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Yes, it is indeed quite similar to games like Civilization or Europa Universalis, only more "zoomed in" to the personal level, with slightly more detail and much more freedom. The main characters are BRP characters with full game stats, skill rolls and character development, the setting has more details and options, and I can add new elements whenever I consider it useful for the game. Oh, and I can play with maps - this is the current map of the main settlement of the colony, with lots of space for future improvements:

You know, those players and their strange ideas often get into the way of a re- feree's innocent fun, and so I decided to create my own private little sandbox for an undisturbed solo game now and then. It started with a look at the map of the old AD&D Birthright game. There was this island, Torova Temylatin, which we always wanted to explore and colonize, but the campaign ran onto a real life rock and sank before we ever came close to it. Well, better very late than never. After a suitable location I needed the rules for such a solo game. Fortunately the "Building Kingdoms" chapter of Runequest II Empires has such rules, and it was easy to expand them with material from other sources, like the Harnmaster and Pendragon games, to get what I wanted. Since I did not like the Birthright background very much, I moved my island - now renamed Torava - into another game universe, one where it is situated north of Angilia, a low fantasy version of medieval Britain which was heavily influenced by the "Merrie England" supplement for Runequest. Finally I needed a "hero" to conquer and rule Torava, and for some unknown rea- son my mind decided to come up with a knight named Sir Richard Herriot. With him at the bow of a sailing ship, looking out for the land he is determined to ma- ke his own, the game could start. Meanwhile Sir Richard has become Lord Richard, Baron of Torava, and the two settlements he founded, Herriot and Westport, are doing fine, although with only a little more than 300 inhabitants they are still quite small and vulnerable (curse those many raids thrown at them by the tables ... ). The monks of the Monastery of Saint Botolph on the Tora provide the settlers with a bit of education and culture and introduce new ways of growing crops and breeding livestock, and a source of iron has been discovered in the Barrier Moun- tains, where Lord Richard will found a third settlement aptly named Ironmine - as soon as he has managed to pay off the huge loan he had to take to finance the monastery. Ah, there is so much to do. Roads have to be built, a fortified manor house made of stone is a necessity, the children have to be sent somewhere for their noble education, the raiding pirate scum has to be dealt with ... at about one year of game time per real world week this can go on for quite a while.

It depends on your setting and gaming style. In our case I think I would ask for a relevant skill of 95 % plus another experience roll of a natural 100 to grant a character a legendary ability instead of the skill improvement.

Meanwhile we have played the next few hours of the events, and this is what happened, or at least what the usurper king's men know about it ... „My Lord, as you will remember, the idiot who claimed to be a rebel was sentenced to death by your bailiff, and the execution was to take place at your castle's courtyard. All the citizens of Morragen had been ordered to come and watch the painful death of the rebel, so there was a huge crowd. Some rebels hid among this crowd, and when the prisoner was led to the execution, two of these rebels used crossbows to wound your bailiff and the priest of Arthun who stood next to him, and then the rebels fled down to the river, pursued by the captain of the guard and most of his men. At the river the rebels stole a boat and escaped downriver to the Estre Swamps, their usual hiding place. While the captain and his men were hunting these rebels, a fire broke out at Arthun's recently completed temple. From what I have been told, a cart with a wine barrel on it broke down at the temple gate. There were only two temple guards at the gate, because the others had escorted the priest to the castle. Among the bystanders who came running to the temple to help with the cart were rebels, who killed the guards and rolled the barrel into the temple. The barrel was filled with lamp oil, so it was easy for them to start a fire and burn down the temple. When the fire at the temple became visible, the crowd at the castle moved to the burning temple. A few brave people attempted to fight the fire, but some mad thief had stolen the ropes from the two nearest wells, which made it impossible to lift the buckets with water up the wells. So the crowd just stood there and watched the fire, but unfortunately this crowd filled the entire market square and made it almost im- possible for the captain of the guard to lead his men back to the castle. At about this time the biggest group of rebels attacked. With most of the castle's guards gone to pursue the first group of rebels, and the remaining temple guards on their way to the burning temple, the woun- ded bailiff and the wounded priest had only few men with them, the castle's gate was still wide open, and it was impossible to know who of the many people at or near the castle were rebels. We still do not know how many rebels took part in the attack, but it must have been more than two dozen of them. They cut down the bailiff, the priest and almost all of the castle's defenders, freed the prisoners, set the castle on fire, and escaped on the guards' horses. The captain of the guards was later able to recover the horses, the rebels had not ridden them into the swamps, but we lost much of the castle, most of the temple, the bailiff, the priest, more than a dozen of our loyal fighters, and – worst of all – the trust of the citizens of Morragen.“ As you see, I decided to neither reward nor punish the scholar character, although the fact that his planned execution gave the rebels the opportunity for their attack could be considered a minor reward. Edit.: On the other hand, standing right next to the bailiff's torturer through the events until the rebel's final attack and knowing that the torturer just waited impatiently for the bailiff's signal to get the execution started could perhaps be considered a mild form of punishment ... Edit. 2: By the way, the crucial moment of this part of the adventure was the bailiff's Idea Roll after he was hit by the crossbow bolt. The character with the crossbow intentionally wounded the bailiff only slightly, hoping that he would fail to recognize the diversion and in his rage order the guards to pursue the "assassins" who had "at- tempted to kill him". The characters were lucky, and the bailiff indeed fumbled his Idea Roll and sent most of his soldiers after the fleeing rebels - and neither he nor his men realized that the people fleeing to the river were only harmless unarmed youngsters dressed like the crossbowmen, while the dangerous and well armed ones still were at the castle and waited for their comrades to provide the second diversion at the temple.

