individual experiences have more interest from a narrative/dramatic point of view. 

A simple way for battle resolution if you like uncertainty could be a battle roll modified by other passions or skills.

[PoppySeed45]

3 hours ago, albesias said:

In a battle context, individual experiences have more interest from a narrative/dramatic point of view. 

A simple way for battle resolution if you like uncertainty could be a battle roll modified by other passions or skills.

Naw, sometimes, I want PCs generaling troops and so on. And I don't want it to be a forgone conclusion. In my opinion, such things should be gameable. It can be done very detailed or abstract, but it obviously can be done (as it is in GURPS, Reign, Trinity Continuum, Savage Worlds, Burning Wheel (and Torchbearer, and Mouse Guard), and Everywhen, and Mythras (well, for pre-modern combat anyway, but they did it). There's other systems that do it too, so I don't think mass combat has to be only from an individual point of view, and it seems a large number of designers agree with me. So I wish BRP natively had something (RQG hints at it with the Battle skill but it's barely there).

[Atgxtg]

On 4/19/2023 at 11:17 AM, Stan Shinn said:

A Star Trek setting in the original series era.

Are you using FASATrek for a base? Being a skill based percentile game system it would give a GM a good head start on a BRP Trek game.

Edited April 26, 2023 by Atgxtg

[Stan Shinn]

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Are you using FASATrek for a base? Being a skill based percentile game system it would give a GM a good head start on a BRP Trek game.

I've been meaning to look at FASA and mine for ideas but at the moment I'm more focused on how Starship combat should work. I'll play test it hopefully at a game day in mid-June. Once I feel good about it I'll share for public feedback and probably have it on Ithch.io for download.

You can download my "Federation" game with 24XX rules to get a sense of where I'm going with the d100 design: https://roguecomet.itch.io/federation-24xx

But the BRP edition will be more crunchy 🙂

[Atgxtg]

15 hours ago, Stan Shinn said:

I've been meaning to look at FASA and mine for ideas

If you have it or can get it without paying an arm and a leg it's worth it as it gives you a decent skill list and chargen. While I think the cadcade/unbrell/enterpise method of doing skills, with skills being grouped together under a main skill, from LUG and Decipher Trek could help streamline things, FASA Trek is still close enough to BRP that you'll pick it up easily. 

One nice bit is that skill ranges are grouped into proficiency levels, and to do certain tasks only requires you to roll against that proficiency level. For instance, a professional in a skill has a rating of 40 or higher, so if you need to be a professional to do something, such as pilot a ship out of spacedock,  then you can do it automatically if have a 40% skill, and have to roll against the difference between your skill and 40% if your skill is lower. This matched up fairly well with BRP's difficulty level. 

 

15 hours ago, Stan Shinn said:

but at the moment I'm more focused on how Starship combat should work. I'll play test it hopefully at a game day in mid-June. Once I feel good about it I'll share for public feedback and probably have it on Ithch.io for download.

I'll keep an eye out. FASA might help here too since the starship combat rules are mostly divorced from the role-playing rules. And you look at the SPacedock stuff from Steven S. Long, as it covers a lot and is free. 

15 hours ago, Stan Shinn said:

You can download my "Federation" game with 24XX rules to get a sense of where I'm going with the d100 design: https://roguecomet.itch.io/federation-24xx

But the BRP edition will be more crunchy 🙂

Thanks I'll give it a look.