Questions about system

[El Mik@]

Hi all,

TRoS has managed to interest me and only a few RPG books have managed to do that lately, so I have a questions:

I have been searching a realistic RPG system and I accidentally found TRoS (I'm so glad that I found it), then I read many reviews and so on. I tried Harn but it just wasn't our game and I think TRos could be.

Then I downloaded the Quick start rules and made couple characters and run a few test combats. System seems to be really good, just what I'm looking (realistic and deadly combat system) and I'm thinking should I buy the core rulebook.

Anyway, I looked the "full" character sheet and there are so many attribures compared to quick start rules, so could someone possibly say what those attribues are representing? For example in quick start rules there were only Brawn, now there is Toughness, Endurance and Health.

Second question is about those Insight points. What are they?

Third question is about those Gifts/Flaws. Are they somewhat same kind than for example in GURPS?

I hope that my players will start to focus more on their character and start to roleplay mor with spiritual attributes than just searching something to do  and hoping that I do everything to them.

I live in a small town in Finland and the Finland's biggest RPG shop has run out of TRoS books and I would need to order it from abroad. I'm just a poor student, so I want to know what kind of system this really is before I will use almost $ 50 to core book.

[Valamir]

Anyway, I looked the "full" character sheet and there are so many attribures compared to quick start rules, so could someone possibly say what those attribues are representing? For example in quick start rules there were only Brawn, now there is Toughness, Endurance and Health.

It'll be mostly a matter of taste.  I personally prefer to have attributes collapsed to just a handful of the ones that are important and make them do double or treble duty.  Others prefer to have every nuance of the attribute broken out into its own seperate attribute.  That's basically what's going on there.

Toughness is that aspect of Brawn that helps you resist damage in combat.
Endurance is that aspect of Brawn that will allow you to fight for along time without getting winded.
Health is that aspect of Brawn that keeps you from getting sick and effects your healing rate.

I'll leave you to judge whether you prefer having 3 seperate attributes or just Brawn that rolls them all into 1.

Second question is about those Insight points. What are they?

Spiritual Attributes are the heart and soul of TRoS.  Fighting for what you believe in, what you're passionate about, will allow characters to achieve heroic stature.  SAs are those passions.

They are used in three ways in the game.

1) you can add your SA score in dice to your die pool rolls to accomplish heroic feats when powered by your passions.

2) you can spend your SAs to improve your character.  In this way character advancement is the result of actively finding something for your character to be passionate about, and then pursueing those passions in play to earn points.  Many TROS stories write themselves simply by winding up the players and letting them go out in search of ways to earn more SA points.

3) every point of SAs that have been spent to improve your character over time winds up as Insight.  The longer you play, the more dedicated you are to earning and spending SAs, the more Insight you'll wind up with.  When your character dies or gets retired, you can use the accumulated Insight of that character to start out your new character with additional advantages (like bringing in a new D&D character at higher than 1st level).

Third question is about those Gifts/Flaws. Are they somewhat same kind than for example in GURPS?

More or less

I live in a small town in Finland and the Finland's biggest RPG shop has run out of TRoS books and I would need to order it from abroad.

 Won't your store order it for you?