BRP for Future campaign

[hdrider67]

I only just found out about BRP's Zero edition (Thanks Rust) on the travellerrpg site.

I have a few questions that I'd like to ask before I order,hopefully today, as in hours if I can!

I'm interested in running a future campaign, similar in many ways to Traveller. Can someone tell me if future equipment is addressed well, or if it's more of an afterthought to the fantasy aspect?

I'm looking for a decent supply of weapons, computers, cybernetics, etc.

Does BRP have a decent listing of skills appropriate to an interstellar campaign?

Does BRP include starship construction / combat rules?

Any Aliens? (or monsters suitable for such?)

Lastly how bad is the presentation? I'm not looking for anything close to perfection in a pre release book but I would hope it's readable.

Thanks in advance!

[fmitchell]

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.

Can someone tell me if future equipment is addressed well, or if it's more of an afterthought to the fantasy aspect?

I'm looking for a decent supply of weapons, computers, cybernetics, etc.

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).

Does BRP have a decent listing of skills appropriate to an interstellar campaign?

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.

Does BRP include starship construction / combat rules?

No.

Any Aliens? (or monsters suitable for such?)

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.

Lastly how bad is the presentation? I'm not looking for anything close to perfection in a pre release book but I would hope it's readable.

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).

[Trifletraxor]

I'm interested in running a future campaign, similar in many ways to Traveller. Can someone tell me if future equipment is addressed well, or if it's more of an afterthought to the fantasy aspect?

As science fiction is a setting that requires a lot of detail, I'd say the book alone is not enough. Using the book together with some other BRP sci-fi material, like the free Cthulhu Rising material, would work very well though.

I'm looking for a decent supply of weapons, computers, cybernetics, etc.

Material for a future sci-fi supplement, but not fully explored in the basic rulebook.

Does BRP have a decent listing of skills appropriate to an interstellar campaign?

They have many that fits, but you will probably want to add some, which should b an easy thing to do considering the structure of the skill rules.

Does BRP include starship construction / combat rules?

Nope, but again, check out Cthulhu Rising (in the link list on this site), and the download section here might get some pretty soon. :thumb:

Any Aliens? (or monsters suitable for such?)

Some, but not that many.

Lastly how bad is the presentation? I'm not looking for anything close to perfection in a pre release book but I would hope it's readable.

Quite readable. Mostly minor editing issues that need to be cleaned up before the 1st edition is released.

SGL.

[hdrider67]

Thanks both of you.

Do you know if a SciFi supplement planned?

I decided what the heck and ordered. I figure I've got the new Traveller coming anyway and the wife can only kill me once. :-)

Thanks!

[Atgxtg]

Well if it helps, I:ve been working on a specfic Sci-Fi setting that I will probably eventually make avialbe here.

As a unrelated project I:ve also been working on a couple different sets of construction and combat rules for Spaceships, which Triff has hinted at. It:s still n the *Alpha* state, but is designed to be adaptable for any Sci-Fi setting, and has scaling rules.

[darkheart]

I would second using Cthulhu Rising.

[ CTHULHU RISING: HORROR ROLEPLAYING IN A DARK FUTURE ]

I've used it in it's own setting and will be using it for the continuation of my star wars campaign with some minor tweeking.

[Conrad]

I have a few questions that I'd like to ask before I order,hopefully today, as in hours if I can!

I'm interested in running a future campaign, similar in many ways to Traveller. Can someone tell me if future equipment is addressed well, or if it's more of an afterthought to the fantasy aspect?

I'm looking for a decent supply of weapons, computers, cybernetics, etc.

Does BRP have a decent listing of skills appropriate to an interstellar campaign?

Does BRP include starship construction / combat rules?

Any Aliens? (or monsters suitable for such?)

hdrider67 have you seen this?

Traveller/BRP Rules

It is a conversion of traveller to the BRP rules, with a skill list and alien races.

As for cybernetics for BRP see:

Fallen Future: Cyberthulhu Gaming

There is a BRP derived Traveller clone called Worlds Beyond that has a set of starship construction rules in it, Chaosium has one left for sale.

The yahoo group brpsystem@yahoogroups.com has a file of Traveller weapons (Striker weapons.pdf) in their files section. There is also a file on modern weapons with some Traveller weapons in it.

I hope that helps you in your quest.

Conrad:)

[hdrider67]

Rust asked me to give my impression of the system (where future campaigns are concerned) after I got a chance to browse, so here I go.

First, I'll say up front my time with my new book has been limited. I've had a busy week so far and it's just starting!

I started the thread asking about some specific items, so I'll address my biggest concerns.

1: Equipment:

The weapon selection gave me a really good starting point. I may have to tweak here and there but for the most part, sehr gut.

The armor I can pretty much leave alone except to delete an itel or two. No force fields for me although I really like how they represented that armor choice.

No Mecha or Robot rules at all, though there was a single mecha example. My mecha will be limited to powered armor and robots will be basic but it would have been nice to see just a bit of a build process.

Where equipment really falls down is in the general area. What benefit for having or penalty for not having a first aid kit, surgery kit, or other kits? The computer description was decent and the autodoc was right on the money but other kits will need some work.

2: Skills: Excellent. I don't think I'll have to do much of anything here.

3: Starships: Non existent I could use the provided vehicle chase rules except that handling (a very important vehicle characteristic) seems to have been left undefined. The build system and combat damage, I can get by without as I've pratically built a simple one already.

Could someone tell me if I missed the definition of handling and how it's applied? I ran through the book pretty quickly so I may have missed it.

3: Aliens: I think a bit more effort might have been put into this subject.It's maybe the easiest to get by without (I can just steal more mundane monsters if needs must).

