Chaot

Ladies and gentlemen, if I may side track this thread for a second. Questbird's a real hepcat and I'm very glad to see him on the boards. Years ago we both posted in a friendly D20 Lankhmar yahoo forum as two tiny BRP voices. He may or may not remember me, but I was going under the handle of zeitgeistgeist or thesilverskin or something back then. Welcome to the boards, QB!

I dig it. Are talking just the BGB? I think the key thing is to grok how skills over 100% work. Once you get that, most of your core work is done. You can peg you encounters so that your heros are bad-asses. The rest is flavoring. A quick look through the book sets a highly trained NPC's top combat skill at around 65%, meaning that they'll roll a Special Success at 13%. I'd peg a competent combatant at 45%, giving them a 9% for a Special Success. If your PC is running around with and attack skill of 150%, they'll have a 30% for a Special Success, putting them at a significant advantage. Then there are the increased HP and including the Fate rules. I think you should definitely through those in. You'll need to make a choice on wether you want Major Wounds and Random Armor (like Elric!) or Hit Locations and Fixed Armor (like RQ). My preference is Elric!, as I find it faster in play. However, I urge you to go check out Simon Phipp'swebsite and read his stories on high level RQ play. There's something oddly compelling about having limbs and heads flying off in all sorts of directions. Then you'll want to figure out how you want to handle magic. The answer here really depends on what you would like to see your players able to do in game. I would recommend that you have some items of power floating around in game. Check out BGB 243-247 for how to do that. If you were using other books I would recommend Elric! for the weapons. Let your players stat out a 16mp Demon Item and then replace the word Demon with Elvish, Dwarven or Orcish. Check out the monograph Gods of Law, which is available free over at stormbringerrpg.com and look at the Minion Rules. Also take a moment and read the rules on Skill Focuses and Using POW to see if you might be interested in including them. Since you mentioned shaolin death monk hobbits, I feel I should mention Dragon Lines as an excellent source for martial arts play. I'll also mention a house rule that I've now used once or twice. Break the Damage Bonus up into Brawn and Finesse. Brawn is calculated like you normally calculate Damage Bonus. To calculate Finesse, swap SIZ out of the equation and substitute DEX. Finesse can only be used with small weapons. Give them Hobbits a fighting chance! "I sit on the floor and pick my nose and think of dirty things Of deviant dwarfs who suck their toes and elves who drub their dings."

I'm reading Anglerre right now, due to Cubicle 7's solid products and a thread over at RPGNet. It was while reading the foreward that I realized you were involved in the project, Sarah. I've got to say I really like the book and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when it hits the tabletop. The stodgy answer would be that their skill choice during character generation represents this. Also, while it's never really been mechanized, Chaosium has a history of 'joke' skills in character write ups. I often let players define their own 'personality' skill which occasionally comes into play. I have no hard and fast rules for it. I just let them use it when I think it would be fun. This is generally dependent on the group though. Some players like it and some players don't, so I try to tailor to them. I'm reminded here of the fabled RuneQuest weapons caddy. Still, I haven't seen FATE in the wild yet though. I do agree that something like Aspects may not be appropriate for some games, but I'm not ready to rule them out altogether. I'm sure some balance could be struck.

Two things I'll add that are not on the list but that I think add to a supplement. Character Digests and Scenario Seeds.

I don't know. I've never run anything at a con and wasn't thinking about doing so but I guess I could sign up to run some BRP there. However, I was thinking about going as a player. I don't have much experience with minis, but that cityscape from 2008 looks impressive. I actually don't have much experience with roleplaying conventions either. I went to Origins once some time in the late '90s and that's it. This year may be the year of cons though. I've tentative plans on meeting up with some old friends over at GenCon later this year.

Ah damn. You had to go and post those pictures, Jason. I had convinced myself that I was fine with just the soft cover book. Now I'm thinking that the soft one is a bit beaten up now and I could really use that nice hardcover on my shelf...

Howdy neighbor! We should talk. I've been mulling it over Mysterioso, and I'm thinking about calling one or two people out here and seeing if I can't get a small group together to do at least one day of the con.

Close enough. I'm over in Staten Island.

Very interesting. Have you been to this before Mysterioso? How is it?

