Sci-Fi

[Kloster]

Tank you Mr Rust nice Links

SFRPG •

Tigres Volants Central I dont understand french but i have an french dictionary.

Tigres Volants is much fun (OK, I am partial because the author is a friend of mine). Older (1.5 and 2.1 in my case) versions are clearly BRP in origin. The current published version has been streamlined, with D20 instead of D100.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

P.S. Don't tell to Alias (the author) that he is french. He is Swiss, proud of it and can be seen from the texts.

[tired librarian]

amazing stuff here guys, especially your efforts, soltakss!

[Solardog]

This is no criticism of you and your RQ Sci-Fi SRD document.:thumb:

For me, the Weapons Section is not the most important part of the RQ Sci-Fi SRD so I haven't spent a lot of time on it. That's why it is near the end of the document. I know that other people like a lot of weapons, but to me they are much of a muchness.

Yes weapons should not important in any Sci Fi RPG Universe, instead it would focus on the general universe/technology and strange alien cultures both human and aliens. You dont travel 4 to 68 parsec to an old human colony/world and step in to old kansas for exampel.

In any case, any "slug thrower" is dangerous in a vacuum environment. If there is a chance of puncturing the hull then they shouldn't be used. I would prefer to use an energy wepon of some kind. Babylon 5's PPGs, Star Trek's Phasers, Star Wars' Blasters and so on are all examples of energy weapons that can be used in space and on planets. They have limited ammunition but are at least as good as a SMG.

Energy weapons do burn damage, its burns through both metal and flesh and can be very dangerous in an vacuum environment. But there no recoil that's god.

Its really fanny, in many Sci Fi franchises people are running around with powerfull energy weapons and no protection, but i guess it make god special effect.

[SMAY63]

Not necessarily talking out of your backside.

You were right about using energy weapons on board a ship or on a planet that has sealed habitats.

Using a 'projectile/slug weapon' is suicidal in those enviroments.

As for Babylon 5's PPGs, there are 2 versions: military and non military.

The miltary version is better than the civilian version (magazine capacity, etc).

Star Trek Phasers: the 23rd-24th century phaser are better than the 21st-22nd century ones.

Looking at the Decipher rules, they have high energy capacity, but each setting: low to heavy stun, low to heavy thermal, etc uses different amounts of energy.

As for Star Wars Blasters, I just look at the D20 Star Wars book.

[wbcreighton]

Just noticing that these two SRDs came out after your RQ SF doc.

Any plans on including info from those as well.

[Conrad]

"Using a 'projectile/slug weapon' is suicidal in those enviroments."

If anyone is interested, these weapons, for the Ringworld setting could be adapted for use as non penetrating shipboard weapons.

MERCY PISTOL

(Bellepax, Inc., Earth [now defunct])

WEIGHT: 300g

VOLUME: small pistol -- 3cm x 10cm x 15cm

RANGE: short 15m, medium 30m, long 40m

DAMAGE DONE: Unconsciousness

ENERGY USED: none

POWER SUPPLY: memory-plastic spring

ARMOR: none

HIT POINTS: 4

APPLICABLE SKILL: Handgun (projectile)

COST: 55 stars (2100 a.d. currency); ammunition costs 2 stars per 100

rounds; illegal to private citizens

The mercy pistol was developed to serve the needs of Terran police

agencies worldwide during the 21st and 22nd centuries. As transplant

technology advanced, it soon became possible for humans to extend

their lives indefinitely. Ensuring a steady supply of organs became

something of a problem, until the establishment of organ banks, since

a steady supply of organs and tissue was necessary. Violent criminals

became the first victims of the organ bank laws; they were soon being

executed by physicians in combined hospital-jails, to fill the demands

of the organ-hungry public.

Police needed a method of apprehending criminals in a way which did

not harm their valuable organs and tissues. Until the development of

the sonic stunner, mercy weapons were the standard armament of police

officials worldwide. They were also utilized by "organleggers"

criminals who sold human body parts on the black market -- parts taken

from unwilling donors.

Mercy weapons fire tiny needles of crystalline material which quickly

dissolve in the bloodstream of the target, rendering it unconscious.

Each crystal is micro-encapsulated in a safety coating which prevents

dangerous concentrations of the sedative from building up in the

target's bloodstream, making it nearly impossible to die of an

overdose.

