Mechashef

As the person who caused this “debate”, I apologise to any that I upset or offended. I believe that MRQ is definitely a variation of BRP/RQ, not a variation of D&D. However I also believe that a couple of the places where it has diverged from RQ have given it a more D&D feel. I played D&D and AD&D many years ago (though RQ was the first system I played), but then didn’t touch it for many years. A few years ago when I started plundering online resources for scenario ideas, I came across the newer versions of D&D. Perhaps the most noticeable change to someone casually reading through D&D scenarios was the introduction of feats. I was involved in the MRQ playtest when Legendary Abilities were proposed. Regardless of where the idea was originally developed, and whether people think they are required in BRP, they certainly give a D&D flavour. I personally had no bad experience with the MRQ playtest (other than it being quite chaotic, but that is understandable), and believe that the MRQ resources can be quite useful to BRP as they can be converted without too much trouble. MRQ does certainly seem to have been influenced by D&D, but of course is still, at its core, based on the BRP ruleset.

However I did find it rather sad that RuneQuest 3 had very little to do with Runes. I created a modification to Sorcery where I had a Runic Lore skill. I assigned one or more of the Gloranthan Runes to each spell (for example Palsy was Death and Stasis, Cast Back was Magic and Moon, Apprentice Bonding was Mastery and Man). Every 5% of Runic Lore taught the character understanding of one more Rune. However, if you understood one of a pair of Power runes, it would take 10% to learn the other one of the pair. Understanding the Runes, didn't teach you the spells, you still needed to learn the spells (some combinations of Runes were used by multiple spells). Runic Lore was a Knowledge skill. If the skill increase was gained by studing under a teacher then only the Runes known by that teacher could be taught. If it was increased through study of ancient texts, then other Runes could be learnt. When a character improved their Runic Lore skill, I (as GM) always had the final say as to which Runes they could gain understanding of. Naturally Infinity (used mainly for Immortality) was on the generally restricted list. The system had its issues, but my players liked it because it put the Runes back into Runequest. I've always been a bit of a b*stard as a GM, and certainly no character is going to make it to Priest or Runelord status without a high Cult Lore skill and Shaman require a high Spirit Lore skill, so the Runic Lore skill requirement didn't disadvantage sorcerers (Wizards in my camaign)

To avoid the horrid images of mages and characrters relying on dodge fighting naked, I always allowed the first (STR+CON)/2 enc points to not impact on skills (except iirc swimming)

Ahhh The D&D influenced game with the name of RuneQuest.

Over the years I have seen a few products claimed (by some people) to be RQ4. Exactly which one are you looking at?

Another very good technique

There is a table in RQ3 (I think) that converts between 3D6 and 2D6+6.

RQ1 & 2 had INT (and SIZ) of 3D6. I think the reason for changing twofold. First, there are some creatures that have intelligence much less than humans. An INT of 2D6 gives an average of 7, but you would still get quite a few humans with an INT of 7 or less. The maximum of 12 would be higher than the human average. By making human INT 2D6+6, it makes creatures with sub-human intelligence really sub-human. Second, in RQ3 there is the concept of fixed INT. Some creatures have a fixed value for INT. Typically these are animals and ones like worms might have an INT of 1. Sheep have 4, dogs 5 and chimps 7. Though RQ3 points out that fixed INT is not the same as normal sentient INT, it is nice that the dumbest human still has a higher rating than a dog (Obviously the authors never met my cousins).

These are not just normal giant spiders, but they may be of interest. They are from RQ3, but shouldn't be hard to convert. Note that the Web Mummy isn't a spider, but is created a Necronea Eye Spider.pdf Necronea.pdf Web Mummy.pdf

When it comes to creating creatures, I follow two policies: For creatures that exist or did once exist, I generally try to make them as accurate as possible. For fantasy creatures, such as your giant spiders, I decide how tough I want them to be. Approximately how many HP and how much damage they will do. How fast and intelligent etc. I will then mess about with STR, SIZ and CON to get it to around my desired figure. To me, gameplay is the important thing. As I've written before, the dimensions of the creature are generally just descriptions - though obviously common sense prevails. If you are interested in gaint spiders, I have created a couple of "species" that I can post if you want. They are not just normal gaint spiders, but have some special abilities.

