RosenMcStern

Great! My comment was poorly worded and probably gratuitous. I'm sorry if it caused anyone to infer I didn't think the rules were tested. I guess it was carryover on my part from the...looseness...of some of the MRQ1 rules.

Your confirmation of testing supports my point: MRQII is a coherent system that works well -- the fact that it is tested to work well in play makes it an easier (IMHO) platform to customize than BRP is.

As a matter of fact, I was not referring to any of your comments but the many complaints that appeared here and on the Mongoose forums. I think that Matt Sprange has admitted that MRQ 1 failed to achieve some of its objectives, so some of these complaints had, nevertheless, some reasons to exist.

I would not say, however, that MRQ 2 is better to customize than BRP. MRQ still lacks some basic rules for several aspects, and even if some BRP combinations have not been tested together, there are several caveats in the rules against combinations of options that are considered incompatible. Do not forget that BRP as a whole is certainly more tested than MRQ2. So far.

Yeah, the ones mentioned above are the two really viable alternatives. Maybe you can add ScreenMonkey to the list, but it has less features. I have tried both and both are good. Rptools modules are free, but when Foen finishes his work on the BRP module for Fantasy Grounds, the latter will outmatch rptools, so maybe getting accustomed to the FG interface in the meantime could be a good time investment.

You can customize FG and all of its modules to your houserules if you want. It involves a little bit of XML programming but nothing hard.

Not even all the gloranthaphiles...

But HQ has its own fans outside Glorantha. It is just another game that provides another kind of game experience. And it is strongly recommended: you do not really know what rpg is until you have read some of this materials by Robin D. Laws.

And, SDavies...

Yes, they tested it. 50% of what you see in the book has been changed after feedback from Deleriad, Simon Bray and me (among others). They considered playtest experience very carefully.

The time has come for you, True Believers, to turn all of your Good Intentions into fact. You can now go and run official demos of BRP products at conventions!

Our (and Chaosium's) publishing partner Cubicle 7, the renowned publisher of Doctor Who, Starblazer Adventures and soon Tolkien's The One Ring, has officially asked people to join its demo team, Department 7. You may notice that Basic Roleplaying and BRP Rome are among the products that need demo teams. This is your opportunity! If you really want to Spread the Word, please contact Angus Abranson through the forum announcement below:

http://cubicle7.clicdev.com/f/index.php?trk=cubicle7&showtopic=1296

You can also join the Department 7 group on Facebook.

I will manage to provide scenarios for a BRP Rome demo to Angus ASAP. Dragon Lines will be among the demo-able products in a few weeks, too. In the meantime, do not miss this opportunity and sign up!

Thanks to all who will join,

Paolo Guccione

Alephtar Games

Well, I suppose that I know

Basically, you have three ethnicities (German/Danish for the Invaders, and Balts or Estonian, which are different. for the natives), so there are sort of ethnic backgrounds. But since character generation is done with BRP and not with MRQ any longer, the ethnic differences are only relevant for the spoken language and the magic available. Skills depend on professions. Of course, as the Balts/Esthonians are barbarians, they have a very different selection And the professions available to the two groups are very different. No RuneQuest -like background is present, although you can easily adapt the system.

Why wish to have only one publisher doing everything? Competition is always a good thing. If two companies develop and support two similar systems, both will be stimulated to make something better each time the other one comes out with a good product. Now BRP must take a breath and develop a reply to RuneQuest II.

And please note that the systems are actually three if you add OpenQuest to the equation.

If you are a RQ3 fan, you will appreciate it big time. It contains improved rules for a lot of things (closing, shields, etc.), a combat system that fixes the problem of endless combat, and other small fixes over RQ3. But it also allows you to "downgrade" parts of RQ3 to a simpler version in a modular way if your like. You can take away Strike Ranks, Hit Locations, separate attack and parry skills, etc. Or you can keep them. Personally, I now play without Strike Ranks and with unified weapon attack/parry skills, and I feel much better. but it is a matter of taste.

If you have access to other AH / Chaosium publications, check the Glorantha books (Elder Secrets, Gloranthan Bestiary). They have a lot of other templates. Trollpack has lots of giant insects that are really useful for the horror, pulp or sci-fi genre, other than fantasy.

I don't like having Grimoires as seperate skills, the old system of having each spell as it's own skill is a personal prefrence of mine.

Please note that the "One spell, one skill" philosophy works well only with the experience check improvement system. If you use improvement rolls for character development, having each spell as a skill makes sorcerers progress too slowly.

However, as Pete said, the rules explicitly allow to have grimoires that contain one spell. In a low magic world, you can have all grimoires be spell scrolls.

I voted Rodinia. At the very least this will make BRP popular in Moscow.

Also, please note that Caldaia is not a marketable name in Italy.

Two points to remark here, while we are at it.

Simon did not remark it in the above description, but Vow POW is the equivalent of Pact POW in RQ Guilds rather than Dedicated POW in the core MRQ 1. That is, it reduces your maximum allotment of Magic Points, not your POW. In the above example, Simon the Simple's Luck roll would be 75% all the time, while his available Magic Points would go down. This has the side effect of decreasing the pious man's ability to cast forbidden magic, which uses Magic Points to fuel spells.

Another important point you may have noticed, and that is worth noting here, is that each POW point dedicated in a vow allows you to gain one spell, not one spell magnitude like in MRQ1. This is specified in a box IIRC. Note that this may lead to some clumsiness if using MRQ1, which is balanced with "one POW per magnitude" in mind. Now that MRQ II is available, I strongly recommend that you use the description for divine spells of the second edition, which is balanced for this kind of model.