Mercy weapons are powered by a spring of memory-plastic, and fire once

per impulse. A dial near the trigger controls the quantity and spread

of the needles fired, up to a maximum of 20. A single needle is enough

to knock out any human target, but a wider spread gives the firer a

better chance to hit. Mercy weapons usually had settings which fired

1, 5, 10, 15, or 20 needles. Every five needles fired increases the

chance to hit by five percentiles. Set to 20, the weapon fires a burst

of projectiles in a conical area with a one meter base at a 15 meter

range. Medium range is 30 meters, and anything beyond 40 meters is

considered long range. Beyond 40 meters, the light projectiles may be

unable to penetrate even light clothing, due to loss of momentum. The

weapon's magazine holds 100 needles, giving a skilled marksman plenty

of shots.

The weapon's main disadvantage is its inability to penetrate armored

targets. The crystalline needles ignore any armor protection less than

3 points, but cannot penetrate armor with any higher rating. The

protective value of armor at a particular hit location is important,

however, since the needle may hit an unarmored area.

If a mercy weapon is fired at a target at point-blank range, the

gamemaster might rule that the target could suffer 1d4 hit point of

damage from such an attack.

On the Ringworld, it is likely that if an advanced people developed

mercy weapons, they could fire ammunition which affected only certain

species or sub-species of humanoids.

--------------------

Tangler Gun

(Bellepax, Inc., Earth - now defunct)

WEIGHT: 2.2kg

VOLUME: short, bulky rifle -- 5cm x 17cm x 48cm

RANGE: short 15m, medium 30m, long 50m

DAMAGE DONE: entangle + possible 1d2

ENERGY USED: 5/shot

POWER SUPPLY: 100/5/350g/N + 20 round magazine, sold as one unit

ARMOR: 3 points

HIT POINTS: 12

APPLICABLE SKILL: Rifle (projectile)

COST: 200 stars (2210 a.d. currency); ammunition/power supply units

cost 6 stars each. A backpack version, for controlling very large

crowds, costs 28 stars, weighs 5kg, and has 120 rounds of ammunition.

Tangler guns were the precursors to mercy weapons. They fire a

projectile of memory plastic which is designed to entangle and

immobilize a target without causing it significant harm. The 2.5cm

round bursts upon impact in a 1 meter radius pattern of strong

adhesive memory plastic ribbons, which almost instantly curl around

the point of impact then rapidly tighten. When struck by a tangler

round, the target should make a Luck roll. If it succeeds, it takes no

damage; otherwise, the impact of the rather weighty projectile does

1d2 hit points of damage to the hit location struck. Note that a

tangler's tangling ability is effective regardless of the hit

location. An entangled target must make a balance roll at half its

skill rating every round to remain standing. Furthermore, the target's

arms will be pinned to its sides unless it overcomes the entangling

ribbons' STR rating of 25. The GM may decide if the target gets one

try to break the tangles, or one try for each arm. Finally, the

entangled victim will be stuck [sTR 25] to any surface he or she falls

to, and if both limbs are trapped, he or she will be unable to squirm

away from the area. Sinclair monofilament cable cuts through

entangling ribbons fairly easily. A hullmetal knife would do so

extremely slowly, rquiring over an hour of work -- work most likely

impossible to an entangled victim. The proper way to free oneself of

"tangles" is to spray a solvent on them.

On the Ringworld, weapons similar to this may be found in the

possession of Healers, City-Builders, and any other reasonably

advanced species.

A crueler variant of the weapon might employ strands of monofilimant

wire in the projectile, or simply fire a large tangle of monofiliment

wire. Such rounds would be expensive, but deadly.

Edited October 23, 2009 by Conrad
To enliven a boring thread with some useful information.

[soltakss]

Just noticing that these two SRDs came out after your RQ SF doc.

Any plans on including info from those as well.

I didn't know they were out, but I'll check them out and start to include them over the next few weeks.

Thanks.

If anyone else knows of any more SRDs that haven't been included, can you let me know?

[KjetilKverndokken]

Is it okey if I use what you have written, and adabt it for my own sci-fi setting Omnichron?

[soltakss]

Is it okey if I use what you have written, and adabt it for my own sci-fi setting Omnichron?

Yes, it is an SRD after all. The normal rules apply - it is produced under the OGL and that should be included with copyright notifications.

If you think of any rules changes/additions, equipment, creature traits legendary abilities etc then let me know and I'll add them to the SRD for others to use. That way, we can keep a common base for RQ Sci Fi.

[tedopon]

This is absolutely brilliant soltakss.

[KjetilKverndokken]

Yeah, I'll see what I find.

I may post some ship stats here after I have read through those rules properly, with the fluff for it.

[KjetilKverndokken]

Btw - Any ready made Character sheet for this?

