Mechashef

Thank you Mr Middleton.

Have the statistics for the beasties in the BRP Creatures book been converted from RQ3 to BRP? i.e Changes to Move, MP to PP, skill names, magic etc? Thanks

You will probably find that most of the people who came to BRP via RuneQuest may consider the idea of not having specials to be heretical! The different flavours of the BRP system seem to have their own emphasis. RQ is probably the most complex of the family and its players seem to like things like criticals, specials and fumbles. CoC (for example) is often more about the story and many people who came to BRP via it aren't excited about special results.

Two issues: One, as already mentioned, Criticals should beat specials, which should beat normal successes. Related to this I like the possibility of getting specials or better, which your suggestion seems to preculde. Two, many people don't like doing the maths. Your Skill is 72, and you roll a 47. How much did you succeed by? I don't have any problems with maths, and I'm sure you don't either, but a lot of people I've gamed with other the years do have a problem with it. I don't mean that they can't do it, just that they don't like doing it. Of course some people reply that the math is easy and we are just dumbing down the game. Of course we aren't, because adding the rule actually adds to the maths burden, and the game is supposed to be fun.

That is probably the most common houserule in RQ3. Dodge as written was terrible. Having it reduce the level of success is a much better option and has been used in every RQ3 game I've seen.

You have: "Degree of Success: Extended Contests:", but what you don't show, though it easy to derive, is Degree of Success for Simple (i.e non-extended) contests. In cases where it is important to determine the winner, but the degree of success is not important: Both players roll, and the one with the best level of success wins. A critical beats a special, a success, a fail or a fumble A special beats a success, a fail or a fumble A success beats a fail or a fumble A fail beats a fumble If both players obtain the same level of success (both roll a critical, or both roll a special or both roll a success) then the player who rolls the highest wins. In cases where it is important to determine the winner and the degree of success is important: This would be the table you had in your post, except without the numbers in brackets. I know what I wrote is very easily derivable from your post, but I think it would be good to state it explicitly as things that seem obvious to us who have been around the system for a while can often be easily misunderstood by newbies.

The RQ3 size table is pretty odd and seems illogical. I have a pdf I wrote on SIZ a year or so ago. Have you given any thought on redoing the entire table?

A 13 year old EMO girl?

I thought it might have been, but didn't really know. Thanks

Yep. The Demon Duck of Doom is my favourite. I've seen the skull of one of these at my local museum. Nasty looking creatures.

Threedeesix's thread about Chaos & Catacombs reminded me of a creature I created a long time ago. I'll admit that I only created it because I was in a whimsical mood and thought just about every game system needed a creature with a stupid name (I blame alcohol). It doesn't really fit in my campaign and anywhay isn't as nasty as the real Demon Duck of Doom which is used in my campaign. Still, it is a usable creature and is guaranteed to make your characters run :-) I give you the Dire Rhea! Enjoy Mechashef Rhea, Dire.pdf

Hawk Pandas

I think the important thing is not who is legally correct, but who has the money and interest to fight for their rights. Didn't the first edition of the AD&D god book (Dieties & Demigods?) contain Cthulhu but later verions ommitted it because of complaints (by Lovecraft's estate, or whoever owned the rights to his works)? I suppose, though Tolkein really brought the word Orc to public awareness, he couldn't claim to have created it.

Thanks for the great work. I second the request to put your Siz table in the downloads section and (or at least a reference to it) in the Wiki.

As has been mentioned before, it can be important to consider some of the earlier authors against the expectations and standards of the time. I love Lovecraft's stories, but by todays standards they are sometimes quite nasty racist pieces of work. The good aspects of his work has been taken and resused by more recent authors so it is easy to overlook those parts. I also find (and ducks for cover) "The Lord of The Rings" to be poorly written by today's standards. Don't get me wrong, it is my second favourite series/book of all time (The Hobbit is my favourite) and I first read it when I was about 10. However, for many people his writing is hard to read. I know several people who have started to read it but given up. I suspect LoTR is the fantasy book that is the one that is most frequently given up on. Some of his work is inspired by mythology that was probably not known by most of his readers when the work was published, but is now realtively well known by modern reads. And I really really wish he had hadn't tried to write poetry.

Approximately what diameter were these clay balls?

You are correct. It is also a Japanese name. Kishi Nobusuke was prime minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. I wonder if he was two faced?

Actually the Kishi is not from Australian mythology. My campaign is inspired by (not based on) mythological Australia. While many of the creatures do have their basis in mythology from this continent, there are many others that I have made up or borrowed from other mythologies. I see Kishis as being urban creatures. Like rats, regardless of where they originated, they would follow the flow of civilisation. I created the Kishi years ago and they were simply known as Hair Hags (I find coming up with names is often the hardest part of creature creation). However, I recently came across the Kishi from Angolan mythology. Kishi (Folklore) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia It wasn't a perfect match, but was close enough so I borrowed the name.

Ok. I have others that are not Australian based, and haven't been posted to the RQ3 Yahoo group. When I've got time, I'll tidy them up and post some.

