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Yeah, for long distance, sea is generally the way to go. In the 20s, even in US and Europe, serious travel was usually by rail or horse. Automobiles existed, but weren't really year round, full weather options yet, and neither were the roads in some places. Air travel was pretty much non-existent as a serious means to transportation. The exception being Zeppelins (and I do mean the DELAG company Zeppelins, not just any airship) which did have somewhat regular passenger service, and by the late 20s was flying the Graf Zepplin all over Europe, across the Atlantic, and even around the world. DELAG was really the only company that was able to make passenger airship travel work out over time and in a safe manner. They only lost one passenger airship in decades of service. Unfortunately, it just happened to occur in front of a lot of newsmen and became the first disaster to be caught on film.

Neither do I, although I'm not so certain that it never happened. I used the Hulk and Hawkeye as a way to illustrate the point. There are certainly situations in the comics where characters get hit by overpowering attacks and doing much better than would realistically be the case. The problem also exists when two superpower characters such as Hulk and Thor fight each other. In the comics if one of the other gets a good hit on the other, it will send them flying into something and might leave them bruised and stunned. In BRP getting a critical could turn such an occurrence into a lethal event. They do have their own internal physical laws. For instance is a superstrong/tough character falls out of a skyscraper to the concrete sidewalk below, he breaks the concrete and leave a crater, but is usually okay since he is tougher than the concrete. Not really. Characters get hit in the comics all the time.Not everybody lives by dodging. And the super powered ones usually keep on fighting. And from a gaming standpoint if the Hulk can't ever hit Hawkeye then that itself causes a lot of problems. The Hulk still needs to be a threat. Yes, characters such as Haweye and Spiderman do focus on dodging the attacks of superstrong characters rather than trying to soak the blow (good thinking, too), but thats' not something that BRP emulates all that well, either. If a fight goes on for a few round, the superstrong character will eventually score a high success level attack and the dodging character will eventually not make a good enough dodge, and that can get rather nasty in BRP. Iron Man is another problem character. Chances are in an attack is strong enough to get partially through the armor, it's enough to incapacitate the man inside the armor. An no, it doesn't usually work that way in the comics. In comparison, most Supers RPGS tend to not only make the dodging more reliable, but also have mechanics in place to mitigate the effects of being hit Or something that helps ensure the appropriate outcome, yes. But I also thinks there needs to be a bit of softening on attakcs and defenses. In BRP if anew character shows up who uses a power that does a different type of damage (like a laser), then any character who wasn't created with some sort of laser defense in mind can be vulnerable. For example, if you didn't add armor vs. lasers to the Hulk, he can get zapped and killed by a laser pistol (or, if you want an example that could/did happenin the comics, consider the laser/living laser vs. Iron Man if IM's didn't buy enough laser protection. I think there would need to be more of a carry over for armor to prevent this. I think it could be done in RQ3. I used to run some low/no magic campaign using RQ3 and it worked. Add in something like a Hero/Fate point mechanic and I think it would work.

Yes, and the Superworld boxed set has stuff like that, but it's not something that is a natural part of RQ/BRP. This is the RPG where a punch to the head from a normal man (1D3+1D4db) has a pretty good chance of being fatal. There really was very little provision for non-lethal combat. It's not as much of an issue. In a horror setting it's okay for a character, even a manor one to be virtually defenseless and slaughtered by a monster. Now it's generally not okay to do this to the hero is a film or a PC in a RPG, but that's much more a matter of GMing and stroy pacing than one with the rules. To boil it down, if you going to include such monsters you need to include their Achilles heel so the PCs have a good chance of success. Oh, BTW, the whole werewolf's imperviousness, and vulnerability to silver is not a "classic werewolf" trait but a "Hollywood werewolf" trait.

It's not really all that difficult, it just takes awhile. Finding water on Mars would help a lot.

Thanks. Only 6 days to wait!

Is the free RPG Day PDF available one line somewhere? I missed out of Free RPG Day, and would like to get a copy.

Mostly because of BRP's inherent deadliness and it not being all that forgiving. For instance, let's look at the Hulk. According to the comics he is considered to be able to lift over 100 tons (say STR 100) and weights "over 800 pounds" (say SIZ 32) for about a +7D6 damage bonus. Now, if the Hulk manages to hit a character such as Hawkeye with a punch, the odds are Hawkeye just got a body party horribly mauled, and is most likely dead or dying. This is probably fairly realistic as to what should happen to a (nearly) normal human who gut hit by something with so much force, but is isn't how things tend to work out in the comics. Now what you really need for supers to "work" is a way to make the combat less lethal. The boxed Superworld RPG had some stuff to do that, but even so, it wasn't such a great fit. In the end they were trying to recreate the wheel (that is Champions). It is usually much easier to use a less lethal setting that better suits the comics that try to shoehorn a system that doesn't fit so well.