[soltakss]

Just noticing that these two SRDs came out after your RQ SF doc.

Thanks for pointing these out. I've downloaded them and had a look at them.

Any plans on including info from those as well.

I will be including these, in some form.

It looks as though the character generation rules for Mercenary and Naval Officer could be adapted to a RQ-style or RQ-Traveller-hybrid-style chargen.

The equipment lists can easily be included and the Space Warfare and Ship Design rules could be adapted to RQ.

[TrippyHippy]

Ditch the extra characteristics. Choose either SOC or CHA (or APP), and have POW being PSI by default (what else would it be there for?). There is simply too much confusion to have to choose between different characteristics to roll, whilst the extra stats add nothing towards helping to visualise the character profile. Remember that BRP also has a Status skill that could be integrated into the rules too.

There doesn't appear to be too much of a lifepath system going on here - it's steered more towards the RuneQuest way of doing things in this regard. I'd prefer the Traveler chargen system.

The rest though, on cursary examination, seems like a really good effort. I'll keep reading....

[soltakss]

Ditch the extra characteristics.

I like extra characteristics :ohwell:

Choose either SOC or CHA (or APP), and have POW being PSI by default (what else would it be there for?). There is simply too much confusion to have to choose between different characteristics to roll, whilst the extra stats add nothing towards helping to visualise the character profile.

I think MAS and LEN make sense for a SciFi game.

SOC was kept from Traveller as it means something very specific, although I suppose RQ skills could do the same job.

I left POW in as standard RQ, but PSI means something different again. I like having mixed games, so I'd keep POW for magic as opposed to Psi powers.

ROB means something very specific and is a measure of the amount of Robotness someone else.

Remember that BRP also has a Status skill that could be integrated into the rules too.

Unfortunately, BRP is not covered by the OGL and I can't really take too much directly from BRP.

There doesn't appear to be too much of a lifepath system going on here - it's steered more towards the RuneQuest way of doing things in this regard. I'd prefer the Traveler chargen system.

I deliberately did this for several reasons:

1. It's a RQ SRD not a Traveller one.

2. I did not have many examples of the Lifepath progression and have no writeup on how it works (The only Traveller material I have is the SRDs).

3. The Traveller professions were not published in SRDs or as OGL supplements.

However, the High Guard and Mercenary SRDs do have full examples of the LifePath, so I may be able to produce a RQ equivalent system. It won't be the same as the Traveller one, because it is for RQ.

The rest though, on cursary examination, seems like a really good effort. I'll keep reading....

Thanks. I'll try and develop it a bit more after I've finished Merrie England:Age of Eleanor.

[soltakss]

Btw - Any ready made Character sheet for this?

No, not yet. The SRD is incomplete, so I didn't think it was ready for a character sheet.

In any case, character sheets should really be setting specific rather than being generic.

But, if anyone wants to do one then I could include it in the SRD.

[KjetilKverndokken]

No, not yet. The SRD is incomplete, so I didn't think it was ready for a character sheet.

So whats left to make it complete?

[soltakss]

So whats left to make it complete?

Off the top of my head:

• Creature Traits
  
• New Creatures
  
• Traveller-style Lifepath chargen
  
• Working spaceship rules
  
• Better combat rules
  
• Better space combat rules
  
• More weapons
  
• More equipment
  
• Better Psionic rules
  
• More Psi Powers
  
• Better Robot Rules
  
• More sample Robots
  
• Better Cybertech rules
  
• More Cybertech examples
  

[TrippyHippy]

I don't mind the LEN and MAS or Robotics stat at all (although maybe you could invert that into HUManity, btw, as they do in Cyberpunk), but the Traveler system already uses CHA as a replacement for SOC in some species (Aslan for example), whilst POW is already used for Psionics in BRP.

I think the confusion is mainly due to this information not being in available SRDs as you say - but with POW in particular it's hard to know what to use it for if there is another PSI stat already. 'Magic' isn't exactly part of the Traveler-style sci-fi canon!

The Lifepath system would take a bit of work - and you could still have it working with the points distribution system as an option. What you would need to do is take each career and have rolls provided to qualify for a term (4 years), survive it (or avoid a mishap - with a mishap table), be promoted (advance in rank), a random Events table, a Benefits table and the skills associated with the career. Most of these rolls can be based upon Characteristic rolls, and the Basic Training and Education should provide each career with the basic skills needed - but skills and benefits are usually randomly accumulated by experience, events and promotion in Traveler. Not by spending chargen points. It tends to create characters with very interesting backgrounds - and it's actually very fun to do.

