soltakss

It really is better, and tastier, to buy it from a supermarket! Less chance of anything crawling across the table.

Honestly, if you want an easy to use game system with little or no character generation that a newbie could pick up within a few minutes and can do SuperHeroes then I would strongly suggest HeroQuest. Forget the fancy rules, just have Super Powers as Affinities, with specific Break-Outs describing special powers and you are good to go. You only need D20s, can write a character on an index card, have a 5 minute character generation and can spend 5 minutes explaining the rules. If you want to be really fancy, you can print out a Results Matrix as well. The rest you can wing.

Our RQ3 sorcerers quickly became Enchanters. First, they bound INT Spirits, as described above. Then they made Sorcery Matrices, which gave them a higher starting point and allowed them to manipulate the spells further. Finally, they attuned Crystals that gave them an edge (Enhancing Crystals work with sorcery in my games). Even as written they work reasonably well. But, getting rid of Free INT and using a skill-based limit works even better. Personally, I'd have RQ3 Sorcerers spend POW to increase their Sorcerous Limits, so spending 10 POW on Manipulate allows the sorcerer to cast up to Venom 10, for example. That way, POW is a feeder for all the magic systems, with the possible exception of Spirit Magic, although Shamans put POW into their Fetches. Spirit Magic: POW Increases a Fetch's POW Divine Magic: POW is spent to gain magic Sorcery: POW used to increase Sorcery Limits Enchantment: POW is used to create Enchantments Summoning/Ceremony - ????

Also, the beauty of Legend being OGC under the OGL means that anyone who feels that the Charge rules, or any other rules, are incomplete, could be improved or are just plain wrong can easily write their own, stick the OGL on and hey presto - new rules for Legend.

Merrie England can use the Piety skill for exactly that - to resist temptation and other evils. However, that wouldn't suit a lot of other settings. BRP does not have such a roll in its core rules. I'd have a Willpower skill, perhaps increased by experience or training, perhaps fixed. It wouldn't be a normal skill, as the player should decide whether the PC is weak-willed or strong-willed.

So, we can look forward to Classic Fantasy D20 in the very near future, then?

Good for a shot in the abdomen, but not much use in other locations.

That is what Classic Fantasy is all about, so a combination of CF and OQ would suit the D&D-cloners perfectly.

Well, it took a while, mainly typing in the data, but I have generated a D20/D100 sheet based on the above tables. The datafile is at www.soltakss.com/d20d100/stormbringer01.txt and the spreadsheet is at www.soltakss.com/d20d100/stormbringerResult.xls - to use it, roll a D20 and a D100 and check the corresponding line. There may be typos in the names, as I am not really familiar with all the places. Also, the randomness of the data might produce some strange combinations, such as Fair Shaven Hair, but it should save some time rolling dice.

Just worked them out - they should be UE Tables and refer to the last table on the page. It would have been easier if they had been in order.

There are some tables which I don't understand - UK Occupation Tables 1,2 and 3 and UK Nationality Tables. I thought they might be typos - should they be for the Unknown East?

BRP, RQ and similar systems work well with the "I hit you and you hit me and we dodge about a bit" way of fighting. I.e. the kind of thing that I would do if I wanted to work a combat out. It doesn't handle all the intricacies of martial arts. That's why I always say that any rule in roleplaying games will satisfy most people, but experts will say that it is rubbish. Look at all the debate over unarmed combat - Experts in judo, ju-jitsu and aikido don;t like the throwing/grappling rules as they are too limited and don't reflect real life. Experts in taekwondo, karate and kung fu don't like the moving/blocking/parrying/flurry rules as they don;t reflect real life. Experts in fencing or the various martial arts that use weapons don't like the combat rules for the exact same reasons. It all depends on what level you like. RQ/BRP still reflects what I see in my head when imagining combat, even with the little bit of martial arts that I did when I was younger. For me, that is fine. For experts, it will never be fine. A roleplaying system that handles all the intricacies of fencing, kendo, aikido swordplay, kung fu weaponplay and all the other martial art forms out there would be far too complicated for my tastes and, I think, would not work particularly well.

For me, it's a one page of bullet points, perhaps with a little bit of description for major ones. Any NPCs are statted up in very vague terms (HPs, weapon skills, basic spells) as they probably won't last more than a couple of rounds anyway.

Reported

Almost always the case

At the risk of offending most of the people on this forum, losing Chaosium would not have made a lot of difference. Sure, we would have lost CoC, which might have upset some people. Elric/Stormbringer might have been affected, but it wasn't doing a great deal. The BRP ruleset is good, but is more of a rehash of other rules rather than anything really new. Apart from that, what D100 gaming have they produced? Mongoose have produced more D100 games material in 10 years than Chaosium has in twenty. Other games companies keep producing D100 supplements, some under the BRP banner, some under OpenQuest or Legend, some under RuneQuest. Add these up and they amount to a fair number. What would happen if Chaosium stopped supporting BRP tomorrow? I reckon that most of the games material would be produced for Legend, or something similar, under the OGL banner, perhaps without OGC. D100 gaming would continue.

It is unlikely that a mainstream bookshop will stock RPG books. At least I have not seen any in Waterstones or WH Smiths, the two major book chains in the UK. As for the FLGS, Waylands Forge has a reasonable RQ/Legend/BRP collection, including independent supplements from Alephtar Games, D101 Games and so on. I don't go to other games stores (no need), so I am not sure how they are doing. On the odd occasion that I venture to London, Leisure Games normally has some D100 game books.

Stormbringer/Elric is probably the closest, then maybe RQ2, or RQ in general.Most of the things can be used in BRP without any conversion, or with minimal conversion if you can run things like Strike Rank/DEX Rank on the fly.

And that is the point of this thread - exploring other. non-Chaosium options. Writing for BRP means that Chaosium have to be involved. Writing for an OGL D100 product means that CF can be self-published or even published in a partnership with another company.

I'm lucky if I produce a book every 2 years at the moment, so I feel your pain. Just do as much as you can and that's fine for most of us.

Classic Fantasy II: http://basicroleplaying.com/basic-roleplaying/new-direction-classic-fantasy-3010/

Legend would be a perfect fit for Classic Fantasy II (CF2). In fact, if you were careful, you could make CF2 into a more generic beast that could work with Legend, BRP or RQ6. By using Legend, you can publish under the OGL, can amend rules etc and can add rules without a problem.

Yes, it makes a lot of sense.

That's not atypical - I have seen several characters behead themselves following a fumble. The use of Hero Points in later versions of RQ help protect against these. However, the best I have seen was a troll who was exploring a cave system with a party when all of a sudden he was surrounded by a fluttering echo-locating flock of bats. Panicking, he swung his maul, rolled a fumble, rolled a "Roll twice" result, then proceeded to roll "Hit nearest friend doing maximum Damage" and "Hit nearest friend doing critical damage", he rolled chest and abdomen and the GM asked the player to roll randomly for which friends were hit and he rolled the two closest to him, so neatly killed them both.

Exactly. 30 years ago, the risky thing for me was staying alive. Now, risk is different. It is not just about individual player characters, it is more about the community, the clan/tribe/city, religions and the world in general. In RQ, the focus used to be on saving yourself. In HQ it is about saving the world. To be honest, I don't use Extended Contests. If I need to use something similar then I use Chained Simple Contests from Mythic Russia. Extended Contests just confuse and bore me.