RosenMcStern

On the contrary, there is absolutely NO problem in converting anything written for RQ3 to BRP 1 (and anything written for SB, too). Differences are neglectable. In addition to this, using old RQ3 stuff with BRP adds the option of dropping something that was not optional before (Strike Ranks or the like). Using the RQ2 rules as base introduces conversion problems like Defense, armor with different values, etc.

- No Power Points. This Temporary POW stuff can give you a big headache. - SIZ and INT rolled on 3d6 (no longer used in any BRP game) - skill increments in 5% steps only - artificial spell limits (Protection 4 is the top, even for the Ultra-High-Priest) - incompatible values for armors (incompatible with BRP1 I mean) - no ENC or fatigue option Etc. etc. RQ3 is not perfect, but is closer to BRP as it is now.

SB/RQ formula: Skill - (Required STR - Actual STR) *5% - (Required DEX - Actual DEX) * 5% BRP formula: Skill / 2 Which one is simpler? Plus make one SAN roll for endorsing Ken St.André, you Tunneling Troll

Done. I was the first one to leave a comment :cool:

As stated before, I am definitely against advising to get out-of-print materials. RQ2 is almost 30 year old, and even though its "atmosphere" was great, it contains game concepts that are terribly outdated. If you start with RQ2, you will have conversion problems with everything if you later want to move your game to BRP. A good alternative for the Third Age if you do not want to read all the HeroWars / HeroQuest stuff would be picking River of Cradles instead, for instance, which is also set in Pavis but after the setting had been explored for 20 years or so. It is still an out of print book, but it contains all of the starting religious info to play an Orlanthi,too, (and you do not want to play any stinking Lunar, do you?) and all the stats given are 100% compatible with BRP 1. You will need some spell descriptions, but if you are a bit patient I am finishing my list of basic RQ spells adapted to BRP, so you will be able to play all the old Gloranthan supplements with the BRP rules and just the MRQ SRD, which is free, for magic.

A fighter could have trouble making three attacks even if you use DEX ranks: the DEX rank for the second will be at 5 DEX ranks lower, the third at 5 DEX after that, etc. If an attack is at DEX rank 0 or below, no further attack can be made. So a character with 150% skill and DEX 10 cannot make three attacks. However, having DEX 11+ is far more common than having SR 4 or less. The point here is that when you use SRs to determine what you can do then SIZ gets in the way. A halfling with a dagger strikes last regardless of DEX, but he can do as many actions as other characters. The best solution IMO is to use DEX ranks and weapon length, and adjust weapon length if one of the combatants is significantly bigger than the other (big troll with fist and duck with long spear should go in DEX order, no closing whatsoever).

BRP, page 172. It was there in RQ3, too. Used it no more than three times in 20 years, of course.

This one I really like, Dredj. Would make a good House Rule or Spot Rule.

This is exactly the point. Many cunnng players used understatted weapons at "just -10%". Now they cannot.

Shaira hits the spot, as usual. These rules are really fine, but there are contradictions. I bet they were written by two people in different moments. The first paragraph, Close Combat, should be labeled "Closing", and it is the best and the most usable. It explains what happens when a long weapon user and a short weapon user engage in melee. The only question here is "When to use the Difficult parry with the Long Weapon rule?" The second paragraph, Closing, should be labeled "Close Combat". It is a bit messy and contradicts the first one with regard to how to enter close combat. Is it declaring that you are closing enough? Or must you also succeed in a Dodge roll if the long weapon user is keeping you at bay? It also uses the old RQ3 rule of "One action only when caught in Close Combat with a long weapon." which I did not like (and I am a _very_ _big_ supporter of RQ3). All in all, I would just drop paragraph 2 and use only paragraph 1. But I know there are Close Combat fans out there that will not agree Oh, and I do not like BRP Strike Ranks. I have used SR for over 20 years and I appreciate them, but the basic system in BRP 1 is more elegant. SRs would be usable in this BRP, were it not for the rule that states that you can attack twice if your SR is 5 or less. Read it carefully. Big clumsy guy with long weapon attacks twice or thrice. Fast small guy with short weapon attacks once. Not good. The basic theory of SRs say that they dictate when you attack, not how often.

If you did not notice, there is a table for specials, criticals and fumbles, too Seriously, if I caugth my daughter ever asking for a calculator or a table for doing the maths in a RPG (it will not take long before she gets interested in the matter) I would bash her on the head and send her studying her maths again. But if someone has little fun doing calculatios, there is no reason to not waste a sheet with some tables. The resistance table alone will not kill a tree.

Please spare Sam's backside But, ahem, the rules that are in the PDF do not say the same as you are stating here: Attack achieves a critical success. Attack does full damage plus normal damage bonus (or attacker may choose a special success instead). Defender’s armor value is bypassed. It looks like you get to choose between max damage and special damage, not between max damage and bypass armor. Which one is true?

I would read it as "normal for Martial arts", i.e. with an additional die. It says "as above", after all. One interesting question is: criticals allow to choose between max damage and special effect, i.e. for a dagger it is eiter 2d4 through armor or 4 through armor. What happens with martial arts? Do you get to choose between 3d4 and 1d4+4 (or even 8?)

We have never seriously played any BRP other than RuneQuest (Call of Cthulhu sometimes, SB almost never), so my group has no problem with hit locations. But I am not necessarily against location-less games. Complexity is not a problem for me (if it is not useless complexity).

