Atgxtg

If you want to distinguish between the two, you You could use Ryo or Bujutsu (Science or Study of War) for School and Budo (Way or Path of War) for the minor schools.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Don't worry, it looked to me like a communication error. At least you didn't say her dress was colorful. That is was a diplomat say to a Japanese woman at a social at an embassy party. Unfortunate he attempted to say it in Japanese, and the Japanese word for colorful is very similar to a Japanese word not used at diplomatic events. So compared to that - your golden.

It's not a mistranslation, but an example of how society and language changes over time. Originally the word courtesan mean a female courtier, that being a person who attends a powerful person of status' (i.e. a noble) court, and was some sort of retainer, knight, or in the case of a female, a lady of the court. The word was borrowed into English where overtime, as the definition of a powerful person of status shifted, so did the role of a lady who attends one. Geisha is somewhat similar in the artistic and social skills requires, but lacks the social stigma that is attached in the West. Mistress is also similar. The word courtesan is somewhat archaic today, and is mostly used as a polite way to refer to a member of the oldest profession. So the word does/did mean what you thought it meant, but it has a secondary meaning in English that is much better known.

Maybe. The original idea was to allow me to stat up a lot of things at one go by finding a similar creature and then plugging in the difference in size. I use the same approach for statting up lots of vehicles and weapons too. But you do have to go over the final results to look for problems. A Woolly Mammoth isn't exactly the same as a scaled up Elephant, but a scaled up Elephant is a good start. And using the cube-sqaure law and the creatures mass will get you in the right ballpark. We were certainly getting lots of dinosaur stats, including stats for several species of allosaurus. It's a pity we didn't finish the book. Here's a excerpt. Allosaurus (Epanterias) amplexus Average Length: 12 m Average Weight: 2 tonnes Diet: Carnivore Period Extant: Late Jurassic Characteristic Roll Average STR 3D6+45 55-56 CON 3D6+28 38-39 SIZ 3D6+40 50-51 INT 3 3 POW 3D6+2 12-13 DEX 3D6+6 16-17 Move: 8 Hit Points: 45 Damage Bonus: +6D6 Fatigue: 94 Armor: 12 points thick scales Attacks: Weapon SR Attack% Damage Bite 5 65 2D6+6D6 Claw 8 55 1D8+6D6 Kick 8 55 2D6+6D6 Notes: Skills: Skill 1, Skill 2 etc etc Optional Statistics Location D20 AP/HP Missile Melee Tail 01-02 01-02 12/15 R. Leg 03-05 03-05 12/15 L. Leg 06-08 06-08 12/15 Abdomen 09-11 09-11 12/18 Chest 12-15 12-15 12/18 R. Claw 16 16 12/12 L. Claw 17 17 12/12 Head 18-20 18-20 12/15 Allosaurus europaeus? Average Length: 7 m Average Weight: 1000 kg Habitat: Large, seasonally dry island with open woodlands. Diet: Carnivore Period Extant: Late Jurassic Characteristic Roll Average STR 3D6+40 50-51 CON 3D6+23 33-34 SIZ 3D6+32 42-43 INT 3 3 POW 3D6+1 11-12 DEX 3D6+7 17-18 Move: 9 Hit Points: 38 Damage Bonus: +5D6 Fatigue: 84 Armor: 10 points thick scales Attacks: Weapon SR Attack% Damage Bite 5 60 2D6+5D6 Claw 8 50 1D6+5D6 Kick 8 50 1D10+5D6 