Paul_Va

On the contrary, if used correctly the Statement of Intent phase speeds up combat because it prevents "tactical thinking". Strange as it may sound, players waste more time thinking before declaring their action if they can do it immediately before doing it. The fact that you are not aware of the exact tactical situation - including the position of opponents - at the DEX rank when you will actually act forces you to choose instinctively, like you would in a real fight. Once it is their turn, players must do what they have stated, and not pick the exact square that will give them the best combination of bonuses or avoid opponent reaction, using up to twenty minutes to think tactically.

If you compare a round of BRP with a round of D&D, where you use initiative but decide everything on the spot, you will see that the BRP round flows more smoothly. You just needs a GM who knows he must enforce the "you do what you declared, no matter what" rule very strictly.

OK, well I'll definitely give it a fair try and see how it works for my gaming group.

Also, be aware that dropping the statement of intent phase - as BRP has no attack of opportunity rule - will allow quick fighters to walk around slower ones and attack undefended targets - or hit the "self destruct" button - without any opposition.

I'm still confused about this because in the Basic Roleplaying core rulebook, it says that characters who are engaged in combat cannot move more than 5 meters and take an action. If they want to move their full amount, they have to disengage from combat, and it lists specific rules for how this is accomplished (I'm not at home with my book in hand, so I can't give the page number). Am I misunderstanding something? I fear I'm at somewhat of a disadvantage because I never played Runequest or Call of Cthulhu, so some of these rules are very new to me.

No, you may move your full MOV in lieu of any other action such as attack, skill or spell use. This occurs on your DEX rank. You may choose to move a portion of your MOV and perform another action if you have a high enough DEX that allows you to act multiple times in a round, but the action suffers a penalty to the skill used as well as occuring DEX-5 ranks later.

Where is this rule? I'm asking because it seems to contradict what it says on p. 190 under Combat Actions, where it says the following:

During a combat round your character can perform any one of the following actions on his or her DEX rank: move, attack, non-combat action, disengage from combat.

I'm working my way through the Basic Roleplaying rulebook, and I have some questions. I just finished reading the chapters on "System" and "Combat," and some things struck me as very odd.

First, if I understand the initiative system correctly, it seems that characters can only either move or attack, not both. Furthermore, if they choose to move, they act at a later time in the combat round due to their DEX rank being lowered. This seems like it could really take some effort to track such dynamic DEX ranks, especially if more than one character is taking DEX modified actions. Furthermore, it seems odd they couldn't move and take an action since the combat rounds actually represent a larger amount of time (12 seconds) than in most other RPGs.

Secondly, from what I've read, it seems that the only time a character can take multiple actions in a round is if the GM has either implemented the optional rule that allows skill points to rise above 100%, or if his character is using a firearm with a rate of fire. Moreover, in those special cases, the added action will occur at a later point in the round due to a lowered DEX rank. Again, isn't this kind of dynamic initiative difficult to track during play? I've always found initiative to be somewhat cumbersome even when it's static in games such as Pathfinder and Savage Worlds.

Lastly, I don't understand the function of the "Statement" phase in the combat round. I don't see what benefit this grants, and it seems to me that it would interrupt the flow of the encounter terribly.

OK, that's good to know because the RuneQuest II: Land of the Samurai book is only $1 at DriveThruRPG.com, and it's great. It has lots of fluff and detail for a Japan based game.

I wonder if there's any way to find out for certain. I wouldn't want to buy them both if they are the same.

Is there any difference between RuneQuest II: Land of the Samurai and Samurai of Legend? It seems curious the description for both books is identical.

I just got into the system, and I'm curious if there is a BRP community in the Los Angeles area. If so, I'd like to get to know the community.

I'm not home with my book handy right now, but doesn't the chapter on Powers in the core rulebook treat on psionics? Or are you looking for an extended system from the basic rules?

I plan on running some BRP games on Roll20 in the near future. I just finished running a Savage Worlds game on it tonight.

Since we're on Ravenloft... I've always been interested in it, but felt it was too disjointed. The biggest stumbling block for me is the inclusion of Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits. The widely disparate tech levels is also a little squirrelly. For a very cool blog with some interesting ideas to re-imagine the setting take a look at:

talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/

The author also has some excellent downloads for running a Gothic horror setting using D&D, but you could port over to BRP pretty easily. One thing that would be cool to develop is his fear and revulsion (not sure I got the names right) mechanics. Fear is how scary something is: seeing a werewolf will have you shaking in your boots. Revulsion is a mechanic for how disturbing/disgusting something is: stumbling across a rotting corpse will have you puking on your boots. The BRP Sanity mechanics don't really cover this, being geared towards cosmic horror.

Wow, Filbanto, thank you for directing me to this blog. It looks great! I agree that some things in Ravenloft are a bit quirky. When your only exposure to RPGs is the high-fantasy, wizbang of D&D, however, the gritty darkness of Ravenloft can be a welcome island of respite. For what it's worth, the tech levels and elf/halfling issues are somewhat remedied in the Gothic Earth setting, which in some ways I think is superior. I tend to play down the high fantasy elements of the setting.

It is not to everyone's tastes, but I find Call of Cthulhu is one of my favorite versions of BRP. I highly recommend to try a modern day game, maybe with bits of the Big Gold Book included to taste, or Cthulhu Dark Ages. I am not a big fan of classic era (1920s-1930s) CoC, but then again, I played quite a few excellent games in the 1920s.

Well, to be honest, part of the reason I haven't investigated the game is that I've never read much Lovecraft, and I didn't want to spoil the reading. Lovecraft is one of those writers I've always meant to get around to. I'm actually in the process of reading his entire oeuvre from beginning to end right now, however, so that problem will soon be remedied.

Chaot, thank you for the explanation of your conversions. That is very insightful. I think I tend to overthink conversions, but it's because I'm something of a perfectionist. And I will definitely check out your game thread.

My attempts included HârnWorld, the World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Ravenloft (a pretty popular choice for conversion! ) and Dark Heresy.

Ravenloft has always been my preferred fantasy setting. Although I haven't tried my hand at Cthulhu yet.

Welcome to Basic Roleplaying! The forum and the system.

Both are awesome and have become my #1 choice!

Thank you for the warm welcome, Nakana.

I looked at the example of the Strahd conversion. Do D20 attribute stats transfer almost "as is"? Also, I just finished reading the free quickstart, and I didn't notice the base attributes affect the skills in anyway. Are skills completely unaffected by the base attributes? Maybe there are optional rules in the full core rulebook for this?

For BRP Ravenloft you might want to chech out this thread on RPG.net. As it turns out Chaot is running a Ravenloft campaign using Magic World, the "new" fantasy iteration of BRP.

Thanks for that link. That's exactly the kind of information I'm looking for.

So I've been playing RPGs for about 4 years now. I started with 4e before moving on to Pathfinder. After a couple of years of PF, however, I realized that I was more interested in creating interesting plots and telling gritty, realistic stories. I looked at WoD a bit, and recently I've been playing Traveller, and Savage Worlds. I was attracted to Savage Worlds because I wanted a streamlined rules system that would allow me to focus more on storytelling, and I wanted a single system that would allow me to tell any kind of story I wanted. Recently I read that Basic Roleplaying is better for telling literary, gritty games, which is ideal for me.

I'm curious though about how much work it takes to convert material from other systems to BRP. Savage Worlds makes it very easy to convert. For example, Ravenloft is my favorite setting, and Savage Worlds has an excellent Horror Companion that provides pre-made stats for most of the monsters I need to create. Is there something analogous for BRP?