There is always someone who hates maths.

Sandy Petersen's Warhamster is a nice set of rules that hybridizes the ancestor of all Gloranthan games, Dragon Pass, with BRP to provide a simple set of rules. It has its limits but it works. Essentially, it allows you to determine the various combat factors (meleee, magic, ranged) that a miniature has by totaling several factors, including average damage done, weapon skill, armor worn etc. Combat rolls are made on d6s, not d100, but this is unavoidable in mini games since you get to roll loads of dice together. You can find it in Tales of the Reaching Moon #12, IIRC.

I have made an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet that allows you to fill the stats and skills in very easily. It can be exported as a PDF via OpenOffice, which is a free multi-platform program, or used on your PC/Mac for online games. Let me test it a bit and I'll post it here. As a spreadsheet, you can easily tailor it to your needs. I have already made a RQ3-like version with locations and spells, but you can change it very easily.

Crits at skill/10 is fine if you do not use specials, but many incarnations of BRP use them. IIRC Call of Cthulhu has no criticals, only impales (just to avoid players having an unfair advantage against Nyarlatothep, who clearly relies heavily on armor). Similarly, a skill cap at 100% may be fine for many games, but not all. If a game is run at epic levels, skills go up to and way over 100% by necessity. Thor, Harrek or Anakin Skywalker cannot be limited to 100%, and if your character must confront the same dangers they face, then the game must support skills over 100%.

This point was raised during the MRQ playtest (where it could actually work, because MRQ has critical rolls at 10% of skill). This system was discarded because it did not work at all with skills over 100%, which are in the core rules and not an optional in MRQ. And do not forget that even if you have a cap of 100% for skills, modifiers can raise them to 200% for an Easy test. How do you handle criticals with doubles in this case? I, too, cannot see a real reason to adopt this suggestion. Specials and criticals work fine as they are, no need to change them with spot rules that cause side effects. If it is not broken, do not fix it.

A light sword is often worn as a ceremonial weapon. It is certainly more justifiable than having characters walk aroung with polearms. A martial arts school must exist in order to learn it for a weapon. I have never heard of a M.A. style for axes, but there are plenty of schools that teach advanced techniques with swords (fencing, kendo, etc.). Your RW Will Vary. Finally, I have fought for ten years with players using broadswords mainly as impaling weapons and inventing all the weirdest explanation to have me introduce impaling bastard swords in RQ3. I do not want that madness back in BRP :shocked:

Hmm, I think you can be right. Swords became really popular when metalworking improved, whereas the spear was the favoured weapon in the Ancient Era. The real advantage of swords over axes, spears and mauls is not in battle, but in the fact that you can easily carry them with you in a non-combat situation. There is no way you can carry a spear hanging from your belt! However, to really simulate this gamewise you must enforce the "No war weapons carried in cites" rule very strongly, which is not easily accomplished with all groups. There will always be someone who whines "Why can he carry his deadly shortsword with him while I must leave my harmless War Maul at the gates?" In addition to this, swords can be used with very fine fencing techniques, but this is already covered by Martial Arts.

Stun is a bit overpowered, yes. But the fact that a crushing weapon can break (or at least damage) the opponent's weapon on a special hit is dangerous, too. I like this effect, but why limit it to blunt weapons? All non-impalng weapons should be able to do this. The unbalance towards crushing weapons is the only thing I really do not like about the combat rules. I would rather have blunt weapons do 1 pt. less damage as they did in RQ3. We have already debated this for long one month ago, and I am happy with the higher minimum and lower maximum of maces, but a Heavy Mace does the same average damage of the equivalent 2H sword and axe of the same size, and this makes not sense to me. Better drop maces to 1d6+2 and 1d4+2 for regular blows, and give weapon-breaking capabilities on special hits to all swinging weapons: if a light mace can break a spear, also a halberd can. The real problem is that, apart from the special effects (impale/bleed/stun) all weapons but slashing weapons have damage adjustments on a special hit. This is unbalancing. An option would be max damage (or less averaged damage: roll the dice twice and pick the best results) on a special hit with a slashing weapon, excluding martial arts. BTW, the damage done by the hand-held dagger is possibly wrong: 1d4 when the knife is 1d3+1?

Working on episode two of Stupor Mundi, but that is MRQ since it started with MRQ OGL and will continue so. I will make it more compatible with BRP if possible, though. I am also working on a rule-agnostic system of Gloranthan Third Age magic that can work with both BRP and MRQ (and other d100 games as well). This is basically MRQ magic amended and made compatible with BRP.

Good setting, yes. One, not necessarily. BRP has always had, historically, three popular settings connected to it: Glorantha, the Lovecraft mythos and the Moorcock multiverse. These are now split between MRQ and BRP, with Lankhmar and Slaine added as bonuses to MRQ. And produced by Chaosium, not necessarily. Chaosium's license agreement clearly states that they are interested in distributing products made by third parties. There is no reason to think an independent publisher will stop supporting a setting just because it is independent. And this you should know well, since you are playtesting episode 2 of my setting I see no reason why outside submissions should be of lower quality than the old supplements made by in-house writers. Should, say, Sandy Petersen or Ken Rolston send in a manuscript, would Dustin or Charlie turn them over? (okay, please let us dream about these things really happening)

Bad naming maybe. But BRP has a tradition behind it. Experienced gamers already know what BRP is. Just say "Basic because it is the system that CoC or SB builds on" and you are highlighting its qualities.