The look more closely. According to the BGB (pages 47-48) you have to select a specialty when picking a broad skill such as firearms, and that skill doesn't necessarily carry over to other, related skills (GM call). And even when it does, it's usually at half rating. So someone who mastered a PPK - that is have Firearms (Pistol) at 90%+, would't necessarily be above the base percentage with a shotgun. Now the "not being able to fire a shotgun" bit is an exaggeration. The character could certainly fire one, just might not have much chance to hit what he was shooting at. It's the same reason why Melee Weapon (Sword) and Melee Weapon (Spear) are separate skills and don't carry over to each other.

I think it also depends on your own preferences, biases, and priories. For example, I could easily see someone completely ditching magic and religious "powers" in a medieval setting, making most of Rosen's required tweaks for the various game systems moot.

I think your "thesis" is correct. I also think it explains why RQ was always tweaked to adapt it to whatever the setting was (Stormbringer, Elfquest, CoC, etc.). It also explains why most d20 doesn't really handle most established settings very well, since it almost always keeps the same rules, regardless of the setting. It's also why RQ/BRP/Superworld really doesn't handle Supers all that well.

That could lead to a hung jury.

I'm envisioning a denouement where the detective has a crypt full on monsters and then names the murderer to be "the chap with the fangs".

Exactly. Plus back then weapons were not standardized. So you might have a 38" broadsword, but some other guy might have a 40" broadsword, and so on. I wouldn't make the blocks too fine. I've found in another RPG that did this that it tends to bog the game down when somebody has to do the math of Handgun 42% + Pistol 17% + Walther PPK 7%, or any other combat skill, all the time. I'd suggest using 10% increments for medium and highly specialized (secondary and tertiary?) skills, but make them a little harder to improve than normal to balance off for the big boost. It will be much easier and faster in play.

I think they do, but only once you reach the point where weapons technology become as specialized as the sciences. For instance something like Handgun/Pistol/Walther PPK. The problem with attemtping this with lower tech weapons is that the distinctions between various weapons on the same "family" are not as clear, and there is a lot more overlap.

You might even want to make things more "normal" the further away from a site inhabited by a ghost, monster,etc. One thing I've found with horror adventures is that familiarity breeds contempt. If the players know they are playing a horror game, then they are forewarned and kinda toughen up and take everything in Strahd, er stride. But if they expect things to be "normal" (normal being somewhat subjective) then a supernatural horror was a much greater impact. It's why the best horror games I've ran were in non-horror RPGs.

Well, I wanted to have a digital copy of Pacesetter's CHILL (it's still hands down my favorite horror RPG, and Cryptworld is about as close as I can find. Besides, I'm also sick as a dog, and didn't want to hunt through all my boxes of RPG stuff to dig out CHILL. It's almost certainly in the bottom box in the back.

Okay, after a little digging, I discovered that the old Pacesetter rules are now owned by Goblinoid Games and Cryptworld is functionally, CHILL. Since the CHILL name is owned by somebody else, the 3rd edtion CHILL rules use different game mechanics. So, after one quick PDF purchase.... When you make a Fear Check you rolled against current WILL (a % roll similar to how BRP does it). You find out how much you made the roll by. The result was cross matrix on the action table (used for everything) on a column based on the severity of the task (the higher the column, the harder the task). on a C or H result the character is heroic and all fear is overcome On a M result the character runs away as fast as possible for one round and loses 1D10/2 current Willpower On a L result the character loses 1D10/2 current Willpower, but does not run away. On a S result the character runs away as fast as possible for one round and loses 1D10 current Willpower On a Failure the character runs away as fast as possible for one round and loses 2D10 current Willpower Note that as character encounter more and more horrific things their current Willpower will drop, making it easier to scare them. However, unlike CoC the GM has a lot of leeway in deciding just when a Fear check is required. For example if somebody was an experience Vampire Hunter, then he'd probably be able to encounter a vampire without making a Fear check.

