Re: [BNW] Newbie questions

[The White Crow <whytcrow@io.com>]

At 10:49 PM 2/8/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>Hey howdy everyone. It seems I've once again found a neat game just as
>it teeters on the verge of extinction, but as long as there's a mailing
>list no game is truly dead, eh?

Exactly.  And it isn't on extinction.  Someone else will be picking up the 
reins.  And who knows where it goes from there?  Ars Magica had 3 other 
publishers (or 4?) before it found a home with Atlas Games, and it has been 
revitalized, and this did wonderful things with it.  I've heard Atlas 
called "the home for unwanted games" so we'll see who ends up with 
BNW.  (And they've done right by all their rescued games, I must say).

>Making New Packages: the rulebook gives VERY vague guidelines, but when
>you've got one package that makes you bulletproof and lets you fire
>energy blasts, and another that gives you a +5 bonus to one skill, it
>seems hard to get a sense for what a "correct" package should offer.
>Anyone come up with decent workable guidelines?

Play it by ear?  There have been some folks who have come up with point 
based systems, but I don't mess with that stuff.  I use the play it by ear 
method.

If your power adds to a skill roll:
+5 if it is combat effective or a broader skill
+10 if it has no combat application or if it is a narrow skill

For other things, take an existing package, and compare.  Nothing that does 
damage should be able to do more damage than standard packages now.  (In 
fact, for a lot of things, you can use an existing package as a model,
just changing stuff to make it fit the new power).

Quite a lot of people have powers up there.  I have a bunch on my site as 
well (URL below).  The thing to remember is keep it simple (IMO -- other 
people like lots of book-keeping...I don't).

>One thing that surprised me was that there is no mechanic for increasing
>one's powers. Every blaster is as powerful as every other blaster, near
>as I can tell. Anyone come up with ideas/ways for characters to improve
>their powers?

They are called Tricks.  Get really good, and you are using Tricks with 
wild abandon to do more damage, hit the spots you want to hit, etc.  I'm 
against raising the powers, but other people will probably chime in with 
their methods.

>For that matter, has anyone tried adapting the rules for either one to
>the other? Deltas squaring off against Doomsayers or psykers could be
>interesting.

I know it has been done.  Feel free -- it would be easy to swap out 
mechanics.  One thign to keep in mind that while BNW chars are easy to 
knock down (it would seem), it rarely seems to work that way if you get 
armor involved.  Also, healing is fast.

>Lastly, as I'm coming late to the party here, has there been any word of
>BNW's fate yet? Last I heard it was on the auction block.

That's all we know.  But we'll know as soon as somehting happens.

Jennifer

--
The White Crow
Author of The Deryni Roleplaying Game
Coming in November 2001 from Grey Ghost Press
My RPG pages:  http://www.io.com/~whytcrow/