As an old Squad Leader and then Advanced Squad Leader player, I can confirm that there is a point where trying to make things too realistic becomes too much trouble. I, like many other people have experimented with breaking SIZ down into multiple stats. Like most other people I know that have tried it, I eventually decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.

As I see it you have three choices: Go out, catch a bunch of hobgoblins and weigh them. Refer to someone else's work who has determined/decided how much they weigh. Make it up. It is your game. I'm sure there aren't many players who will storm out of your game ranting that you are an idiot because your hobgoblins weigh 190lbs instead of 210lbs. Seriously though, for hobgoblins, I could suggest two ideas. You want them bigger than humans. Does that mean: Simply slightly bigger or On average bigger, but with the same maximum (i.e the biggest humans are the same as the biggest hobgoblins). For option A, why don't you simply give them a SIZ of 2D6+8 or 2D6+9. You could also do something similar for STR (3D6+2 or 3D6+3) For option B, you could try 2D4+10 and perhaps also adjust STR (perhaps 2D6+6)

A good question that perhaps doesn't have a good answer. I'll give you one an answer that is based on the write-up of giants in RQ (Which grow up to 16m tall). Can your giant lift its own weight? Many GMs would use the Resistance table, with STR as the active and SIZ as the passive. If your giant has a SIZ of 40 and a STR of 40 then it would have a 50% chance of lifting its own weight. Note that following this logic, the average human has less than a 50% chance of lifting their own weight :-( If your giant has a SIZ of 40 and a STR of 15, then it would have no hope of succeeding, and btw, unless you come up with a special spot rule, many humans would be able to beat the giant in an arm wrestle. So yes, I would also scale up the SIZ. That makes giants really dangerous. I’ve always loved RQ giants. A 16m tall giant is really scary. A 2m tall human would come about halfway to its knee. It can be really fun for characters to explore a house built on that sort of scale!

I've done a fair bit of work on this type of thing. In my campaign I created stats for a whole lot of real prehistoric Australian animals (Carnifex, Diprotodon, Megalania, Demon Duck of Doom etc). I have also created quite a few fictitious beasties too. I still work off mass. In game terms, mass affects HP and SR. Physical size is a description. How much do you think your giant spider will weigh? As much as a deer, horse, a hippo, an elephant? Use a resource (perhaps wiki) to determine the weight of your real, similar mass creature) and then use the SIZ table to get some idea of the value for SIZ. Even for humanoids, the same thing applies. How heavy is your goblin? Use that to work out SIZ. Height is just a description. As an example, in games where I’ve used elves and dwarves, I’ve messed with the SIZ values. In the BRP manual, elves have a SIZ of 2D4+4, while dwarves have 1D4+4. That is not how I think of these two races. My elves are lithe and shorter than humans, so 2D4+4 is reasonable, but my dwarves are shorter than elves but very stocky. I find 1D4+4 to be way too low. I actually use 2D4+6 for their SIZ.

It is only fair to give credit where credit is due. I've spent heaps of time looking at the EQ3 SIZ table and the only conclusion I could come up with was that it was "odd". Once you told me about the SIZ + 8 equals double the mass, it made sense. There are still errors in the official table (as you have pointed out), and it is debatable how well the SIZ ranges given for various real creatures actually represent the weights of those creatures, but that is not the fault of the table itself. I had created my own modification of the official table, but have dropped it in favour of yours. When are you going to put it into the downloads section?

Take a look at: http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/basic-roleplaying/1368-brp-siz-table-metric-corrected-2.html Post number 15 is the best SIZ table I've seen for BRP.

Try page 296 (from memory). My understanding about SIZ is that is primarily indicates mass, not height, which may be causing you some confusion.

OMG! An empire of black wearing, depressed and angst ridden citizens! What have I unleashed! Their suicide squads are a bit unusual. They never get out of their own barracks!

