deleriad

I've just had a read through this. I've played a lot of BRP and a lot of RQII. The two systems actually end up more similar than they look in how they handle moving and acting. To spell things out. Average character in RQII can act 2 or 3 times per round. Call it 3 for convenience. Average BRP character can act once and react once per round. In both systems you can combine a small movement freely with an action. In BRP you can move 5m and act. In RQII you can move up to 8m and act (divided among all your actions.) In BRP say you want to attack someone 5m or less away. The action happens on your DEX rank. In RQII if you want to attack someone 8m or less away then it happens as part of an action. In BRP if you want to attack someone more than 5m away it happens on DEX/2. In RQII if you want to attack someone more than 8m away you have to charge so the attack happens on a future action. In both cases you declare the attack on the character's 'turn' but it happens later in the round. Generally BRP is actually less restrictive with movement than RQII. In BRP you can move half of your full allowance and still act. In RQII, if you want to move more than 8m in a round then you can't take any other actions. As another example. You want to draw your sword, move 5m and then attack. RQII. Action 1. Draw Sword. Action 2 move and attack. BRP. DEX - draw sword. DEX-5 - move and attack. In both cases, the attack happens later in the round than if you didn't need draw the sword.

Although figures on a character sheet don't allow for changes during play. BRP tends to have a lot of situational modifiers and so on that make it relatively common for the skill used to change, e.g multiple parries. FREX, parry skill 63, special chance 13. Second parry of the round (-30) rolls 7. Time to do the maths again. I've found in the past that though it was common practice to put special chances on character sheets that it was not as helpful as I hoped and, sometimes, caused problems. E.g. players would look at the special chance and forget that they had to modify it so you would get me querying it.As in the example above. Player rolls a 12 and says "special parry!" I would then end up starting to figure out what that meant then remember that he had already parried once so 12 would look high for a special. So I would say "are you sure?" and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing we would realise that in fact it wasn't a special because of the modifier but of course the player was so used to seeing 13 as a special that he would instantly spot it on the dice.

Roughly as Phil says. RQII uses a blackjack method for opposed skill contests. If both parties get same level of success then highest roll wins. (Note that if both fail or fumble no one wins). By definition there is no higher number than 95 that can be rolled as a success. Therefore if your skill is 150 vs 70 then what happens is that the highest skill is reduced to 100 and the amount of reduction is taken off the lowest skill. So 150 vs 70 ends up as 100 vs 20. If you don't do that then much of the skill over 100 is effectively wasted. E.g. 130% vs 100% is as near to 50/50 in who wins as you can get. I personally prefer the old RQ2 attacks over 100 rule where, simply, skill over 100 is subtracted from the opponent. So 150 vs 70 ends up as 150 vs 20. Similarly, 150 vs 120 ends up as 130 vs 70 rather than 100 vs 70. It has one annoying problem though: contests with more than 2 people. E.g. if the contest is between 150%, 120% and 70% then under RQII it would be 100 vs 90 vs 20. Under my system it becomes a bit complicated as you have to figure what to reduce the highest skill by. At this point someone is about to start typing "why don't you just calculate who won by most" so I'll simply ask them to read the 102 other threads about the topic of opposed rolls in a roll-under percentile system where the skill can exceed 100. Like democracy, there is no good solution, just the one you prefer to live with.

Actually, yes and no. For humans and equivalents the stats are fairly similar but BRP has a much wider spread. Generally in d20 once stats exceed 20 their progression is very slow. For example a mature, adult red dragon in the d20 srd is STR 33, significantly less than a BRP dragon would be. As long as you bear that in mind you won't go far wrong.

Well there is a general belief though I'm not sure how strong the evidence is that 10,000 hours or 10 years of deliberative practice or experience will see an individual reach their peak ability with a skill or practice of some sort. As wikipedia says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert#Academic_views_on_expertise

I have seen that system. It's not quite the same as 'arithmetical' specials though once you get to 100%. E.g. 100% skill actually only has 18% chance of a special. That's because a roll of 05 would be a critical and 00 would be a fumble. Any dice reading system gets quirky around and over 100%. In BRP skills over 100 end up being quite common because of the *2 Easy system. On any easy skill roll any skill of 50 ends up over over 100. It's a pretty picky issue. It's a similar quirk to using "doubles" for criticals and fumbles. Using doubles is nice and neat but given that 2 of the doubles are 99 and 00 then criticals become a little less common and fumbles become probably too common in proportion to normal failures.

