Fate of BRP

[Vexthug]

27 minutes ago, g33k said:

Just hadda pop back in and ask... 

am I the only one who originally hit this thread wondering if it was going to be some semi-crazed mashup of the "Fate" game mechanics with BRP???

 

I already did that with my Openquest Game. I changed the hero point system with the fate point system, Allowing players to create advantages and overcome obsticles like in a fate game. Even doing compels on characters to earn more points. It did change the feel of the game, it became much more cinematic and less lethal. My players loved it.

Miles

[Michael Hopcroft]

On 4/24/2017 at 8:43 AM, g33k said:

Just hadda pop back in and ask... 

am I the only one who originally hit this thread wondering if it was going to be some semi-crazed mashup of the "Fate" game mechanics with BRP???

 

 

 

Would that even work? BRP may be too crunchy to work with aspects and compulsions of same. "I dive behind the oil drums nobody saw before that just now happened to be in the middle of the desert because it would be convenient to not die!"

EDIT: I stand somewhat corrected with the post above. OpenQuest is admittedly a little less crunchy than something like Mythras or BGB BRP, but it does, in fact, seem to be a better fit than I thought it would be. I would be interested to see how Aspects can be incorporated into d100 character creation. Also, do you need to compel or create aspects before dice are rolled, or can you do something to modify the effect of the die roll that just happened?

 

 

Edited May 14, 2017 by Michael Hopcroft
Post-Ninja Update

[Michael Hopcroft]

On 4/23/2017 at 1:25 PM, Atgxtg said:

Yes the original intent was  to revising a flagging RPG (D&D), and kill off a bunch of competing products by allowing third party companies to produce D&D products at only a modest fee.  Where it went wrong was that WotC thought that once D&D locked up the market they'd maintain control over D&D, and then just kill off the OGL with 4th edition. It backfired when 4E didn't go over so well with 3E players, and Panthfinder came out and continued developing the OGL format D&D.

I think MRQ went OGL because it came out before the 4E fiasco, and because Mongoose specializes in putting out a lot of product fast. They don't really care who control the development of the game as long as they can make money by producing lots of supplements. Had open MRQ took off, and a RQ equivalent of Pathfinder came out, then I suspect Mongoose would be content producing supplements for it. 

 

Panthfinder? I wonder where the Panthers are -- ah! There's one now!" "Roll for Initiative...."

Or Pantsfinder? "Honey where's my pants?" "Here! Here are your pants!" (I need to buy a copy of The LEGO Movie....)

If it can be discussed, I have always wondered how Chaosium and Mongoose came up with the arrangement that enabled D100 ti to be released under the OGL and thus allowed the floodgates to open? This was several years after D&D 3.0, so Chaosium must have had some inkling what would happen. And admittedly it took a few years before the floodgates did in fact open.

[Atgxtg]

21 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

If it can be discussed, I have always wondered how Chaosium and Mongoose came up with the arrangement that enabled D100 ti to be released under the OGL and thus allowed the floodgates to open? This was several years after D&D 3.0, so Chaosium must have had some inkling what would happen. And admittedly it took a few years before the floodgates did in fact open.

As far as I know, they didn't come to any arrangement. What was revealed/explained was that you cannot copy write game mechanics. Yo can copy write text,and the name brand (i.,. RuneQuest) but not the actual game mechanics. This means that it's legal to virtually copy an RPG so long as you do not copy the text verbatim. or use the same name. Whether or not it is right to do so is another matter.

Anyway, at the time MRQ was made, the rights for the name RuneQuest had been picked up by Greg Stafford, apparently after they had lapsed, and he licensed out the name to Mongoose in an arrangement that let them produce an RPG named RuneQuest. That is what opened the gates, as it were. 

Chaosium didn't do anything about it because there really was very little they could have done, without the RQ brand name. About thier only legal option was to try and sue Mongoose for copying some of their game mechanics, but that would have meant trying to win against the precedent ruling (actually make in a case about a computer RPG, I believe), which would have been an expense, uphill battle. Probably so expensive that it would have been a Pyrrhic victory, costing more to win in court than the RPG line would bring back in profits. Even if they had owned the RQ name brand their only realistic option would have ben  to get Mongoose to call their game something other than RuneQuest (or something deemed too close to RuneQuest)

 

So, technically speaking, anybody could produce and market a copy of virtually any RPG (even D&D) with out without consent of that game's publisher, regardless of copy write, OGL or whatever, so long as they do not swipe the name or text verbatim. At least from a legal standpoint. Again, form a moral standpoint is something else. 

