Greville

The most fun I've had playing a pre-made adventure was in Stormbringer. We played the Hall of Risk adventure and I went through three characters in one day. I bought Elric and it was my 'go to' system for fantasy games, until I imported a copy of Runequest III.

I think it's because weapon reach is key until you are in close combat. The strike rank rules assume that the combatants are not in close combat. Once in close combat the rules state that the person with the higher DEX rank will go first and that any parry attempts by people with long weapons are difficult. I'm not too worried about the person with the most reach going first. I guess the combat scenarios would look like this: Mark and John have weapon skills of 70% Mark draws his sword and rushes at John, who has a dagger. Mark swings and John has 70% chance to parry. He succeeds and steps close. John stabs at Mark and he only has a 35%. In the next round Mark can give up his attacks to try and move back. John can also dodge or parry to move close and attack normally. Unless he wants to be toast, Mark has the option of disengaging, knocking John back, taking a spear, or just hoping that John's dagger breaks after parrying a few decent attacks. Of course he can also learn shield and block at his normal chance. This seems to be one of the most overlooked advantages of carrying a shield, that and the weapon breakage rules punish constant parrying.

I've always thought BRP would be good for running a Paranoia game. The thing that's help me back is the baggage that goes with Paranoia and when I ran it we've always had the party slaughtering each other at the first opportunity. So what I'd like to do is run another setting in a good place and bring in the elements from Paranoia slowly. Make the humour dark and run it kinda straight, well not so slapsticky (is that a word?) anyway. What settings do you thing would fit? My first choice is playing Fallout and have the party all be vault dwellers serving the computer....I mean Overseer. What do you think?

It really depends on how elves work in your world. On reading the BGB I'd say it's the second option. However maximum power doesn't indicate how magical a culture is, it only shows how powerful the top percentiles are. I think it's the average and more importantly the minimum power that show how accessible magic will be for a race or culture. As written in the BGB Elves have a minimum power of 8, an average power of 13 and the same maximum power of 21 (your second example. This would suggest that Elves are a highly magical race because both the minimum power and the average power are considerably higher than humans in general. An average Human has a power of 11 (10.5 rounded up), whereas an Elf with 11 power would be considered to have very poor magical ability. That being said, it's your game-world and you can tweak Elves however you like.

Chivalry & Sorcery 3rd Ed had two AP systems for initiative; a basic quick one and a detailed one. I loved the basic one and it seems like what you are after. The issue we had is that people then start to make characters with the most action points they can have. Mind you the current system in BRP is no better; it encourages high dex.

I prefer listing the skills that will be different, then adjusting the default scores up and down as required. Another option is to restrict certain professions if they do not fit the characters cultural background or personal history. I also like to limit the skill choices, for the personal point spend, to reflect the culture.

I have a character wishing to make a magic item with one or more sorcery spells embedded. On p246 of the BRP Book (big gold book) it states that: "The creator of an artifact must sacrifice a point of permanent POW per sorcery spell invested in the artifact..." Do you use the rules as written? I think it should read "per sorcery spell level". The player of the character hopes otherwise, and says that he should be able to invest a full strength spell, like four levels of Sorcerer's Armour, for one POW. I'm in two minds, one POW is a significant loss and balances well against an extra 4 points of armour. Two POW to make it permanent doesn't worry me either. But I think there's potential to abuse the stat boosting spells. What are your thoughts? Cheers, Greville

It looks like I'm late to this one, but what about calling it a Vocation? You could have Vocation: Soldier, Vocation: Farmer etc