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Thanks - I didn't spot those. I'll have a look this evening to see if they suit a Shieldwall on the top of a hill.

Does BRP still have a bonus for having a height advantage? I can't find it in the rules, but it was always there in RQ. What about other situational modifications? Attacking from the side/from behind?

It's very clear with no huge areas of white space, which is what I like. I wouldn't include tracks for Hit Points/Power Points/Fatigue/Sanity/Fate Points, personally, because I always think that a simple box with a score and a space for a tally or amended score works better for me. Shields might be better included in the Weapons section. The skills have a lot of blank values, which is OK for a very general sheet, but how many games have that many new skills? You could cut down on some of them and then put the Hit Locations and Weapons/Armour on the front sheet.

I'd love to see a writeup of Ancient Greece for BRP. Why hasn't it appeared on the Alternate Earth RQ Group? Because nobody has written one. Would you have one supplement covering all the eras or several supplements, each covering one era? The eras are, to my mind: 1. Mycenean/Heroic Age Greece Active Gods Interaction with Mythology Loads of strange monsters Magic and cults Heroic Age Culture (Bronze/Iron Age Barbarians, invading hordes of Greeks, Chieftains and Bands of Warriors) Epic Campaigns (Iliad, Oddessy, Argonauts, Minotaur) 2. Classical Greece Age of Reason Gods don't play a big part Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy Wars with Persia 3. Alexandrian Invaders from Macedonia Uniting Greece Gods and Magic don't really play a part War against Persia and India What happens if Alexander doesn't die? 4. Post-Alexandrian (Hellenic) Covered by Age of Alexander Smaller kingdoms at war Rise of Rome Persia becomes less Greek in nature Wars between Rome and the Hellenic states Gods play no part Cults and magic have a minor role to play, at best My favourite era would be the Mycenean one, as that's more akin to the kind of Greek History that I like

That's how I've always played it. I take into account all modifiers, bonuses and penalties, whether they are situational. from spells, from abilities or whatever, that gives me a skill and the Special/Critical/Fumble chances come from that calculated skill. Anything else becomes far too complicated to work out. The only sticking point might be when to apply the Difficult/Easy modifier. If you have a skill of 50% and have situational modifiers of +30% and spell modifiers of +20% and the roll is Easy, do you: (a) Use (50 + 30 + 20) x 2 = 200% ( Use (50 + 30) x 2 + 20 = 180% © Use 50 x 2 + 30 + 20 = 150% Similarly, if the roll is Difficult, do you: (a) Use (50 + 30 + 20) / 2 = 50% ( Use (50 + 30) / 2 + 20 = 60% © Use 50 / 2 + 30 + 20 = 75% I'm sure it says in the rules but I can't be bothered to have a look (and I promised my wife I'd only be on the computer for 5 minutes)

What's the problem? Do you have a burning desire to keep him in jail or to have him executed? It sounds like a clever plan to me. If he can get some important people to come and vouch for him, spreads some cash amongst the guards and is convincing, then let him go. It can't hurt. Lots of politically-connected people get off scot-free in real life, so why not in a game? In my opinion, this is the clever, risk-taking stuff that games should be full of and I wouldn't want to punish in arbitrarily.

In non-Gloranthan games, my giants go up to about 6m for most purposes. However, a Jack and the Beanstalk giant would be substantially taller - maybe 16m. If I played a game using the Birchbark Chronicles, I would use substantially bigger giants for the Alyps of Bashkiria and Tartaria, these would be more like Gloranthan True Giants, 150m or so, but they are mountain-sized giants.

Good luck with the Monograph - the more products we can get for BRP the better. You'll probably love doing 80% of it and hate the final 20% of tidying up, proofreading and rewriting. But, it will be worth it in the end.

I hope you like them - Paolo's Stupor Mundi is very good. The BRP version of Merrie England should be available "soon". I don't know when, but it shouldn't be too long now.

Not dumb at all. A lot of people have wondered the same thing over the years and will still wonder in the future, because of the history of RQ/BRP/Glorantha. I can't see it happening, personally. Maybe Chaosium can do a First Age Glorantha (Arkat vs Gbaji) makeover with BRP.

It opened up in Open office but showed 5 pages with headers, 3 of which were blank and two had skills and stats in. Was that what the file contained?

In Excel 2000 (probably similar in other versions) ... Select the columns that you want to change, right-click on the column header and choose Column Width - then type in 1 and press OK. It works really well, in my opinion.

Excel. If you want a PDF, do it in Excel and print using a PDF Printer the combine the files back to a single file. I use a grid of 1-character cells and merge them together to make larger cells. This makes it a lot easier to manipulate and lay out. However, I like blocky easy to read character sheets, which is easy to do in Excel.