Hmmm ... thank you, I like that. A public trial by combat in the castle's courtyard, which would in fact be a public execution since the character has hardly any combat skills, would enable the bai- liff to make an example of this suspected rebel supporter and thereby to frighten the commoners - and at the same time give the other characters both an oppor- tunity and an incentive to attack the castle at this time, disguised as spectators of the trial by combat. It is rather close to a certain scene of a certain Robin Hood movie, but this does not have to be a disadvantage, the setting offers enough ways to make it diffe- rent. Besides, to rescue their stupid comrade and to free the prisoners in such a very public way could well boost the reputation of the rebels considerably (see the other thread about recruiting / "Prince Illiam ...").

I am afraid this character has the right connections to convince a respectable secret supporter of the rebellion to pay the fine / ransom. I am very much tempted to treat the character this way, if only to make sure that his player does not develop a habit of similar antics of his characters.

Thank you very much, another good idea.

In the current Carelan campaign the characters have been assigned the task to free some important prisoners from the castle at the town of Morragen. The group's scholar is sent to scout the castle, to learn as much as he can about the number of guards and their equipment, and if possible to contact one of the prisoners. He walks up to the guard at the castle's gate and tells him: "Good Man, I am one of the rebels who want to free your prisoners. We would like to know how many guards you have here, and what equipment they have. Would you be so kind to raise an alarm, so I can get an impression of this ?" He is of course arrested and thrown into the dungeon, and the other players sta- re at the scholar's player in utter disbelief. The player smiles and explains that his character now knows the guards and their equipment and the interior layout of the castle, and that he has the opportunity to talk to the prisoners. And in the next morning he will tell the bailiff that he was drunk, wanted to make an admittedly silly joke, and now regrets this and is willing to pay a fine before he is set free. Well, I have to play the bailiff, and I really do not know how to handle this. It is incredibly stupid and in a strange way brilliant at the same time, and I have no idea how my bailiff should react to this: Hang the man or let him go ? What would you do with this insane scholar ?

Yep, thank you very much. Since there are different factions among the rebellion, and not all of them are of the Robin Hood kind, I will also use modifiers / points for the less than helpful ac- tions of those other factions, hoping that this will cause the characters to try to rein in the bandits among the rebels - which will of course increase the peasants' sympathies and support for the characters.

In our campaigns it is very rare that a player character gets killed by the other player characters, but it has happened. If the death of the player character is caused by a stupid decision of the character (player) and justified by the inner logic of the setting, I expect the player to accept it without complaints and to move on without holding a grudge - in the end, it was he who killed his charac- ter. If the player is unable to understand and accept this, I will explain it to him, but only the first time it happens. If he does it again, I will tell him to search for ano- ther game to join - my Rule 1 of gaming is never to do it with people who cannot distinguish clearly between game reality and the real world.

Thank you for a good idea. Of course, there should also be negative modifiers, for example for wounding ci- vilians or otherwise causing harm to them (those stolen chickens ...).

In our settings we used "natural" giants (normal physical creatures), which were two to four times as tall as humans (4 m to 8 m) and "mythological" giants (like those of the Norse mythology), which were "as tall as they wanted", up to hund- reds of meters (think of the saga where some gods sleep in the glove of a giant).

Thank you very much, this would be good modifiers for the approach I edited into my last post.

