SF BRP

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Daefaroth

Ah! Ok, I've seen it then though it's been quite awhile. Thank you.

I also somewhat shamelessly used it as an inspiration for my vehicle designs in BRP. I liked the idea of Speed being handled as a simple STR-SIZ function and looking up the remainder on a table to find the Speed/MOV score. It allowed me to use some crunchy math to calculate a vehicle's MOV rating without players needing to use the crunchy math to design a vehicle.

In a nutshell, it works like this.

1) Figure out the SIZ of the vehicle based on it's mass by looking it up on a table.

2) Give the vehicle an engine with a STR rating, with a correction to horsepower or thrust avialble for those who want it.

3) Subtract SIZ form STR, look up the remainder on the Speed Table, and that tells you the vehicle's MOV rate.


And it all works in "reverse" too. If you wanted to design a vehicle to go a certain speed you could find the MOV score you wanted, look up the excess STR you need on the table, and add the vehicle's SIZ to get the STR of the engine needed.

For real world vehicles it is a lot simpler since all the work has been done already and you just need to covert a few things into game terms like hit points and MOV.

Where it can get cool is that by having a STR score, a PC could tweak the engine, up it's STR and up the vehicles performance.


I actually works out well for Sci-Fi. The Space:1999 Eagle Transporter is looking pretty good so far. Spaceships, tend to have very high MOV and SIZ scores, so the number are larger. The Eagle Transporter worked out at SIZ 109 and STR 280 Engines (actually 4 STR 264 engines) and an acceleration in space of about MOV 4300 each round.

But all that could be scaled too. Spaceship speeds generally are only important in relation to each other or for travel times anyway. The Eagle isn't too bad for characters to interact with, but something like The Enterprise or a Star Destroyer would probably benefit from scaling.

[Joseph Paul]

I tend to believe that some "crunch" is important in RPGs, just to keep thing internally consistent, but that most of the "crunch" can and should be transparent in play. For example, a game could have a formula that is used to calculate weapon damage dice, APs, Hit Points, ship's performance stats and whatever, but the players don't need to know them. They just need to know the final numbers and what dice they need to roll.

Yes,Yes, Yes! You get it! Atgxtg you are my new hero!

[Zane]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

That sort of the approach I was thinking too. Did you ever see the old Universe RPG or the CODA version of Star Trek? You get a hull and it has a certain number of spaces that you fill up with components.

CODA version of Star Trek? You've lost me on that one. I have the FASA version, and the Star Fleet Battles RPG. Is the CODA one, the one that Decipher did a few years back?

As for the Universe RPG, I'm afraid that's a definite hole in my library.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Zane

CODA version of Star Trek? You've lost me on that one. I have the FASA version, and the Star Fleet Battles RPG. Is the CODA one, the one that Decipher did a few years back?

As for the Universe RPG, I'm afraid that's a definite hole in my library.

Yeah. CODA is the name for the system designed for Decipher. It was actually written by the staff of Last Unicorn Games, who ended up working for Decipher. LUG had produced a previous version of a Star Trek RPG referred to as the ICON system.


IN CODA, you would decide on the SIZE of a ship, and that would determine how many SPACES that it had for components and systems. Some components had fixed costs, and some would have costs based on the SIZE of the ship. There were also some restrictions, like what engines can go on what SIZED ship.

It had a few nice ideas. For example, power allocation, a hold over from the Star Trek computer and war games, was eliminated. Instead ship'
s systems had a reliability rating and every 5 points (that's 5 points Starship Scale) of damage the ship took, caused a random system to drop a level on reliability. Each drop would have an effect, like weapons becoming harder to aim or doing reduced damage, and enough hits could take a system out.

Overall the design system was fairly simply, and not a bad model for BRP.

I've toyed around a little with the idea. My idea is to make it compatible with scaling and the vehicle design stuff I started. Hopefully, that would let people go into more detail if they wanted to, but not force them into it when they don't have to.

So that's the theory. Translating that into BRP and having all the values be internally consist with each other and the rest of the game is something else. Doing it all without the final version of BRP will all the footnotes, corrections and missing data is virtually impossible. I can only bring some things so far, and will have to adjust other things as new info becomes available.

[Joseph Paul]

You can scrap making it consistent with the rest of the game. The game stats for vehicles are not consistent in themselves already. A vehicles or SF supplement would be the way to go with people overwriting the inconsistent material already published.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

You can scrap making it consistent with the rest of the game. The game stats for vehicles are not consistent in themselves already. A vehicles or SF supplement would be the way to go with people overwriting the inconsistent material already published.

Well, I sort of already have a vehicle write up system that gives decent results. At least they match up with the results in BRP and are internally consistent. It really only has a few minor problems that I hope can be worked out once BRP the Handling/Maneuver thing is worked out. I even have formulas that work for SIZ, hit points, and APs that fit within the system.

As it stands now, you can write up most real world vehicles in game terms in a couple of minutes. Or design something from scratch in a little longer. If you want I can send you a copt of the current "quick write up" rules for vehicles. A few people have tried it, and it has held up fairly well so far. I even got a decent batmobile out of it.

What I am hping to do is to make the spaceship rules combatable with my design rules. So far, it has worked. Just that I need to get the scaling down. A Space:1999 Eagle works out fine with the vehicles rules, but is a small enough ship (estimated SIZ109) that it can stay at PC scale. Something like the Galaxy-class Starship from Star Trek (estimated SIZ 29,032) might benefit from a 100:1 or even a 1000:1 scale.

Something like 29 kilo-SIZ points (kSIZ) might be a way to scale it without scaling.

For instance, if a Type X phaser did 1D10kilo-Damage points it would be easy to use and on character scale.

The trouble area would be things like starfighters and shuttlecraft. Small enough for normal scale, yet in some settings capable of hurting big ships. Probably just need to tweak the special or critical hit rules to let then to 1kHit Point against bit ships as long as they can do a certain minimum. So X-Wings can "damage" Star Destroyers.



That's the direction I'm heading towards. It certainly isn't the only option, but seems like a good way to keep everything internally consistent, and doesn't require rewriting the BRP core rules.

[Joseph Paul]

I would most certainly like to see your efforts. if you could E-mail them to the addy in my profile please?

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

I would most certainly like to see your efforts. if you could E-mail them to the addy in my profile please?

Certainly. If I can figure out how to attach a document file to your BRP email address.

[Joseph Paul]

Sent you a private message with an email addy in it.

Thanks again

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Sent you a private message with an email addy in it.

Thanks again

Don't thank me yet, it might suck!