Edited May 14, 2017 by Atgxtg

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

Would that even work? BRP may be too crunchy to work with aspects and compulsions of same. "I dive behind the oil drums nobody saw before that just now happened to be in the middle of the desert because it would be convenient to not die!"

EDIT: I stand somewhat corrected with the post above. OpenQuest is admittedly a little less crunchy than something like Mythras or BGB BRP, but it does, in fact, seem to be a better fit than I thought it would be. I would be interested to see how Aspects can be incorporated into d100 character creation. Also, do you need to compel or create aspects before dice are rolled, or can you do something to modify the effect of the die roll that just happened?

 

 

Sure it could. Just look at how much "crunch" got dropped between RQ2 and CoC1. The 16 page BRP rulebook from 1980 really boiled down the game into Attributes, hit points,skill percentages, damage, and the resistance table. The biggest obstacle, IMO would be that BRP isn't all that well set up for opposed rolls.

[Chaot]

On 4/24/2017 at 11:43 AM, g33k said:

am I the only one who originally hit this thread wondering if it was going to be some semi-crazed mashup of the "Fate" game mechanics with BRP???

 

I want to do this, and I suspect it's really doable, but I haven't quite groked Fate yet. I've found that now that I have hundreds of roleplaying books picked up over thirty years I dislike reading them. This is detrimental, when you want to steal cool things from Fate but find yourself falling asleep reading it's not very productive. I need to play it or pretend to run it.

[Vexthug]

You can invoke an aspect after a roll, but it has to make narrative sense in order to work. A GM can make that call just like in any other game. Aspects came into play when you would call for a modifier like windy day -25%, take careful aim + 25%. If you take the time to create the aspect it dosn't cost you a fate point. If an aspect is compelled against you you gain a fate point. It just a way to reward players for having cool ideas and for going along with the bad things the GM sends their way. 

If anyone is interested in an actual play session of Fate there's an episode of Tabletop that plays the game. The shows fun to watch regardless of your opinion of Fate, but love both D100 and Fate games the same. they both have their pros an cons, and I've learned how to have fun with both. But it took me A full year to grok the fate point and aspect concept.

 

[RosenMcStern]

A bit off topic, are we?

18 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

Would that even work? BRP may be too crunchy to work with aspects and compulsions of same. "I dive behind the oil drums nobody saw before that just now happened to be in the middle of the desert because it would be convenient to not die!"

EDIT: I stand somewhat corrected with the post above. OpenQuest is admittedly a little less crunchy than something like Mythras or BGB BRP, but it does, in fact, seem to be a better fit than I thought it would be. I would be interested to see how Aspects can be incorporated into d100 character creation. Also, do you need to compel or create aspects before dice are rolled, or can you do something to modify the effect of the die roll that just happened?

 

11 hours ago, Chaot said:

I want to do this, and I suspect it's really doable, but I haven't quite groked Fate yet. I've found that now that I have hundreds of roleplaying books picked up over thirty years I dislike reading them. This is detrimental, when you want to steal cool things from Fate but find yourself falling asleep reading it's not very productive. I need to play it or pretend to run it.

The Freeform Trait and Consequence mechanics in Revolution D100 are designed to work akin to the Fate core system, albeit not exactly in the same way. An optional rule even allows you to invoke a Positive Consequence (negative if you are the GM) to change the success level of a roll after the dice have hit the table. And we are working on a way of acquiring Recurrent Positive Consequences, which are essentially Aspects, during character creation, with an alternative chargen method which produces really fleshed out heroes.

So far, we are quite happy of how it works. And it does not create paradox, as the rules do not allow you to make things appear out of nowhere.