Notes: At this time the European archipelago was very close to North America, and whether this is distinct from all known Morrison Allosaurus species is not certain. Skills: Skill 1, Skill 2 etc etc Optional Statistics Location D20 AP/HP Missile Melee Tail 01-02 01-02 10/13 R. Leg 03-05 03-05 10/13 L. Leg 06-08 06-08 10/13 Abdomen 09-11 09-11 10/16 Chest 12-15 12-15 10/16 R. Claw 16 16 10/10 L. Claw 17 17 10/10 Head 18-20 18-20 10/13 Allosaurus fragilis Average Length: 8.5 m Average Weight: 1.7 tonnes Habitat: Short wet season, otherwise semiarid with open floodplain prairies and riverine forests. Diet: Carnivore Period Extant: Late Jurassic Characteristic Roll Average STR 3D6+44 54-55 CON 3D6+27 37-38 SIZ 3D6+38 48-49 INT 3 3 POW 3D6+2 12-13 DEX 3D6+6 16-17 Move: 9 Hit Points: 44 Damage Bonus: +5D6 Fatigue: 92 Armor: 10 points thick scales Attacks: Weapon SR Attack% Damage Bite 5 65 2D6+5D6 Claw 8 55 1D8+5D6 Kick 8 55 2D6+5D6 Notes: The remains the genus Allosaurus and its species are based on are not adequate, so taxonomic designations are not certain. All Morrison Allosaurus have usually been lumped into this species, but there is considerable diversity among the specimens, especially in the length/height ratio of the skull, and it is improbable that any one species spanned the 7 million years or more of the Morrison. A lower Morrison skull and skeleton may be a juvenile A. fragilis Skills: Skill 1, Skill 2 etc etc Optional Statistics Location D20 AP/HP Missile Melee Tail 01-02 01-02 10/15 R. Leg 03-05 03-05 10/15 L. Leg 06-08 06-08 10/15 Abdomen 09-11 09-11 10/18 Chest 12-15 12-15 10/18 R. Claw 16 16 10/12 L. Claw 17 17 10/12 Head 18-20 18-20 10/15 Allosaurus unnamed species Average Length: 8.5 m Average Weight: 1.7 tonnes Habitat: Short wet season, otherwise semiarid with open floodplain prairies and riverine forests. Diet: Carnivore Period Extant: Late Jurassic Characteristic Roll Average STR 3D6+44 54-55 CON 3D6+27 37-38 SIZ 3D6+38 48-49 INT 3 3 POW 3D6+2 12-13 DEX 3D6+6 16-17 Move: 9 Hit Points: 44 Damage Bonus: +5D6 Fatigue: 92 Armor: 10 points thick scales Attacks: Weapon SR Attack% Damage Bite 5 65 2D6+5D6 Claw 8 55 1D8+5D6 Kick 8 55 2D6+5D6 Notes: This has been placed in A. atrox, which is based on inadequate remains. By far the most common theropod in the Morrison, some Allosaurus species shared their habitats with Ceratosaurus and Torvosaurus. There may be more than one Allosaurus species in the middle Morrison. The classic nontyrannosaur large theropod. Skills: Skill 1, Skill 2 etc etc Optional Statistics Location D20 AP/HP Missile Melee Tail 01-02 01-02 10/15 R. Leg 03-05 03-05 10/15 L. Leg 06-08 06-08 10/15 Abdomen 09-11 09-11 10/18 Chest 12-15 12-15 10/18 R. Claw 16 16 10/12 L. Claw 17 17 10/12 Head 18-20 18-20 10/15 PM me an email address and I'll send you the spreadsheet and you can try it out for yourself. If it proves useful I might just upload the sheet to the forums.

RQ2 had a rule for converting over similar skills (like say from Broadsword to Scimitar) where you could covert the skill over at half cost/training time. Something like that might be better than just automatically increasing in rank. You could have them improve twice as fast (2d6 instead of 1D6) to reflect the similarities.

