RosenMcStern

My conversion notes to use the Mongoose RuneQuest SRD are at Alephtar Games - Glorantha

Historically, this system's success is due to it being linked to licensed supplements about the fictional works of two authors: H.P. Lovecraft and M. Moorcock, with Moorcock's Multiverse being currently portrayed by a BRP-cousing, Mongoose RuneQuest. A further step would be finding some other licenses about other genres, neither fantasy nor horror, and using them for new and stunning RPG products. A fantastic idea with no franchise involved (Fractured Hopes is a good example of this) will not do the trick. I am still convinced that an anime setting could be something to try. But this has a drawback: it requires a lot of money, something that both fans and Chaosium (I suppose) lack, I fear. So what is left to do is putting out Real World settings like Rome or Mythic Iceland, hoping they will attract some attention. Good timing is of the essence here: a Rome setting that is out the exact week that the Gladiator is in the theatres has a good chance of being a hit. One that is out when, say, Star Wars is the movie of the week is doomed to marginality. Anyone has some idea about a setting that does not require a license?

The suggested range of critical successes/errors should be applied only to actions that involve PCs, which require a more frequent occurrence of extreme situations for narrative reasons. In other situations critical rolls should happen only at GM discretion. Moreover, a fumble when landing with an aircraft could also mean you damage the craft gear, not necessarily that the plane crashes.

I would rather use the x10 damage rule, with 15d6 being (1d8+1)x10. This way you can have more granularity for armor or hit points Smart! This could also solved the "The Thing vs. The Hulk" problem posed in the other thread. It is not that difficult anyway. SIZ comes out of tonnage, and STR and POW are easily worked out of the reactor output (kW power divided by 10). She stated she has lived in the Land of the Rising Sun for some time, so I suppose she knows some Jap.

This is one of the circumstances in hand to hand combat that HeroQuest handles better. You just skip rolling individual "goons" as attacks and add them to the Big Bad Guy's AP total (or use them as augments). Jason integrated the concept of augments (assisting) in simple skill resolution in the new BRP. It is a pity there is no equivalent for combat.

You are absolutely right. I kept the weapon damage in multiples of 10 exactly to allow this simplification. Still, a x15 is not an easy multiplier. Hmmm, the range is 15-90 (average 52.5). Maybe a 1d10x10 is a better choice.

Let us draw a curtain on this sorrow Macross/Robotech story, and its unbelievable Battletech spin-off. Someone who can read Japanese, you mean. Hmmmm.... Shaira?

AFAIK, he was compelled to throw in Koji Kabuto as a co-protagonist against his own will. Another case of Marketing versus Creativity.

The mechanics for plotting one characteristic against another are designed with the 1-20 range in mind. Assuming Spider-man is STR 40 or so (well, he is 50 in TSR's Marvel SuperHeroes, but the scale is different) you can still handle his feats with a Resistance roll. Throw in Superman and the scale of powers is 100+, and the Resistance table breaks. Of course you can still resolve the matter with an opposed roll on STR x1, but this is a concept that is rather new to BRP and no one here has experimented with it so far.

I do not see any reason why. If you have Dodge 80%, then you simply dodge 4 blows out of 5, or less if you are facing multiple opponents and incur in the -30% penalty. This mix of active and passive defense adds very little to realism, and decreases playability by splitting the defense mechanics between active and passive.

Thumbs up for Shaira here. I do agree with Simon that HeroQuest is probably the most suitable rule system for playing supers, but the new BRP has a lot of options that can be used to make it HQ-like if you wish. It is just a matter of knowing how to apply the rules. Again, I completely agree. The first time I took a BRP-based game in my hands I felt the urge to houserule a lot of things, but I later discovered that very little could not be accomplished by simply using the existing rules correctly.

Jason has stated on these forums that he liked the concept of Defense that was in RQ2, but did not insert it because it would become a super-skill more valuable than any other skill. In any case, it is still there as a super-power so you can easily add it. But I would not recommend doing so: Dodge represents this better.