[Atgxtg]

18 hours ago, Chaot said:

I want to do this, and I suspect it's really doable, but I haven't quite groked Fate yet. I've found that now that I have hundreds of roleplaying books picked up over thirty years I dislike reading them. This is detrimental, when you want to steal cool things from Fate but find yourself falling asleep reading it's not very productive. I need to play it or pretend to run it.

I usually think about characters and chargen, it helps. So when I see some talent or ability I get an idea of how to work in into a character and it keeps me interested. 

[Atgxtg]

6 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

A bit off topic, are we?

 

The Freeform Trait and Consequence mechanics in Revolution D100 are designed to work akin to the Fate core system, albeit not exactly in the same way. An optional rule even allows you to invoke a Positive Consequence (negative if you are the GM) to change the success level of a roll after the dice have hit the table.

That sound a lot like how I'd want it to work! I am a big fan of the old James Bond RPG, and that's pretty much how Hero Points worked. I might have to pick up the Revolution D100 PDF. When ever you describe the rules they seem a lot more interesting that the SRD was. 

Edited May 15, 2017 by Atgxtg

[Mankcam]

On 2017-5-15 at 1:45 AM, Atgxtg said:

The biggest obstacle, IMO would be that BRP isn't all that well set up for opposed rolls.

Sure it is. Well CoC 7E is in any case, after introducing an extra success level between regular success and special success.

This really frees things up to help provide narrative descriptions on how well an action is performed, and it really shines with opposed rolls as ourcomes are determined upon the differences between success levels.

I would really like to see the extra degree of success across the board in BRP games, rather than just CoC 7E. 

Edited May 15, 2017 by Mankcam

[colinabrett]

10 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I would really like to see the extra degree of success across the board in BRP games, rather than just CoC 7E. 

I've actually thought about having an extra level of failure. It seems quite drastic that a character can have a normal fail or a complete disaster. A "mishap" level, worse than a fail but not quite as bad as a fumble, to balance out the critical/special/success levels. 

Any thoughts?

Colin

[Mankcam]

3 hours ago, colinabrett said:

I've actually thought about having an extra level of failure. It seems quite drastic that a character can have a normal fail or a complete disaster. A "mishap" level, worse than a fail but not quite as bad as a fumble, to balance out the critical/special/success levels. 

Any thoughts?

Colin

Yeah that's actually a pretty good idea as well. It may be a bit more tricky to work out on the fly, but it is a reasonable assumption that if a system has several degrees of success then it is logical that it could also have several degrees of failure. Interesting.

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, colinabrett said:

I've actually thought about having an extra level of failure. It seems quite drastic that a character can have a normal fail or a complete disaster. A "mishap" level, worse than a fail but not quite as bad as a fumble, to balance out the critical/special/success levels. 

This extra level would apply mostly in the low skill bracket, or with heavy negative modifiers. Just like a special success disappears when you have sufficiently low skill, a special failure or mishap will much sooner become indistinguishable from a fumble once you get into rune level/100% skill areas, unless you give it more than a 20% of all failures chance. (If you give a 40% of all failures chance being a mishap, with very high skills this would occur on a roll of 99% where a roll of 100% would be a fumble, and rolls of 96-98% a normal failure.)

The mishap chance would have to be re-calculated (or looked up) every time you modify the skill by a few percent.

For modified skills of 95%  or less you could separate the determination of success or failure (the d100 skill roll) from the success level, which could be rolled with a d20 where a 1 would indicate a critical (success or failure), a 2-4 a special, a 5-10 an above average, a 17-20 a marginal success or failure, or whatever success levels you want to inflict on your players. (If you don't trust a d20, you can multiply by 5 and roll another d100.) Unfortunately this breaks down when your modified skill exceeds 95%, as criticals and specials continue to rise while failures remain the same probability.

Another case where this breaks down are rules which limit say an attack skill to the riding (or climbing, or sailing) skill of the character, saving the roll on the conditional skill but capping the effective skill. I seem to recall such a rule for mounted combat, and a similar case could be made for swashbuckler attacks from swinging chandeliers, archers or gunners firing from a ship in heavy waters and the like using an appropriate conditional skill. High skill characters would be better off rolling for the conditional skill and then rolling for their high skill when it comes to reaping specials and crits.

[Atgxtg]

15 hours ago, Mankcam said:

Sure it is. Well CoC 7E is in any case, after introducing an extra success level between regular success and special success.