If you are going to go with school feats and such, you might want to look at Mythras. Mythras had fighting styles rather than weapon skills, and has special abilities for characters with high combat skills. Another approach: Each school covers several related skills.For instance a school of kenjtsu (swordmanship) might teach Sword, Iaijutsu (Fast Draw), Dodge, Etiquette, and Poetry. When a character rolls to improve skills trained at the school, add 1/10th their school skill to their improvement rolls (so they will improve faster from belonging to a school). Students will get a certain amount of free training in school related skills each month equal to 1/5th their school skill, which can be saved up. Possibly add 1/10th school skill to their base chance in the rschool elated skills as well? A school could have one or more special techniques that become available at higher school ratings. These could be a combat special (like in Mythras), a magical effect like a spell, or even a Ki Skill from Land of the Ninja. Naturally for Rokukgan these would be those that fit a particular school. ,

That is somewhat reminiscent of Ars Magica. It that RPG magical power (Vim) can come in multiple forms, say to a type of spell (usually a form, i.e. air, fire, water, earth, animal, plant, body, mind, image, a raw magical power). Also different sources of magical power (magic, faerie, divine, infernal) work differently, and interfere with each other, and sometimes bleed over into each other. . A mage can collect magical energy and either use it or store it (depending on their abilities). Most covenants of magi form near a source of magical power that they can tap for thier own uses. POW that is tied to a specific purpose can be very useful to a mage working on projects in that area. For example a mage who was strong in plant magic might benefit from being near a faerie forest, as a magical faerie plant might how POW that he could tap. Casting if done by combining their skill in a technique (Create, Destroy, Control, Change, Perceive) with one of the Forms I mentioned above and rolling that against a spells difficulty. In BRP terms, this would be similar to RQ3 Sorcery/BRP Wizardry and rolling against the lower of the two skills. But not that much different.

So pretty much like Mugen said, it's Magic the Gathering. Not that there is anything wrong with that. So how do you get the magic to power stuff? For instance, if a human wizard finds a tome of elish spells (Gold), how does he get gold magic to power the spells that require gold magic? In BRP POW has no affiliation, it just is. But with colors will each caster devote themselves to a single color, and their power gets that affiliation? Or can they be affilated to multiple colors (and if so what the point of the colors). Are there schools that teach spellcasters special techniques to attune their magic? The cloest we have to this in BRP is the cult affiliations in RQ. I'm not knocking it, I'm just trying to figure out how this would work in game for the player characters.

Yeah, if the OP wants to go with that idea. That way mages could get some clue about a spell by the aura it gives off. So if you see a spell with a dark yellow (mustard?) color aura you know it some sort of mix of elf/faerie magic and infernal magic. . A healing spell could be palet green (or pale grey) and so on. That could be a cool form of shorthand communication to spellcasters. That's exactly what I thought, except some of the colors are different. Still, I think the core concept is sound, that is subdividing the spells by their effects. Ars Magica did something similar with Techniques and Forms. Come to think of it Ars Magica's spell domains (Magical, Faerie, Infernal, Holy) are also similar, but concered more with the source of a spell rather than the effect.

Oh, I just stumbled across something on my hard drive that might help. Way back in the early days of the BGB a couple of us got together to do a dinosaur book. While the project got stalled due to other things (a move and change of jobs), I did make up a spreadsheet for it to help scale up and modify creatures. I called it the critter Fitter!. You plugged in a existing creature and then scaled it to the size you wanted and it would scale mass attributes, natural weapons, other game stats, and the dice required (you could customize the dice used, say from D6s to D8s for Chaos creatures). You could adjust armor based on a multiple of the damage bonus. It was a bit crude, but it worked, and did most of the "heavy lifting". It looked like this: I could clean it up a little and make it available if it would help.

Just wondering but do some things overlap? For instance what if a spellcaster were to raise a thrunderstorm. Technically, it's controlled natures, so it's Grey Magic, but it's unleashing elemental energies so it would be Purple Magic. Is such magic in both colors? If not, what if the rule to determine what color. If a spell can be in or require multiple colors then you might want to make your colors White (Silver), Blue, Yellow (or Gold), Red and Black so that you can mix colors for spells that mix categories. So a spell that is both Yellow and Blue would be Green, and so forth.

