My BRP plan for new group - Legend to Runequest or Delta Green

[Jae]

I want to get my gamer friends back into rpgs and have decided the BRP route is the best way to do that, since it is well supported and easy for newbies to get into. My plan is to use a rules light system and a pre-made fantasy intro adventure in a no named world, that if successful would lead into a pre-made campaign in a pre-made setting. If that all works then I hope to get them into CoC and Delta Green.

 

At the moment I am leaning towards using the Legend rules (rules light) with the RQ6 Caravan Intro adventure, leading into the Book of Quests. At some point I plan to transition the group over to RQ6 rules (more crunch and more magic systems) and set the world in Age of Treason/Koranthia.

 

Soooo, my questions are:

 

Does that plan make sense or would I be better off sticking to one ruleset from the outset?

Are there other systems and starting campaigns that are great to hook players in?

[soltakss]

That makes sense.

 

If you aim for a rules set mid-way between Legend/RQ6/BRP, then you can use all the supplements with the minimum of changes.

 

If not, then Legend/RQ6 are close enough to use together, with BRP supplements adding flavour when required.

[deleriad]

At the moment I am leaning towards using the Legend rules (rules light) with the RQ6 Caravan Intro adventure, leading into the Book of Quests. At some point I plan to transition the group over to RQ6 rules (more crunch and more magic systems) and set the world in Age of Treason/Koranthia.

 

 

Seems like a good plan. Only thing I would say is that Legend is actually no more rules light than RQ6. RQ6 has a whole load more magic systems in the actual book but combat, skills, character creation, armour, weapons are fundamentally the same as Legend. RQ6 is more refined, more cohesive and better explained which is what you would expect given that its written by the same authors with 2 years more experience. Given that you can buy RQ Essentials for the same price as Legend (or more if you like) there doesn't really seem to be any point in using Legend as a gateway to RQ6 when you can use RQ Essentials as a gateway. The one thing that makes Legend *look* lighter is that it's a smaller book. The reason for that is it doesn't put the same amount of detail into explaining how the system works so there's more onus on the GM on making sense of it. The system itself is no lighter.

 

If you are going to use Caravan to Book of Quests then one advantage is that all the scenarios are written so that PCs don't need access to magic and the NPCs are also fairly simple so that the GM doesn't need a great deal of rules knowledge to be able to run them. That way you can start with RQ essentials and as you all get more experienced you can add more details and more magic.

[RosenMcStern]

On the contrary, it does not make any sense at all to me. Your estimation of rule complexity misses the point completely, as you are making an estimate by judging the size of the books and not the size of the information that players must memorize.

 

1. From the players' point of view, Legend is in no way easier than RQ6. RQ6 has many more options for the GM than Legend, but the difference in size between the two is that Legend has the GM-oriented part of the system in separate books, whereas RQ6 has everything in one book. But the parts of the RQ6 core book that the players need to read are the exact equivalent of the Legend core book. As for magic systems, the ones you will probably need for newbies are Folk, Divine and Sorcery Magic - and they are in both systems.

2. Again, from the players' point of view Call of Cthulhu is way simpler than RQ6 (no locations, no magic systems but single spells, fixed base chances for skills, fixed number of combat actions, easier combat rules, no opposed rolls, no fatigue rules, etc.). There is absolutely no need to use RQ as an introduction to CoC: in fact, most players have gone through the opposite path, starting easy with CoC and then moving on to the complexity of RuneQuest.

If what you really want is to play Delta Green, go directly for it. Your players will have no issues due to not having played RQ before.

[deleriad]

If what you really want is to play Delta Green, go directly for it. Your players will have no issues due to not having played RQ before.

 

It may be less to do with *system* complexity than *setting* complexity. If you want to get your friends playing "traditional" fantasy first where the concept is fairly straightforward then RQ lets you break out some simple scenarios with a bit of combat and a bit of roleplaying. 

 

Something like Delta Green probably requires more buy in from the players and is in many ways more demanding in terms of player input. So I can see good reasons to start with a fairly straight forward fantasy rpg setting and afterwards experiment with different settings and different genres.

[Vorax Transtellaris]

Have you looked into OpenQuest/Renaissance?

[Jae]

Wow, thanks for the responses. You guys raised some excellent points and have convinced me of the Runequest 6 route. I recently picked up the bundle of holding deal (thanks Allen and Loz) and have to admit that the length of the book did skew my perspective, especially as its been a long time since I GMed anything. 

 

I chose the fantasy route over CoC or Delta Green as I have never GMed either and I was concerned by the points deleriad makes about setting complexity as well as GM workload. However, RosenMcstern does make an interesting point about the simplicity of the CoC system.

What do you think is the best route for a rusty GM that also wants to ease his way back into GMing without too much up front investment of time?

Also, what do you think are great introduction adventure --> campaigns?

[Jae]

Have you looked into OpenQuest/Renaissance?

I did consider OpenQuest, The Age of Shadow, Magic World and even BRP with the BGB. I am open to hearing about the benefits of the other systems, especially in light of GM and player ease. I only looked briefly at Renaissance but admit to ruling it out until its line was more developed and was unsure how disconnected it was from the Clockwork setting (which is one of the many other BRP settings I'd love to explore with my players in the future). I am still reasonably open at this stage and just need convincing.

[RosenMcStern]

The OpenQuest -> RuneQuest route certainly makes more sense than the RuneQuest -> Delta Green one if you want to "start with plain fantasy". In addition to this, if your players show interest for the Lovecraftian universe while playing OQ, you may switch to a OpenQuest -> CoC/Delta Green transition instead.

It all depends on what you want to achieve. RQ6 is extremely tactical, if that is what you want stick with RQ. If "color" is more important to you, then start with OQ and then move on to CoC or Magic World, which are simpler than RuneQuest but have some good supplements.

Edit: RQ6 of course has "color" too, but Call of Cthulhu has definitely more supplements at the moment.

[Vorax Transtellaris]

With Dark Streets you'd have a 18th century Cthulhu setting for Renaissance, a nice transition from "plain" OpenQuest fantasy to BRP Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green.