I see your point, but this would not work in this setting, the characters have to go to the settlements and to convince villagers and townsmen to join the rebel- lion, there simply are no particular racial or ethnic groups with armed followers in this setting. And just to claim that all peasants of Village Remote hate the usur- per and leave their families and farms to join the good fight seems rather implau- sible, so I am looking for a way to determine how many of those farmers could be willing to become rebels, based upon the previous successes or failures of the rebellion (= its reputation) and the "sales pitch" (= Recruiting skill) of the charac- ters. Edit.: I just got an interesting tip in another forum, to use the people's Loyalty to the ruler as a base value and add and subtract modifiers according to the local si- tuation and the activities and skills of the characters. For example, the further the settlement is from the capital and the more the people are oppressed, the less is their Loyalty, and when the characters manage to turn it into negative Loyalty (ah, Disloyalty), a certain percentage of them will join the rebellion. I think this approach should work, now I only have to think about the modifiers which would fit well into the setting - I hope.

Most of the system part of our Carelan setting has now been designed, the eco- nomy will be borrowed from Harnmaster, the mass combat mainly from Pendragon and GURPS, and the magic from Midgard - they all fit in well enough with our ver- sion of a "BRP-enriched CoC". Unfortunately there is still one problem remaining, recruiting. The characters will have to win new members for the rebellion, and I failed to come up with a con- vincing rules mechanism for this, a complete "setting designer's block". The mechanism should consider the reputation of the rebellion, the social skills of the recruiters, the degree of oppression suffered by the community where the attempt to win recruits is made, and the size of this community (and perhaps also other factors I did not think of ...) and should give the number of recruits as the result. I suspect that something like this has already been developed for some game out there, and also that it would not be terribly difficult to come up with such a me- chanism, but right now I can only stare at the screen and wonder where my brain has gone. Any help with this would be most welcome.

According to the rules, Early Bulletproof Vests use metal plates, so they are the kind of vests developed during the American Civil War. Modern Bulletproof Vests use plastics, which were developed after 1950, with Kevlar becoming a standard after 1975. No, mercenaries usually can spend more money on their equipment than govern- ments are able or willing to spend to outfit their soldiers, and therefore mercena- ries usually have the best available gear. I would treat the kind of helmet used by the explosives experts and similar speci- alists as Heavy Helmet and the kind of helmet used by normal soldiers as Light Helmet, because otherwise the stats do not make that much sense, since the lightweight helmets made of non-metallic materials offer a much better protection than the heavy metal helmets still used by some armies.

Looks rather "Disney" to me, too ...

Hello Evilschemer, welcome here and good luck with your monograph, I will keep watching out for it.

Another interesting option could be GURPS Mass Combat, which I just re-discove- red on a backup CD. It is slightly more abstract than the systems of Pendragon and Flashing Blades, the referee has to provide more of the "fluff", but otherwise it seems to be as fast and simple as I need it, and includes rules for terrain, re- connaissance, surprise and ambush, heroic actions and all that, as well as diffe- rent types of defensive and offensive tactics.

No problem. We usually shorten it to "Gelthan", the archaic form with the silly apostrophes has been out of use since my childhood, 2,400 years ago.

Thank you very much. I have Flashing Blades, but I never used its mass combat system, I will take a look at it.

While I see your point and agree, the title of the thread will inevitably lead to the naming of old settings and IPs, too. Since this thread is already quite long, perhaps start a new one asking for ideas on new, fresh and original worlds for BRP ?

In the not so far future our current Carelan low fantasy campaign will probably move from character combat to skirmishes and then to battles, and I am loo- king for suitable rules to play them. At the moment I am thinking of the battle rules of the Pendragon game, which would fit our magic poor setting well and seem to model a pseudo-medieval type of mass combat at the right (= low) complexity level, including the more or less "heroic" involvement of the characters. However, since there might well be better options out there, I would like to ask for your recommendations for such a system, which should: - be close enough to BRP to make an adaptation easily possible, - be simple (no detailed tabletop rules, I would not be able to handle them), - model combat between units of dozens to hundreds of medieval soldiers, - include rules for surprise, ambush and hit and run tactics, - include rules for terrain (marsh / swamp will certainly be a location), - make it possible to determine the fate of characters during the combat, - enable "heroic" characters to influence the outcome of the combat. What they do not need to do is to deal with magic, siege combat and non-hu- man soldiers / monsters. Any help with this would be most welcome.

They would make an excellent setting, but to translate the technology - in fact, the many technologies - into BRP terms would be a true nightmare. Even GURPS with its very elaborate technology system had problems with this.

Indeed, this would be one I would buy, I often regret the loss of my copy.