Looking for starship design and combat rules you can adapt to BRP?

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

It would be a start - but bear in mind that Call of Cthulhu doesn't actually have vehicle combat rules, it has car chase rules. IIRC Jason's included a more generic version in the new book for "vehicle" based pursuits. I'll have a look in my copy of the playtest files when I get a chance...

Cheers,

Nick Middleton.

Car chase or star chase?
I dont think it matters that much. Just tweaking the rules a little bit. The cars do have HP and APs, (so should the starships too) and instead of investigators firing at fleeing cultistomobiles, you have gunners firing futuristic weapons firing at each others vessel or at space monsters or so.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

Only at such an abstract level that you lose any setting specific colour from including starship combat in the first place: in which case, why bother?

Because you can do a llot at the abstract level without loosing setting color if you do it right. One RPG that I'm fond of is FATE. While a very abstract system, it can handle many things and is easiliy adaptable becuase it is so abstract. Yet the game keeps color and flavor with a few tweaks.

soltakss is right, for the most part vechile combat can be handled like PC combat. Just cut & paste the "flavor enhancers" you need to fit the setting.

BRP actually does that through Superworld. Many superowlrd powers, are built in a manner similar to Chanpions. While a laser blast, Ki Strike, Disintergrator beam, and magentic rail gun are all differernt, the most important game effect are the range, skill% and damage. Much like a RQ hatchet and shortsword are fairly similar in a fucntional aspect in BRP.

Certainly, fine-tuning the system to better fit the setting makes sense for a space combat rule system, but that is desireable for other RPG settings too. As other have pointed out, Chaosium has done this in the past to RQ to apapt it so that it would be suitable for Strombringer, ElfQuest, CoC, etc.


I think the reason why we don't have any rules for statships is just that Chaosium has never released a successful Sci-Fi RPG. Ringworld and FutureWorld were barely blips on the RPG radar. It isn't that Spaceships are tougher to work out than Magic or Superpowers. The old Battle Magic system, while easy, certainly doesn't fit 90%+ of the fantasy settings, but we stil have it.

I think the best way to handle it, and along the lines of how BRP is being organized, would be to work out a basic Hull/HP, MOVE, weapons, skill based system along sotakss idea (and workable along with the old sailing ship rules), and the work up some SPOT RULES for types fo SF settings. Stuff like different methods of FTL propulsion and all that could be in the SPOT RULES.

Come to think of it, the superpower rules could probably handle spaceships. Just limit the powers availably by the setting. For instance, Star Trek gets teleportation, energy weapons, and forcie fields.

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

Star Trek space battles involve large damage control crews rushing about the ship, and critical command decisions about angling deflectors (or shields) in particular directions, energy allocation and involve primarily beam weapons: it feels rather like naval warfare of the late nineteenth century. Babylon 5 space combat on the other hand has predominantly projectile based weaponry (with preposterously short ranges, but that's a separate topic), and no forcefields / shields (on earthforce ships at least), plus small fighter craft providing screens for the larger capital ships: it feels like WWII mixed naval and air engagements (BSG goes even further and explicitly models Naval aircraft carriers directly).

Nope. Star Trek battles involve a handful of people sitting at consoles, making skill rolls, and saying how large damage control crews are rushing about the ship. On TV the Damage control crews generally boil down to one engineer or scientist character having to make a skill roll. It is really just a half dozen people who are handling the ship, and the other thousand NPCs are just there for color. That matches up well with a RPG group.

As for Bablyon 5 (or any other setting) I again bring up the idea of SPOT RULES.

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

So, who wants to write it then?

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

THat's a good question. A BRPG spaceship's book? IMO I think that one weakness of generic RPG books is that it is impossible to cover all the bases. WE have an infinite capacity to envision settings, but a finite number of pages to cover it. So we prioritize. Personally, I think some Sci-Fi rules for BRP are more important than Superpowers, but since Supers was already written decades ago I can see why it is in the book. BRP does need some decent SCi-Fi stuff it is is going to attempt to cover the genre, and definitely needs some sort of spaceship rules to do so (hey, they put a spaceship on the cover, right?).

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

I think the reason why we don't have any rules for statships is just that Chaosium has never released a successful Sci-Fi RPG. Ringworld and FutureWorld were barely blips on the RPG radar. It isn't that Spaceships are tougher to work out than Magic or Superpowers. The old Battle Magic system, while easy, certainly doesn't fit 90%+ of the fantasy settings, but we stil have it.

And note that both those games were heavily non-spacecraft oriented; the default assumpion in the first was that it'd take place on the Ringworld, and the second was designed for a setting that used stargates for travel.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

And note that both those games were heavily non-spacecraft oriented; the default assumpion in the first was that it'd take place on the Ringworld, and the second was designed for a setting that used stargates for travel.

Yeah. It is a "take the easy way out" approach to Sci-Fi. Sensible for a company who'se bread and butter lied elsewhere (Fantasy with Rq, and latter Horror with CoC). Had either of those two settings became as popluar as CoC, I have no doubt that Chaosiu would have written detailed Starship rules back in the 80s. But the bulk of BRP products have leaned towards fantasy and the supernatural raqther than Sci-Fi. Plus, Sci-Fi has generally been the least successful or profitable genre is the never very healty RPG field. Traveller is the closest thing to a successful Sci-Fi RPG, and it is now with it fourth company or so. So I'm not too surpsed that ships haven't been a major driving focus for BRP.

[Sven Norén]

Originally Posted by soltakss

Ship design is more complicated. I'd treat ships as PCs, whether they are alive/intelligent or not. So, give ships SIZ, CON, INT (?), DEX, POW (?). I'm not sure if they need STR or CHA, but they might be useful, STR might indicate how much cargo a ship can carry.

STR is engines. High STR and low SIZ makes for an agile ship that has a good chance to dodge incoming missiles or feint enemy artillerists, the reverse - less so.

Cargo is just part of the overall SIZ.

[Rurik]

INT could be the 'intelligence' of the shipboard computers (how advanced they are), while POW could be the robustness of those systems. HP would represent physical damage, and POW Pts./MP could be used for Electronics damage (computers, sensors, etc).

Electronic Warfare or Sensor tech (or even shield systems) could be the 'Magic System' of starship combat.

[Sven Norén]

INT as the capacity for collecting, analysing and evaluating information, a.k.a. Intelligence... meesa like!

Should we start new thread for brainstorming spaceship construction rules?

[Trifletraxor]

Sounds like a good idea. I like the suggestions that are coming up here.

SGL.

[The Tweaker]

Originally Posted by Sven Norén

Should we start new thread for brainstorming spaceship construction rules?

I think that would be cool, as there are lots of good ideas spread throught this thread, but I would rather wait until I have the book in my hands, as I am pretty sure it will include a ton of info which will be useful or relevant in this sense. I am very fond of the 'starships-as-characters' concept, and thus I'd bet the superpowers/magic and equipment chapters will be very useful in this sense. You could probably use the rules for superhero force fields as a basis for some simple ship shield's rules, for instance.

On the other hand, some time ago I posted a collection of links to BRP French resources. One of them was an Star Wars adaptation with some nice and simple (i.e., very abstracted) rules for vehicle and starship combat which should work beautifully for any space opera setting. If I have the time, I will try to translate them into English and post them here.