Jegergryte

I'm also a very new BRP GM/player (only ran the first session last weekend), so some of these questions bug me too… especially after reading a bunch of threads on these and other issues… As of yet the problem has not come up, but I can see it will next session, when the shield-and-sword fighter joins the crew… My idea, at first, was as simple as giving the shield one or two extra "free" parries with no penalties, and/or lowering the penalty to 20% or 15% thus giving it an advantage either way… I could have picked the idea up from some of those threads, and I haven't really thought of the ramifications it might have.

Thanks! I'll have a look-see, although where can I find the pdf? prefer them to sites…

Hi, I was wondering, healing potions are usually magical, based in alchemy, often boosted by spells, to create this healing effect… but what about herbal remedies, herbal salves and potions? Does any book cover this in any way, I mean in particular the non-magical healing through herbs and such, although the herbs might be magical in nature, they do not necessarily reproduce spells or spell-like effects… any pointers? I have my all players start with at least some knowledge about herbs, especially the ones from rural and more "wild" areas than the cities… the idea is to let them find and identify various types of herbs, including healing herbs… but I have as of yet no good grasp of how powerful a common to uncommon healing herb would be… once prepared that is, if it is not a herb that can be eaten as is… how many HP would/could one of these heal before it became too powerful? I was thinking something around 1d2 or 1d3 for common herbs, 1d4 for uncommon to 1d6 for rare… before one enters into the realm of magical herbs of perhaps 1d8… with minuses or pluses depending on season, preparation and such… this is beside the herbs that cure stuns, stops bleeding, repairs muscle and nerve damage and so on… any good supplements on this? or does anyone have good house-rules or tips?

Thanks for the input Mankcam, yet I am under the impression that the CE styles are a lot more flashy, or at least a lot more powerful since they are, seemingly, solely based in super powers, whereas the the ones in DL may have access to powers (and spells) like that, yet still they give bonuses and powers that are not so badarse, yet cool and stylish... My setting is not really mythical-fantasy-Asia, its more myhtic-fantasy with elements of steam punk, renaissance, high mediaeval and dark ages and so on… even possible elements of science fiction tech, depending on nation, continent and stuff like that. Its a very old world with a long, and secret, history… So I want semi-flashy, yet not superhero martial artists flying about (I mean there are some, but they're more like plot devices than anything else), and I also want similar options to knights, paladins and so on… I think I have Land of Samurai somewhere… I'll have a look-see. Thanks. Using the guidelines from Dragon Lines I am thinking about creating a sword and shield martial art/combat style… with a technique similar to nimble defence applying to shields… good idea? bad idea? I know the martial arts are meant to replace the d4 personality "feature" from BRP that gives skill bonuses… I think its a cool way of doing it, yet I find it very deterministic in the sense that it should be chosen at character creation like that… to implement it as more of a skill option I guess I should forgo the the skill bonuses, or at least lower them dramatically and let it be a in-game/downtime venture of training and stuff… any thoughts or hints?

It seems that the Celestial Empire styles are a lot more flashy than I prefer, seemingly solely based in super powers… Also, would the Dragon Lines system work well for creating combat styles for non-asian inspired martial artists? I'm thinking along the lines of a Broadsword or longsword style for knights, sharp-shooting for a sniper type ranger/hunter or backstabbing thief style… Would letting players use experience to increase the martial art style seriously disrupt game balance? The thing is, one of my players has the martial art skill, assassin type character… but he has no martial art style (seeing as I only bought this book yesterday)… considering this I could create a style for him, and let him be trained in it without having any of the techniques or powers (I intend to start out with normal styles without chi stuff)… or make him learn a style, if he so desires, which will start at default level (depending on how he learns it or how well the teach roll goes, if he gets a teacher)… hm…

Question about the "Throw Target" skill. If the target of this has a higher Acrobatis skill, can it be used instead of the Agility characteristic? I'm wondering because I'm a little confused as to how acrobatics is actually supposed to be used in the game…

I just got my grubby little hands on both the above mentioned titles… Now the main reason was to get my hands on a martial arts system that is fancy and flashy. I am reading the books now in tandem, but I'm wondering if the two are compatible and will work well in conjunction… The setting I'm going to use them in is a home-brewed pseudo-low-magic setting (takes some explanation that, but basically magic has been gone for a few millennia and is just now starting to return). For more info about it, there's link in my signature I hope. If not here. Its all a bit sketchy on the site, but its growing and being developed further through play, as opposed to sitting alone in my room pondering… so its slow going really. I'm looking for a system that will let my players (and NPCs!) be cool and flashy, powerful and all that, while still not becoming flying martial artists of doom disrupting the "natural" order of things. Any handy tips or pointers would be very helpful! In advance thanks, Jegergryte

All right… new question. Related perhaps by proxy or not related at all… but, I wonder… I have this old game called Millenniums End, great game sort of… what I remember most vividly is the combat system, which I for many reasons liked, even though it was partly long winded and weird… does anyone here have experience with it, and how compatible would you say this system is with BRP? I was inspired by this thread. All my games are now closer yet in boxes in a garage somewhere just out of reach until I get a place to call my own again… Any insight is appreciated to the fullest extent of my abilities.