Yeah, most creature will have an average STR within 5-8 points of their SIZ- basically what Joerg just said about having a chance to lift itself. Real world creatures probably wont vary by more than 16-20 points. Now you can do whatever you want to with the writups, but you are also going to need to account for anything weird. For instance if you modify a fruit fly to have STR 50 you'll have to explain why they aren't snapping people in half, or maybe they are snapping people in half. They'd probably need a lot of calories for those muscles too. Those muscles would probably add a lot of mass (well a lot for a fly) so they probably would have to flap like a humming bird to fly. Just what you can get away with, depends on how well you can justify things, and as Jeorg noted above, some of that depends on if you are doing a realistic or fantasy setting. It helps if you know a little about science, animal behavior and such (a 25 ton dragon is probably going to need to eat something, probably something big or several somethings), but really, you can do just about anything, assuming you can make people believe it. Experiment with some existing species to see how it works out. Take a wolf, add some STR and SIZ, give it 4 point scales and you got a decent critter for an alien planet or fantasy world. Take a cat and give it teleport, and it probably okay for the fantasy world, but needs a bit more justification for a sci-fi setting (it would probably need to be intelligent and/or have mental powers). Generally speaking minor changes are easy to pull off (no one will probably even notice a SIZ 4 critter with 8 STR) but more drastic changes will be more obvious and might require more/better justification (SIZ 4 creature with 16 STR) or downright impossible to get players to buy into (without laughing). Like that STR 50 fruit fly. Magic helps a lot here.

"He got all of that one! It's outta here!!" The Magic Book does solve the magic system difficulties.

I think I should point out the OP's question was if "BRP was a good fit for Land of the Ninja?", not "Can I use LotN with BRP?." It's kinda of like using a Cthulhu Invictus scenario with BRP Rome or Mythic Rome. Sure you can do it, but obviously there is going to be Cthulhu Mythos stuff in the adventure that won't be in BRP Rome or Mythic Rome, that will only make sense if you are familiar with Cthulu Invictus and CoC. A lot of this will come down to just what a GM want's to use from LotN: Chargen , weapon stats (which you mostly don't need as BRP covers them), cult write ups, divine, spirit and sorcery magic, ship stats, and economics are all for RQ3 and wouldn't port over directly to BRP. Names, Homelands, New Skills, Ki Skills (although some of the actual skills are different), Social Castes, Clan Structure, HON, Drinking Rules, Ninja Skills, Ninja Equipment, most creature stats, and the scenarios probably would port over directly.(except for the magic).

Not exactly. No, in RQ the damage was 1D3 before RQG. So that part would be the same. Some of the differences would be that in RQ you can ingore spirit combat from an opponent whose POW is way below yours, that someone had to be able to go dis-corporate to initiate spirit combat, that you needed to defeat a spirit in spirit combat to learn spirit magic spells. there were all sorts of possible side effects from losing spirit combat (dominant and covert possession, curses), and a host of spells and abilities that could impact the conflict, not all of which have been ported over to BRP (Spirit Screen in particular). But that's the thing with BRP. It's not RuneQuest 3. It's similar but it's not the same, and so porting anything from RuneQuest (or RuneQuest 2, Call of Cthulhu, or Stormbringer , or Elric! etc.) will require some adaptation and judgement calls, and even then won't play out exactly the same. No it's not bad that it's not the same but it is different. I agree. BRP main strength, IMO is that it collects a lot of previous stuff under one cover to serve as a toolkit, making it easier for GMs to pick and choose what they want for a given setting. For instance, BRP has a rule for multiple parries that I think would work well for a LotN campaign, and Strombringer had a rispote rule that would work well too. They would be great for games where one lone Samurai can take down several opponents. But it all comes down to what sortof Medieval Japanese setting the GM wants.