You can still roll D20 for mobs and d100 for PCs and important characters. It reeks of D&D but it should work. But my idea as a GM would be to just say: "You picked a fight with 50 bad guys? Well, you are dead!".

Yes, but remember that this system does not work if you allow skill scores above 100. All these variants (d20, doubles) make it simpler to read the dice, but decrease realism and detail.

See above for varitech. I am not a big Macross fan, although I appreciated the anime when it was produced 20+ years ago. Besides, there is a Palladium RPG about Macross & C, so a Palladium/BRP conversion should be the best solution for this, not rebuilding the stats from scratch like I did with Mazinger.

Battletech is off limits for me: it is the only game I consider more dumb than D&D. And believe me, I have played it. Robotech/Macross is more interesting but I do not know the setting well enough to provide sensible stats. Universal Century (the Gundam setting) would be more interesting to do, because it has a much bigger fanbase than macross (in most countries at least) and includes a lot of psionics, providing the opportunity to test the rules. And I know it well enough to write down some stats.

This does not mean that this "enhanced effect" is better than the standard effect given by D100. It is just the consequence of a limit imposed by the fewer options given by the dice. I did not miss the point. It is just that I do not agree that simpler is always better. No dice is simpler than any dice, so why do we use dice at all? I have not heard that many people complaining about the x2 or x4 or x5 multipliers. In fact I never heard any, while I heard people complaining about lack of realism and detail.

Apart from the intuitiveness of saying "Chances 65%" over saying "Chance 13", the real reason to stick to d100 is criticals and specials, a feature that is rather peculiar to BRP and is largely neglected in Pendragon. Most battles in RuneQuest or in Call of Cthulhu are decided by an "Impale" or by and "Ignore armor" result. If you use a d20, this result is largely dependent on luck, because you have a score of 1 for a critical and this is the same if your skill is 01 or 20. With D100, luck plays a lesser role, because your 100% gunman will score double damage with a 20 or less and a critical with 05 or less, while your 20% rookie will score a critical with 01 and an impale with 04: a big difference that you hardly ever notice if you use d20. Characteristics could be brought to the same scale of skills (01-100 instead of 01-20) but this would not make the game any more playable. Very few people have trouble doing the maths for a CON x4 roll, although some exist.

Well, I did not specify which sunday... Here come the other ones. Everything added to the original post, just to keep them together.

There are plenty of public domain images about the Ancient Age and the Middle Ages on the internet. I used many of them in Stupor Mundi but there are many more. The NY Public Library has a lot of old book scans that you can download and use freely.

Yet it was very simple in RQ2/3 - admittedly simpler in 2, but still manageable in 3. So it can be written down in a comprehensible way rules-wise, because it has been done before. Explaining what shamanism is in society can be more complicate, as Simon pointed out.

This is exactly the rule as explained in the book. However, this is also sorely wrong, as it lets a fighter who is bigger and has a longer weapon (clumsy SIZ 20 DEX 9 troll with maul SR 5) attack at double the rate allowed to a smaller but faster character (incredibly fast halfling SIZ 8 DEX 20 with shortsword SR 6). It totally contradicts the philosophy behind Strike Ranks, and I think it should never be used.

No, you are perfectly right. This was the rule: you needed both the skill and a SR of 7 or lower. BRP requires 100%+ skill and a DEX of 6 or higher (not uncommon). The part about being able to attack twice if you have SR 5- is the only rule I consider really broken in BRP. A man with a pike is not faster than a man with a knife: deadlier yes, faster no.

Most of us independent publishers use Lulu Press (Self Publishing - Lulu.com). It does a decent job but it is not exactly cheap.

Variable armor with hit locations is explicitly discouraged in the rules. The roll should represent the chance of hitting a less armored area when you are not using hit locations, but if you use them all you need do is figure where the character is armored and where he is not.