Mugen

You seem to voluntarily duck the real answer...

To me, seeing a list with creatures like the Fachan, the Jabberwock, the various spirits and the cave troll immediately bring back memories of RQ3. Although there's one notable omission between Dragon and Dwarf. 😄

That list sounds very familiar. It seems to me all creatures from RQ3 boxed set and Monster Coliseum have been included, along with a few others. With the exception of Elementals, of course, which are from Elric! and not RQ.

Well, it's not a bad book by any means. But it has its own internal logic, which differs from other BRP magic systems. The Emphasis on "POWer" as a kind of "Super Magic Points" which you sacrifice to get higher form of Magic is very interesting. But it only really works if you use the rule which lets player gain POW with experience rolls. Note that any creature book for RuneQuest 3 will be also good for BRP and Magic World, as all games from that time were very homogeneous. You might be surprised by different attack and parry scores for each weapon, relatively low Dodge skill (whose base was 05+ a small bonus) and localized hit points. But it's easy to ignore. You might also be disapppointed by the absence of standard creatures such as orcs, which were in another RQ book.

Basic Magic "Divine Magic" allows you to learn very powerful spells. But you need to worship a deity and pay POW to obtain those. Rituals deal with magic items and summonings. It's a set of rules common to the 3 other magic systems, and not an independent system.

The answer to this question may be quite confusing for someone not aware of Chaosium publication history. Basically, all the magic systems come from older Chaosium publications. -as said above, "Basic Magic" is a reprint from RuneQuest 3 and contain 4 types of Magic : Spirit (mixing shamanism and "common Magic"), Divine, Sorcery and Ritual. -The 2011 Basic Roleplaying (usually named the Big Gold Book, or BGB, because it's thick and yellow) contains magic systems from Magic World 1st edition (*) (named Magic), Elric! (named Sorcery) and ElfQuest (which is used for Psionics). Despite the use of similar names, BGB Sorcery is actually closer to Basic Magic "Spirit Magic", and BGB Magic is closer to Basic Magic "Sorcery". BGB Magic and Basic Magic Sorcery require you to learn a skill for each spell, and let you chose the strength of your spells, depending on the amount of Magic Points you spend. Spirit Magic and BGB Sorcery are more simple : there are no skills to learn, and spells have either a fixed cost, or a limit to the number of MP you can spend. Spirit Magic also deals with Spirit summoning and shamans, whereas BGB Sorcery has rules for Demon and Elemental summonings. BGB Psionics are in fact not very different from BGB Magic. They just focus on effects associated with Psi powers. (*) Magic World first edition was very different from second edition, which is basically the same as Elric !

I never said the reason the knockback stops is air resistance. Given the speeds in this context, it's very negligeable. As for the speed decrease rate, my hypothesis was that the weight of the body was the main factor, and it's a constant. Edit : I also made that hypothesis to keep things simple...

I was going to answer "none" because a fantasy world can rely solely on humans and natural animals, but I realised that's not what you mean when you write "monster". 🙂 Combat-wise, I like the categories from D&D 4th edition, with 6 standard roles (artillery, brute, lurker, skirmisher, soldier, controler) and 4 levels (minions, standard, elite and solo). Minions are cannon fodder, with only 1 hit point. Not suited for all kind off games. Solo are the "boss encounter" type of antagonist, with as many hit points as 4 standard enemies.

Trudvang is a strange beast. It has rather complex skill, combat and magic systems, but the most simple core resolution system I know : roll a d20, if its inferior or equal to your skill, you succeed. No criticals, no opposed rolls, nothing except a binary success/fail. Even the process needed to treat "Hide versus Perception" is not really described, and you need to deduce it from the text. There's also an English version which I was not aware of : https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/243105/trudvang-chronicles-character-sheet

A 3 level ladder similar to the description given by @Atgxtgexists in the game Trudvang, a swedish game which also takes its roots in Drakkar och Demoner, like Dragonbane. Fortunately, it has been translated in French, and you can find its Feuille de Personnage online, with the skill list. Base skills ranks from 1 to 10, médium skills from 0 to 5 and specialties from 0 to 5, but add+2 to the base skill per level.

One huge selling point for both games is that they're standalone products. You don't need to buy the core rukebook to use them. I didn't read their Hawkmoon game. I read that they used a variant of the Sorcery rules for Science, and I was not a fan of the idea. My favourite rules for this were the ones in the first French edition, which were different from the English version. Scientists had skills in Biology, Chemistry, Electricity, Mechanics, etc. and the game offered a list of possible effects to chose from for each skill, along with modifiers to your skill if you wanted yo add it to a project. The more effects you put in a project, the longer it took and the more it cost. It was far from perfect, as your project was resolved with just one skill roll, no matter how complex and time consuming it was. I also think the difficulties made it very complex to do anything even with skills above 80%.

