Mugen

What about using both Cults and Sorcery rules from MRQ2 ? For instance you could say that : Rank 1 = Apprenticeship An apprentice learns the Common Magic skill. Rank 2 = Wizard A Wizard learns the Manipulation Skill. He can learn Grimoires from the "Common Sorcery" school. Rank 3 = Specialist Wizard A Specialist Wizard can learn Grimoires from one of the following schools : -Demonology; -Elementalism; -Illusionism; -Necromancy. Rank 4 = Arch Magus An Arch Magus can learn Grimoires from any school. Of course, that means you'll have to create Grimoires for each of the 5 schools.

As for myself, I would treat the problem in a slightly different way. I have very bad memories of "Complementary skill"-like rules. I would use a number of broad skills such as Athletics, Magic, Melee, Stealth, Science and so on, along with "specializations". For instance, a swordsman might have a Melee skill of 37%, a Sword specialization of +45% and a Dagger specialization of +15%, for a total of 82% when using a sword in melee and 52% with a dagger. Of course, some actions would require a minimum level in a specialization. A Science roll would allow you to know the basics of nuclear physics, but a high specialization level would be necessary to design a nuclear plant.

What about "Specialties" ? Another possibility is to call percentile scores "aptitudes" and use the term "skills" for your "traits". Also, the concept is very similar to what Legend of the Five Rings 3rd and 4th editions call "Emphasises".

Yes, but you can easily find the rules in MRQ2 which I used as an inspiration for this one

What about stealing some bits from MRQ2 ? For instance, state that if success level is the same and Attack roll is greater than Parry roll, only half damage is parried (maybe more with a shield).

Some D&D retro-clones are exact copies of the "Rules Cyclopedia" version of the game. They make references to the d20 SRD to avoid problems with WotC. I guess the same can be done with the Mongoose RuneQuest 1 SRD.

I don't know anything about Classic Fantasy, but I can give you my opinion on 5 BRP-based fantasy games : Avalon Hill RuneQuest 3: This one has been my favorite for 15 years. It might look very complicated at first, but you can remove a lot of rules without effect on game balance. It has very good divine spirit and divine magic sytems, but its sorcery needs to be reworked. Elric!: A good game, but I really don't like its magic system. Mongoose RuneQuest 1: I think this is the one you own. There are a few good ideas, but I agree it has too many flaws to work correctly... OpenQuest : Quite a good game. Basically, it is MRQ1 with less skills and a simplified version of AHRQ3 magic system. Too bad some aspects of MRQ1 remains, especially in Sorcery Mongoose RuneQuest 2: My favourite of the 5 games by far. From my point of view, the authors took MRQ1, examined all aspects of the game and fixed every bug in it. The few improvements are still there, but everything else is new. For instance, you will only need 1 skill to cast common magic spells, and can be a decent sorcerer with only 2 or 3 skills. Personnally, the only problem I have with it is the localized hit points, definitely not my taste. But it has an optional system for generic hit points.

This is due to the fact MRQII uses a skill opposition rule for all kind of opposition. As a consequence, it does not use characteristic rolls either. You will test "Brawn" skill instead of STRx5, Evade instead of DEXx5 and so on...

Plus, his supernatural senses allows him to know a question has been asked on ANY forum.

In MRQII, you will find 4 magic systems : -Common Magic : A series of simple spells dealing mostly with combat and bonuses to skills. Very similar to "Gold Book"'s Sorcery, actually, except it requires a "Common Magic" skill to be performed. -Sorcery : A very powerful approach of magic. You learn spells from Grimoires and have the possibility to change their parameters at will. This is actually an evolution of "Gold Book"'s Magic. -Divine Magic : In this You dedicate a portion of your POW to a deity in exchange of very powerful powers. -Shamanism : Where you deal with spirits and elemental entities, go out of your body to find them and bind them to fetishes. According to your definitions : -Divine Magic might be a better fit for Druids than BRP Sorcery; -Sidhes and Foreigners might be interested by Common Magic or Sorcery, but this is subject to discussion. Note that MRQ II do not use Resistance Table at all so you will have to find replacements. For instance, opposed tests between casting skill and Evade will have to be changed into POW vs DEX tests.

I'm not sure about this. My memories may not be accurate, but as far as I remember, MERP tables work more or less like this : 0 or less : fumble 1 to 75 : failure 76 to 90 : Half success 91 to 110 : Success 125 to 150 : Good success 151 to 175 : Very Good success 176+ : Critical success Which means one with a bonus of +35 facing a medium difficulty have a 45% chance to have a success, not counting the Half-success. So, a +35 would translate into a 45% skill. In fact, a roll on the resistance table is a characteristicx5 roll with a difficulty equal to (opposing factor-10)x5%.