That I think is the crucial point. It's when you're busy doing a load of other stuff in your head, you're chatting, maybe tired, trying to imagine how what's going on in the world in play when you have to spend some time figuring out figures then someone says, hang on a second isn't that X or oh, I forgot to include the bonus/penalty. It's time that takes you out of what's going on. I had started using 1/10th criticals in CoC and then progressed to doubles as "specials" in the mid 90s before I drifted out of gaming. Nowadays I prefer it for its simplicity and speed of use.

The only bitter, dysfunctional family members I've seen are maybe half a dozen on this site and a few extra who got burned on the original, by all accounts, shambolic playtesting of MRQ1. As far as I can see everyone else seems to get along and have a great deal of fun playing all sorts of versions of BRP and RQ. Personally I think for all the things that Mongoose got wrong they did something else great. The original Glorantha 2nd age book is a work of brilliance as were their 2nd age campaigns. For me MRQII does exactly what I want in a BRP game. If Mongoose are sincere about "Wayfarer" and get good authors to work on the setting then I'll be happy to see more high quality material for my gaming.

I don't know, the boards seem reasonably reasonable to me. There's some concern about how compatible "Wayfarer" will be and some bitterness about the ending of Glorantha 2nd age. Other than that the main opinion seems to be wait and see with the people who aren't interested in Glorantha being mildly positive.

I'm frankly surprised at the name change as the system core seemed to be selling well enough with only the Glorantha line not working. My guess would be that they asked to keep the name and lose Glorantha and were told that they could have both or none. The name change alone is probably going to cut book sales in half over the next year as casual players assume that RQ is "dead" and people start offloading the books so they must have been taking a hit on the licence. Given Mongoose's ruthless attachment to the bottom line I can imagine it's distinctly possible that Wayfarer will be effectively stillborn. I hope not but who knows. The basic format (a half-size book with lots of settings) is in theory a good one. I personally hope that Glorantha 2nd age material continues to be published in some form. It's a shame to see the RuneQuest name sink back under but names have a habit of returning.

I started using Hero Points in RQ3 and they've certainly been around for a long time as commonly used house rules in BRP games. I don't like the Fate Points mechanic in BGB - it's both fiddly and obscure. I've recently switched to a static refreshing system of HPs (i.e. PCs get 3 per session to spend) and it works well. What I find interesting and I don't know it it is related is that towards the end of the third year of my (Gloranthan) campaign the PCs have precisely 2 magic items. One javelin that returns to its owner's hands and one plot device spider mask. One PC is also rune-touched by motion. To a large extent it is the use of Hero Points that gives them an advantage over NPCs rather than the accumulation of magic items.

Basically yes. With some caveats. CMs are generated by degrees of success and RQII has two degrees success (critical and normal) while BRP has 3 (critical, special and normal). BRP would make CMs significantly more common than RQII. Other thing to remember is that CMs replace both 'special' results (i.e. criticals) as well as pre-rolled tactics in RQII. This means that you would have to replace combat tactics which are decided before a roll (e.g. hitting to disarm) with tactics which are chosen after a qualifying roll. I reckon you would have to remove those aspects of BRP rules and replace them with CMs. Running them in tandem risks the combat system grinding to a halt. You would also need to decide whether to keep BRPs 3 degrees of success or replace them with the 2 degrees model.

Static defence is significantly different active. It's perfectly possible to use it in BRP but it makes a massive difference. At heart, static defence is better against hordes than active. Also static defence is a linear modifier where as active defence isn't. For example, imagine 75% attack vs 75% parry. At its simplest, to cause damage the attacker needs to make their roll while the defender needs to fail theirs. That means you have 75%*75% = 19% of hitting and doing damage. So to simulate that you need a modifier of -56%. On the other hand, 75% vs 50% is 38% which is a modifier of -37. Trying to convert by eye is basically impossible. As a final example, 50% attack vs 75% parry is 13% chance of success. The other thing to realise is that it often takes as long to calculate modifiers as it does to simply roll extra dice. In SW it's simple enough as you are comparing against a single digit target number while in BRP you might end up having a roll with multiplication as well as then subtracting a defence value. All in all, static defence values can be used but they don't go with the grain of the system.