How about a campaign based around medieval Europe (or perhaps Roman Empire) attempting to colonise parts of the Americas? The campaign could be against the Indians, or Aztecs, or Maya or Inca. My own campaign is based around a Highish medieval empire colonising a land inspired by Mythic Australia. The colony is used as a prison by the Emopire, but there are also many free settlers. The PCs often work as bounty hunters, chasing down escaped convicts. Chaos is a major enemy (obviously like Glorantha). The empire recognises that everyone has at least some Chaos in them, and believes that identical twins are those people who have the least Chaos in them (because they are identical). When Identical twins are born, they are taken to the capital, trained, and when they reach 12 put through tests. Their performance in these tests determines which government jobs they will receive (including the position of Twin Emperors). Some die during the testing. One of the PCs is a twin whose brother died during the testing. He is also deemed to have failed the testing. btw. The main campaign area is bordered by: North: A dried up inland sea (like some of the salt flats in Australia) dominated by lizard (goanna) people who sail the Salt Flats in magical wheeled sailing ships. They capture people hunting for the famed opals, taking them back to their main citadel, never to be seen again. East: An immense swamp, mainly inhabited by nomadic frog people who live in family groups. Each family group builds a house on the back of a domesticated behemoth. They don’t take kindly to outsiders hunting for the prized black pearls from the giant swamp clams. South: An area of sea where the islands move about. The natives (based on the Lapita culture) are usually friendly, but some are cannibals. While it is possible for outsiders to navigate through the Sea of Islands, only members of one of the native cults know the proper rituals that will help them to navigate to a specific island. West: A huge mountain chain inhabited by Incan inspired dwarves. They don’t generally live underground, but inhabit mountain valleys where they grow potatoes and sacrifice people to mountain spirits. Some people are sacrificed to the sun god by incinerating them with giant lenses. They also practice a local martial art based on TaeKwon-do. After all, if you are as short as a dwarf, a martial art that incorporates jumping is probably a good choice :-) If you read through to here, you have probably been pointing out to yourself, where I got each idea from. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve probably never had an original Role Playing idea.

I've never come across that one. Any cool creatures in it? I did find those stats quite useful. I actually liked Griffin island and (hang my head in shame) Eldarad. I never actually ran or played either, but used bits. In particular the powerfulish sorcerers from both proved useful to give people an idea of what sorcerers were capable of.

Not as such that I am aware of. However, various supplements have new creatures, and some have quite a reasonable number. The Land of Ninja and Vikings supplements both contain many new creatures. I can recommend both of those products. Troll Pack, or one of the other troll based supplements also had quite a few. Various web sites have collections of monsters. The wiki associated with this site has some good ones. the RuneQuest 3 Yahoo group also has some (mainly by me - I like to create creatures but am not that great at it, but there are others).

Not your fault at all. I have been involved with RQ for about 27 years and tend to forget about MRQ, which is really rather stupid as I was involved in the initial playtesting of it and was invited into the cutdown playtest group but declined because I didn't like where it was going. I believe so. I haven't seen them as I own RQ3, but apparently they are direct copies of RQ3. Take a look at my original post. That indicates what generally needs changing. It isn't hard. I actually find the difference in Movement values to be the most annoying, but that is only because I like it to feel right, and the BRP movement values don't. A more sane person wouldn't worry about it so much.

Oops! I assumed he meant the Craetures book from RQ3 and the Gloranthan bestiary! :-( In that case, just ignore wht I wrote

I have a similar suggestion to Thalaba. Shift the difficulty rating of the skill check one level in their favour. A skilll attempt that is an Easy Action for a human becomes an Automatic Action. A skilll attempt that is an Average Action for a human becomes an Easy Action. A skilll attempt that is a Difficult Action for a human becomes an Average Action. I suppose the issue id what happens to actions that are Impossible for Humans. I would suggest that at the GM's discretion, a particular task that is impossible for humans may become a Difficult action, but there are some tasks that may still be impossible. An example that I just made up (I have no idea about your material so this is probably of very little use). Your little rat man needs to field repair the high tech energy weapon cannon of the tank. He identifies that a timing device that delays part of the firing process (only by a few milliseconds) has burnt out. Without the part, the gun can't be used. If the cables are connected without the delaying device, the gun will explode when fired. He comes up with the idea of simply inserting a cable that is long enough that it will take the required number of milliseconds for the energy to travel along it. Cutting a cable that is the right length might be an impossible task for a human, but a difficult task for the rat person.

Mostly Yes. The RQ3 Creatures book is available for purchase for BRP and hasn't been changed at all! There are a few things to look at: Move ratings are expressed differently between the two settings but is easy enough to fudge. I think the RQ3 system is clearer than BRP. RQ3 has MP while BRP has PP. Different name for the same thing. Skills are different and there are skills that are the same but have different names. Once again, the conversion is easy. The magic systems that come with BRP are taken from other members of the family, not RQ. However, the RQ3 magic book is also available for BRP. I'm not sure of any changes, but I'd expect them to be minimal.