Ironically, I'd have to check that! I've got it, but haven't spent much time going through it, You see, I was thinking of the First Edition rules, which had Fear Checks. When you encountered something scary, such as a known monster ( meaning that you know it's a monster, and not just a person, not that you have ID'd the type), half eaten body, etc. You made a Fear check. This was a Willpower roll on a color coded table (much like the old Marvel Superheroes RPG) with penalties based upon how badly you did on the Will roll. From what I remember, unlike CoC, character's wen't going to end up in the sanitarium, but they might freeze up for a bit or run screaming from the spot. The Fear effects were short term, not long term. Probably because if a hero is being chased by a vampire or werewolf and survives, he probably should be carted off and institutionalized. So no sprialing madness, mental breakdown or such. First edition Chill was more in the style of old Universal or Hammer horror films. Later editions expanded this to other subgenres, but I think the original rules probably suit your purposes better. If you'd ike I could dig out my rule books and get you more details on exactly how it worked and the penalties.

Yeah, but the cool thing is that the QR table from Bond can be easily ported over to BRP. In fact I guess CoC7 does something similar. The breakdowns for QRs was QR 1 =1/10, QR 2= 1/5, QR 3= 1/2, QR4= Success Chance.

I agree with Mankcam. If you just allow Hero Points to bump up the success level you should be golden. The old Jame Bond RPG did just that, and it allowed for the cool stunts that Bond regularly pulled off. One of the things that game had was a table tied to the quality rating (=success level) that show how much information you got. It would work just find for something like Holmes. Doubly so, since you could set the difficulty to that it would normally be a hard thing to spot, but somebody with Hero Points can pull it off easy.

Are you familiar with CHILL?

Except they don't work very similarly. The d20 version is tied to d20 and does things in accordance with levels and all that. The Tri-Star version is free of all that, making it much easier to see how to match it up with BRP. For instance, Damn Healthy! instreases Health/Hit Points in TriStat is one the same scale as character stats, just like in BRP, whereas the d20 one adds an extra d8 hit points. Not that I makes much difference in this case. You don't need to swipe over the mechanics, just the framework. So you are free to look at both, since ultimately it's all going to be put into BRP terms. Get the Superworld boxed set. It does most of that for you, and could easily be adapted (in under 5 minutes) to do the rest. All you'd have to do is use the SuperSTR, DEX, etc powers to buy up attributes from zero.

Okay. In that case some of the challenges you are going to have to deal with: Hit Point Scale: An attack that does an extra 10 points of damage in BRP is much, much nastier than an attack that does an extra 10 points of damage in d20. Since HP are fixed in BRP a few points of extra damage means a lot. But in d20 hit dice increase with level. Weapon Escalation: BRP weapons increase in damage faster than d20 weapons, despite the fact that hit points increase much much faster in d20. For example a tank gun that does 6d6+12 in d20 would do around 15D6 in BRP! That could be a big problem if someone is playing a big mech for a character. Attribute Scale: BRP animals and monsters tend to have much higher stat scores as well. Something like a dragon might be STR 36 in d20, but STR 72 in BRP. Forgivingness? (Is that a word?): d20 BESM is a lot more forgiving than BRP is. Yes, I mentioned the damage and weapon escalation above, but it's worth pointing out that even the same amount of damage isn't handled the same in both systems. In d20 a 6 point hit can range from a serious wound to a minor annoyance, depending on how many hit points the character has. In BRP the same 6 point hit probably disables a limb, renders a character unconscious or is a major wound. This is going to make a big difference in how some attributes play out. A "pet Monster" in BRP will probably be far more effective than it's d20 counterpart. I really think that to get things to work you are going to have to do a lot of work. IMO too much work to be worth it. You're going to have to go through every facet of what you are porting over and find some sort of equivalent value to match it up with. Odd, since it is very similar to what you are trying to use. And it is one thing that can be a big aid to you in what you are trying to do. It does help to give a relative value of abilities in BRP terms. I think he was right. I think you should also look at non-d20 BESM to help you "remove" the d20 elements from the game. I just looked at Tri-stat BESM and it seems a lot easier to match up and port over, since it doesn't have any of the class and character level stuff, increasing hit points, etc. Even the weapon damage ratings match up better.

Could be. Of course considering the Mecha-biased scale a lot of tanks will get lumped together, stat-wise. The differences between a M4 Sherman and Mitsubishi Type 61 don't mean all that much once stepped on by Godzilla.

So that's 2 points of armor (Modern Tank 24 armor= 2.4, Vintage Tank 18 armor =1.8) What about hit points? According to RD100 a tank would have about 3HP in the Hull and 2 elsewhere. But BGB/10 would give a modern tank 14 hp, and a Vintage tank 9. So it looks like about to BRB/30 for Hull So if I had a simple table for tanks and other vehicles that gave values for armor (by equivalent thickness of steel)and hit points (by tonnage) you wouldn't be interested? Not using the of SIZ table actually bypasses most of the problems I had for vehicle in BRP. I've got several tables worth of tank, APC, ships, airships, subs and so forth that could be put into RD100 format pretty painlessly.