Urizen

The range chart looks pretty good too, but seems like it may add a bit more complication to a system that's already pretty involved. I may try it anyway, but I hope to come up with something a bit less charty. (yes I made up that word.)

Well, it's just a modification of the Apparent Size chart in the RQ6 book - I just made it scale more plausibly, so that the long shots are basically impossible and the close-shots against motionless targets are quite easy. I think I might want to modify how much a moving character affects difficulty, but it tends to make shots very 'impossible' quickly because of a limited scale in difficulties.

I went ahead and wrote up a blog post on some issues with ranged combat in real life, and another providing a chart to make shooting at range far more difficult.

Bows, Crossbows and Melee Combat [with Slings!]

RQ6 Adjusted Ranged Combat Apparent Size modifiers

Err, there's already one for RQ6 that produces anything from a single NPC to whole mixed parties.

http://ouropa.planeetta.com/rq_tools/enemygen/

Totally, but I meant as a desktop executable.

-RQ2 Vikings

-RQ2 Land of the Samurai

Legend has similar (identical?) supplements - Vikings of Legend and Samurai of Legend. I own them both, they're good. Not sure if they're just updates of the MRQ ones or not.

Soonish. End of July by the Latest.

Good to hear!

Palladium's "The Compendium of Weapons, Armour & Castles" may be useful.

I've had that book since 1997, heh. It is a good bit, though.

I did a small tool to create NPC's on the fly. Let me know what you think

Awesome, the only thing better than random generators are computerised random generators.

I wish I could program, I'd like to steal your code and make one for RuneQuest 6.

I think RuneQuest 6 is the best option of them all. The BRP BGB isn't really an 'rpg' so much as a collection of variant rules from the different RuneQuest-based systems, out of which you may build an RPG.

My reason for preferring RQ6 is that the book is very tightly put together and the rules are crunchy without excessive fiddling. It's also very easy to use Legend and Mongoose Runequest/MRQ2 resources (which are very cheap) with very little in the way of conversion. BRP or Pendragon would require some conversion (mainly in the realm of derived statistics and weapons/armor) but is possible to do on-the-fly for most 'd100' products.

Magic World is a great game, and simpler than RQ6. It's Stormbringer minus the Moorcock.

Ships and set battles... Dang it, I have to buy this. I need these kind of rules for the medieval campaign.

Four bucks isn't bad.

I'm moving more towards a reasonably accurate game set in the Middle Ages. I think I will keep 'magic', in terms of mechanics, out of the game. That's not to say that there wouldn't be miracles, just that the PCs are in no position to dispute or verify them or command one up.

I have this for MRQ, but I will consider buying it again.

In the RuneQuest 6 section on ranged combat there is a sidebar about how real-life ranged combat is quite a bit more difficult than is presented in the game, especially against man-sized opponents; the game 'errs on the side of the heroic'.

However, the way RPG-Fantasy characters use bows like they're a gun has been a pet peeve of mine since I was 14; at close range it's basically asking to get killed by anyone with a melee weapon, and at long range it's just not practical as an individual combat technique.

So, I would like to err on the side of real-world ranged combat.

A couple of simple ideas are: changing the Apparent Size tables and upping the difficulty modifiers for moving targets and cover. But I am very new to RQ6 and I don't want to start tinkering and find out what I'm doing doesn't quite work.

We are releasing RQ6 in a much-reduced, introductory PDF edition called RuneQuest Essentials. Designed for those who want to try RuneQuest before migrating to the full rules, it offers a great way of getting to know one of the most celebrated roleplaying game systems out there.

What's more, RuneQuest Essentials is free. You can download it from www.thedesignmechanism.com/downloads (or via DrivethruRPG and our publisher page there). If you feel we're being overly generous, then there's a Donate button you can use to make a contribution of whatever you feel appropriate - or, at Drivethru, you can Pay What You Want.

What we want is for you to try RuneQuest. We'll be publishing an introductory scenario, Sariniya's Curse, very soon, and there's already a wealth of additional free material available on the Downloads page.

So if you've never tried RuneQuest before, there's no better time, and no better way, than with RuneQuest Essentials.

I'm glad to hear of this. RQ6 is a pretty pricey book, and it's hard to get someone to drop cash on it without experience.

Newt, you are a fantastic publisher with some of the best customer service in this industry!!!

Oh, and you produce some fantastic product as well.

Rod

He even runs OQ2 games for people!

To be honest, you might be better off getting a book of non-fiction and then just rolling your own, but of course it depends on how much detail you want and your chosen starting area of Europe.

SDLeary

I own some history books on the subject, but there is a difference: RPGs focus on stuff that tends to be encountered while playing an RPG, whereas history books aren't constrained by such practical motives. It would be as simple as a google search and some copy-paste to get accurate maps, personalities and military affairs in a defined period and place (say, Brabant) but there are always little bits of characterization and focus that make the RPG books useful in this respect. A specific example would be the background tables in HarnWorld and Chivalry & Sorcery, which can be easily adapted to BRP.

