soltakss

And they are a lot easier to write

When you see a BRP Supplement, what kinds of things would you like to see included?

I was surprised. I thought that RQ3 and RQ2 were similar, except for the Melee/Missile locations, but it looks as though a lot of the creatures were split up and made slightly different. RQM seems to have used a combination of RQ2/3 but has tweaked the numbers slightly. BRP uses hit locations as an optional rule, so I would just use RQ3 locations. Some creatures have been tweaked slightly to account for tails (such as newtlings), others have been changed a fair bit, Manticores and Cockatrices for example. One thing I can't understand is that Manticores used to have 4 legs and a pair of wings (RQ2) but have hit locations for 4 legs and no wings in RQ3/MRQ even though they are illustrated with wings. I'd use the RQ2 locations for Manticores. If I have the time, I'll add some other creatures, but don't hold your breath as it took a while to do and isn't the most interesting of tasks.

I have added hit locations. These are from: [RQ2] RQ2 Rulebook/Gateway Bestiary [RQ3] RQ3 Rulebook (Creatures Book / Glorantha Book) / Gloranthan Bestiary [MRQ1] SRD [MRQ2] MRQ2 Rulebook I have not included all creature classes as it is tedious and picky work, nor have I included all the weird creatures from Gloranthan Bestiary. There are some gaps but it is probably complete enough to be used. Natural Weapons and SIZ Ranges will have to wait for a while, unfortunately, unless someone else wants to have a go ...

I am trying to write up some creatures for BRP but have had some problems with things like Damage Bonus, Hit Points and Movement. To help me, I have produced a spreadsheet that compares these things between different versions of RQ/BRP. It compares RQ2/RQ3/BRP/MRQ1/MRQ2, which are the systems that I know. To see the spreadsheet, have a look at http://www.soltakss.com/RQComparison.xls. The first sheet shows Hit Points per Location for each system, based on SIZ+CON for all systems but RQ2, which uses Hit Points. The second sheet shows Damage Bonuses based on STR+SIZ. MRQ only goes up to 5D10 and there doesn't seem to be an easy formula to work out higher ranges. The third sheet shows Movement, comparing the movement of creatures across the systems. I've tried to include most of the creatures that can be found across the systems, but I am probably missing a number of them. If anyone can spot any errors then please let me know. For RQ3 Hit Locations, I used the formula rather than the values in the tables as the tables from RQ3 are incorrect. Can you think of anything else that could be easily compared between systems?

I've seen a video (on one of those Police Shocker style programs) of a man in the USA who was Tazered and then carried on forward - it took 2 or 3 goes to bring him down. So, it's definitely possible to laugh off a Tazer attack. But 2D6+12 sounds right - it has more than a 50/50 chance of immobilising an average person and a fair chance of immobilising a big person.

I wouldn't bother buying Basic Magic - you can get pretty much everything contained there from the MRQ1 SRD (Which should be in the Downloads section, Deluxe PDF ???). As the good general says, you should probably have spell lists for each style. MRQ has different magic types, but they don't really matter unless you have gods knocking around. They all seem to be wizardy types, so you could use sorcery for all of them as a default and then use divine or common magic for unusual cases. You could mix the BRP spells into these as well, if you wanted to. I'd use the MRQ2 Common Magic rules or the MRQ1 Rune Magic rules for BRP magic, though, as having loads of different systems might be confusing for very little gain.

If you use Strike Ranks, the next round lasts until the relevant strike rank. Presumably the same applies to Dex Ranks. There used to be a similar issue in RQ2/3 when you fumbled and lost your next so many attacks, if you didn't atack in that combat how long did the fumble last. You have to use common sense in such situations and fit the solution to the actual gameplay that occured. So, if the orc is stunned for a round then I would say that he is stunned until a similar time (SR/DEX rank/Whatever) the next round. I wouldn't say that it lasts untuil the end of the round as the orc might have been stunned at the very end of the round making it a meaningless penalty.

We should talk, then ...

Not really, it loses one potential sale so it's not a big deal. Anyone who bases their decisions on what to write on anything that I say is a fool.

I like "Yes, you could do that, if you really want to" because that scares the bejeezers out of them.

PDFs are fine. I use them a lot now that I take my Netbook to games. I tend to print some of them out, but only in booklet form, so a clear layout is the main thing for me. Colour or not? Don't care. Pretty pictures or not? Don't care, either. Good maps? Yes. Clear text? Yes. Making it available as a PDF is fine, but if you used something like Lulu then you could make a print available at little or no extra cost to you and that gives the buyers a choice.

In my opinion, Mythic Russia is very easy to play using BRP. All you need to do is hand-wave the stats, skills and spells. I have plans to convert the work that I did on Birchbark Chronicles to BRP, probably in an "Age of the Infidel" Merrie England supplement. That would probably contain BRP Mongols of all flavours, as well as all sorts of Saracen, Moor, Jew and similar folk. It is quite easy to write a Russian supplement for BRP, but it would be very similar to Mythic Russia. It would be very difficult to make it better than Mythic Russia, though.

