Michael Hopcroft

CON and DEX are probably equivalent (although CON 30 is pretty awesome in a BRP game since even massive real and fantasy critters easily have CONs half or a third of that). STR is trickier, since we don't know how it scales in SAS. I'd take the lifting ability in SAS and see what STR level would be required in BRP to match it. A +6D6 damage bonus sounds about right for a Superman homage, though. Such a hero would easily do Godzilla-level damage.

The Empire City Universe (or the Champions Universe) and the Mythos are a frightening combination. "I punch Cthulhu!" "OK, but you still have to make your SAN roll first...."

I'm haven't quite wrapped my brain around the BRP powers structure or how powers work, so I'm nowhere near ready to build or model a character. And given what you say below the idea that BRP doesn't handle supers all that well might have some validity -- or at the very least that BRP will alter some of your assumptions about how superpowers work in-game.

The d20 lifting scale is SAS is the same as the lifting scale in standard d20. In d20 terms, Sentinel has a STR bonus of +43. As I mentioned, I find the d20 port for SAS, although it is playable once you actually have your characters set up, clumsy at best. The Tri-Stat version is a much better game, and so is M&M. (Playing M&M at a convention was one of the first times I was able to take a Superman homage and actually do some of the stuff a Superman homage should do. It seems a perfect fit for the DC Universe in particular.)

Would such a character even be at all playable in BRP? SAS d20 characters do massive amounts of damage in combat by d20 standards. 4d6+8 attacks are on the low end of the scale, and the typical SAS player character is tough enough to withstand one. A 4d6+8 attack in BRP will generally turn even the toughest character into something no longer recognizable as solid matter.

They're like cockroaches. No matter how many times you stamp them out or erase them from existence, Daleks always manage to come back. There's always some forgotten bunker or buried complex somewhere where a handful of them are dozing in stasis, waiting their chance for freedom and conquest.

And no base is ever truly abandoned when one of your hobbies is time travel....

In an earlier thread in another part of the board (which I can't quite look up) I posited the question of superheroes as a way of exploring how to turn characters from other games into BRP characters. The example involved the d20 version of Guardians of Order's Silver Age Sentinels, although their d20 version of Big Eyes, Small Mouth has roughly equivalent possibilities and problems. I still think GOO's flirtation with d20 was a major mistake for them, at least creatively.

In terms of power or point level, the Guard (the premier superteam of the Empire City Universe) was hardly balanced. It was, however, rather on the high end. Their lead character was the Sentinel, a thematic cross between Superman and Captain America. With Sentinel's d20 character sheet in front of me, I see that he had STR 96 and CON 30 but only (?) DEX 19. My question was whether porting those numbers directly into BRP would give nonsense results. According to the chart in BRP that much would give a damage bonus of +6D6 assuming a reasonable size for a Superman/Cap type. Is that enough to do all the things that Sentinel is reputed to be able to do?

That's TWO -- TWO obscure historical RPG references for the price of one!

I'm not nearly ready mentally to tackle converting superpowers; in fact, I'm barely familiar with how they work in chargen. But it's an interesting question. I've had a hard time imagining anyone having the poiints to get a 96 STR in Superworld -- what would that do?

Daleks might be able to survive outside their shells, but probably only for a day or two at most. That shell isn't just an armor and weapon system -- it's a very sophisticated piece of life support technology that takes care of the digestive, respiratory, circulatory and other needs of the Dalek and enables it to survive and function almost anywhere -- including hard vacuum.

The question I would like to see answered is how Daleks reproduce. With their individuality trained out of them almost at the embryonic stage there would not be Dalek "families". I imagine that on Skaro, and on any other world the Daleks have established a permanent presence on, there would be some sort of system where Daleks come in at specified time to provide genetic material (perhaps from the vestiges of their reproductive systems) and then medical specialist Daleks make Dalek embryos which are grown in utero and then raised and educated in large groups until they develop enough phsycially and intellectually to get their casings and enlist in the glorious Dalek cause.

Daleks are probably miserable their entire lives. Especially when they don't have someone to bully.

I still haven't heard anything from Guardian. Do you think telling them which distributor carries RQ6 would help them find it?

Well, I have the BRP ruleset and also Mutants & Masterminds/DC Adventures (same game, but the second has the pre-52 lineups from DC Comics) plus a few fan-created packages I picked up online. The big thing in the new edition appears to be the do-anything-with-a-little-work Core set that comes with FG3 and is intended to be the basis for many extensions for other games.

Thanks to wbcreighton I know that BRP works. I don't have the skill to do any modifications (I mentioned in FG that I wish sometimes I were ten years younger and that better programming coursework had been available to me when I was in high school and college -- the Apple II was the hot new thing when I graduated from high school....). As it is, I'm just hoping I can be a skilled enough end user to make play happen.

Of course if you join in FG Con 4 coming up in May, you'll get to play using the most popular rulesets. I am planning to run a BRP game so it better still be working ;-) o.

I would love to take part in FG Con. The last virtual convention I went to was a blast. We were mainly playing and socializing on Hangouts, so I'm wondering how FG handles the socializing aspects. And whether it supports voice at all.