Each of the base BRP systems has its own focus. Dark Ages focuses mainly on Frankia around 1000AD, and does a good broad job, but doesn't give much detail. Invictus includes a lot of detail, but is much earlier than the period you are looking at. Pendragon and supplements add a 12th-14th C Chivalric tone which is sometimes difficult to pry out if you are not careful.

I definitely agree that there are bits and pieces that really affect the tone. I will probably not be using magic (or, like Pendragon and some Chivalry & Sorcery campaigns, making it a GM-only affair) and that's something I need to look out for, I don't want to get into LeFey or Nyralathotep on accident. I will be using RuneQuest 6, and I actually already own most of the books I listed. I tend to buy RuneQuest-based systems on general principle, because it's not too much monkey-work to make them fit together (Hell, BRP BGB basically is someone doing this with the Chaosium branches).

Any of the systems could work fine though. Just a decent amount of setting work for the chosen period.

And that's exactly what started this sort-of scattershot pile of books/pdfs I've assembled before me, I want to progressively refine the elements I'm interested in and then choose the time period that best suits/fits/contains them.

Wow, seems like a exhaustive list. Covering about a 1000 years seems like a very wide net to cast. A lot changed in Britain from when the Romans left to the 16th century for example.

Thanks for your suggestions, they have been added to the lists.

The width of this net is one reason I have been assembling these resources. I need to research and decide which period I actually want to run it in, so I can break out the appropriate Osprey books when designing Combat Styles [RQ6 will be the core] and setting up maps. Proto-medieval antiquity appeals a great deal, but so does the period of the Crusades; my usual darling is the Renaissance era (articulated plate is fun), but I feel that's been adequately done in Renaissance Deluxe.

It's amazing, considering how influential the ancient and medieval world are for fantasy games, that there's a tremendous lack of content and interest in historical games, even historical fantasy. Not that Pendragon and GURPS Rome don't have their admirers, but considering how many people play in settings that are pretty much cheesy ripoffs of the medieval and antique periods I think it says something about a disconnect between the people who built the fantasy genre and the majority of its players.

Of course, the same can largely be said regarding game masters and players: if players weren't lazy, they'd be game masters.

Aside from my Concept Album of a setting (detailed over in RQ6) I am seriously considering working on a RuneQuest 6 game designed around a historical world of the very early 'dark ages' and the Middle Ages. I will make a list here of what I have accumulated so far, and would like to know if there are any good d100 sources I have missed.

My goal here is not just to find stuff for my own game but to create a reference list for people who want to do historical European roleplaying without having to search Google as much as I did. This list would include everything from late Antiquity into the Renaissance, which is a thousand years, and focusing on BRP.

BRP

Crusaders of the Amber Coast

Merrie England

Mythic Iceland

Pax Romana

Rome: Life and Death of the Republic

Witchcraft

Val-du-Loup

Cakebread & Walton

Clockwork & Chivalry

Diverse & Sundry

Renaissance Deluxe

Call of Cthulhu

Cthulhu Dark Ages

Cthulhu Invictus

Legend

Arms of Legend

Gladiators of Legend

Pirates of Legend

Vikings of Legend

MRQ

Deus Vult & Ex Cathedra

Empires

Stupor Mundi

Pendragon

Beyond the Wall

Book of Knights

Lordly Domains

Noble's Book

Pagan Shore

Pendragon 5th Edition

Saxons!

Time & Time Again: Holy Warriors

Non-RQ Derived Systems

Books I think are good enough depots of information that they could be used for a medieval game, despite being dissimilar in system to BRP.

Burgs and Bailiffs

AD&D 2e: Celts Campaign, Charlemagne's Paladins, the Crusades, the Glory of Rome, Viking Campaign

Ars Magica 5th Edition: Core Rulebook, City & Guilds, Lords of Men

Chivalry & Sorcery, especially the unofficial Redbook editions.

Fief: A Look at Medieval Society from Its Lower Rungs

d20: The Last Days of Constantinople

GURPS 3rd Edition: Arabian Nights, Camelot, Celtic Myth, Middle Ages 1, Religion, Vikings

GURPS 4th Edition Crusades, Hot Spots: Constantinople and Renaissance Florence, Low-Tech and Companions 1-3

Harn Manor

HarnPlayer Player's Guide to HarnWorld

High Medieval

Maelstron, which, oddly enough, is based on the Advanced Fighting Fantasy roleplaying system.

Magical Medieval City Guide and Magical Medieval Europe

Timemaster: Sea Dogs of England and Temples of Blood

Town: City Dweller's Look at 13th to 15th Century Europe

I'd be really interested in how this goes.

One of the (many, many, many) ideas bouncing around my head is a world where only ritual magic exists. (Mechanics are still fuzzy, but inspirations include Incantations in the d20 SRD, sorcery in Castle Falkenstein, GURPS Book/Path Magic, and the Occultism system of A Magical Medley from Grey Ghost Games.) One typically works magic in a secure chamber, not on a battlefield. "Magic items" are unique artifacts, and many have no use except in the aforementioned rituals. Essentially, magic creates situations and problems more often than it solves them; it's mainly the province of mad sorcerers, village wise men, and banishers of demons.