Thanks, knew there was something I hadn't thought of. Thanks for the insight Peoples of the Interwebs, much appreciated. This would have been so much easier to see if I was just home… (Need to get back home to my stash – need me books!) -Jeger

Hi, First off, while I've been a member of these forums a while, mostly just reading and observing, I'm now soon getting the time to get properly into it, hence some questions will start to surface. I have many, but for now: I've been going through the BGB a couple of times now… I have been looking at the stat blocks… now I know this might turn me into a pariah for saying, but I have to say the similarities between the stat blocks in BRP and D20 are striking. BUT my question is, are they compatible, I mean, an 18 STR in D20 and the same in BRP could be considered equal? This could then mean that conversion from D20 games to BRP, statwise if nothing else, is pretty easy? Stat blocks are not always being that easy to convert between system in my experience, but if this is the case here, then it makes it that much easier to create good games (system wise) of older settings and stuff. in advance thanks, -A

Agreed, someone should do that. AvP might be crap films, but what little I have read of the comics they are really cool. Nice sci-fi setting to play in… crap humans caught between badass xenomorphs and beardy predators… and of course with the latest predator film there is a need to differentiate between types of predators … unless this was already canon (in the comics) and I'm just an ignorant little peon… Sounds like a great plan. Hohum.

Sure thing, understandable… I can see the reasoning for a higher Con indeed, although I'm not perfectly familiar with BRP and stat ranges, an increased Con seems legitimate. The highly increased Dex might fit better for praetorians perhaps? Lowering the +12 to +8 or +6 for the normal xenomorphs and using the statblock in the BGB as smaller versions (I have heard tales of dog-xenomorphs and stuff… although I know very little of this and if this actually affect their size). The praetorians could also perhaps have an increased Int?

While I'm no expert on BRP nor the Xenomorph (I have mainly watched the films, not playing the games or reading the comics), I find your revision to add a few nice extras, like the immunities and the wall walking. Extra fluff is also always nice. Stats for various types of the xenomorphs would also be nice, like the praetorian (I think those are the badass guard guys – you would know) and/or any others, but perhaps not relevant just now. Your version is more powerful than the one in BGB (pp 358), but I see where you've taken the ideas from. So I wonder: why this boost in power? I have not play-tested the xenomorph in the BGB so I wouldn't know if its weak or not…

I for one had good experiences with MRQI … but we never played it for long because of other games going on and RL troubles smiting most of us simultaneously about a couple of sessions into the game… which broke the group into tiny bits… so the trouble of which you all refer I know nothing about, probably for the best though, then I don't regret buying the books… and now I've got BRP which is going to be fun to mould into the game I want it to be, much more preferable to the static MRQI. I have yet to test MRQII, but I have read and looked at it. I am, for the sake of being nice, rooting for the survival of MRQII/Wayfarer (although I think the name is crap), simply because its ready-made, simple enough to get into and in need of little (or less) customisation than BRP … initially at least… as far as I have understood anyway. About the loss of 2nd age Glorantha though? couldn't really care less, never got into it, even bought a few books, more than I should have, its perhaps the worst setting I've read so far… there is something about a magical cube that is a world that doesn't work for me… its ok if its cartoons (Hägar the Horrible anyone?), but as a rpg setting I just couldn't accept the axiomatic foundations of such a world… neither could my players. Call me narrow-minded and boring, such a world just doesn't cut it for me. As for Mongoose, again I have no big issue with this company, this is perhaps because I'm a proper materialist, a real capitalist consumer, so when they renew, revise or otherwise perform actions to earn money and survive, even if they're poorly thought through, I don't mind too much because I know I'm only buying the stuff, they have to make it and turn a profit… if they decide to revise, well I can buy into it or ignore it. The fact that they produce something which catches my interest and attention is good enough for me… however temporary that infatuation might be.

Yes you're right, I just looked it up… and trolls, well, those creatures seems to vary too, Norwegian trolls are quite different from the portrayal in standard fantasy games… Still an interesting read on mythologies.

Well, what I would recommend you to do, perhaps, is to look up the stories where the valravn appeared, it is, as I understood it, mainly two stories. I guess you're right though, the stories might not have said too much about the specific powers, perhaps because the stories where intended for quite something different than rpgs which essentially means you're free to do as you will yes… I would still recommend powers that deal with confusion and misleading, it seems to be the most recurring and present theme about these creatures, in addition to those you've already mentioned. Those would all fit quite snugly into the "Norse" feeling I guess, been a while since I read Snorre and other the old "Norsey" stuff… EDIT: It seems this: Grimm, Jacob (James Steven Stallybrass Trans.) (2004). Teutonic Mythology: Translated from the Fourth Edition with Notes and Appendix by James Stallybrass. Volume III. Dover Publications. ISBN 0486435482 book would be a good choice for looking into these stories, its the only one in English I found. You could probably find excerpts, or definitely, a torrent somewhere…

