Help deciding on Ruleset

[Kingfish]

Hello all,

I'm back at it and trying to figure out, what would be the best ruleset for the game I am wanting to run.

If anyone is familiar with the old "Twilight 2000" PnP game from the mid 80s(and it was redone in the early 90s too), this is what I want to run. If anyone knows the system and understands all the options open to me with FG, it would be great for some options!

I am not a programmer nor to I have that much time to learn. I don't want to seem like a total slug here but I am finding it hard enough to get the time to play and setup a story...hopefully you will understand.

I'd like to have some automation...at least as much as D20_JPG...but if I must I will fall back to D20 Modern(which seems to be pretty bland).

Ok, I've talked enough...any help would be much appreciated.
K

[kairos]

I have to wholeheartedly recommend the BRP ruleset. Not only will you find it suitable to your apparently awesomely old-school tastes, it's highly customizable, and you don't need to be a computer whiz to do it. :)

Also, if you get the Eldrtich Horror (https://oberoten.dyndns.org/fgwiki/index.php/BRP_Eldritch_Horror_Extension) extension, you can do Call of Cthulhu in addition to generic BRP games.

[Kingfish]

Interesting...I will look into it!

What is the level of automation in the BRP ruleset? Seems my players have become accustomed to the D20_JPG's 'shortcuts' and whatnot.

Thanks for the response too!
K

[StuartW]

You can download the free user manual for the BRP ruleset here (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/filelibrary/manuals/BasicRoleplayingforFantasyGroundsII-UserGuide.pdf), and the free PDF quickstart rules from Chaosium here (https://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=3700). The former should give you an idea of the level of automation available (and includes a section on customisation) and the latter is a good intro to the actual RPG system.

If you've ever played RuneQuest or Call of Cthulhu (or Elric, or SuperWorld), then you've played a BRP-based game.

Stuart

[kairos]

Hi, Kingfish:

The BRP ruleset is fully drag and drop and all that. What I like about it is that you can easily make the game you want. Skills and characteristics and magic types are all customizable.

I'm in SC and free most nights after 8pm if you would be interested in seeing a demo. Let me know.

[Griogre]

I don't really remember Twilight 2000 very well, but if the BRP ruleset doesn't work, you could probably use the Generic ruleset which is little more than a blank generic character sheet. Most of those old games from the 70's or 80's would run fine with it.

[Kingfish]

Outstanding guys, thanks for the help!

TW2000(and the later Merc2000) is just a coldwar gone bad kinda world. TW2000 is kinda like a Red Dawn RPG from the military's viewpoint really and Merc2000 is just a non-war version. My old PnP group was far more fond of the Mercenary game. They tried to build a team like the one from the first Predator movie. It was a LOT of fun!

Attributes are the usual's; Strength, Constitution, Agility, Education, Intelligence and Charisma. Each of these have skills attached to them. Its very much like the first release of the Storytelling system in many regards.

So all I really need is some melee types, knife & bayonet but its MOSTLY modern firearms and explosives. Vehicles, basically land and air for transport and some heavy weapons when things go REAL bad.

The only thing that worries me is the Hit Capacity. It is broken down into locations; Head, Chest, Abdomen and each limb. Hope I can figure out how to make it work. Bullets sprayed into an area tend to hit multiple targets in multiple locations...might have to just keep that outside the game :/

Oh well, any more info or suggestions...please keep'em comin!

[Ikael]

One another alternative is to use Unicore ruleset. This is not RPG-system dependent ruleset, instead you have lots of freedom setting up what characteristics there is in your game. You can easily setup the ruleset to use those characteristics that you mention (as primaryattributes) and you can even create hit locations (as secondayattributes). In addition to that Unicore provides easy way to define different types of gears and items that you usable in game. Twilight 2000 has lots of different type of gear that has different "characteristics" or data. You could easily create all those different types of gear and share them to players as drag-drop entries. You can even create the gear entries using the ruleset and export them as sharable modules for your players to fast up the play.

You can find Unicore ruleset from FGWiki (https://oberoten.dyndns.org/fgwiki/index.php/Unicore)and it's free one. It has some learning curve on how you can customize things inside the ruleset, but it's very easy when you learn it, all you have to do is edit/add simply entries in one file. If you're interested in this, remember to download and use at least one theme extension along with the ruleset! You can find several theme extensions from the same site (on below of that page). I would recommdn to use either ultramodern or outbreak themes for games such Twilight 2000/MERC.

EDIT: here is small proof of concept about Twilight 2000 rules in Unicore ruleset. I did this extension very quickly so it might contains some types and errors but seemed to work fine when tested quickly. You could take peek how this extension was made and edit it further for your needs.

[Kingfish]

More wonderful info! This is the very best community on the web!!! Thanks again and I will give it a look!