Q&A with the new BRP Author

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Jason Durall

Not really.

BRP, in all of its incarnations, has primarily been about characters rather than vehicles. These character might be investigators, sorcerers, adventurers,

I'd argue that's entirely an issue of focus, however; for example, I don't think it would be possible to not place some emphasis on vehicles in some subgenres (Star Wars style games, for example, have too much involvement of small vehicular combat for that not to be relevant, even if the focus _was_ on characters. Same for any mecha game).

Your explanation of your thought process however, is noted. I somewhat disagree with the conclusion you came to from it, but you're the author, not me.

[Jason Durall]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

I somewhat disagree with the conclusion you came to from it, but you're the author, not me.

This is a good time to note, once more, that Dustin Wright at Chaosium is eager to hear from people who'd like to be authors of BRP sourcebooks.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by badcat

On a slight detour of the main thread subject, does anyone have a suggestion for a published set of starship construction/combat that would fit a BRP game?

Yeah, several suggestions. It depends on what sort of SCI-FI ships and combat you want. One suggestion (and perhaps the simplest method) would be to use the starship combat system from the CODA edition of STAR TREK. Here's why:

1) The starship combat stats are set on a different scale than the character combat rules, so you could use them "as is" without worrying if theyt match up well with BRP weapon scores. Of course you could alway equate 1 Hull pont to 100 BRP HP and 1 point of Penetration to 3d6x10 damage and work the rest out to BRP terms if you wanted to, but you don't have to.

2) Spaceship combat is abstract, with ship performing maneuvers like strafing runs, weapon locks, hard about and so on. Movement is done through range bads (like short/medium/long/etcd>) rather than on a map. This makes is easy to run "rules lite".


3) Most tasks are done by rolling 2 or 3d6 plus modifiers vs a target number. That makes it easy to just multiply the modifiers by 5 or 10 and apply to D100. Since most taks are tests aginst a skill rating, that plays right into the ways things are done in BRP.

4) The ship construction rules are simple and stand alone from the RPG rules (see point #1). Basically you decide how big your ship is, and that gives you a number of SPACES that you can fill up with goodies like weapons, engines, and shields.

Badcat, I've got something lke a dozen Sci-Fi Rpgs, so PM me with what sort of setting your shooting for, and how complex you want the rules, and I'll try to find something.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Jason Durall

This is a good time to note, once more, that Dustin Wright at Chaosium is eager to hear from people who'd like to be authors of BRP sourcebooks.

And please note that my response was a disagreement, not an intended slam. On the whole, I've heard nothing but good things about the job you've done with this from playtesters, and I think your willingness to spend your time answering fan questions is admirable.

[NickMiddleton]

Originally Posted by badcat

On a slight detour of the main thread subject, does anyone have a suggestion for a published set of starship construction/combat that would fit a BRP game?

FGU's Space Opera - the rest of the game is an archetypal FGU mess of over complexity and ad hoc design, but the Starships are glorious pulp SF creations: Trans-gravitic Inter-phase Sub-space Anomaly (TISA) drives! Star Torpedo's! Blast cannons! Star ships blatting around asteroid belts at (non-relativistic!?!) large portions of C. Ah me, happy memories. They're also far more approachable as I recall than the more sober (and excessively mathematical) equivalents in Niall Shapero's Other Suns (the other BRP SF game).

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

[Jason Durall]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

And please note that my response was a disagreement, not an intended slam. On the whole, I've heard nothing but good things about the job you've done with this from playtesters, and I think your willingness to spend your time answering fan questions is admirable.

I didn't take it as a slam... more as a "It would be awesome if someone could write a starship creation/modification/combat system for BRP."

I would happily use it, though I've got no interest in writing it.

Sorry if the answer came back as argumentative.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Jason Durall

This is a good time to note, once more, that Dustin Wright at Chaosium is eager to hear from people who'd like to be authors of BRP sourcebooks.

Interested, but I7m hesitant to bite the hook until I at least see the bait. I want to see what BRP looks like. I'm gunshy after seeing how the "return of the classic RuneQuest system" turned out.

I'll be happy when I can flip through the BRP book and see all the familar RQ-based goodness.

Plus see what's been modified.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

FGU's Space Opera - the rest of the game is an archetypal FGU mess of over complexity and ad hoc design, but the Starships are glorious pulp SF creations: Trans-gravitic Inter-phase Sub-space Anomaly (TISA) drives! Star Torpedo's! Blast cannons! Star ships blatting around asteroid belts at (non-relativistic!?!) large portions of C. Ah me, happy memories. They're also far more approachable as I recall than the more sober (and excessively mathematical) equivalents in Niall Shapero's Other Suns (the other BRP SF game).

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

I don't know how I forgot Other Suns, given I used to know Nicolai.

I think both it and Space Opera suffer from being rather more complicated in execution than most people probably want to deal with in BRP typically, though.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Jason Durall

I didn't take it as a slam... more as a "It would be awesome if someone could write a starship creation/modification/combat system for BRP."

I would happily use it, though I've got no interest in writing it.

Sorry if the answer came back as argumentative.

No, I just didn't want you to take it as a "If I was writing the game _I'd_ have done it right." I'd probably just have left out something else more important.

(Ironically, none of the games I'm considering running with BRP likely really need a starship creation game; one's based partly on FutureWorld (and therefor uses interplanetary gates as its primary travel method), and the other, while it has a spacecraft as the origin point of the scenario, it crashes during the lead in and is never seen again...)

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Interested, but I7m hesitant to bite the hook until I at least see the bait. I want to see what BRP looks like. I'm gunshy after seeing how the "return of the classic RuneQuest system" turned out.

Tell me about it.

I'll be happy when I can flip through the BRP book and see all the familar RQ-based goodness.

Plus see what's been modified.

I have to admit after my last experience with doing work for the game industry, I'd also be prone to looking at someone else and going "You go first." One of the things that will be somewhat telling to me is how long it actually takes for it to get out. In the game industry, releases tend to run to about five tiers:
1. "We're more or less on time"
2. "We're late, but at least here it is"
3. "We're backed up because of product in the pipeline/cashflow/personal problems, but it is coming out"
4. "We're going to try really hard to get it out"
5. "We've cancelled it/gone out of business".

Outside of a couple big names, I almost expect the third; I'm pretty much astounded when I get the first.