Thanks, I shall. Until your reply, this creature seems to have sunk without a trace, so I had decided not to post any more . This was the first creature I'd converted so I din't really know until that point exactly what the differences were. There are some: HP for locations. RQ uses .16 for the most fragile locations compared to 1/5 for BRP. Skills are different Skill Categories are different. Some weapons have different stats Magic is quite different, and this is the BRP area I'm least familiar with. There may be some others that I can't immediately think of.

I would like to express my thanks for the work that Jason and others have done on BRP. Looking back over the various threads, it is not uncommon to see ones about unclear rules. I would hate for Jason and the others who have worked on this product to get a negative impression. People don't write in about the hundreds of pages of well written rules, only the very few poorer ones. Mistakes creep in to everything and BRP is no exception. Of course you can't make everyone happy, and while "every one" knows that the various games that made up BRP are all quite similar, I'm sure Jason and the others are very aware of how different they can actually be. Trying to reconcile the different "versions" of the rules must have been a nightmare. Thanks

A character in a RQ3 campaign I used to play in had an intelligent sword. It was essentially just another form of character. It had INT and POW, and at the start of each combat the sword would attampt to overcome the wielder's MP on the resistance table. If it succeeded then it fought the battle, using its attack and parry skills. Just like a normal character it would get experience rolls for combat success, thus increasing its combat ability. It could communicate via a form of mindspeech, knew (and could learn more) magic. It could also gain knowledge skills, and as it had been around for a long time was pretty good at history and general world lore. If the character won the resistance roll, he had control and his combat skills were used, but the sword still gave some benefits (such as he could direct it to cast spells). It outlasted a few wielders, and was last seen impaled in the heart of an otherwise powerfully regenerating demon - the player has going overseas and it was a good way for him to finish - as long as the sword is in the demon it is effectively dead.

A couple more things (my previous post was getting too long). A very minor difference between the RQ3 and BRP rules is that in RQ3 it kicks in starting at SIZ 21 compared to SIZ 20 for BRP. Not that this will have any real effect. However in both system this rule wouldn't apply to the average "Small Donkey" in the Wiki (by MurfinMS) as it has a STR of 19. To further complicate matters, the errata for RQ3 has a completely different take on the issue. It reads: This seems closer to the BRP rule, and I don't think it makes game sense. If we have an average horse carrying 13 SIZ points (perhaps a naked average human) what happens? Fatigue points are calculated normally (STR + CON) The average horse has 42FP (28.5 + 13) round up SIZ 13 is 77-83kg. If I take to lower figure and divide by two, that gives ENC of 39. The horse has 3FP. If we add any equipment, including clothing and armour it is going to get worse. The average horse being ridden by an average human will probably start off being around 0FP. You might find that resonable, or perhaps not. Of course it can be argued that the rule is intended for pack animals, not for ridden ones, but though I'm not a horsey person, I don't think that 77kg is a lot to carry for a horse - or is it? Note that one other effect of the errata, and probably a good one, is that bigger creatures can carry proportionally more. Thus in my campaign the domesticated behemoths which the swamp frog people build their homes on can carry heaps!

I think you are right. It doesn't make sense. That section appears to have been taken from RQ3, but to have fallen victim to a fumble. The section (in BRP) reads First a couple of observations: The chart on P26 is titled "Character SIZ Chart", not "Size Comparison Chart" The chart only goes up to SIZ 25, which is not especially useful as an average horse (probably the most likely creature for these rules to be used for) has a STR of 28.5. The weight ranges for SIZ values on that table overlap considerably and have a huge range (SIZ 25 goes from 121kg to 250kg). The rule doesn't specify if you are to use the lower value, the average, or the higher one. The Comparative Sizes Table on P296 may be a better bet, especially as it is very similar to the RQ3 SIZ table, but unlike that one , it doesn't detail every SIZ value. It also has the same issue that each SIZ point covers a range. I'd suggest taking the higher value. The real problem however is that, in my opinion, the 3rd sentence of the rule just doesn't make sense. Note that RQ3 has a different 3rd sentence: (Italics added by me). As an example, I'll use a horse. The average STR for a horse is 28.5, so I'll use 29. Unfortunately that value does not appear on either SIZ table, but my trusty RQ3 book tells me that SIZ 29 is 308 to 335kg. I'll take the high end of the range: 335kg. Divide that by 3 (and rounding up) gives 112. Thus my horse has 112 Fatigue Points. Does this help?

I tend to agree with you. I find the fatigue system from RQ3 to be great in concept and quite intuitive, but in practice quite cumbersome. However a couple of the players in my campaign (who also play Advanced Squad Leader - which probably explains a lot) quite like it so we use it. On the bright side, they did convince me to write up some simple rules for single vs double edged swords and also curved vs straight ones. Overall, I'm probably one of the rare people who are happy (in general) to see less of RQ2 in BRP. I tend to think that compared to RQ3, RQ2 is very over rated. People tend to fondly remember the good things about it but overlook the things that RQ3 does better. I was disappointed to see that BRP seems to use MOV values more similar (and if anything worse) than RQ2's wacky ones instead the, in my opinion, better ones from RQ3.