You appear to be conflating two different arguments here. I was comparing the chance to fumble in different systems. In the OP's system, the fumble chance for someone with 100% skill is 0.25%, while RAW the chance for a fumble for someone with 100% is 1% and using doubles as fumbles the chance for someone to fumble is 2%. The again, if using doubles for crits/fumbles you are using a 1/10ths system rather than the 1/20ths system of BRP RAW. Therefore a crit/fum probably needs to be about 1/2 as powerful as in RAW. I personally wouldn't use doubles for crits in a setting if I routinely expected skills to be 90+ because I think the ratio of crits to fumbles is too low for 90%+. I would also say that the OP's system for crits/fumbles is actually more granular for skills in the 0-100 range than the RAW is with the drawback of the big breakpoint at 101%.

Well the rules as written clearly say that on a skill of 5% your chance of a critical is 1%. Likewise, on a skill of 100 your chance for a fumble is 1%. You can compare the OP's system to your personal house rules but it seems to make more sense to compare it to the actual rules. Using a doubled range on the d20 is one possible answer but as I said, using BRP raw then someone with a skill of 60% performing an easy skill is going to end up as 120% so my take on it is that you would end up messing around with changing the critical and special spread quite frequently. At that point it may be more trouble than it's worth. As for 'hating' doubles as criticals. Again RAW the chance for a fumble with a skill of 100 is 1% (4% fail, 1% fumble) while with doubles it is (3% fail, 2% fumble). You could easily understand that as saying that when someone is that good then a failure usually only occurs because something unusual has happened. Personally, as a GM I don't automatically equate a fumble with incompetence. Sometimes it seems to make more sense that a situational factor occurred: e.g. slipping on a patch of oil just as you took aim. Still and all, I usually only use doubles with new players or non-roleplayers because I have a mild preference for using crits as 1/10th and there's no particularly appealing way to handle skills over 100.

I must admit that when running BRP for new or non-gamers I use doubles as criticals. I tell them that a double is "twice as good or twice as bad" as normal. Personally I don't use the resistance table and I do make extensive use of "blackjack" style opposed skills. One little quirk with OP's system is what happens at high and low values. E.g. if your chance of success is 5% then your chance of a critical is actually 1/400 (5%*5%) rather than standard BRP of 1/100. That's not a bad thing but it is a thing. Note that with *2 modifiers it is actually quite easy for a starting BRP character to have a skill of 120 or 140% so the skill+d20 method may struggle more often than expected.

I don't know. it seems to me that that's the reason you roll dice in rpgs. When the dice pull a crazy stunt then that's when you're challenged. I remember a whole campaign arc lasting two years being born from one fumble. I guess if that happened, once I got over the shock of ok, what do I do now you start thinking. Why did it die? Is there some strange weakness? Is it really dead? Was there something unusual in the weapon? And how does the character respond? Do they believe themselves blessed? Will this make them more reckless? Do they have a story they can dine out on. All that kind of stuff. As for the exploding stuff. An exploding d4 has a 1/8 chance of rolling 7+. An exploding d6 has a 1/6 chance of rolling 7+. An exploding d4 rolls 1-3 75% of the time, an exploding d6 rolls 1-3 50% of the time. A d4 explodes more often than a d6 which makes it *look* more dramatic. One of those times where the feel of a game is at variance with its numbers.

That is interesting. There are more changes than I would have expected.

Possibly hit locations. I think BRP uses the RQ3 locations but RQ2, RQ3 and MRQ use different spreads. I must admit it would also be nice to compare average SIZ ratings. I would also for technical reasons be interested to know how natural weapon attacks (not including damage bonus) compare. So quite a few things really

Without having looked at the actual BGB text I have for as long as I can remember in RQ & CoC treated any short term effect such as "x for a round" to mean, "xed until the end of the next round." It just keeps things simple and clean. It does mean that an orc who is stunned before he attacks ends up losing two potential attacks rather than just one.