That makes sense, since you don't have the same kinetic energy in each situation. If you suffer a 5m knockback, your speed at the end of that 5m move should be 0, which means you should have no kinetic energy, and suffer no damage. It's possible to deduce what amount of damage one should take from a knockback from the damage taken from a fall. In both situations, your kinetic energy is equal to (m.v^2)/2, where v is your speed and m your mass. But in the case of a fall, v grows linearly with each meter, whereas in the case of a knockback, it decreases. It should be possible then to say that a Xm knockback is equivalent to a Ym fall, except in the case of a knockback, X should be the difference between the total knockback distance and the actual distance covered.

The first RPG I read was the BECMI Basic set. I had played another game before, but only for two sessions. I switched AD&D (1st edition) after that, because the Expert Set was unavailable anywhere in a 100km radius. I still own the booklets of B, E and C boxes and a few AD&D books, all in very bad condition, but I havent played the game since I discovered StormBringer in 1987.

@Atgxtgyou're right about thieves attack table. I perfectly remember the 4 attack matrices on one page, but for some reason I had the wrong information in mind. Perhaps because it's how it works in BECMI...

Yes, BECMI is the version with Basic/Expert/Companion/Master/Immortals. I don't remember 😄 My guess is they use the same table as Magic Users, like in AD&D. BECMI also had "Race"-As-Class. Because BECMI level 36 characters with no magic items are just as good at protecting themselves as they were at level 1. Also, if 2 BRP characters with weapon skill equal to 50%, they'll hit each other 25% of the time, because they can parry or dodge.

BECMI characters have a slower to-hit progression than AD&D. Fighters get +2 every 3 levels, clerics every 4 levels and Magic users every 5 levels. Strength adds up to +3 at 18, with no extraordinary strength for fighters But it doesn't fit well with the attack/parry/dodge system of brp. DEX reduces AC by up to 3 points, but otherwise better armor is the only way to reduce your chances to lose hit points. And hp also partially reflect brp Parry and dodge. IIRC, the thresholds for Dex bonus were very similar to rq2.

That's a guide for modern D&D (3e to 5e), but it's not applicable to BECMI, which has no such unified core system. Thieves abilities are the closest equivalent to skills in this game.

You can ask @Newt directly, but it seems obvious to me that he was referring to the Basic Roleplaying booklet from 1981. It's a stripped-down version of the game system that was used in RuneQuest 1, which is the origin of all Chaosium d100-based gamss.

It's possibly one of those cases where SIZ is not only seen as mass, but also body size. Just like SR is a function of SIZ and DEX. It's harder to evade a large creature than smaller ones. As for parrying a knockback, it can be seen as the defender actively preparing himself for impact. But it should be more effective with a Shield than a dagger.

Well, most French speaking players are not familiar with this game either. Essentially because it's old, horribly complex and was not really successful. And perhaps because people thought it was about playing in strict historical settings, whereas the game really is about playing in real-world myths. Unfortunately, only two versions were published : a celtic one, and an arabic one. A second edition was published a few years later, with 3 settings (Celtic, Egyptian and Arthurian), but with a much more simple system, which doesn't include the rules I'm describing here. The Celtic version of that second edition was translated in English, but without much success. The "table" I'm speaking about is 3x3 and the "dynamic" part is where you cross-index 2 maluses from different sources on it to find which "effective malus" you must apply. The wound tables are really a mix of RoleMaster and RuneQuest. -you first roll on a hit location table to determine which part of the body was hit. The table is more complex than RQ, and use a d100. -then, you determine on a table the amount of damage you cause, depending on your Strength and the Margin of Success of the attack. -then, you subtract armor (which depends on the kind of armor worn and the kind of weapon used) -then, depending on the damage inflicted, you can get a criticity level between I and V (roman numbers, of course). Low damage only reduce Health track. -then, you roll on a table to determine the exact effect of the wound, depending on the criticity level. The results on the severity table really look like what you see in RM.

Légendes Health system is not a wound system like in Star Wars. The game has a Health track, a Stamina track and a Wounds system, similar to RoleMaster, but with a random Hit location system. Old age can also put such conditions on your attributes. Each of these 4 sources can give you a malus, and you have to "dynamically" determine what malus you use. IIRC, some wounds also reduce your maximum Health. It's a rather old system (1983), influenced by RuneQuest and other games that were popular back then.

Old French game Légendes handled this with a 4-level malus system (-25%, -50%, -75% and Incapacity) for physical impairments. If you suffered from more than one physical problem (a wound and exhaustion, for instance), a quick table told you what your "effective malus" was. I don't remember the actual numbers, but a -25% over a -50% certainly resulted in a -50%, whereas two -50% certainly resulted in a -75%.

Only 3 years. 1983 for the wargame, 1986 for the RPG.

I think we lost a lot of potential roleplayers when GW realized they couid sell way more miniatures if they focused on selling fantasy armies rather tran fantasy RPG miniatures...

Broad skills and specializations for me too. No idea on the details of the experience system, though. I could perhaps arbitrarily rule that the skill can only increase through experience and specializations through training or vice-versa, just to avoid cases like when a character had 3 different uses of a particular skill but with different specialties. I don't want hip to get 3 increases of his skill after one adventure.