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BRP(parchment book)


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A couple of weeks ago I bought the big BRP book; the one with the beige wrap around cover that is obviously supposed to look like parchment and has a multi-genre Vitruvian Man on the front cover. What year was that book first published?

I am aware that Chaosium has published many games with variations of essentially the same system. Are those days over? Will everything after BRP conform to the rules in BRP?

The magic section (and the sorcery section)seemed to have a rather scanty selection of spells. Does Chaosium have any plans to publish supplements with more spells?

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A couple of weeks ago I bought the big BRP book; the one with the beige wrap around cover that is obviously supposed to look like parchment and has a multi-genre Vitruvian Man on the front cover. What year was that book first published?

This year! :) There was a "Zero Edition" that was released 2007, but that was only available for a short time.

I am aware that Chaosium has published many games with variations of essentially the same system. Are those days over? Will everything after BRP conform to the rules in BRP?

The rule variations in the BRP book cover most of those variations that have been before. I would guess that you'll see future supplements conform to either to BRP or Call of Cthulhu, as CoC allready has such a strong base (even though the systems are pretty similar).

The magic section (and the sorcery section)seemed to have a rather scanty selection of spells. Does Chaosium have any plans to publish supplements with more spells?

Most likely, we just don't know when. :cool:

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Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!
b1.gif 116/420. High Priest.

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ALsonote that "zero edition" is not the finished rulebook, but was printed and released early to appease fans who wanted to see it and didn't want to wait for the final relase, since it wan't known when the book would be ready to ship.

There are a few things in the rules that were not in or corrected since "zero", so it is worth checking out to see the updates. Chaosium was going to make a file with the corrections, but I don't know if it is done yet.

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

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I will pose some rule questions and you folks can help me learn BRP a little bit better.

Let us suppose that Joe the Warrior( no relation to Joe the Plumber) has a shield and a shortsword. Bob the Bandit has a knife in his left hand and a light club in his right. Joe makes an attack and gets a Success. Bob dodges and gets a Fumble. Looking at A/D Matrix, Bob has to roll on Fumble table. There is a Parry Fumble table but none for Dodge.

Should Bob just roll on Parry Fumble?

Assuming the answer is yes, let's say he rolls 88. That means Joe's attack is considered Special rather than the original regular Success. Yes or No?

If yes, then Joe has Special and Bob has Fumble. That part of A/D Matrix says defender rolls on Fumble table. Bob has to roll on Fumble table AGAIN? Is that right?

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I will pose some rule questions and you folks can help me learn BRP a little bit better.

Let us suppose that Joe the Warrior( no relation to Joe the Plumber) has a shield and a shortsword. Bob the Bandit has a knife in his left hand and a light club in his right. Joe makes an attack and gets a Success. Bob dodges and gets a Fumble. Looking at A/D Matrix, Bob has to roll on Fumble table. There is a Parry Fumble table but none for Dodge.

Should Bob just roll on Parry Fumble?

Assuming the answer is yes, let's say he rolls 88. That means Joe's attack is considered Special rather than the original regular Success. Yes or No?

If yes, then Joe has Special and Bob has Fumble. That part of A/D Matrix says defender rolls on Fumble table. Bob has to roll on Fumble table AGAIN? Is that right?

To answer the questions.

I think that the table used in the case of a fumble dodge is unarmed fumble.

I you think that using the parry fumble is better, the with a roll of 88, Joe's attack is a special. But Bob does not have to roll for a new fumble.

That's how I do it.

Cheers

Jean

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I will pose some rule questions and you folks can help me learn BRP a little bit better.

Let us suppose that Joe the Warrior( no relation to Joe the Plumber) has a shield and a shortsword. Bob the Bandit has a knife in his left hand and a light club in his right. Joe makes an attack and gets a Success. Bob dodges and gets a Fumble. Looking at A/D Matrix, Bob has to roll on Fumble table. There is a Parry Fumble table but none for Dodge.

Should Bob just roll on Parry Fumble?

No, the skill description for Dodge (page 55) specifically mentions the Natural Weapons Attack and Parry Fumble Table, so use that one.

Assuming the answer is yes, let's say he rolls 88. That means Joe's attack is considered Special rather than the original regular Success. Yes or No?

Assuming that this is a Parry fumble we are talking about, then yes, the fumble result "promotes" Joes success to a special.

If yes, then Joe has Special and Bob has Fumble. That part of A/D Matrix says defender rolls on Fumble table. Bob has to roll on Fumble table AGAIN? Is that right?

No. Do not apply the matrix outcomes iteratively - Normal Success Attack vs Fumbled Dodge reads "Attack strikes defender and rolls damage normally. Defender’s armor value subtracted from damage. Defender rolls on the appropriate fumble table." The outcome of that Fumble roll is that the attack is considered a Special for the purpsoes of calculating damage, special effects and so on only.

Cheers,

Nick

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Yes, it does seem to. I'd assumed Time-Aiming was for missiles, and Location-Aiming was for either, though - and I could still argue that, so I'll stick to it!

Britain has been infiltrated by soviet agents to the highest levels. They control the BBC, the main political party leaderships, NHS & local council executives, much of the police, most newspapers and the utility companies. Of course the EU is theirs, through-and-through. And they are among us - a pervasive evil, like Stasi.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Time for my next question. Take a look at the "Use of spells by non-magicians" subsection of the Magic section. The third sentence has confused me. I thought spells were bought like the other skills. If the character has INT of 12, he can know only 3 levels altogether? What does that mean?

