BRP for Future campaign

[hdrider67]

I only just found out about BRP's Zero edition (Thanks Rust) on the travellerrpg site.

I have a few questions that I'd like to ask before I order,hopefully today, as in hours if I can!

I'm interested in running a future campaign, similar in many ways to Traveller. Can someone tell me if future equipment is addressed well, or if it's more of an afterthought to the fantasy aspect?

I'm looking for a decent supply of weapons, computers, cybernetics, etc.

Does BRP have a decent listing of skills appropriate to an interstellar campaign?

Does BRP include starship construction / combat rules?

Any Aliens? (or monsters suitable for such?)

Lastly how bad is the presentation? I'm not looking for anything close to perfection in a pre release book but I would hope it's readable.

Thanks in advance!

[fmitchell]

Short answer: since it's trying to be multigenre, it doesn't cover any one genre particularly well. Fantasy and Modern get most of the attention.

Originally Posted by hdrider67

Can someone tell me if future equipment is addressed well, or if it's more of an afterthought to the fantasy aspect?

I'm looking for a decent supply of weapons, computers, cybernetics, etc.

Not sure what "decent" means. There's some futuristic weapons, a couple of rules for robots and AIs, and a few vague line-items under "Vehicles" for spaceships. If you want detail or variety, you'll have to convert from Traveller (or GURPS UltraTech, or whatever).

Originally Posted by hdrider67

Does BRP have a decent listing of skills appropriate to an interstellar campaign?

Depends on the campaign, but it's not hard to add a skill. In this edition, a lot of similar skills have been summarized into "template" or "meta-" skills, like Knowledge (X), Pilot (X), Repair (X), Technical Skill (X), etc.

Originally Posted by hdrider67

Does BRP include starship construction / combat rules?

No.

Originally Posted by hdrider67

Any Aliens? (or monsters suitable for such?)

A few token aliens: Grays, Xenomorphs (think Alien and sequels), and Blobs, plus robots. You could always repurpose some fantasy creatures as aliens, or invent/convert your own ... it's not that hard.

Originally Posted by hdrider67

Lastly how bad is the presentation? I'm not looking for anything close to perfection in a pre release book but I would hope it's readable.

Some misplaced page references, minor inconsistencies, missing footnotes, and the like.

Hope this helps,

Frank

P.S. In general, Science Fiction RPGs are complicated, since there's so many different imagined futures, from old-school space opera to transhumanist revolutions. To cover all possible future technologies you'd need an entire book, if not two or three.

If you like a particular subgenre, it probably wouldn't be too hard to convert existing material to BRP, based on examples in the book. There's an entire chapter on campaign genres, although science-fiction gets maybe two pages there (near-future, cyberpunk, space travel, space opera).

[Trifletraxor]

Originally Posted by hdrider67

I'm interested in running a future campaign, similar in many ways to Traveller. Can someone tell me if future equipment is addressed well, or if it's more of an afterthought to the fantasy aspect?

As science fiction is a setting that requires a lot of detail, I'd say the book alone is not enough. Using the book together with some other BRP sci-fi material, like the free Cthulhu Rising material, would work very well though.

I'm looking for a decent supply of weapons, computers, cybernetics, etc.

Material for a future sci-fi supplement, but not fully explored in the basic rulebook.

Does BRP have a decent listing of skills appropriate to an interstellar campaign?

They have many that fits, but you will probably want to add some, which should b an easy thing to do considering the structure of the skill rules.

Does BRP include starship construction / combat rules?

Nope, but again, check out Cthulhu Rising (in the link list on this site), and the download section here might get some pretty soon.

Any Aliens? (or monsters suitable for such?)

Some, but not that many.

Lastly how bad is the presentation? I'm not looking for anything close to perfection in a pre release book but I would hope it's readable.

Quite readable. Mostly minor editing issues that need to be cleaned up before the 1st edition is released.

SGL.

[hdrider67]

Thanks both of you.

Do you know if a SciFi supplement planned?

I decided what the heck and ordered. I figure I've got the new Traveller coming anyway and the wife can only kill me once. :-)

Thanks!

[Atgxtg]

Well if it helps, I:ve been working on a specfic Sci-Fi setting that I will probably eventually make avialbe here.

As a unrelated project I:ve also been working on a couple different sets of construction and combat rules for Spaceships, which Triff has hinted at. It:s still n the *Alpha* state, but is designed to be adaptable for any Sci-Fi setting, and has scaling rules.

[darkheart]

I would second using Cthulhu Rising.
[ CTHULHU RISING: HORROR ROLEPLAYING IN A DARK FUTURE ]
I've used it in it's own setting and will be using it for the continuation of my star wars campaign with some minor tweeking.

[Conrad]

Originally Posted by hdrider67

I have a few questions that I'd like to ask before I order,hopefully today, as in hours if I can!