Hence why I wrote "There are differences, just how important they are may or may not matter much to you." Much of it will come down to prefences in rulesets. Some thing will impact game play singficantly (differences in parrying rules, skill caps and POW gain for Rune Spells) but how much that matters to individual GMs and groups will vary. The statblocks are basically the the same but there are some differences in actual stat values (cultural modifiers for instance). Animals seem to hanve shrunk in UGE. A BRP:UGE Tiger is SIZ 16-17 while an RQ3 Tiger was SIZ 26, so RQ3 critters and monsters will be bigger, stronger, tougher, and dealier than what people are expecting in UGE. A bigger problem will be RQ3's magic. In RQ magic isn't limited to professional spellcasters, and pretty much everybody knows some magic. RQ adventures pretty much suppose that just about every experienced character knows a minor weapon enhancing spell, some defensive magic, and some healing. The healing would be a thing, since PC won't have quite the "bounce back" ability in UGE that they would have in RQ3. A GM will also have to either drop a lot of the magic from the NPCs or add more magic to his campaign, or else the NPCs will wipe out the PCs pretty easily. Good Samuai Warriors with 60% skill have Bladesharp 3 (+15% attack, +3 damage) , Demoralize, and and Protection 2 (+2 armor) for magic, and that would give them a huge edge against mundane PCs. Now a GM can cut most of the magic out, but a lot of the spiritual stuff in RQ was tied to the magic so you loose a lot of that. Since the OP has LotN they probably got an inkling of what I mean here. You pretty much lose the entire Religion & Magic section of LotN, which plays an important part of the culture. Some familiarity with RQ really helps here. Plus if you take out the magic then the PC will tend to be underpowered and vulnerable compared to the RQ characters the scenarios were written for. Yes it does, and it's mostly the same as RQ3, but UGE doesn't have Spirit Combat, which would be important for LotN. It has most of the components (POW vs POW rolls and POW increases), it just hasn't got the Magic point losses for spirit combat. Not that the Spirit Combat rules couldn't be ported over. Yes, especially the sequencing. On page 80 of the UGE it states that sorcery spells take a full round (10 Strike Ranks) to cast while in RQ casting time was DEX SR+Magic Point cost of the spell. So you can't get a spell off before someone whacks you with an axe in UGE. Now all of the difference can be death with by a GM familiar with the game system, but it will take some work. A GM who want's to run BRP:UGE would probably do better by not porting anything over except perhaps the scenarios, and some of the monsters, and even those will need to be modified to fit the system. Again, this could all be ported over to BRP:UGE but RQ would be a better fit. Because otherwise, what is there to use? I mean you got Japanese weapon and armor stats already in BRP, BRP uses a different chargen process than RQ, somewhat different skills, and a somewhat different magic system. So if don't use any of the RQ mechanics there isn't all that much to take from LotN. A few short scenarios. Unless a GM has at least a passing familiarity with RQ they won't really know what they are losing, and if they are familiar with RQ then they probably have a copy and could use that instead of BRP.

You don't really need to, at least not for that rule. Do keep in mind though that if most of the damage is fixed the cost shoots up to 1 for 1. So a dagger Kukri that does 1D4+3 would cost 7 HP, more that a battleaxe (1D8+2 cost 5 HP). I pretty much posted most of what went with that rule. It was just a short rule in a text box, designed mostly for Batman-type characters who make their own weapons, so that they could be on the same point value as the other characters. Most of the superpowers from Superworld have been adapted into BRP in the "Powers" section. Soyou don't need Superworld just for that. For things like HEAT, FREEZE etc, superpowers are probably the way to go, especially since they use the same hero point mechanics as weapon damage above. You don't need Superworld for that as it is already included into BRP. Now if you were going to run a full four color comics campaign then I think Superworld does that better than core BGB, but that's a whole different reason. Oh, but you might want to get a hold of BTRC's Stuff! supplement for their EABA system, or even just the free preview. Stuff! has rules for building things, including a section on weapons , based on their size and tech era, with a host of modifiers such as if the weapon is one or two handed, bulky ammo, explosive damage, reload time, etc. All those modifiers could factor into your weapons point cost. I have a somewhat rudimentary adaptation to BRP damages for that too. It's not finished but it gives values in the right ballpark. I can probably send you a conversion of EABA points to Hero Points. The Stuff! free preview is the first 20 something pages of the book, including the basic weapon design rules, with a "SAMPLE" watermark over them. Good enough for you to see what it is about and decide if it helps you. OOh, and you might as well grab the the free preview of EABA, called EABAlite, if you get Stufff! just to give you an overview of how things work so you know what you are converting, and will know if your numbers hold up in BRP terms. For instance, a 9mm Pistol does 2d+1 damage in EABA and 1D10 damage in BRP/CoC, (5 Hero Points). So you would know that a weapon that does 1d+2 in EABA it should do less than 1D10 in BRP.