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Time for my next question. Take a look at the "Use of spells by non-magicians" subsection of the Magic section. The third sentence has confused me. I thought spells were bought like the other skills. If the character has INT of 12, he can know only 3 levels altogether? What does that mean?

Hmm, I can see what you mean as earlier on it seems to contradict the idea that a spell's level matters with regard to memorization (and that the magician can choose what level a spell is at the time of casting). If I were to call it, I'd say that a non-magician with an INT of 12 can learn up to 3 spells and is able to cast them at levels 1-3.

I'm taking this from the section Spell Level, the section Memorization of Magic and the section Becoming a Magician all of which seem to suggest that INT affects both how many spells you can memorize and how high a level you can cast at, but nowhere else does it suggest that using a higher-level spell limits you to remembering less spells.

So that's what I'd go with, I think it should read, "The non-magician character can know up to 1/4 his or her INT (rounded down) spells and is also limited to 1/4 INT (rounded down) in spell levels."

It might mean that non-magicians are limited to 1/4 INT spell levels and that they cannot change the level of a spell as magicians can (i.e. if they learn a spell at level 2, they can only ever cast it at level 2) but it doesn't specifically say that, at least nowhere I can find.

Edited by Byron Alexander
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  • 1 month later...

The book addresses the idea of campaign power level. It has a sliding scale: normal, heroic, epic and superhuman. You get a greater number of skill points, the higher you go. Okay, no problem. Understood.

There is also a "personality" section of character creation that seems to indicate it should be used for...well...heroic characters. How are these two elements of the rules supposed to mesh? If I try to do a normal level game but let them take the "personality" option, is it still really a normal level game? Your thoughts on this?

Leaving aside the "personality" section, do you differentiate the campaign levels in some way other than just more skill points? Are there optional rules you would use? Homebrew rules?

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Hi,

I think there was a thread recently about “option 6” or something like that which addressed the impact of the including the extra 260 “personality” points. I am inclined not to use them myself – but if I did, I would use them to replace the INTx10 free points. (This would be for normal power-level fast and furious games like a zombie apocalypse or the like.)

This link should go to the thread: http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/basic-roleplaying/1077-utilisation-step-six-step-6-your-games.html

For the record, I run “Normal” games.

Hope this helps,

Rich

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Hi,

I think there was a thread recently about “option 6” or something like that which addressed the impact of the including the extra 260 “personality” points. I am inclined not to use them myself – but if I did, I would use them to replace the INTx10 free points. (This would be for normal power-level fast and furious games like a zombie apocalypse or the like.)

This link should go to the thread: http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/basic-roleplaying/1077-utilisation-step-six-step-6-your-games.html

For the record, I run “Normal” games.

Hope this helps,

Rich

Umm...wait...INT x 10 free points? What's that? Did I overlook some major part of character generation?

I know about the "personality" skill points. I know about the skill points to be spent on profession skills based on normal, heroic, epic and superhuman games. I don't remember seeing anything about INT x 10.

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Umm...wait...INT x 10 free points? What's that? Did I overlook some major part of character generation?

I know about the "personality" skill points. I know about the skill points to be spent on profession skills based on normal, heroic, epic and superhuman games. I don't remember seeing anything about INT x 10.

Bottom of page 23, step 7, under "Personal Point Pool" and the last paragraph in the first column of page 24.

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Wow! An answer from one of the writers. That's cool.

Hopefully, you will continue to read this thread. What was the thinking behind the "personality" part of chargen? And how, in your mind, does it mesh with the variable game levels? What was the intention there?

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Whilst not one of the writers, I was involved in the play testing of the new BRP. Step six comes from the previous BRP game Elric!, which was one of the major influences on the baseline of the new systems as I understand it. The personality type option in Elric! was assumed to be used, as it was meant to be quite a heroic game. In the new BRP it pretty clearly says that unless notably heroic characters are what you are after, don't use the option.

My preference is to use it to emphasise the heroic edge within the wider campaign level. For example, a campaign based on the TV show 24 is arguably a normal game (there's no powers and it's ostensibly set in the real world) - but I'd definitely use the step six for such a game, where as for say a Smiley's People inspired game I wouldn't.

Another approach is to make the add from step Six scale with the campaign level: +10 / +15 / +20 / +25 for normal / heroic / epic / superhuman games.

Cheers,

Nick

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  • 3 weeks later...

Next question:

I already looked in the skill section and the armor section. Maybe I overlooked it but is there anything in the "Vitruvian Man" book that tells me if armor penulties will reduce a skill below the base skill? Which page?

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I don't think this is mentioned specifically in the book anywhere, so I see no reason why a skill couldn't be reduced below base chance from armour penalties. I would probably not go below 1% though to allow for a lucky break.

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The base chance is just a starting chance. It is not an absolute minimum.

If you have a character who is at base chance and is fighting in the dark, fighting from the ground, swimming while heavily encumbered then his skills will be reduced, even though he is at the base chance.

I wouldn't reduce skills to below 5%, personally, as 1% is too low even for me.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

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