I think you should consider increasing your SIZ scale. Your "colossal" creatures have an average of SIZ 32, which in canonical BRP is between a horse (SIZ 25 to 30) and an elephant (SIZ 45 to 50), but half the score of a dragon (SIZ 65 to 70).

Definitely, yes. In my opinion, the differences between recent editions of BRP and MRQ shows that the best thing with BRP-related systems is the ease with which you can pick a sub-system from any game and "plug" it in you game. I mean, you can do it with any system, but it will be a tiresome work.

There are fire-breathing dragons in RuneQuest (any edition), StormBringer and Elric ! As for Slaad, maybe Slarges (man/reptiles hybrides from RuneQuest) can be a good substitute. As for a straight translation, it's difficult at low levels, and impossible at high level. STR, DEX, CON and INT are more or less equivalent in both games, but BRP POW is a mix between D&D3.0 CHA and WIS, and BRP CHA or APP are different from D&D 3.0 CHA... The problem is that there is no equivalent to level or hit dice in BRP, so you will lose an important information.

Note that there are 5 other rule sets by Sandy Petersen for RQ3. As far as I remember, those cover the following subjects : -rituals (rules to make enchants cost less POW, also makes a difference between ritual divine spells, ritual sorcery spells and ritual spirit spells); -grimoire (useful tricks for all spell casters); -shaman (never read it); -saints (for Malkioni characters : http://www.poppyware.com/dunham/glorantha/saints.html); -mysticism (for kralori characters). I used to have those on a Geocities account, but it is now closed...

Which monster(s) would you like to see ? There are a number of "classical" D&D monsters in every version of the RuneQuest "Monsters" book.

About negative hit points: Personnally, I prefer to record the total damage amount suffered by a character and compare it to thresholds. For instance, I could use 3 thresholds : -Fatigued (-10% to all checks) : CON/2; -Inconscious : (CON+TAI)/2; -Dead : CON+(TAI/2) This way, I don't need to introduce negative hit points.

About Roll-play and Role-play. Personnally, I treat Social skills just like other skills. That is : 1) The player describes what he tries to achieve. 2) The player rolls 3) I tell the player what is the outcome of its The only difference is that steps 1) and 3) take the form of a dialog between me and the player. In my view, this is definitely Role-playing, as we do not simply roll the dice and say "I try to convince the Guard to let me in. I roll a crit. Ok, he lets you enter". Skills and characteristics are an important part of the definition of a player's role. If I let a player convince me that his arguments are good, I think it is not role-playing, but rather player and GM talking. In my games, good arguments and circumstances may give boni and mali to the PC's skill, not the player's performance.

As others said, Sengoku is the best possible source of knowledge you could find on the subject for a RPG. As far as I know, the only error in the book is where the author speaks of two possible writings for "yamabushi", each referring to a different kind of monk. Land of Ninja may be helpful if you plan on using RQ3 magic system. If you read french, a RPG named "Tenga" is scheduled for this year. Even though I didn't read nor played it, I know its author, and I am very confident on the quality of his work.

It depends on your preferences. -If you like a very "realistic" and "gritty" system, use BRP; -If you want a more "heroic" approach, go with MRQ2. As for myself, I don't use localized Hit points at all. I prefer general hit points with a StormBringer-like "major wounds" system.

I agree with you "class"-oriented character creation can be quick and efficient, but using class as skills is in my opinion a bad idea, which raises more questions than it solves problems, especially when compared to simple skill systems.

I like to have a relatively small skill list, but with possible expansions for professional or specialized skills. For instance, I prefer having one "Perception" skill than Hearing, Sight, Touch, Taste etc. I also prefer one "Athletics" skill over a list of Swim, Climb, Jump, etc. Note that I understand the need to let one be better at swimming than Jumping, but I'd rather use a system of "specialties" rather than a bigger number of skills. For instance, a good swimmer might have Athletics : 75% and Specialtiy Swim : +20%, allowing to use an effective skill of 95% when swimming. I'm also fond of the "Advanced skills" mechanism of MRQII, even if their choice of skills is strange in some aspects (like the fact Seduce is an Advanced skill...).

MRQ2 rule is : "If both fail, then a stalemate has occured, forcing the opposed test to be rolled again at a later point". Note that nothing is said in cases when both rolls are identical, which is common when both opponents rolled a crit.

Check the Bronze Grimoire : it offers new spells for Elric! and should be compatible with Sorcery. As for Magic, you might find things in old editions of Drakar och Demoner, if you speak Swedish... Or you could check any version of RuneQuest Sorcery, which is (despite the name) a more complex version of Magic.

To be exact, there is one page about templars, which explains the differences and similarities between the Templars and the Order. MRQ II uses the same stats than BRP, and % based skills, but uses base skill %age equal to the sum of two characteristics, which means it will be very different from BRP ones. You major problem will be with magic. Some Hieromonks will use Divine magic, and their enemies will use Sorcery. So you'll have to find equivalents to MRQII spells in BRP.