The old Superworld RPG had some rules for customizing weapons with Hero Poiints, the same points used to buy superpowers. A weapon cost 1 Hero Point per 2 points of max damage, provided most of the damage was random, or 1 per point if it wasn't. So a weapon that did 1D10 damage would cost 5 Hero Points. Weapons got the specials appropriate o thier type (mostly for impaling weapons, but it BRP you could include bleeding, crush, knockdown, etc. Assume a weapon gets one special type for no cost. Since specials occur about 20% of the time, you could assume that buying another special or selling one off is worth 20% (1/5th) of the weapons cost. So a weapon that did 1D10 damage with no special bonus would only cost 4 Hero Points. One that could choose between crush or knockdown could cost 6 points. Ranged weapons just got range based on the weapon type/description but you could give it a point cost. Something like 1 HP per 20m or so. You could use that as a baseline for your system, and then apply point costs and discounts for other effects (probably based on the superpowers and limitations).

I probably am familiar enough with RQ3 and LotN to help here. I'd say BRP isn't a good fit. It's okay, but since LotN was written for RQ3, RQ3 is the better fit. There are differences between RQ3 and BRP UGE. Some more significant than others. It's possibly to turn the BRP rules into RQ3 with a few adjustments. It's also possible to adapt LotN to UGE, but you might need to adjust a few abilities and spells. But any edition of RQ would be a better fit. RQ2 is fairly cheap and available, and won't bog you down with a lot of Glorathan stuff that wouldn't apply to a LotN game. It's not quite RQ3, but it would cover the spells. There are differences, just how important they are may or may not matter much to you. Here are some off the top of my head: RQ3 used separate Attack and Parry skills instead of one skill for both, and the two skills were governed by different category modifiers. But LotN used Kenjutsu skill to combine the pair, so this would be an easy non-fix. But its worth being aware of for how RQ treated all the other melee weapons. In RQ3 weapons and shields had armor points (approximately 2/3rds the value of UGE Hit Points). When you parried, most weapons blocked damage equal to their armor points. If the AP were exceeded then the remainder went on to the target and the parrying item AP were reduced by 1 point. Most parrying weapons would do damage to the attacking weapon if they parried a failed attack. Special Success parries prevented the parrying weapon from being damaged, and a critical success blocked all damage. Note that this meant that it was hard to completely parry powerful blows. Skills were limited to 100% except for skills with a positive category modifier, which could improve whenever someone rolled over 100 for improvement. The Skill category modifier was added to improvement rolls. Thus if a character who had a good category modifier would tend to improve faster. BRP's Sorcery was based off of RQ's Battle Magic/Spririt Magic system. Most of the spells are basically the same but with a new name and a few chaotic tweaks gained from Elric! Battle/Spirit Magic from any edition of RQ would be an even better fit. RQ3 Divine Magic was a more powerful longer lasting magic that required the sacrifice of permanent POW to acquire. Some Divine Magic was reusable, which meat you could get it back by praying at a temple, while other spells were one use, and you'd need to sacrifice more POW to require them. Again, any edition of RQ could cover this type of magic better than BRP. Oh, in RQ if you won a POW vs POW roll against someone with a higher (maybe equal or higher) POW score you got a chance to improve your POW score at the end of the session. You also got 1 point per year if you were in a cult and joined in the usual ceremonies. This was how you picked up the POW to spend on Rune Divivne Magic RQ3 made use of the Strike Rank System, and that would matter in a LotN game. Especially for Iaijutsu. If you use DEX ranks instead then you would need to give DEX rank bonuses for Iaijutsu success levels. (+5/+10+/20 sounds good off the top of my head)

Good point. Plus even if they are different they will all seem the same to a PC whose been pounced on. Only GMs see the actual game stats, players judge creatures (and NPCs) by what the GM tells or shows them.