Edited August 9, 2009 by TrippyHippy

[Guest Vile Traveller]

Yes, the Traveller lifepath character generation concept is the thing I most want to see translated into BRP. I know points-build has its adherents, but I've always loved the unexpected factors thrown up by random (or semi-random, like Traveller) chargen. It's my personal experience that, the longer you play with a points-based system like GURPS, the more your characters tend to come out the same.

[soltakss]

Lifepath it is, then. I'll include it as an optional character generation.

In any case, this is for RQ, not BRP, although it should be fairly compatible. The OGL is easy to use, BRP's licence isn't. I have no real desire to give away 250 copies of anything I produce, so I doubt if I will write any BRP material.

[Solardog]

I know that this is off topic for this thread.

This is Science Fiction the BRP way. Not the book but the cover picture.

Source:Chaosium Inc.

[soltakss]

I'm working through the High Guard and Mercenary SRDs and adding them to the RQ SciFi SRD.

Traveller loves its tables, it's taking half my time combining multiple tables and stripping out unnecessary tables.

When looking at Traveller-style character generation, the rules in the new SRDs refer to Degrees of Effect and allocate results accordingly. Now, I take this as being the number that a target is exceeded by, so if I have a target of 7 and I roll 10 then I have 3 degrees of Effect. Is that right?

What would be the best way of converting this mechanic to RQ/BRP? I could say 1 Degree of Effect for every 20 rolled, so rolling 01-20 gives 1, 21-40 2, 41-60 3, 61-80 4 and 81-100 5, but this doesn't take into account criticals. My preference would be based on how much you make a roll by, but this doesn't gel with RQM.

Also, the Traveller rules goes very heavily into ship design, but the SRDs are very sketchy and are little more than toolkits. How many people have built ships using the Traveller system? How many would want that level of flexibility for a RQ/BRP SciFi game? To a certain extent it leaves me cold, but the power gamer in me is itching to optimise ship design and I would guess that a lot of people feel the same.

Are there any sample Traveller ships on the web? I couldn't find any when I last looked, but there again I didn't look very hard. Personally, I would prefer to have a dozen or so sample ship types that people could use off the shelf rather than having to spend ages designing a ship.

Also, people seem to like the Traveller Lifepath character generation system. I don't know why - it seems overly complex, unrealistic and cumbersome to me. Are there any examples of other professions available anywhere? I've got examples of Scout, Merchant, Mercenary and Navy but that's a very small number of professions.

I'm also posting this on the Mongoose forum for those people there who don't use the BRP forum.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

I do also like the concept of "how much you made it by", but that would take some playtesting, I think.

I like my ship design. Mongoose Traveller is fairly simple and modular, and you can use the SRD to design ships - but it helps if you have the main rulebook to explain things in simpler terms. There are a few worked examples of ships (mostly conversions from Classic Traveller) on the Mongoose forum. Most others are in books (I even wrote a couple myself - see my sig), so you'd have to pay to look. It's the problem with licenses like this - less people can be bothered putting up free stuff on the web when they could just as easily publish PDFs and get paid for them.

Lifepath character generation is intended to be something of a mini-game in itself (actually a lot of Traveller is like that, including ship building and world generation), so to some extent it should be a bit long-winded. I agree it's not terribly realistic, but I don't think it ever will be given the limitations - you don't want to spend too long on it, after all. People like it because they become involved with the character even before play begins. Spica Publishing has produced a career book, maybe you should pick up the PDF. They also have a free career-generation sheet, which makes it easy to create your own MGT careers.

[lawrence.whitaker]

The Traveller career process is great fun - and more so under Mongoose Traveller. No, its not realistic at all, but it does offer the opportunity to create characters with some interesting history snippets, skeletons in the closet, enemies, friends and contacts. The 'Connections' rule is also superb, giving characters a reason to know each other, and be adventuring, by sharing a history snippet and being rewarded, skill-wise, because of it.

I've worked on several extended career paths for various Traveller books I've penned, and they're always one of the most fun areas of the rules to work on. If you think a little about the career you're reflecting, and a specialisation within it (Naval Gunner, for instance; or Psionic Rebel; or Mutant Bounty Hunter) then you can come up with some really great background colour for characters.

But, writing the career paths is time consuming, especially when you offer specialisations within a career. So you may want to consider a more streamlined way of doing it. Also, are you including a Survival roll? That's a standard Traveller trope, and a failed Survival roll leads to a Mishap Event, which can also be good fun, too. If you do end-up using a career path system, you'll need to work that decision into the design mechanism.