I downloaded the demo just now. It'll probably be at least a couple of days before I can purchase my license (probably the Full license so I can GM -- the Ultimate sounds nice but is a bit spendy for me at the moment).

There are several games I am interested in, the majority opf which do not show up on the list of games FG supports. And I'm wondering how many of the rulesets that are listed on the site, either from fans or officially, work with the newest edition (apparently the program just completed a major upgrade cycle). I have ideas on what I would like to see but no ideas whatsoever on how to make them real. I regret my age -- if I were younger I would probably have been taught enough programming in high school and college that I could have a go at building a ruleset. As it is I'll probably be as completely lost at sea as I would be adapting a template set for Hero Lab (which supports CoC but not really the full scope of BRP).

In reading through the Powers section in BRP, it seems to really discourage bricks. If you want to be super strong you must add one point to the characteristic for one Power Point. Since you only start on average with about 105-110 and need attacks and defenses, you can't just pour everything you've got into STR. I don't think I've seen a published Superworld character with a STR above 65 (in the core set the most I've seen is 63, but Superworld seems to use a different scale for Damage Bonus).

You could have the flying sharks be mere heralds for a shark god (Megalodon-ish?) and served by amphibious shark-men. Wherever the PCs look -- on land, sea. or air -- they'll be confronted by a toothy avatar of the deity until they figure out how to placate it or beat it.

I wonder if the Shark God can pluck dragons out of the air and eat them. (And what happens when another creature eats a dragon? Does the magic of the beast do something to the beast consuming it?)

What I would really benefit from is a BRP-centered Excel sheet that enables me to add new campaign-related skills, use all the power systems in the core book (including psychic abilities and superpowers) including adding original spells, and alter the number of dice rolled in attributes to make way for a greater variety of creatures and beings. I'd also like it to calculate the core things that need to be calculated, from hit points and damage bonuses to base skill levels, and enable me to improvement skill checks to build more experienced characters if I want a degree of randomness.

The following scribd link is a good resource for checking the benchmarks for stats across various games systems. It doesn't include BRP (sadly, it's only real flaw), but since d20 and BRP both use 3d6 for the basic stats, I consider them both to be equivalent.

Converting over in a 1:1 ratio is how I do it...

STR in BRP is STR in D20

DEX in BRP is DEX in D20

INT in BRP is INT in D20

CON in BRP is CON in D20

APP in BRP is CHA in D20

POW in BRP can be seen as WIS in D20

SIZ is not used in D20, although you can convert to their scaling method (small, med, large, etc.)

SAN in BRP can be seen as WIS in D20

EDU is not used in D20

-STS

If I used that link straight it would put the Sentinel's strength in the range of several thousand. I don't think anything can survive being hit with a 100d6 damage bonus. Even the lowest conceivable roll of 100 would vaporize almost anything. But since its pasis is AD&D2 rather than d20 I suspect that might not be the best approach.

You'd have to ignore their curse of flightlessness, supposedly if they get into any machine that flies it will crash.

Perhaps those ducks who do head for space do not have the curse quite that bad (they can't fly unaided, but an airplane or spaceship will work just fine with a Duck aboard) or, if the curse is persistent even in the low-magic area of the typical SF campaign, they could have access to artifacts that let them do so safely.

Or perhaps the ducks have worked out a means to teleport between planets or have built a series of gate networks (walk -- er, waddle -- through the gate and you're in another world). Which puts Ducks in possession of probably the most advanced technologies in the campaign -- which traditional Duck paranoia will prevent them from willingly sharing.

It just occurred to me that I don't really remember how D20 characteristics scale to d100 characteristics. That could serve to alter things as the numbers get bigger. And I wonder whether the SAS conversion to d20 was deliberately nerfed for ease of play. The CoC conversion system doesn't provide any formula for that purpose, but somehow I don't think straight-on substitution would be the answer.

Anyone have a BRP spreadsheet that includes super-powers?

What did they call that race of cylindrical aliens they found in the Antarctic -- the ones responsible for the shuggoths? I'd be expecting to see them in a Cthulhu Space campaign.

Elder Things.

Calling them that to their faces would probably not be wise. I can see them in space, and as a different race for the PCs to encounter. Not necessarily elementally evil, but different. Different enough to make first contact difficult -- IIRC they cannot speak in the same way humans do, to the point that they might not even recognize the sounds we continually emit as language. Depending on what sorts of technology they use, the inevitable misunderstandings might have dangerous consequences.

Then again, even Mythos aliens might do well to heed the advice of the Doctor: Run. As fast and far as you can. Run and hide, because the monsters are coming.

And I'm loving this talk of Space Ducky-power going on!

Imagine the Ducks with a space empire of their own, with dozens of worlds under their big webbed heel....

BGB has a stats for a Xenomorph but many other Cthulhu creatures are possibilities - Mi Go and Byakhee being just two examples of space faring creatures from the Mythos.