Yuk! Personally I don't like mixing a high roll wins mechanic with a low roll equal better success level. 

15 hours ago, Mankcam said:

This really frees things up to help provide narrative descriptions on how well an action is performed, and it really shines with opposed rolls as ourcomes are determined upon the differences between success levels.

I would really like to see the extra degree of success across the board in BRP games, rather than just CoC 7E. 

Me too. Maybe even more than one SL. But then if they use a high roll win mechanic I'd like to see the success level be determined by the difference between the rolls. That's what we are doing anyway. 

[RosenMcStern]

15 hours ago, Mankcam said:

Sure it is. Well CoC 7E is in any case, after introducing an extra success level between regular success and special success.

But even in this case, the chances of a tie are rather high. And this particular mechanics is a big departure from standard BRP. It only works if you *never* modify the skill value with + and - modifiers, whereas pre-made scenarios are full of this kind of modifiers, to which most players are now used. And each new level of success/failure introduced adds clutter to the character sheet, which not every player likes.

In short, not everyone likes this approach. And you cannot "port" it easily to other variants of BRP without denaturating them to a point that may make some players uncomfortable.

[Atgxtg]

Exactly. That's why I think opposed rolls don't really work with the existing success level game mechanics. I think to get opposed rolls to work, you need to toss out the existing method of working up success levels and do something else.

. 

[Mankcam]

In my experience I have found 'the highest number under sucess' to be counter-intutitive; I understand its rationale, but it just seems to feel wrong when we do it. So my troupe finds rolling the 'best level of success wins' works much better for us.

I always thought that it was the standard rule for BRP, which is why CoC 7E's rule is the same concept, just adding in one more level of success. 

Without the extra success level this does gets bland due to the high chance of ties.  In CoC 7E I havent seen that many ties, so it seemed to work for us. Although I must say that we have only played a handful of sessions.

It hasnt seemed to add to any complexity for us. We dont record skills with 1/2 and 1/5 values, as it definately would clutter the character sheet up. Its pretty easy to do these calculations on the fly. 

I dont think there will ever be a consensus on this within BRP gamers, its one of those few game mechanics in BRP that people tend to polarise over.

Edited May 16, 2017 by Mankcam

[Questbird]

On 5/16/2017 at 4:55 PM, colinabrett said:

I've actually thought about having an extra level of failure. It seems quite drastic that a character can have a normal fail or a complete disaster. A "mishap" level, worse than a fail but not quite as bad as a fumble, to balance out the critical/special/success levels. 

Any thoughts?

Colin

A while back Nakana had a thread about criticals and I came up with a visual dice rolling method which could easily produce a special failure result. It works fine if you use a visual method but not so well if you calculate it on the fly because:

+ no player wants to report a worse level of failure than simple failure

+ As a GM, sometimes my maths brain just fails in the middle of a combat

A classic fumble on 99-00 is a visual result: everyone recognises it without any maths.

Here's the system I came up with:

TL;DR

Roll d100

1 or 2 on the units die is a special. If the result is equal to or under your skill, special success; over and it's a special failure (optional)

If you roll an odd 'tens' result, eg 10, 30, 50 etc. which is equal to or under your skill, it's a critical success; an odd 'tens' result over your skill is a critical failure

That gives you three levels of success and failure. In this system critical failure replaces fumbles.

Edited May 18, 2017 by Questbird

[Atgxtg]

On 5/16/2017 at 9:51 AM, Mankcam said:

In my experience I have found 'the highest number under sucess' to be counter-intutitive; I understand its rationale, but it just seems to feel wrong when we do it. So my troupe finds rolling the 'best level of success wins' works much better for us.

You could use low roll wins when success levels are tied. Years back there was a big stink over this as being unfair to the higher skilled character, but I did the math and the results aren't that much different than high wins on ties. It's mainly because if there is a large difference in skill ratings, the chances of both characters getting the same success level becomes less likely. 

On 5/16/2017 at 9:51 AM, Mankcam said:

I dont think there will ever be a consensus on this within BRP gamers, its one of those few game mechanics in BRP that people tend to polarise over.

