I had issues with Ringworld, myself - game balance wise. I played in a campaign of it for one session and gave up after rolling the worst character ever - it has age-based skills and unlimited PC lifespans and I rolled up a 17 or 18 year old character (I forget which, but 1 off minimum). People over the other side of the table were running out of skills to pump to 100 (I distinctly remember someone putting 80% into sewing), whereas even with a helpful GM giving us weeks of training time en route I couldn't actually pass a check to tick my improvement box. From what I heard, after I left, my PC was eventually doped up and used for Rishathra (sp?) with ghouls.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;379208I had issues with Ringworld, myself - game balance wise. I played in a campaign of it for one session and gave up after rolling the worst character ever - it has age-based skills and unlimited PC lifespans and I rolled up a 17 or 18 year old character (I forget which, but 1 off minimum). People over the other side of the table were running out of skills to pump to 100 (I distinctly remember someone putting 80% into sewing), whereas even with a helpful GM giving us weeks of training time en route I couldn't actually pass a check to tick my improvement box. From what I heard, after I left, my PC was eventually doped up and used for Rishathra (sp?) with ghouls.

Sounds like you had a bad group.

Also, this is why I HATE random character creation systems and prefer points buy based systems.

As a comment on the BRP system, an old saying tells us you can learn from your failures as well as your successes, so maybe BRP needs(needed) to have an option to let you get a skill check on skills you tried but failed at.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;379208From what I heard, after I left, my PC was eventually doped up and used for Rishathra (sp?) with ghouls.

you're right, that's a terrible game flaw but that outcome is fuckin' hilarious!

I suppose I should be happy that my character was useful for something.
His other great moment in-game was critically fumbling an Oratory (I think) roll to cheer up a depressed party member and doubling their recovery time.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;379255I suppose I should be happy that my character was useful for something.
His other great moment in-game was critically fumbling an Oratory (I think) roll to cheer up a depressed party member and doubling their recovery time.

from what I remember of RW and the known space line in general, people could develop psionic abilities in a variety of ways.

Seriously, if I were running that game and your random rolled character was such a dud I'd have arranged for something to give you some useful psi power.

"well, whatever that alien slug was you seemed to have recovered from the bite it gave you, but the damned thing is, after recovering you suddenly seem able to hear people near you thinking..."

I own the RPG and it's supplements. I also owned the computer game. It is a great setting. And a lot of the artwork is excellent.

Ringworld was one of three approximately equal game influences on the design of the original StarCluster, along with Traveller and SPI Universe. One of my favorite old SF games.

-clash

I never got to play much of it but it's a treasured game for me. I like a lot of the variations it had on the other BRP systems of the time. Loved the illustrations and 'feel' of the graphic layout.
Melding it with some of the optional rules from the current BRP system book could shuttle off the random character stuff (if that's a problem).
I can't see it ever coming back though... unless Mongoose somehow snags the rights to it (do they do anything that's not a licensed setting?)... and then spackles the setting out over a wide series of substandard books with high price tags that never really live up to the potential.

The single outstanding feature of the game for me was the Ralph McQuarrie cover art. Any reprint MUST have this as well...

Yeah, that's a great bit of box art!
I wasn't even into Niven at the time but that painting pulled me right on over and sold me the game... I'm shallow like that.

I'm a big fan of Niven's "Known Space," and the RPG is one of the Holy Grails I've tried to find since the 80s. It's always been just out of reach for me. The shops I went to that would have carried it back in the 80s never seemed to have it, even though they always seemed to have every other Chaosium product. The advent of the internet was little help - everytime I bid on it on eBay, someone would come along and run the bids into the stratosphere. I mean, I want it, but I'm not paying $100 or so for it. I've pretty much given up on getting it until a new edition of it appears, which may mean I'll never get it.