lars dangly

Actually, I think there is an important and practical reason why the game is played with d100 and not d20: The chances of special successes, critical successes and critical failures are too low to represent correctly on a d20 (unless you really changed the way they are calculated). I.e., if my skill goes from 40 % to 80 %, I've increased my chance of scoring a critical success by lot (from 2 % to 4 %), but the discretization of a d20 roll is too 'chunky' to represent the change. Pendragon gets around this by having a very different mechanic for determining critical successes (and for resolving rolls generally). You would need to re-tool the special success systems pretty extensively if you wanted to roll d20. I was actually sort of hoping that the new edition of BRP would use d20 and the Pendragon resolution mechanic. But, the old-standby RQ/d100 resolution mechanic is a well-oiled machine, so no harm done.

I am a long-standing BRP fan and love the new integrated system, but I think it is not a great choice for a Supers game. One thing I've noticed about long-term campaigns in BRP-related systems is they start to drag once the characters get very powerful. The characters get more complex as they get more powerful (think of all the crap that fills the character sheet of a really experienced Runelord-Priest in RQ), and the bloat of magic, spirits, bound stuff, etc., etc. just overwhelms the action. It sort of stops feeling like BRP at that point. I've actually seen players just decide to go into really dangerous encounters with none of their magic or items 'turned on' so they can have a tighter resolution. My sense is that a Supers game would be much the same. Now, one thing I do intend to use the Supers section for is to have a mechanism for creating players and NPCs who have native abilities beyond what is humanly possible. I.e., Beowulf, played straight up as a fantastic hero with all of the abilities he had in the saga, needs to be a 'Super', even though his setting is not the Marvel universe. Handled right, this might actually let you have a high-powered classic fantasy setting without each character having gobs and gobs of hard-to-follow abilities. "My ST is 50! I don't need no stinking Bladesharp!"

This is a strange element of character generation if BRP is being used for settings in which magic is unusual and it should cost you something to learn it. While I've never done a formal survey, I'll bet that is a good description of most people's fantasy campaigns. On the other hand, maybe they didn't want to create a BRP that prevents you from running a classing Runequest campaign, where everyone really does know a little magic. Whatever the explanation, I think the way to handle this is through the benevolent dictatorship of the game master. Either impose a tax on the magic using character's other starting skills, or give everyone else a little extra juice to balance things out. Or just don't allow non-wizard backgrounds to know any magic.

I agree with that. I'm not questioning the rightness of Chaosium's design philosophy. My point was simply that in deciding to head off in a different direction you have automatically put yourself into a sort of niche market that won't compete with D&D and its clones. It's like a restaurant that chooses to serve up carefully made and creative food - thank god they exist, but don't expect them to replace pizza.

Sounds great. I'll start picking away at a Foes volume this weekend. I tend to work quickly on these things once I get a bee in my bonnet, so perhaps I'll have something to circulate in a couple of weeks. All the versions of the character generator that I could find are written for some version of a windows OS. Do you know if a Mac compatible one exists?

Oh...my bad. But, I don't get it. I wasn't aware that anyone thought 'Bonuse' was an old-time spelling of bonus.

The materials you've posted look really nice. Do you have any idea of how long you'll need to finish a post-able first draft of the whole thing? One thing I was wondering is whether you have any intention of making a middle-earth specific version of the old 'Foes' book (or something like it). BRP is one of those systems that is easy to run when you have full stat blocks prepared but really hard to whip together on the fly. I find that if I try to run adventures without preparation all my monsters and NPC's end up being the same because I don't have time to differentiate them from each other. The Foes book was always a huge help to me running RQII because a reasonably fresh take on the next darktroll or llama rider was there for the reading. If you are not interested in doing this, I might take it on myself.

The only thing you might change is that you spelled 'Damage Bonus' with an extra 'E' on the end. Otherwise it looks really useful and cram-packed with information. Thanks

Hi everyone; I just discovered this forum, but am a long-time BRP gamer (I bought my first copy of the RQII rules when they first hit store shelves in the late 70's and last played it a couple of weeks ago). I think one of the sources of D&D's much greater popularity is its modular character: there is a discrete set of character types; they advance in ability on very defined and linear ways; and they complement each other in such a way that each has something different to 'do' in an adventuring party. Setting aside the question of rules, it is very easy to figure out how you are supposed to play a game that is structured like this. It's almost like playing Clue, where you take on one of several pre-defined roles. Ive never seen a variant of BRP that promotes this kind of play. It is easy to make fun of, but is actually really enjoyable and promotes fun group play. So, it is no surprise that people like it. Another reason is that D&D, in all its incarnations, has had a huge selection of distinct monsters and magic items. So, even if every encounter you play is more or less the same ("What's that weird thing? I don't know, let's kill it! Hey, who gets to keep its zygatoscope of mystical tintintabulation?"), there is great variety in the gooey monsters you encounter and the stuff you get to collect. This too is easy to make fun of, but the proof is in the pudding: lots and lots of people have fun playing games that work this way. BRP could be played this way, but I've never seen a version that really actively promotes it.