Necro thread alert, level 3. Just followed the link to this and I think you have a pretty good formulation here, especially in RQII terms. There are a few minor quibbles. I can imagine that Sunder would work (if the outer shell is glazed and therefore harder than the inner substance then you could sunder it) and bypass armour could still be narrated as finding a weak spot. Ditto Impale and maximise damage. I think the immunity to fatigue and stun effects is enough to recreate the idea. You could possibly also broaden it out by defining vital areas. E.g. a major wound to abdomen location might prevent it from using legs, major wound to head may destroy its senses and so on. In Gloranthan terms those rules would probably also work for the Mostali constructs like Jolanti. I wouldn't mind betting that if you expanded this a bit that it would get published in signs & portents.

The problem with this may well be that Chaosium sells even less of the core book and therefore has to charge a higher licensing fee for the supplements, driving up the cost of supplements. There are obviously multiple business models. Chaosium appears to have chosen the premium core book model. Personally I prefer what Pinnacle has done with Savage Worlds. A very cheap, simple core book which is pretty close to being impulse buy cost. If you can buy the main rulebook for the cost of a nice pizza then supplements end up selling the core book for you. Personally I find that the four power systems in the main rulebook are just too weak to be interesting in and of themselves and the first thing you do with a new setting is either create your own powers or modify them so heavily that it's a moot point whether it was any good in the first place. At the moment you have an expensive rulebook and expensive supplements and a push to include all the rules you need in a supplement which means that the supplements and rulebook appear to be in competition with each other. I can't help thinking that that's not a healthy position to be in. Once you get companies like Alephtar trying to work around the rulebook rather than with it you have a situation where the rulebook starts to be perceived as a problem and that's an even more unhealthy situation with players using the quick start or simply sticking with coC rather than buying into BRP.

And I wonder how many more might do so if the BRP book was a slimmer, focused, cheaper product. This is presumably why the Savage Worlds is so cheap. Someone looks at a supplement thinks I would like that and I don't mind spending an extra $10 to get the core book. I would love to see a trade paperback sized, core book for BRP that is less than 200 pages, presents the core of the system and leaves all the rules options to the setting books. On a related note, has anyone seen Adamant's experiment with "app" pricing. Everything is priced $1. I have no idea whether it will work but I can't help feeling that luxury BRP hardbacks and so on are all well and good for the small core of diehards. I'm not personally convinced that it's a sustainable path though.

Ran the third scenario as a one shot at the local club last weekend. It was good fun. It's a nice cleaned up system but still suffers from skill bloat and what appeared to be an awful lot of overlapping skills. The magic system was pretty opaque and it feels like I've got to go back over it again to try to understand what, for example, pre-installed apps do and how long they take to do it. The writing is superb. Having only so far read the Atrocity Archives, which I found disappointing, the rpg book feels better and more engagingly written than the source material. The only other thing that I was little disappointed with is the scenarios. The first is just a little too thin, the second just a little too obvious and the third too complicated for people who don't know the source. The third is *great* and I ended up running it but it was a big ask for the players. Still and all, it's the best thing I've seen for BRP so far by a country mile.

Here's a design question then. Imagine you're a player playing this system. If a normal success can give a CM instead of damage (not forgetting that a normal CM only occurs if your opponent doesn't successfully parry or diodge) under what relatively common circumstances would you actually choose NOT to damage an opponent but choose a CM instead? If the answer is that you can't think of a relatively normal circumstance then the result of this system is that CMs won't be chosen. The net result of your changes to all the systems seems to be that you end up recreating the current BRP system the long way around. At which point it's hard to know what you have achieved. Secondly for a normal parry to gain a CM the opponent must have missed therefore there will be no damage to block anyway, so that caveat is a bit pointless. Thirdly, for what it's worth, RQII currently is agnostic about whether non-damaging CMs (disarm et al) cause damage as well as the CM effect. So a relatively easy house-rule is to say that non-damaging CMs are performed instead of damage. Finally, the intent behind your ideas seems to be that the majority of damaging attacks should have no "special effects." This D&D style combat as a meat grinder. Two people stand there and batter each other until one falls over. The intent behind RQII combat as I understand it is that every damaging attack has a special effect. Thinking about fights, they don't seem to be meat grinds (I nick him in the arm, he pokes me in the leg, I whack him in the head, he hits me hard in the stomach and I pass out) they're a blur of attack and defence until *something happens.* A lot of the commentary about CMs by people who don' t actually play the game seems to be along the lines of "too much happens" making it "too easy" to do things other than grind away at hit points. Anyway, those are the problems I see with this idea.