What did they call that race of cylindrical aliens they found in the Antarctic -- the ones responsible for the shuggoths? I'd be expecting to see them in a Cthulhu Space campaign.

I managed to take out one of my older games: Silver Age Sentinels the late Guardians of Order's attempt at a superhero game. It was done in two flavors, tri-Stat and d20. The d20 port isn't that great.

I had it on PDF, so I printed out the Sentinel's d20 character sheet (the Sentinel is sort of a cross between Captain America and Superman -- the experiment did a lot more than augment his physique, also giving him Flight, Invulnerability, and "Atomic" attack powers. He has a STR of 96in d20 and a BAB equivalent of +13. He would definitely pose some of the handwavium issues we see in most supers campaigns. His Damage Bonus, if we take the straight score, would be +5D6. It could be worse....

The Tri-Stat version is a much better game, but probably an even more difficult conversion. Tri-Stat gives a single stat -- Body -- for all physical elements of a character. Superior strength and endurance are represented by Attributes that further define a character. IF you look at the Sentinel in Tri-Stat, you see that his Body stat is high but that he still has multiple levels in Super-Strength. This makes pure mathematical conversion a pipe dream.

Ducks are a good idea no matter what setting your playing, lol.

Even The Many Fantastic Adventures of Elmer Fudd?

The biggest issue with DC Adventures is the scaling mechanic they used. I like linear system mechanics, and if there has to be a scale change, then make an actual scale change and not just try to sneak it in there in the normal scale.

Just be glad you're not trying to translate the original DC Heroes. Superman with a STR 25 was 33,554,432 times as strong as a normal human with STR 2. Hard to imaging him being lower than a STR in three or even four figures.

The second biggest issue is that BRP is so deadly (compared to the normal comic books that are attempting to be emulated) and a punch from the average super-strong PC would be a killing blow. I incorporated a "pulling your punch" mechanic so that normals were not just splattered, but trying to incorporate anything beyond street level supers in a gritty campaign is, at least for me, difficult.

You would definitely have to buy out the store's entire stock of handwavium to avoid problems with some of the most powerful characters. A character who runs up and down the city streets at Mach 5 would require lots of the stuff. But one way to deal with the fragility of humans is to use the PCs' reputations to advantage. I'm amazed that anyone short of Darkseid would even bother trying to punch or shoot Superman. Surely they would know that all it does in annoy him (if even that -- he always had a surprisingly even keel). Superman would not really need to do anything to foil a bank robbery except show up -- you're a bank robber. He's Superman. One guess who's going to win this one.

How would you buys build a race template for a species of sapient pigs? I don't have culture details yet, but I'm curious about writing them up.

The one question I have is the SIZ, STR and DEX scores. Pigs are bigger and stronger than suburbanites raised on cartoons give them credit for. These "pigmen" would have human mental characteristics,and presumably a few adaptations to life as tool-using bipeds (working hands, and feet big enough to keep them upright, in place of their hooves), but at least in part they'll still be pigs.

The one cultural thing is that they would probably resent pork-eating cultures and people, even if the pigs they ate were just normal, non-sapient livestock. They probably don't particularly care about their "cousins" in the barnyard, but the symbolism is what gets to them.

Unfortunately I could not find references to any of the d100 games on the system when I last visited. Rolling dice the right way should work just fine, though. I'm just wondering what other things I will need to track down in the system to run BRP/RQ/D100 adequately.

See, that's part of the problem. Never send a human to do a duck's job. Ducks cut their cultural teeth eradicating zombies and worse things. Got xenomorphs in your space station? Send in the waterfowl!

Ducks vs Cthulhu IN SPAAACE.... I like it.

I've heard mentions of Call of Cthulhu IN SPAAACE!: a game where Man is exploring the stars but finding the Mythos every so often. Finding ways to terrify (and blast the sanity of) explorers who have already encountered many different kinds of alien life is a challenge. But there are ready-made space creatures in the CoC core books who could be just as easily encountered on alien worlds as they can on Earth (or in its solar system).

I was thinking for a long time about doing a somewhat-higher-fantasy version of Harn for some system. Harn is in commercial limbo, and has been seemingly for the last ten years. That doesn't make its following any less dedicated. Nonetheless, there are interesting things going on, and the lack of an overarcing meta-plot to the setting makes it a blank slate for players to write on.

IIRC, magic in Harn is rare and frequently mistrusted. Playing a mage would be rough for that reason.

Pity I only had the option of voting for one system.

Personally, I'd like to see Ducks in a space opera setting. They've been booted out of RuneQuest, so surely Duckworld is a planet that exists in the PCs' universe -- homeworld to fearless, wily adventurers. The endurance of Flash Gordon, the cunning of Buck Rogers, the avarice of Harry Mudd, all rolled into one waist-high package wrapped in shiny white spandex jumpsuits.

WHAT? RuneQuest would never quite be the same without the ducks.

I looked back up to the top of the thread and saw that the OP had issues converting DC Adventures. Now supers in BRP (via the old Superworld rules) might well pose issues regardless. But I'm curious what problems you had and how you addressed them.