Yeah. Back when RQ was created anything involving opposed rolls was settled with the resistance table. So an opposed skill roll mechanic is foreign to the game system. I don't think we'll get a consensus unless such a system got introduced or at least endorsed by someone like Steve Perrin. And even then it is doubtful. 

[colinabrett]

5 hours ago, Questbird said:

 

TL;DR

Roll d100

1 or 2 on the units die is a special. If the result is equal to or under your skill, special success; over and it's a special failure (optional)

If you roll an odd 'tens' result, eg 10, 30, 50 etc. which is equal to or under your skill, it's a critical success; an odd 'tens' result over your skill is a critical failure

That gives you three levels of success and failure. In this system critical failure replaces fumbles.

Outstanding! I had thought of something a bit simpler, however.

If the game's skills can't exceed 100, then a Fumble occurs on 00 (for skills => 50%) or 99-100 (for skills < 50%). A Mishap occurs on 99 (for skills => 50%) or 97-98 (for skills < 50%).

The same parameters can be used for skills over 100. This way, a super-skilled character (eg 150% in a skill) doesn't go from success to Fumble in a single step: there is a chance of something "slightly less disastrous" happening instead.

Note that these were just ideas: they have never really been tested in a game.

Colin

[Atgxtg]

If somebody wanted to, they could do something similar to get rid of the tables. A Special success would be any success that ends in a "0" or "5". 

That could also be used to add a "special failure" if desired. So if someone rolled a 75, ot would be a special success if their skill were 75% or higher, and a special failure if their skill was lower. 

[Questbird]

16 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

If somebody wanted to, they could do something similar to get rid of the tables. A Special success would be any success that ends in a "0" or "5". 

That could also be used to add a "special failure" if desired. So if someone rolled a 75, ot would be a special success if their skill were 75% or higher, and a special failure if their skill was lower. 

I had 0 or 5 in my system originally too, but I changed it to 1 or 2 so that rolling low is still generally more desirable, also to clear the '10's for criticals.

However my visual system does change 00 to be just a failure (for skills < 100) rather than a fumble and 01 becomes a special not a critical (10 is a critical instead as long as you have skill >=10).

[Questbird]

On 5/18/2017 at 4:36 PM, colinabrett said:

Outstanding! I had thought of something a bit simpler, however.

If the game's skills can't exceed 100, then a Fumble occurs on 00 (for skills => 50%) or 99-100 (for skills < 50%). A Mishap occurs on 99 (for skills => 50%) or 97-98 (for skills < 50%).

The same parameters can be used for skills over 100. This way, a super-skilled character (eg 150% in a skill) doesn't go from success to Fumble in a single step: there is a chance of something "slightly less disastrous" happening instead.

Note that these were just ideas: they have never really been tested in a game.

Colin

Of course maybe Masters (skills >100%) should not fail a roll in normal circumstances. Only if a task was difficult would there be any chance of failure. Or you could say that for skills > 100 only a roll of 00 gives a 'mishap' result to be interpreted by the GM.

In fact BRP does have the concept of critical failure, it's just hard(er) to calculate on the fly than critical success, and with less incentive, for players at least, to do so.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Questbird said:

I had 0 or 5 in my system originally too, but I changed it to 1 or 2 so that rolling low is still generally more desirable, also to clear the '10's for criticals.

However my visual system does change 00 to be just a failure (for skills < 100) rather than a fumble and 01 becomes a special not a critical (10 is a critical instead as long as you have skill >=10).

Your seem to have swapped the frequency of specials and criticals - your criticals crop up half of the time, and for only marginally developed skills usually as critical failures.

The probability to avoid a critical failure changes in a very erratic way, too, with plateaus of 11 percentiles between rapid rises of 10 steps in between (counting the last step double with the plateau). Chances for critical failure obviously move in the opposite direction, which means that there are narrow brackets where every circumstantial percentile will effect the outcome in a significant way half of all dice rolls, and then there will be brackets where modifiers of 10 percent might not matter much at all. A nightmare for estimating outcome probabilities, and a case where successful supporting actions that hinder opponents may be a great deal-changer or just pointless fluff. Having an additional D2 (odds on any even-numbered die) in the toss yields much better predictability than your method.