All the RQ games I have played in have many magical items. They aren't all unique items, but we used to have a lot of one-offs. In fact, I carried around a pack of index cards for years storing all my character's magic items. Generally, magical items in RQ/BRP come in several forms: Spell Matrices - these allow someone to cast a spell that they wouldn't normally have. Crystals - some store Power Points, others boost atacking/defending POW, increase the potency of spells, others have special one-off effects Enchantments - boosting Armour Points, boosting Hit Points, granting permanent spell effects, spell matrices, Power Point storage, Binding Enchantments for spirits/elementals/demons Potions - Poisons/Antidotes/Healing Salves/Disease Cures are all fairly readily available in my games There are probably many more, but those are the ones that I can think of. Many's the time that I have picked up a sling with a Speedart matrix. The unique items are far more interesting, in my opinion. They can do virtually anything, from bestowing a permanent ability to giving a skill boost, giving access to a spell or effect a certain number of times per day/week/year or whatever. The items on my site (referred to above) might give an idea of what can be done. If you need guidelines: 1. Look at other similar items and replicate something with slightly different powers. So, a sword with a matrix and a spear with a matrix are esentially the same kind of item 2. Be careful about game balance - some weapons can be very powerful in a low powered game, other items can destroy certain aspects of a game 3. Don't worry about how they are made - Not all magical items need to be made according to some rules about making magical items. Don't feel that you have to rationalise all magical items. 4. Place them carefully, why does a bandit have the Crown of Imperial Splendour? 5. Be inventive if you want to - nto all magical items have to be the same.

Have a look at http://basicroleplaying.com/showthread.php/2216-Comparing-Systems for a comparison of hit locations between systems. BRP uses the same missile locations as RQ3, I think.

RQ INT was originally 3D6, which gave an average of 10-11, linking up well with the IQ100 average. However, this gives a huge proportion of INT 3-7 characters, which is unrealistic, so it was changed to be 2D6+6, which gives an average of 13 and a minimum of 8. Wikipedia has an IQ Chart at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_reference_chart which gives some scales. But, as stated above, I wouldn't put too much stock on IQ tests.

Sorry, missed this question. By HQ1 I mean the first edition of HeroQuest. I use HW for HeroWars (which could be HQ0.5).

There's a big difference between multiple attacks and split attacks. Somebody with an attack of 300% can split his attack to have 3 attacks of 100% each, assuming that he has the SRs/DEX Ranks to use them. If he is fighting 3 enemies then he could attack each one once at 100%. If he attacked a single enemy then he would have to attack using the full 300% as he cannot split that attack against the same single foe. However, if he had two attacks at 300% then he could hit a single enemy twice at 300% or attack multiple enemies using split attacks or any valid combination of attacks. I have fond memories of playing a magicked-up centaur who would attack while Berserk with a transformed head (Bite), a spear, Fist and Kick, splitting each attack 2 or 3 times. He was big and very quick (DEX and SIZ above 21) so have low SRs and had magical abilities that allowed his attacks to happen simultaneously. He was useless against skilled foes, but would smash through hordes like a maniacal windmill while his comrades would concentrate on the big boys. I think that his record was to take out 8 NPCs in one round. Happy days.

Thanks, I've added them now.

Slightly off topic, the following trailer is for a film coming out in the Summer. It's tailor made for an Aces High crossover. It's name ... Cowboys and Aliens I'm in Geek Heaven

Oh, I wouldn't use HQ2, as I don't think it would work very well. HQ1 is probably a better fit. You can certainly build a scale of sizes for Strong, or a scale of speeds, or whatever, for PCs to overcome in certain situations. The trick is to work out what the scales are beforehand. As to which abilities work, that is a matter for discussion between GM and player. I'd put heavy penalties on abilities that clearly shouldn't work, so the PC has a chance but not a good one. But, the point isn't that HeroQuest is a better system than BRP, it is just that, in my opinion, it works better for Supers.

I see your Gravity Cannon 5M and use my Ignore Physical Laws 10M3 to evade it. Have I mentioned that HeroQuest is really, really good for SuperHero games?

Narnia is an excellent fit for BRP. Combat seems very basic with no special effects, which BRP can do standing on its head. Most Narnian creatures are, as you say, based on real world creatures or standard mythological creatures. Using 3D6 INT for talking creatures is easy. Magic might be a little bit trickier. There is Sorcery of some kind, but few people can use it. Spells seem to be stored in rarely found spell books and are of very variable strength/power. You'd have to write the spells up or not give them to PCs. There are magic items, but these appear to be one-off things. Healing potions, magical swords, magical bows, warning horns and so on. They should be easy to write up. Powerful people might cause a problem. The White Queen should be an ultra-powerful sorceress. Aslan doesn't really need stats as he is basically unkillable and only appears as a plot device. If you play real world people/children in Narnia then you would need to have some kind of character generation for them, without many high skills. They would start as beginning characters. If you allowed Narnians as PCs then they would have a fantasy-based character generation, possibly with high skills. But, you should be able to run a Narnia campaign using the maps in the books and a bit of handwaving.

I've put together a map on Google Maps showing what I think are the main towns and cities of the era. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=210336152846282603197.00049ca836df817141a7a&z=5 Colour coding includes Cities mentioned by Nennius, British locations, Pictish locations, Irish locations, Invader locations and magical locations. Can't tell you which colours are which as I am colour blind and Paint.NET doesn't name the colours on the palette. Let me know what you think, anything I've missed out, if the names are wrong and any other comments.

HeroQuest could, but you'd have to describe what you wanted to do and how you were doing it.