Well, I dug around a bit… It seems that there are conflicting notions around the origin of this particular creature, though one thing that seems to recur is the drinking of infant blood, turning into a knight, and being half raven half something else, usually a wolf. In heraldry the Valravn is depicted as a half-eagle half-wolf. One story goes that the Valravn is actually a knight changed into a raven by magic, and only the blood of a male infant can free him and turn him back into a knight. The stories of the Valravn are similar to south-scandinavian folklore on werewolves. Other stories (fables) portray the Valravn as a creature that hunts for infant blood. I guess you read the english entry on wikipedia, the above is from the norwegian. The danish entry has even less data, but the general gist is that by savouring infant blood it can change into a knight. If you're familiar with 4E then some guys have been talking about making it into a monster for that system here. I guess you would need to decide upon size really, because one depiction has a woman riding a wolf-body with a birds head, which means its pretty big. The 4E guys above seem to think its bird sized, which of course is one way to see it. Here is another site, in english, that gives more information about the creature. I have found little that says anything about magic powers in these creatures, except that they might possess superhuman powers or abilities, which I interpret to mean strength, speed and such stuff, with reference to the above about werewolf beliefs sharing many similarities with the Valravn stories (in Scandinavia at least). Other abilities could be powers related to labyrinths and leading people astray, changing the paths and trails the party might follow through a particularly dense part of the forest, and the Valravn can change the trail leading the party where it wants. Other powers might be a power to confuse, charm or in some other way mislead the party… I don't know, just some thoughts. I have found nothing specific about these powers, so this might not be more than you already dug out for yourself, but at least this is what I found after a few googles…

Reading danish is like reading norwegian, except they write in a roundabout manner… if you still need some help just link or pm me, I'm sure I can read and give you at least a general translation that would be better than google-translate, which is not very good (i.e. sucks) with norwegian at least…

Nice work, I like it! and thank you very much for sharing and caring

Seeing as that is my last week in Berkeley I might take the trip over, sounds great! Thanks for the info, didn't know that any such thing was happening, oh the wonders of the interwebs!

I would be very interested in that primer of yours, I am a busy bee studying and having to entertain a visiting better half, so I won’t be able to start that sort of stuff myself until late June to early July at best… if you would like to share of course. I had the same feeling when browsing through the book, I mean they have already listed a Jedi stat block in the back, disguised as "Galactic Knight" or something. The system would lend itself very well to SW I think, its just the time needed to assemble the various optional rules modules that is BRP, I don’t have that at the moment.

I ran DoD back when it came out, or more correctly, I started the campaign run but we got side tracked and then, partly because of me trying to return to DoD, my players lost interest, not a superb story arc. These factors aside though, looking at your conversion with my very limited grasp of BRP (I just recently found it and have yet to find anyone to play with), but with my fairly extensive knowledge of the SAGA and other D20 editions I think this looks great. Balance-wise I can’t say anything useful, srry about that, but just seeing how you have converted and used the BRP options to make it fit the SW universe looks great, and gives me guidelines for doing the same (something I’ve promised friends at home to do when I return), even though I’ve also got a desire to go Mass Effect with this system (although the D6 version of Mass Effect that I found looks very promising).

All right, howdy all! I started my career doing this sort of interaction in a shared imaginary space some, oh soon 20 years ago, I was an early starter by some standards, started up with the Red and Blue books of D&D when I was about 8-9… Since then I’ve tried out a series of games, some of which include the various incarnations of the Star Wars RPGs, MERP, RMSS, HARP, HARP SF (beta testing), 7th Sea, Legend of the 5 Rings, Vampire, Millenniums End, Babylon 5 (Chameleon Eclectic’s version), returned to test out D&D 3rd edition, stopped that quickly, Icar (free sci-fi rpg, good stuff), Spacemaster: Privateers… that sort of sums up the old and good experiences… I never got to test out Call of Cthulu (shame on me), but I was never into the scary horror stuff… some time back I got my hands on Mongoose’s RQ, which was interesting, we played it for a while, but it never really amounted to much of a campaign. Then, fairly recently, I found BRP in the shape and form of a big golden book all sealed inside plastic, so I had to buy it to see how this game was. I’m still leafing through it, but I’m liking what I see, especially the flexibility of it, which I guess is why most people would love the system. For the first oh 12 years I was mainly GMing, but after moving to Britain for some studying I got someone there to GM, so I’ve started to enjoy being a player too, something I really didn’t get the chance to earlier… for some reason a lot of people are either afraid of GMing or they just don’t want to… The past two years have been scarce on the gaming side, partly because of new studies, less gamers in the social circle and those who are, well, they tend to be busy drinking, working or some other more important activity. Have a great weekend, I know I will try to have one.

I’m all new here and all new to BRP, on the other hand I’m an old Star Wars buff, I have a complete set (or at least close to complete set) of all incarnations of this game. While I’m still just trying to get to know BRP (I have some experience with Mongoose’s RQ), I at once got a desire to try it for star wars… at the moment the only viable alternative is HARP SF, which while still a great game is a lot more limited (like all the d20 incarnations) than WEG D6, and a leveless BRP. So, even though it might not count for much, I would love to see your conversion!