Harshax

Tal Meta once did the entire Greyhawk pantheon in RQ3 stats and it was AMAZING.

http://talmeta.net

You might need to email him.

@Harshax: Long time no see. Welcome back!

Thanks!

The connection I see is with M. John Harrison's Viriconium setting, but then I've never read Vance.

Care to share the name of the series' first book?

If this is a 'Sins of our Fathers' style campaign, then I'd suggest the following:

Prologue: Narrate (hand-out) a summation of the primary conflict affecting the characters

<a session or three>

Epilogue: Narrate (hand-out) a summation of what is left unresolved.

<time passes>

Prologue: How have things gotten worse? What's gotten better? How is the conflict renewed?

Start again with the new characters.

While there are probably many ways to play a generation-spanning game (eg: Pendragon), I assume the biggest draw to be finishing what your parent's started.

Are the relationships strictly parent/child? Can they be elder/younger siblings? I was just thinking of LotR movies, and wondered what it would be like to roleplay Boromir (get killed), and picking up the game anew with Faramir.

it's interesting what people's first take on this setting. My first impression was Vance's Dying Earth.

Oh, sorry, I was just wanting to convert monsters and NPCs. The characters will be built from scratch.

My bad. The guidelines from my previous thread aren't suitable for monsters. Monsters should be measured in turns of threat. Mooks, listless guards, or rabble usually have a 30% to do things. Dangerous opponents are in the 60 - 90 rank. Heroic monsters are masters and above.

The multiple defense/-30 cumulative penalty is a must for D&D games (characters vs. hordes). Just leave room on the character sheet for a slide rule, starting at the character's highest parry, dodge. Each line lowers this by 30%. Have the players use a small colored paperclip to track their current percentages.

eg:

Top of Page: 77, 91 [assuming 77 dodge, 91 parry]

2nd Defense: 47, 61

3rd Defense: 17, 31

4th Defense: -, 1

I'm not really liking the idea of each defense roll after the first having a cumulative -30% penalty. I really don't want to keep track of how many times each character and NPC has been attacked during a round. I was thinking of just removing the rule entirely, but I'd like to have some rule where a character suffers a penalty when fighting multiple opponents. Is there something like a gang-up bonus/penalty already made somewhere? If not what would be a good way of handling something like this?

I would ignore direct mappings of Skill Rank to %. Look at page 48 of the BRP book "Measuring Skill Ratings". If the character has maxed out his skill rank in a class skill, I would set their BRP Skill Level between Professional and Expert. If they've taken feats that give them further bonuses to the skill, I'd bump the % up to the master level. If the character is over 6th level (meaning they would get multiple attacks, and have greater than 9 ranks), I'd push them into the low master. I'd add an additional 100% for levels 11 and 16. Halve this for cross-class skills. This rating is for skills with max rank only.

Now if the character has only dabbled, I'd give them a percentage of the max percentile.

Example:

6th level fighter.

Weapons - no more than 110%

Intimidate (9 ranks, class skill) - 110%

Swim (9 ranks, class skill + Skill Focus) - 135%

Move Silently (4.5 ranks, cross class) - 55%

Jump (4 ranks, class skill) - 48%

EDIT: I don't really recommend converting characters. If you insist, I don't recommend you spend too much time coming up with exact formula. I don't think it can be done. The above guidelines were thought up in about 30 seconds, and seem to give adequate results.

Just run with it. You and your group will determine if the characters feel tough enough.

As to rate of experience gain. That's something I feel more comfortable talking about. BRP characters can improve very rapidly, depending on how often you allow skill increase rolls. Characters with low skills will increase faster than characters with high skills. Players who attempt many different skills through a session will increase many skills faster than players who do not attempt different skills. Some GMs like to limit the number of skill roll increases possible during the experience gain routine. This is often done in games where the GM feels that characters should specialize. I've seen players purposely try alternate skills after they have already earned their skill checks for the session. eg. Warriors using an axe instead of their sword, because they already earned a skill check in sword.

For small groups, I think it is ok to let characters earn as many checks as possible. For larger groups, this may not be ideal.