It is a problem that surfaced during playtesting. Some manoeuvers could be abused. But in actual play, it did not show up so frequently, and I noticed that some limitations were put in after playtesting. So there is no great danger of this becoming boring.

Besides, it is clear that more manoeuvers may exist. Remember that each weapon type has its own, so additional weapons should add additional manoeuvers. I cannot remember if the entangle manoeuver was in, for instance. Also consider that martial arts styles could provide more manoeuvers. And the EWF martial artists have plenty of peculiar combat techniques.

Incidentally, Dragon Lines has dozens of MA techniques that could work well as MRQ2 manoeuvers.

Ummm, you got that very slightly wrong.

..

So it is quite possible to have the damage of your attack parried, but use an offensive CM to mess up the defender in another way. Just as its possible that a defender is wounded as he applies a defensive CM to discommode his foe. Its quite sophisticated, and allows a lot of real life situations occur in play.

I knew. It is just that this happens in some rather unfrequent cases. Basically, when you critical against a successful parry, you usually apply the Bypass Parry manoeuver to hit even if your opponent parries. But you still have the option of doing no damage and applying a combat manoeuver if this is tactically more effective (knockback into the chasm is a good example). Similarly, if you critically parry and your weapon is small, you would usually want to use "improve parry" to block all damage (the infamous "parry the poleaxe with a dagger case"), but you can also take the damage in and use a defensive manoeuver to disable your opponent instead - there are cases where this is more advisable.

The point is that these are extreme cases and someone could be scared by the complexity if you mention them in a "please summarize this for me" description. It is not complicate, instad. The average result is that if you succeed and your opponent fails, then you do something very nasty to your foe - either offensively or defensively - and there are several pages of nasty options to choose from. In the remaining 5-10% of non-average cases (criticals, different sizes of weapons, etc), the rules allow for hundreds of permutations that represent peculiar but realistic events. All this without introducing even one special case - it is all covered by the two basic rules: level of success, and size of weapon.

But let us not forget the simple but effective "trip opponent" option. The classic "Small quick halfling with dagger vs. big clumsy ogre with huge club" will end up very often with the ogre lying prone on the ground after missing an attack.

Very simple. It is as it has been explained here: to overcome your opponent, you need to achieve one level of success more than him (success vs. failure, critical vs. success, etc.). If level of success is equal, then damage is blocked if the weapons are of the same size, or passes through (partially or totally) if the attacker's weapon is larger. With the exception of the latter case, if you hit you also get a manoeuver (two if you critical), which means that when you hit you often disable your opponent.

But the real fun part is that you get a manoeuver also when your parry is one level of success better than the attack. If you attack a swordsmaster and miss, you are in trouble...

Now, when will the $% book arrive at a shop I can reach?

You used a Resurrect spell for these smilies? I now realize that all my complaints about POW loss for non-permanent gains were just silly.

This is a real example of a wasted divine spell!

Okay, two weeks of posts were sacrificed to the Gods of Open Source. Do we get something in exchange for the sacrifice? Divine magic? A skill? A special ability?

We could try and add a new section to this site: Success stories.

Let me add my voice to the praising crowd.

I've seen a couple amateur programmers code circles around a professional software engineer.

Hackers are all amateurs, and it is well known that they code better than professional programmers.

Only the current incarnation of BRP uses opposed rolls for combat. Not ever MRQ does so.

Er, Loz and Pete have not stressed this fact so far to avoid premature complaints, but in fact MRQ2 has a combat system that is very similar to BRP - with the addition of manoeuvers and a couple of other touches of genius.

The point is that there are two kinds of 'opposed rolls': the one that only checks if you have different levels of success and considers all equal levels of success as ties, and the one that looks for a winner even in case both contestants achieve the same level of success. BRP uses the first method for everything, including combat, with the second method as an option if you like - but an option that cannot be applied to combat. Note that a tie here means that the defender wins - either he was not hit, or he parried.

Pendragon and HeroQuest use the second approach. Contestants never tie there, unless they roll the same number.

MRQ1 had serious existential doubts about whether it wanted to use method one or method two. MRQ2 has grown up and chooses option 1, at least for combat.

So, if anything roll high is unfairly biased, not roll low.

I fail to see how this should be unfair. The high skill character is supposed to have the upper hand, after all. Favouring the better one is realistic, not unfair.

I was a Navy man and I know how evil the American military isn't.

You have to come to terms with the fact that the majority of Earth's population has a very different opinion.

...killing natives for their stuff would be sort of obsolete.

Erm, calling genocide "obsolete for lack of necessity" hints at the fact that you would find it morally acceptable if the resources were scarce. I hope I misunderstood your statement.

It could be fun to have to similar, but not identical Earths now able to interact with each other.

DC comics needed 12 comic books (and George Perez) to get rid of this kind of "fun" when it went out of control.

If I were to try to do a 1 page flyer (probably folded into an A5 booklet) I would take a very different approach of learning through trying.

You are cold, tired and scared. It feels like you have been running for hours since THEY broke in through the door.

...

I've just dashed that off with no real care and attention. It can be done but I'm not entirely sure when it would ever be useful.

Exactly. I can find only one glitch in all this.

Like the "Go fight the bear who eats the old woman's sheep" example in the old BRP booklet, this example is suitable, but hardly exciting.

Try and imagine another example with, this time, Bobbi-wan the Jedi Padawan who has to infiltrate the spaceport tavern and discovers that he is not facing smugglers but Siths. The dog is not a dog but a small Droid, and he is not trying to avoid being listened, but sensed using the Force. Or it might be Purple Sonya the swordswoman who is crawling along a sewer in the city of Shaddi-zar, and meets the carrion-eating snakes of Seth. The situation is similar, but it gives you the idea that you are there do something *cool*, not to avenge the Granny's sheep.