Kinda. The easiest way to is use an existing race or creature and maybe shift a couple of points around. For instance Goblins are similar to Orcs (possibly the same depending on which source you use) so you could start with Orc stats and reduce STR and SIZ a little and maybe boost DEX a little. There is the cube-square law. It's what scientists use to help estimate the weight of a creature. The law points out that if you increase/decrease the size of a object/creature proportionally, it's surface area (and muscle area, i.e. Strength) will be affected by the square of that change, and it's mass/weight by the cube of that change. That measn that if you double the height/width/depth of a object/creature you will multiply it's surface area (Strength) by four and it's weight and mass by eight. Now in BRP game therms that means that if you double the height you add 16 points of STR and 24 points of SIZ. So you can use that to scale up/down existing creature to get reasonable new ones. So for every 3 point difference if SIZ there would be a corresponding 2 point difference in STR. For instance if you wanted to make a goblin that was 3/4th the weight of an Orc: Per p. 229 of the UGE an ORC is SIZ 2D6+2 (9) for an average mass of 55kg, so we'd want about 40 kg for our Goblin or about SIZ 5-6 ish. If we say SIZ 6 and give it a SIZ of 2D4+1 (6). It lost 3 points of SIZ so it should lose about 2 points of STR. Orcs nave a STR of 4D6 (14) so we want about 12 STR for our Goblins. Let's say we go with 4D4+2 (12). Now there are other options (2D8+3, 3D6+1, 2D6+5), but I just picked 4D4+2. Now I might want to give them a little more DEX, but I decide against it. So there is a goblin writeup STR 4D4+2 (12), SIZ 2D6+2 (9). And that is one way to do it. But there are others. I could have just used the 'Lesser orc" stats (STR 3D6, SIZ 2D6) from p. 229 for goblins. They wouldn't have been all that different. A point weaker but a point bigger. If's it's intelligent, personality culture and habits. If's it's a creature, appearance, diet (carnivore, herbivore, omnivore), temperament (aggressive, timid, docile) and sociability (is it a loner, a pack animal, a herd animal, etc.). Existing creatures are a good starting point. For instance, let's say that I wanted to make a arctic predator similar to a saber tooth tiger, but polar bear sized, and acting more like a wolf. I'd start with Tiger, or better yet Lion stats (because the Smilodon or "saber-toothed tiger" was closer to a lion) so in UGE STR 2D6+2 and SIZ 3D6+6. To make it bear sized I'd increase SIZ to 3D6+10, and add another point of STR for 2D6+3. I'd up it's armour to 3 points, like the bear. To account for the larger fangs, I'd increase the bite damage die from 1D10 for 2D6 or maybe even 2D8. I'd have it be a pack animal like the wolf, with a strong pack hierarchy and communal raising of cubs. Since I've decided on it being a carnivore predator, I'd need to decide if it is an ambush predator (like a cat) or if it it a chaser (like a wolf), and adjust it's skills based on it's hunting strategy. I'd probably go chaser so skills closer to wolf that lion. Then I'd consider adding some details to make the creature unique. Maybe it has cammo colored fur? Or maybe it sees in the infra-red band, and finds prey by picking up their heat signatures? It kinda depends on if it is a fantasy creature or sci-fi one. OH, and I consider just how I wanted to use the creature in a adventure or campaign. There isn't much point in creating something the PCs will never interact with or have to worry about in some way.