I'm converting the War of the Lance campaign from D&Ds Dragonlance setting so we can play it using the BRP rules. Since I've only even used BRP for Call of Cthulhu I'm having some trouble figuring out how powerful characters will be in a more high fantasy setting. I know how fragile characters are in CoC, so I may have gone overboard on making characters tougher for the War of the Lance campaign. I had the players make their characters using the Heroic settings, the Skill Category Bonuses, and the CON+SIZ rule for HP (villains and major monsters will also get frull CON+SIZ for HP, but everything else will still only get the average). Am I making the characters too powerful for a campaign that starts at 5th level in D&D? Should I remove the Skill Category Bonuses and use the regular average of CON+SIZ for characters? Of course, I also want the characters to be strong enough to survive the level 20 encounters at the end of the campaign. How much do BRP characters advance during a campaign? Should I tone down the later parts of the campaign, or even make it so the entire campaign is about the same power level?

Griffin Island was the greatest RQ campaign setting, bar none. My GM simply added enough glorantha culture information to give it more depth.

The Classicist who vetted the map's historical accuracy, said it was the best he'd seen of the period, and even asked express permission to be able to use it in his classes. So don't disparage the poor city maps, they really are the best available!

Clearly, I'm ignorant of the amount of work required to get what maps came with the book.

. . . Stepping slowly away from the keyboard.

I bought the PDF. It is really good. My only quibbles being that it could have used a better map of the city (or more, considering the historical periods covered), and maybe a caption under the illustrations, to indicate what the images were. Finally, I would have loved to see it bookmarked. The bookmarking alone is going to cost you a star from any reviewer that works primarily from PDF files.

It's worth buying a hard copy too.

Two things. Someone who has purchased it needs to post a review on drivethru to increase sales. Secondly, correct the following typo:

We would like to spend man lines to describe what is in this 220-page sourcebook,

If you hadn't noticed, I'm not trying to create D&D. I'm drafting a BRP driven game in the D&D genre - high fantasy & dungeon delving. Last I looked, there wasn't a brp supplement out there that does this. It would be another matter if I had Elric! But alas, I do not. Even if I did, it would require work on my part to add the missing elements.

So far, I haven't done anything to make BRP any different than it already is. I've chosen which optional rules to use, drafted up some professions, racial characteristics, divine magic rules, arcane spellfailure rules, and created a spell or three.

But it is all obviously BRP. You may not be crapping on a game system, but you've certain made your opinion of how you feel about this particular genre known. If you would kindly leave this thread alone, I'd much appreciate it.

I know what you mean. A D&D emulator for BRP?:confused:

Not to knock any game system, but I don't see the rationale behind this. It would seem to me that if one wanted to have the "D&D experience" one could just play D&D.

[i'm kind of all over the place with my design at the moment. I just work on whatever comes to mind. I might be nearly done.]

Arcane Magic

Arcane magic works as described in the Powers Chapter, under Magic. See page 88 in the Basic Roleplaying rulebook for more information.

Armor & Arcane Magic

Armor, or other heavy clothing, is restrictive to the practice of magic. Double the physical penalty for wearing armor to any arcane magic attempts. Elves suffer one half this penalty.

Divine Magic

Magic granted from the gods works differently than arcane magic. Divine spells are not skills, work 99% of the time, and are not affected by armor penalties. Spells are learned by sacrificing permanent POW to the gods, and when cast, temporarily fade from memory.

To learn divine magic, a candidate must travel to a shrine or temple dedicated to their deity. If the character has not committed any transgressions against the cult and is deemed morally satisfactory, he may sacrifices 1 point of permanent POW to create a link between himself and his deity. Characters that start play as clerics have already performed this sacrifice. Once a member of the cult, an initiate may sacrifice more points of POW to their deity, in exchange for magic.

An initiate must pray for their deity's magic. This is usually done at a certain time of day and under conditions considered holy to the religion. The initiate must also have access to their holy symbol. Once these conditions are met, the initiate can request a number of spells equal to the total amount of POW sacrificed to the deity (not counting the first point used to establish the link with the divine).