I'm interested in running a future campaign, similar in many ways to Traveller. Can someone tell me if future equipment is addressed well, or if it's more of an afterthought to the fantasy aspect?

I'm looking for a decent supply of weapons, computers, cybernetics, etc.

Does BRP have a decent listing of skills appropriate to an interstellar campaign?

Does BRP include starship construction / combat rules?

Any Aliens? (or monsters suitable for such?)

hdrider67 have you seen this:
Traveller/BRP Rules

It is a conversion of traveller to the BRP rules, with a skill list and alien races.
As for cybernetics for BRP see:

Fallen Future: Cyberthulhu Gaming


There is a BRP derived Traveller clone called Worlds Beyond that has a set of starship construction rules in it, Chaosium has one left for sale:


http://www.catalog.chaosium.com/prod...roducts_id=995

(this link appears dodgey so you might have to Google this reference)

The yahoo group brpsystem@yahoogroups.com has a file of Traveller weapons (Striker weapons.pdf) in their files section. There is also a file on modern weapons with some Traveller weapons in it.


I hope that helps you in your quest.

Conrad

[hdrider67]

Rust asked me to give my impression of the system (where future campaigns are concerned) after I got a chance to browse, so here I go.

First, I'll say up front my time with my new book has been limited. I've had a busy week so far and it's just starting!

I started the thread asking about some specific items, so I'll address my biggest concerns.

1: Equipment:

The weapon selection gave me a really good starting point. I may have to tweak here and there but for the most part, sehr gut.

The armor I can pretty much leave alone except to delete an itel or two. No force fields for me although I really like how they represented that armor choice.

No Mecha or Robot rules at all, though there was a single mecha example. My mecha will be limited to powered armor and robots will be basic but it would have been nice to see just a bit of a build process.

Where equipment really falls down is in the general area. What benefit for having or penalty for not having a first aid kit, surgery kit, or other kits? The computer description was decent and the autodoc was right on the money but other kits will need some work.

2: Skills: Excellent. I don't think I'll have to do much of anything here.

3: Starships: Non existent I could use the provided vehicle chase rules except that handling (a very important vehicle characteristic) seems to have been left undefined. The build system and combat damage, I can get by without as I've pratically built a simple one already.

Could someone tell me if I missed the definition of handling and how it's applied? I ran through the book pretty quickly so I may have missed it.

3: Aliens: I think a bit more effort might have been put into this subject.It's maybe the easiest to get by without (I can just steal more mundane monsters if needs must).

My biggest complaint? Wealth. I can't tell you how much I despise wealth systems. I know it's a pain because of the many genres that have to be represented but specifying X units would have made it much less work. Don't define units and put in a blurb saying stuff from outside a tech level would cost more (or less in some cases) than stuff in the represented genre.

So, I'm happy to say I won't have to do much work on skills at all. THAT would have been work. Weapons are pretty much where I need them to be thought he other equipment is going to require effort.

Starships and vehicular combat will need some details roughed out as well.

It may sound like I'm not happy but I am. I'd give this a 3.5/5 and I would expect it to improve greatly by the time it hits the printers.


My suggestions to Chaosium:

Dump wealth.

Flesh out the technology for each genre, if only a little.

Scales of combat could be easily done by multiplying vehicle heavy weapon damage (and AP/HP) by five and REALLY big weapons (waterborne ships, starships, and some aircraft) by 10.

Define the vehicle rules. Chases happen in all time periods so this is an important feature to have working.

Spend just a little time on Aliens.

All in all, I think it has amazing potential. I'd be happy to wait months to get the bugs worked out and I'd pay 150% of what I paid already for the right product.

Thanks Chaosium!

[hdrider67]

Originally Posted by Conrad

hdrider67 have you seen this:
Traveller/BRP Rules

It is a conversion of traveller to the BRP rules, with a skill list and alien races.
As for cybernetics for BRP see:

Fallen Future: Cyberthulhu Gaming


There is a BRP derived Traveller clone called Worlds Beyond that has a set of starship construction rules in it, Chaosium has one left for sale:


http://www.catalog.chaosium.com/prod...roducts_id=995

(this link appears dodgey so you might have to Google this reference)

The yahoo group brpsystem@yahoogroups.com has a file of Traveller weapons (Striker weapons.pdf) in their files section. There is also a file on modern weapons with some Traveller weapons in it.


I hope that helps you in your quest.

Conrad

Conrad,

Can you tell me if the Worlds Beyond is very good? I can't afford to buy it right now but if it's not going to be around long I might just throw financial caution to the wind and acquire it.

Thanks!

[rust]

Thank you very much for this review, now I am really looking forward to see
BRP published.
The skills are the most important part for me, too. Well, it would have been
nice to have rules for the construction of robots and starships, but it should
not be too difficult to find a solution for this.

As for Worlds Beyond, I do not know it myself, but I have been told that it
is not worth the money, because it has a lot of gaps and it is not well
edited at all - but this is hearsay, I never really saw it.