I generally play with starting characters having at least one combat skill beginning above 100%. I use Dex Ranks for initiative including bonuses for holding action and penalties for acting before your Dex Rank. I use Major Wounds, not Hit Locations. Generally I peg skill levels thusly, with some softness in the numbers: 30% - competent 60% - professional 90% - exceptional 120% - master At a certain point, your bad guys aren't there to actually do damage to the PCs. They are there to wear the PC's defenses down in a round. Each time the PC defends against them the PC are adds a -30% to their skill roll, giving the Big Bad a chance to land a blow. If the mooks are actually lucky enough to land something, that's gravy. The PCs should always be thinking about a way of controlling the number of nasties coming at them. The Big Bad should be thinking of ways to distract the PC, use up the resources of the PC or overwhelm the PC. This can be done on a meta level too by controlling the location of the fight, introducing external factors like bystanders and such, misdirection, etc. Bad Guys should not be afraid to fall back and fortify their position. The nice thing about this whole approach is that by pegging your standard mook at 30% you can capture a nice swords and sorcery feel, with the PCs cutting swaths through the mob while still allowing the mob to pose as a potentially dangerous element to the PCs. You can allow the PCs to swashbuckle their way through a scene knocking heads until you want to make a dramatic shift in the scene by introducing more dangerous elements. You also may want to take a look at Minion Rules. They're available free in the Gods of Law document on this site and published in the Dragon Lines book. There are some real benefits to using Minion rules and I've adopted them for my heroic play. One thing they do is streamline an already quick combat system while offering an outcome that is very similar to what you would get if you played through with standard combat rules as writ. Minion rules speed large portions of combat and allow you to keep the game running at a very fast pace. Another thing they do is cue your Players in to the power level dynamics on the field, giving them more information and allowing them to decide how they want to focus their efforts. Most importantly though, my advice is to just sit down by yourself and run some quick mock battles. It will at the least give you a basic base to go from. I find BRP to be a simple and straight forward system but I am constantly and happily surprised by how some aspects of it combine in play. It's a solid but sensitive system and which options you allow in play will greatly color your results.

Occasionally I'll pick up something, but I rarely actually read them on a computer. I've found that I actually have more interest in pdfs now that I have an iPhone and am sure that were I to get an iPad or some similarly capable tablet, my pdf reading habit would increase tenfold. As is, I just don't read pdfs on my computer.

I seem to remember that the Ravenloft Fear rules could be easily adapted to BRP. It's been a while since I've read Ravenloft but I seem to remember someone suggesting those rules for use with BRP. Google did not find what I was looking for, but it unearthed an old post of mine that I had forgotten, stating Strahd for BRP. I know it's totally off topic, but I thought I'd share.

Not to difficult, but now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure how much use it will be to you. It not the rules version I usually use so I pulled down a copy of one of it's supplements, White Wolf, because I knew it had a clockwork knight in it but the write up is decidedly uninspiring. So you might actually want to hold of on picking up Stormbringer unless you want it anyway. There was a wonderful discussion about AI and how to run it on this board that might be of use to you. I'll poke around and see if I can find it. There is also a bit on Abominations in The Bronze Grimoire that might be of use to you. I'll pull the book and take a look when I have a chance.

I think there are examples scattered throughout BRP games to use as guides. There are scorpion men, beast men, giants, ogres and walktapy in RQ3 for example. I was just looking through Aces High and they have some were creatures (lion, bear and wolf if I remember right) who have a half man form. Aces High also has some beast men sorts whose title now eludes me that are physical nature spirit types and it has Snake Men.

One might also look to Stormbringer Virtues for ideas as well. Been a while since I went over them myself.

My completely unsolicited advice? Don't worry about it. Write for the Green that you have in your head and let other people adapt it to their play styles. Maybe toss in a few sidebars if you want to illustrate some possible ways of integrating the Green into an ongoing campaign. As a GM, I'm interested in reading your setting and then making my own changes. There's no way you can anticipate my tastes, so I don't see a reason to worry about it.

Tongue was planted firmly in cheek. Perhaps a winky should have been placed at the end instead of a smiley.

How about the piecemeal approach? Basic mechanics resolution is free. Download Sanity rules - $5. Download Allegiance rules - $5 Download Hit Location rules and related Spot Rules - $5 Download Major Wound rules and related Spot Rules - $5 Download [specific magic rules] - $5

Bizarre. Yeah, it would be on page 140 and 141. I guess we have books from a different print run...