I don't! The Merrie England rules for MRQ are different to BRP. MRQ does some things better (Hero Points, Legendary Abilities, Divine Magic) and BRP does some things better (Character Generation, Weapon Damage). I'd love to see Legendary Abilities in BRP and a BRP-style character generation in RQ. So, you could use things from Age of Eleanor in Age of Chivalry and vice versa. Age of Eleanor was written for MRQ1/2 and there were some things there that were possibly ambiguous, ruleswise. Hopefully we won't have many of those in the new edition. It is difficult, especially for me, as I have MRQI, MRQII, BRP, RQ3 and HeroQuest running around in my head and find it difficult to separate them. Thanks. The majority of Age of Chivalry is fluff, the rules content is relatively small. But, that's how things should be - the basic rules system should be enough to describe most things, anything new should be setting-specific or should describe new mechanics. BRP does things slightly differently, so some things have been slightly changed. Divine Magic has been overhauled, Demonology has been expanded, Astrology has been expanded (but might not work and could well be changed) but nost of the other things are unchanged.

Short, ugly creatures, the Duergar are dwarfs from the Simonside hills of Northumberland in the north of England. Duergar live within the hills and are known to be both mischievous and malicious. They lead travellers astray by carrying lanterns into bogs and push walkers off the hillside. So, as Fairy Folk they would have magical powers, their particular powers are not explicitly mentioned. They are definitely Bad Fairies, though. I didn't have enough room to detail all the creatures, so most of them are in sketch form. Perhaps they could be expanded on in a later volume.

The RQ one wasn't, apart from a sumptuous cover and a map (colour in the PDF). However, the illustrations were in a medieval style which suited black and white. I don't know what the illustrations in the BRP version will be, but I would guess that they will be excellent again.

The Chapter Headings are: Player Characters Religion and Magic Magical Science Major Religions Nobles, Knights and The Crown The Land and People Further Afield The Crusades Trading and Adventuring The Afterlife Angels and Demons Creatures Famous Characters and Sample Characters Campaigns The full Table of Contents is at http://www.soltakss.com/merrieengland/ME_TOC.txt Of course, these might change with editing and layout, so please don't hold me to them.

For a start, there's probably three times as much stuff in the new Merrie England. Then there's the fact that I am slapdash when making sure that rules hang together and tend to wander, so need to be reigned in sometimes. When converting from two similar systems it is easy to miss things or leave some things unconverted, so it takes a while to make sure that everything is correct for BRP. Personally, I'd leave it as a halfway house between BRP and RQ, but I'm not the one paying for it to be published. Also, Paolo had to work on the Italian version of RQ, so Merrie England had to take a back seat, which is fair enough.

If you liked the RQ version of Merrie England, then you'll hopefully like the BRP one better. It's being heavily edited at the moment so should be ready in a few months.

Also, 5 extra characteristics? Were their 5? I can remember splitting SIZ into MAS and LEN, which make a lot of sense in SciFi games. PSI is different to POW because I would like these rules to cover Space Fantasy which has magic as well as Psionics. ROB for Robotics is useful in a Cybernetic game. Was there a fifth? I can't remember. EDU? No, just checked the previous posts and SOC is from Traveller. I am ambivalent towards SOC, it makes some sense for a socially stratified setting. In any case, I like extra Characteristics. My Eastern games have CHI as a Characteristic. I would have preferred PTY (Piety) to be a characteristic in Merrie England. EDU makes sense, in a way, and has been accepted in many games.

Yes, that would work. However, my ultimate aim is to produce a version of the game that works well with SciFi, without having to look at many different and slightly incompatible games. Yes, the first thing was to put as much as I could from the other SRDs and then slowly merge them together. Traveller has a lot of good ideas, but a system that I could never understand even after playing for a year. D20 also has good ideas but suffers from being class based. RuneQuest is a good system but suffers from not having SciFi rules or a SciFi setting. Put them all together and you could, in theory, have good rules with many good ideas taken from many different games. It's not there yet, as I have previously mentioned. I haven't worked on the RQ SciFi document for over a year, mainly because I have been writing two Merrie England supplements. I want to focus on Merrie England for a while, so probably won't do much for a good few months. Also, I had an idea for a setting, but those ideas have changed quite a bit recently. I wasn't sure if the setting would work and was reluctant to work on it for that reason. When I flesh the setting out in my mind, I will need an SRD to back the game up and will continue work on the RQ Scifi document in earnest. Combat is stuck in MRQI as it was taken from the MRQ SRD. I would struggle to add Combat Manoeuvres as MRQII has not been released under the OGL. That doesn't really matter to me, as anyone could use the MRQII Combat Manoeuvres with a RQ SciFi setting with no real problems. I wouldn't use OpenQuest because that specifically doesn't use Hit Locations and the RQ SciFi specifically does. However, they are both based on the same SRDs and are generally compatible. I will be coming back to RQSciFi within a year and will be able to merge a lot of things together. What I will do is to create a very general SciFi SRD and then produce a version for a SciFi Setting. However, that won't be for a year or so. In any case, it was more of a proof of concept to show that RQ could be used for SciFi and would make a good SciFi rules system.

I love BRP/RQ but it just doesn't work for SuperHeroes, in my opinion. Use HeroQuest, that ticks all the boxes and is the best game for SuperHeroes that I have ever seen.

Merrie England: Age of Chivalry will almost certainly not be released this month, but Paolo will be able to give more information on that ...

Livelihood sounds good to me. You could use it instead of Crafts, in a general way, because there's not much point having Livelihood (Blacksmith) and Craft (Blacksmith) together. You could use Craft for secondary or unusual knowledge, a soldier having Craft (Needlework) for example. I'd give penalties to using Livelihood to act instead of multiple Crafts, though. A Blacksmith might be able to make weapons and armour, perhaps at full chance, but he'd probably have a penalty to making machine parts or making jewellery, even though his skills might be useful.

I wouldn't go out of my way to read them, but I sometimes enjoy them, mainly as ideas for scenarios. However, I don't particularly enjoy the "and then I rolled a 10" style.