One of my thoughts would be a straight historical medieval Europe, and pull an Ars Magica without the peasant mysticism - make the Catholics literally correct. In any case, a historical medieval game interests me a lot - RuneQuest would also work very well for that, for similar reasons. I pulled out my copy of MaelStrom and Chivalry & Sorcery earlier wondering how much trouble it would be to work the social/family side of character into some kind of RQ6 accessible shape.

In terms of fantasy magic, I tend to like spellcasters - E-F/MU4Life - but I tend to give it a sword & sorcery/demonology slant.

Of course I'm very waffly at this point. I've considered going in the opposite direction and using the Pendragon/Harn/Chivalry & Sorcery stuff to back up a very early medieval or late antiquity game, instead.

Roll20 has made character sheets public, meaning people can share the sheet designs and macros with other players regardless of their subscription 'level'.

I have seen HackMaster and Rolemaster implemented with the Roll20 sheets, as well as Call of Cthulhu. This makes me think that a RuneQuest 6 automated character sheet is well within the Roll20 realm of possibility. Needless to say, related game systems would benefit from such developments.

I have little programming experience, and none with Roll20 Macros or character sheet design, but I'd like to start promoting the game and playing on there. I might try my hand at crafting a sheet, but I'm interested if anyone else has considered giving this a shot.

Links:

Announcement

http://blog.roll20.net/post/82092273480/data-delve-dev-blog-2-introducing-character-sheets

Roll20 Character Sheet and Macro Wikis

https://wiki.roll20.net/Character_Sheets

https://wiki.roll20.net/Macros

GitHub directory of Roll20 Character Sheets

https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets

I've run RQ6 in a low magic campaign. Works very well, but I think you have to make available a plethora of healing herbs, potions or healers (witches, perhaps) or risk a lot of downtime from combat. $0.02.

I think I will keep medicine fairly plausible and historical (granted this isn't Earth, so they may have access to compounds we don't), but this world is also intended to be rather less dangerous than fantasy settings.

In terms of security of property most freeholding peasants, for example, were under less threat of robbery or theft than many people in modern cities. A high expectation and low threshold for violence are the prime factors making it so typical in fantasy campaigns; 'IRL' if you seriously wanted to go into a fortress [dungeon] you'd use an army and siege tactics, and it's my expectations that characters will do just that or probably die.

Though I shain't build any 'dungeons'.

There was a DOS adventure game, similar to the Gold Box D&D games or Ultima, where the player controlled a group of mercenaries in Germany during the Middle Ages; you eventually learned to fight smart or, if possible, make your money without actually fighting. I think I'd like to encourage players toward a more rational/practical approach to questions of violence.

Also: Cults can be an indispensable tool to give aid and support to characters—keep them alive—without access to magic, even when they are mundane guilds, brotherhoods or military associations. As you say, they could be the mechanisms through which you can introduce the concepts you wish to explore.

Making good use of the cult mechanics is one reason I chose RQ6 for this.

I am currently working on a magic free picaresque-themed game, set in a fantasy world. The cultures range from early Bronze Age down to Chalcolithic, and perhaps earlier for isolated tribes in the valleys, etc.

Aside from the lack of magic, the lack of religion is also something I wanted to try. I am usually a religion geek, but I really want to try building a world without using gods (real or imagined) to build my cultures around.

I am only looking at developing a couple of core cultures, and don't want to go nuts plotting it all out (MAR Barker/Greg Stafford Syndrome) but instead want to stick with some brief descriptions and a treatment of how they interact.

More than any previous edition the 'Cults' of RuneQuest 6 have the flexibility needed to provide structure to martial orders and other formal organizations, and that is definitely one thing I want to take advantage of.

Overall the world is presumed to be essentially mechanistic and similar to the materialist view physics - I won't be introducing any de facto magic like nonsensium space aliens or parapsychology - but unlike Earth in its geography and history.

A theme I want to riff on is that history is overdetermined - that is, for any major historical change within society or the broader physical landscape, the elements that bring it about are mutually complimentary enough to make individual variations stochastic white noise. If this seems a bit abstract, think of it in terms of Lovecraftian cosmic nihilism, Nietzsche or Conan in fatalism; but with a bit more clinical distance as to whether cosmic nihilism really is terrifying or just moot.

Another theme would be that human cultures, for their infinite complexity, have a tendency to manifest patterns of behavior even when supposedly major factors (religion) are excised entirely [in parallel example, modern political ideologies certainly fulfill the role for some that religions have in the past.]

I've been getting into Roll20 lately, running an Adventure Fantasy Game campaign and about to start an Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea one. I like the interfact and convenience of it.

Now here's the thing: I really haven't had a chance to play much of the d100 games, but I do have many of the books (RQ1/3/6, CoC, Stormbringer, BRP BGB, Magic World, Legend, MRQ, OpenQuest, GORE, Nephilim, Clockwork & Chivalry, Renaissance Deluxe) and at this point I'm willing to play any of them. I don't have the experience yet to run a game or I would.

I'm most interested in RuneQuest 6, but but just about anything would be nice

Well, that was weird, but I'm looking forward to the RQ6 version of Classic Fantasy myself.