My biggest complaint? Wealth. I can't tell you how much I despise wealth systems. I know it's a pain because of the many genres that have to be represented but specifying X units would have made it much less work. Don't define units and put in a blurb saying stuff from outside a tech level would cost more (or less in some cases) than stuff in the represented genre.

So, I'm happy to say I won't have to do much work on skills at all. THAT would have been work. Weapons are pretty much where I need them to be thought he other equipment is going to require effort.

Starships and vehicular combat will need some details roughed out as well.

It may sound like I'm not happy but I am. I'd give this a 3.5/5 and I would expect it to improve greatly by the time it hits the printers.

My suggestions to Chaosium:

Dump wealth.

Flesh out the technology for each genre, if only a little.

Scales of combat could be easily done by multiplying vehicle heavy weapon damage (and AP/HP) by five and REALLY big weapons (waterborne ships, starships, and some aircraft) by 10.

Define the vehicle rules. Chases happen in all time periods so this is an important feature to have working.

Spend just a little time on Aliens.

All in all, I think it has amazing potential. I'd be happy to wait months to get the bugs worked out and I'd pay 150% of what I paid already for the right product.

Thanks Chaosium!

[hdrider67]

hdrider67 have you seen this:

Traveller/BRP Rules

It is a conversion of traveller to the BRP rules, with a skill list and alien races.

As for cybernetics for BRP see:

Fallen Future: Cyberthulhu Gaming

There is a BRP derived Traveller clone called Worlds Beyond that has a set of starship construction rules in it, Chaosium has one left for sale:

www.catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=995

(this link appears dodgey so you might have to Google this reference)

The yahoo group brpsystem@yahoogroups.com has a file of Traveller weapons (Striker weapons.pdf) in their files section. There is also a file on modern weapons with some Traveller weapons in it.

I hope that helps you in your quest.

Conrad:)

Conrad,

Can you tell me if the Worlds Beyond is very good? I can't afford to buy it right now but if it's not going to be around long I might just throw financial caution to the wind and acquire it.

Thanks!

[rust]

Thank you very much for this review, now I am really looking forward to see

BRP published.

The skills are the most important part for me, too. Well, it would have been

nice to have rules for the construction of robots and starships, but it should

not be too difficult to find a solution for this.

As for Worlds Beyond, I do not know it myself, but I have been told that it

is not worth the money, because it has a lot of gaps and it is not well

edited at all - but this is hearsay, I never really saw it.

[Conrad]

Conrad,

Can you tell me if the Worlds Beyond is very good? I can't afford to buy it right now but if it's not going to be around long I might just throw financial caution to the wind and acquire it.

Thanks!

I have Worlds Beyond.The ship creation section is very complete with computers, shields, drives and weapons (some of them quite good, like "shadows", remote weapons platforms) and starship combat. If you want WB for the starship creation rules, then go for it.

There is more to the rpg than that though. There are the races and equipment and the worlds detailed and even a solar system generation section (well worth it if you plan on creating your own space sectors).

I am well pleased with the game. The system it uses is also near enough to standard BRP rules that supplements for other BRP games can be used with it.

What more could you ask for ?

[Conrad]

As for Worlds Beyond, I do not know it myself, but I have been told that it

is not worth the money, because it has a lot of gaps and it is not well

edited at all - but this is hearsay, I never really saw it.

There is a lack of psionics rules, but you can easily adapt the ones from Cthulhu Rising for the game( or from the DBRP rulesbook). There are no rules on environmental damage, such as vacuum, exotic atmospheres and burning damage but the new BRP book has these. The proofreading leaves something to be desired as there are a few typos here and there. An optional table (or two) for character development seems to be missing, but this has zero effect on the chargen. In fact I wondered why any of the other character background tables had been included, as most roleplayers can make up their own character backgrounds. The game is a BRP Traveller clone and worthy of being resurrected by Chaosium. It should be updated to the DBRP rules, which wouldn't take much work at all, and reissued as a supplement.

[rust]

Well, as mentioned above: I do only know hearsay, I never did see the book.

But when I started looking for informations on it, I usually found comments

like this one from the Pen & Paper website:

Wanderer (Feb 8, 2007 - 4:51 AM CST):

Not a bad system, but poorly edited. Typos aside, an entire section of the character history generation system was omitted from the book! Since the company vanished from view immediately after, there's not even a method for contacting the authors.

What you write about it looks much different, and I will think again about

buying it.

[Conrad]

Wanderer (Feb 8, 2007 - 4:51 AM CST):

Not a bad system, but poorly edited. Typos aside, an entire section of the character history generation system was omitted from the book! Since the company vanished from view immediately after, there's not even a method for contacting the authors.

Yeh I saw this too. But the missing tables don't make an iota of difference. They just aren't needed. The tables you do get in the game are more than sufficient for creating a character history.

[hdrider67]

Yeh I saw this too. But the missing tables don't make an iota of difference. They just aren't needed. The tables you do get in the game are more than sufficient for creating a character history.

Well, I was just told I got a pretty nice bonus this year, so I'm going to buy a copy after the 15th, if it's still available.

Thanks!

[Conrad]

Well, I was just told I got a pretty nice bonus this year, so I'm going to buy a copy after the 15th, if it's still available.

Thanks!

Good luck with obtaining a copy of the game. I sincerely hope that it doesn't disappoint you.

I'd like to start a thread up for Worlds Beyond to see if we can cobble up some adventures for it.

[hdrider67]

Good luck with obtaining a copy of the game. I sincerely hope that it doesn't disappoint you.

I'd like to start a thread up for Worlds Beyond to see if we can cobble up some adventures for it.

Well, Chaosium took the money for the order, so I can only hope they have a copy.

[Conrad]

Well, Chaosium took the money for the order, so I can only hope they have a copy.

If you get the game please tell us all what you think of it.