That's a neat little document Rich. Thanks. BlackLiger, have you ever seen Khoras? I've always liked the way the author streamlined information there. Reminds me of the CIA World Factbook. Edit: Two other sources that aren't quite what you're looking for but may help you design your own are Rich Staats' World Creation Guide and the Worldbuilding wiki.

It's at the very back of the book, isn't it? Right before the advertisements for BRP and the Monographs ad? Or is that just a segment of the Green? I too was thinking about using it as a dimension for my Young Kingdoms game. Alternatively, I was thinking about toning the magic down a bit, darkening up the tone a bit, and using it as a continent in a Freeport game.

As the Beetle Overlord commands. I need to finish going through it first though.

I'll certainly be on the look out for it. I haven't gone through all of the book yet as I'm enjoying my leisurely reading pace. I've even some hope of either working it into an ongoing campaign or doing a short one or two shot using it.

The map is solid. There's the main map and a detailed one an area in Tivonnia and they scratch everything that I would want from a map. They are clear, well drawn and well labeled. There's a Character Sheet in the middle of the book as well, so it looks great but it's not easily useable. Perhaps the good Mr. jamesbrianking could be enticed to make a copy of the maps or the character sheet digitally available? As for finding Lords of Tarsa, it's likely only available through Chaosium as it's one of the monograph lines. Oh, I left out a lot. There are scattered ruins that people nearly universally avoid. The ruins are usually surrounded by twisted landscapes and their origin is largely a mystery and those who seek to penetrate their mystery are later observed mentally broken. Long ago, giant flying beasts called Drakon terrorized the skies. Rumor has it that they have returned to the Northern Barrens. There are secret magic schools and secret assassin brotherhoods and a bunch of other fun stuff. Edit: And, there are something like nine kingdoms detailed in the gazetteer as well as tribes and city states, all interconnected, there's a generic character digest tweaked Magic rules as well as some new spells, a magic item section, etc.

Happy New Year everyone! So, I received this as part of my Chaosium Christmas haul and have been doing a slow read of it. I was going to hold off on commenting on it until I had a chance to do a thorough reading but this is my opinion so far. If anything, this is an understatement. The lands of Itania are surprisingly well developed for a sixty page gazetteer and the kingdoms that comprise Itania have all sorts of interconnections, strengths, weaknesses, dependencies and alliances that make for great hooks for interesting campaigns. A quick look at some areas: Breganza - Wealthy and the heart of a slave trade network. Very poor resource wise though and rely on trade with other countries. The land is littered with arenas but also with some of the finest arts and music schools in Itania. Many slaves are cultivated through specialized slave schools as well. The queen is a former concubine who ascended to her position after the king's wife tragically passed away. Some have observed that those who criticize the queen have a tendency of dying or disappearing. Mirensa - Neighbors Breganza to the north. They're ruled by an expansionist tyrant named Girart who spends as much time scheming to keep the petty kings under his rule in line as he does against foreign powers. For an example of Girart's intrigues one can look to Persa, who is loosely allied with two other nations, Tivonna and Tirenza, both enemies of Mirensa. Due to an external threat, the king of Persa allowed a regiment of the White Regiment of Tivonna's Royal Archers to be stationed within the royal palace. When the king and the royal family of Persa were slaughtered, prominent nobles in the Persan government pointed to Tivonna and turned to Mirensa to restore order. One of Girart's sons now sits on the throne of Persa until such a time that a new regent can be appointed by the citizens of Persa... Onesta - Onesta is a little land nested between Mirensa and Breganza that has hosted the King's Tournament of Gladiators for the past two hundred years. It is a huge event that draws entries from all of Itania. Until recently, Onesta had been ruled by a former slave and a champion of the Tournament, Colmazio. He came to power after a bloody succession battle after the previous king of Onesta, Erberto, was murdered. While there's a whole back story to that, the current situation is that Colmazio now lives in exile in Breganza. Onesta has been invaded by Mirensa and Colmazio conducts guerrilla raids with a small cadre of loyal troops. This is just a very tiny glimpse of the stuff going on in this setting. I highly recommend it.