Divine magic spells are fueled with the caster's own Magic Points, are always cast with 100% skill, will only fail on a result of '00', and can not be fumbled. Casting divine magic works just like arcane magic. However, the maximum level of any spell is equal to half the caster's POW, not INT. Once cast, successful or not, the spell fades from memory. An initiate must therefore request multiple castings of a spell if they wish to use it more than once per day.

Spells still in memory when an initiate prays for their allotment of magic may simply 'return' the magic in exchange for different spells. Sometimes a deity will grant different spells, either on a whim, to punish the initiate for a mild transgression, or because they foresee the character needing a different power sometime in the future.

Example: Thalos, priest of Grod the Mighty Volcano, prays to his deity for magic. Since his initiation, Thalos has sacrificed 6 points of POW to his deity. Looking over his available spells, and knowing he intends to assault an orc fortress this evening, he requests one casting each of Dispel and Protection, and two castings of Flame and Healing.

This whole thread has me scratching my head. Since I've been on these boards, BRP enthusiasts have persistently proclaimed that they enjoy Runequest, et. al., because "it's NOT Brand X." So why would you want to make your beloved game system more like the one you ditched when you saw the light and abandoned d20s for d10s? :shocked:

I'm not one of those people. I dislike Brand Anything bashers. I proudly played D&D for years. I have a lot of unplayed material for that game. At the moment, there is nothing BRP on the market that does the D&D genre. So I'm making do, by creating the vaneer necessary for me to enjoy D&D, but using the BRP engine. Got it?

IPv6?

I'd say, for that authentic D&D experience, you should do all stats as '4d6 best 3, strict order', then add modifiers for race etc.

That has been the challenge thus far. Do I want an authentic D&D experience, or a better one?

Go on then, tell us - what's your take on this? And can Elves cast in armour or not?

Clearly your bias against the current hijack of this thread is that you are math challenged.

Oh yeah? I can subnet in my head.

four words:

Shut up and play!

This thread is utter madness. MADNESS I SAY!

I hope islan appreciate the meta-mechanical tizzy this board is thrown into whenever this topic comes up.

:lol::lol:

If you're uploading three different file types for compatibility, would just a PDF or just an RTF work?

I think RTF would work just fine.

I included mook rules in Gods of Law for this very purpose.

I think I should check Gods of Law out.

For slightly tougher opposition, but still not at the level of danger as an important NPC, you can make any or all of the following adjustments:

This might be a little too bare-bones for your tastes, but it works for me. What I like about this approach is that, once internalized, you really only need to know numbers, instead of worrying about keeping track of every Hit point and who's dying from shock.

Thanks for sharing!

I'm trying to figure out the best method for handling waves of monsters in my upcoming dungeon crawl games. I've already decided to use Hit Locations for Players, but I want to dispense with that detail for the nameless hoards that will likely fall before the characters.

How can I accomplish this?

I was thinking Mooks (rabble, extras) would only have Hit Points = to their Major Wound penalty. Their armor would be rated in suits, but instead of random AP to reduce damage, add the mean AP protection x5% to their parry or dodge rolls.

So a Goblin (CON 10, SIZ 8) wearing hard leather armor would have 5 Hit Points (9/2 = 4.5), and have a +18% to Parry Rolls (mean of 1d6 = 3.5 x 5%).

What have you done to reduce the bookkeeping phase when you GM?

Being slightly overwhelmed with the volume of D&D concepts I want to convert, I'm going to concentrate on Basic. Once I'm comfortable with this, this document will expand to Advanced.

Things so far:

RACES

Dwarf

Dwarves are both stout and broad. Their wide frame and dense bones of the dwarves reinforce the notion that they are made from the bedrocks of mountains. While they never grow taller than 5', they can weigh up to 200 lbs.

Special Abilities: Dwarves can see in the dark up to 60 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise like normal sight, and dwarves can function just fine with no light at all. Dwarves possess Stunecunning (CON x2), which is the natural ability to notice unusual stonework, such as sliding walls, stonework traps, new construction (even when built to match the old), unsafe stone surfaces, shaky stone ceilings, and the like. Something that isn't stone but that is disguised as stone also counts as unusual stonework. A dwarf can also intuit depth, sensing his approximate depth underground as naturally as a human can sense which way is up.

