Thot

So you'd actually say standard BRP magic and sorcery would suffice?

That is a beautiful and plausible idea, but not what I'd want to do with this. When you are an evil overlord and have conquered hundreds or thousands of worlds, each with their own type of magic, their own strengths and weaknesses, and their own strategy and tactics, then I would assume that neither casualties nor raffinesse are terribly important. Most likely, the initial assault will not even be carried out by the Emperor himself, but some under-underling, who will of course be sacked and turned into an undead as reward for his first failure. They will just be used to roll over an equally equipped foe with superior numbers, and the reconnaissance they do will probably usually be "reconnaissance by main task force". Which has, of course the advantage that our heroes actually have a chance to figure it all out and save the day, the week, the month, possibly even liberate other peoples from subjugated worlds and that we have clear-cut enemies. It seems I will have to do my own magic system to at least offer some fun counter to modern military weaponry for a fantasy civilization?

I just did a basic calculation based on a few known weapons from the BGB: Name Dmg Rng J Avrg Dam MinDmg Max Dmg J/AvrgDmg J/MinDmg J/MaxDmg Pistol, Heavy 1D10+2 15 2000 7,5 3 12 267 667 167 Revolver, Light 1D6 15 1000 3,5 1 6 286 1000 167 Revolver, Medium 1D8 25 1500 4,5 1 8 333 1500 188 Rifle, Assault 2D6+2 90 1800 9 4 14 200 450 129 Rifle, Sniper 2D10+4 250 3600 15 6 24 240 600 150 From these results, it seems that about 150 Joules of muzzle energy are 1 point of maximum damage, with numbers being a lot less clear for average and minimum numbers.

Hah, that would be easy, wouldn't it. Unfortunately, that is not an option for what I want to do. As I wrote, this is supposed to be military SF in tone (even though the opponents are fantasy-sourced), and for that, I cannot take away the players' and their allies' most important tools. (I mean, imagine that, you build your character as a soldier proficient in firearms, and then those very skills are made useless by GM fiat. Not cool.) Yup, and AAA tanks like the Gepard or the Shilka will shred anything flying with fantasy tech or magic, like dragons or cloudships, into pieces even through layers of clouds at night. Looking at the two actual magic systems in the BGB (magic and sorcery), there are a few things that could help the invaders, such as invisibility (which I would rule to protect from radar and infrared in addition to normal sight) teleportation (firearms are basically useless when the enemy melee fighters teleport between you and your allies, as any shot will also hit your own people) Summoned creatures (many of which are immune or less vulnerable to firearms) But I have a feeling that with these three alone, it could get a bit dull for the players, so more options would be nice. As the evil invaders have conquered many (as in hundreds or thousands of) worlds, their servants may use various different magic systems. Ah,you mean a superpower-based "magic" system? I'll have to look into that. I know GURPS and Hero systems can do it that way, but I haven't studied BRP's rules options for such a thing yet. Thanks for that tip! Those are very cool ideas! Obviously.

Thanks, I own the BGB (and various setting-specific BRP stuff). My question is more geared towards magic systems recommendations that would even the odds a bit. Specifically because I don't want Reign-Of-Fire-like implausibility.

Hm, reading the above... is there a more-or-less direct conversion formula for impact energy in joules to BRP weapon damage? Or a table of some kind?

Well, then I'll have to replace lovecraftian gods with more traditional fantasy-type evil gods. To avoid any confusion: The tone of such a campaign as described in the OP will be more like military SF. You know, MASSIVE military invasion involving plate-armored evil undead fighters, dragons, wizards, and hordes of cannibalistic axe-swinging orc barbarians.

Really? Awesome! Sounds like stuff worth a license... got to check that out, thanks! Edit: From what I can read, no, not all, not even close... though those Laundry Fles seem interesting, they are utterly different stuff. Any suggestions on how to implement such a thing as described in the OP with BRP? Particularly, what magic types are most suited to countering modern weapons technology?

An idea for a campaign (setting) is forming in my mind for which I'd like to read your ideas on how to do it with BRP: It is our modern world of ca. 2016 that, through magically created interdimensional portals, is being invaded by a particularly evil, evil multidimensional fantasy empire - led by a necromancer king, supported by all the types of evil people fantasy has to offer: Orc chieftains, complete with various types of semi-intelligent war beasts, undead of all sorts (of course), evil wizards, demon summoners, dragons, priests of evil gods (who may seem a bit lovecraftian of a more traditional fantasy-evil-god-type), subjugated 'good' people, and so on. Their technology, initially, is at about rennaissance level, but they will have various types of magic at their disposal that still have to select (suggestions welcome) and that should sort of even the odds against a defending world that has tanks, war jetplanes, automatic weapons and all the modern tools at its disposal. The invaders have done this whole "conquer a new world" thing many times before, but of course never against one so advanced. They have about a billion (nine zeroes) warriors at their disposal, from many, many worlds, can resurrect dead with various means and are determined to conquer our world regardless of any initial casualties. What are your thoughts?

Good examples. StarGate would be particularly excellent in my personal opinion, but I believe the franchise is in limbo somehow, with no one being able to make negotiations for it.

The differences between oWoD and Underworld are vast, both in tone and in the origin story. A good license would be something that's currently a TV show, because TV shows are much like RPG campaigns, so that is the easiest port. A good approach would thus be something that is successful on TV currently - or even stuff that is a bit older, but popular with the streaming services.