If I were to do it from the ground up: 1) Treat Blood Points like/as Magic Points to power spells and keep the vampire mobile. Vampires can drain magic points/blood points from their victims. 2) Treat each disciplines as a Spirit Magic spell, powered by blood points. So Potency would be Strength, and so on. Some disciplines, such as Protean would need to be written up. It wouldn't be quite straightforward as most disciplines have a greater effect on ability that a few points of attributes. 3) Allow Vampires to train up their stats per the generation. A rough cap of that would be 3 points per dot+3. So 5 dots = max 18, 6 = max 21, 7= max 24, etc. 4) Add a humanity stat and track it. Port over the humanity rules. Change them to work on a percentile roll. The SANity mechanics might be a good place to start. 5) Port over any other Vampire abilities, such as spending blood points to heal, and weaknesses such as Frenzy and vulnerability to sunlight. 6) Use BRP values for weapon damages. Something like 3 points per dot seems about right for converting other, unspecified damages. So an attack that did 4 damage in Vampire would do about 2d6 in BRP. 7) Skills seem to work out at around at about +20% to the base per dot. From there it would depend on what sort of world I was going to run. If it was a typical Vampire type campaign with just vampires then I wouldn't need to do much more. If it were to incorporate Werewolves, Magi and such then I'd need to port over their mechanics to BRP as well (tricky). Worse still, if I were to mix this in with a standard BRP setting with BRP magic, I'd have to do more work on the disciplines to differentiate them from the other magic systems. All that is a very rough, "How I would do it." But once I got started I'd probably try to fine tune and refine the adaptation to try and be truer to the source and to try and simplify the mechanics as much as possible. Unforeseen difficulties would arise somewhere, and I'd have to adjust things to get around any problems. I'd also peek at GURPS Vampire as it would show how it had been adapted to another system before. But the above is work, and I'd need a good reason to try and adapt WoD Vampires to BRP in the first place. Not that there aren't good reasons to do so, just that whatever the reason that made me do so would influence the choices I would make while adapting it. For instance, if I adapted it because I like BRP's open ended skill scores I would drop the cap on skills that exists in WoD. If I liked the cap then I'd limit skill scores in BRP (typically 100%). Past BRP games have done both approaches, so it would come down to what I felt worked best for my game.

I like the top one, too. We just had a eclipse so the second one seems sort of "ho-hum". Now if you added a spaceship in front of the dark object (ala Forbidden Planet) it would look more Sci-FI ish. The third one just looks like Saturn (or some other ringed gas giant) which is okay, but it seems like a typical company logo that you see on a car, photocopier or refrigerator. Since the game is named Quasar, a quasar would seem to be the proper logo. I think if you brightened the center of the black hole, and the white light emission from the center, it would be perfect.

THe potential pitfalls, if any, to this are all out oc character stuff.Basically making sure each player feels like they can contribute, and being aware of the on hit kill potential. In game everything works out fine. Guess who the archers shoot at, Joe Average or Godzilla? Then you're golden. My concerns were making sure that your were aware of how it will work out according to game mechanics and that you were getting the results you wanted. I've seen plenty of GMs (self included) who created something and got blindsided by how it affected gameplay. It's very east to get a TPK in BRP, especially for those more accustomed to D20 style games. But as long as you know how things work, go for it! Hmm, ya know, a BRP game where everybody played Giants could be fun.

That's not entirely true, as some species (ducks, orcs and cave trolls for instace) had a lower species APP. Not against normal humans, no. It will be unbalanced, the question is whether or not it is okay for it to be unbalanced. It's starts aren't much different that a Dark Troll, and not as tough as a Great Troll so it within the realm of playabiliy. Which might not be a drawback if you're tough and can snap a human with just a punch (1d3+2d6 hits like a battleaxe).Your observations are all quite correct. The question is if the poster is okay with such a species, or if they'd rather something closer to human with say a couple of points higher in one stat but lower in another.