Elf

Special Abilities: An elf can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. She retains the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions. Having superb senses, Sense and Spot have a starting value of 20% and 35% respectively. Elves are naturally immune to the paralyzing touch of ghouls. Born of a rich magical tradition, elves may spend any of their starting skill points on Magic. These spells must come from the Magic-User spell list.

Halfling

Special Abilities: Halflings are both small and stealthy. As such, Hide and Stealth have a starting value of 30%, while Dodge is 20% higher than the starting value of DEX x2.

Human

Special Abilities: May spend up to 100 of their starting skill points on any skill outside their profession.

Race       STR     CON     SIZ     INT     POW     DEX     APP

Dwarf      3d6     2d6+8   2d6+6   2d6+6   3d6     3d6     2d8

Elf        3d6     2d8     2d8     2d6+6   3d6     3d6+2   3d6

Halfling   2d8     2d6+6   1d6+3   2d6+6   3d6     2d6+8   3d6

Human      3d6     3d6     2d6+6   2d6+6   3d6     3d6     3d6

SKILLS & PROFESSIONS

Universal Skills:

Communication: Any, except Command

Manipulation: None

Mental: Appraise, First Aid

Perception: Any

Physical: Climb, Dodge, Jump, Ride, Swim, Throw

Combat: None

Cleric

Weapon Skills: Club, Hammer, Mace, Shield, Sling, Staff

Skills: Medicine, Knowledge [Various]

Special: Clerics begin the game with 2-points of Divine Magic

Fighter

Weapon Skills: Any

Skills: Command, Strategy, Martial Arts [Various]

Thief

Weapon Skills: Bow, Club, Crossbow, Dagger, Mace, Sling, Staff, Sword

Skills: Fine Manipulation, Sleight of Hand, Hide, Stealth

Magic-User

Weapon Skills: Dagger, Staff

Skills: Knowledge [Various], Magic [Various]

MAGIC

Divine vs. Arcane

Arcane Magic and Armor

Trappings

Certain spells have trappings that can be altered to fit the character spellcasting style, or the players ascetics. Let's take Flame for example. Instead of a pillar of fire rising from the ground, it could be a ball of flame fired from the magic-user's fingertip. A large application of Flame; one that effects multiple squares; might look like a small streaking mote that explodes on impact, or a fan of flames that erupts from the magic-users outstretched hands.

Spell Lists

Cleric: Control, Countermagic, Dark, Diminish, Dispel, Dull, Enhance, Flame, Heal, Light, Perception, Protection, Resistance, Sharpen, Silence, Speak To Mind, Ward, Wound

Magic-User: Blast, Change, Conjure Elemental, Control, Countermagic, Dark, Diminish, Dispel, Dull, Enhance, Flame, Frost, Illusion, Invisibility, Lift, Light, Lightning, Perception, Protection, Resistance, Seal, Sharpen, Speak To Mind, Teleport, Unseal, Vision, Wall, Ward, Wound

NEW SPELLS

Silence

DB2: Caves of Horrendous Chaos

The module I intend to unapologetically rip off.

MONSTERS

Seems cluttered to upload three versions of the same document (doc, odt, pdf). Why can't we upload a zip file?

A lot of you have some very similar ideas. Here's my attempt to put them into some kind of rule-speak:

A starting character (Age 17 +1d6) can only spend their initial allotment on skills within their profession. The profession skills are highly limited in scope, so as to make characters lean toward iconic 'classes'. Skills in italic are guild skills.

Example

Fighter - Command, First Aid, Strategy, Climb, Dodge, Jump, Ride, Swim, Throw, Martial Arts [Any], Weapon Skills [Any, Including Shields, and Parry Skills]

Assassin - Disguise, Fine Manipulation, Listen, Spot, Climb, Stealth, Throw, Weapon Skills, Craft [Alchemy: Poisons], Handle Poison, Murder [species]

If the player wishes to create an older character, those skill points gained can be spent anywhere. Older characters (each 10 years older than starting age), get 30 skill points to spend on any other skill. These additional skill points cannot be spent on other guild skills unless the character belongs to that guild as well (GM's approval).