Questbird

I think I was using that system as a base, but changed it to 1 or 2 instead of 0 or 5 so that the 'roll low' concept could be preserved. It's hard to shift to a new dice rolling system if you're used to a different one. And in fact we ended up sticking with the old system because people couldn't adjust their old brains.

It's nice and simple, but BRP has 20% specials and 5% criticals so a 'visual' dice method gets more complicated. I came up with this one.

Probably some of the events in the RPG industry you mentioned in your earlier post, and maybe lacklustre sales of the game.

The fights are like Master duels in Stormbringer (ie. skill over 100%). Each opponent will normally hit and parry perfectly round after round. The only difference is the critical chance. Someone will critical and/or someone will fumble. Then the fight is over; but it can take a long time. Add in some Force powers to even things up. Examples from the movies: Jumping great distances, acrobatic dodges, Force push or pull of inanimate objects (eg Vader throwing bits of equipment at Luke in The Empire Strikes Back). Note that in this last case the rain of objects did bruise and tire Luke even though he dodged or sliced through most with his lightsaber. Another part of all Lucas-style lightsaber duels is banter and psychological warfare. Obi-Wan and Vader try to undermine each other with words while they clash their sabers. Vader and Luke do the same when they fight; arguably Luke is defeated in Empire because he's psychologically unprepared for Vader's stunning news, he can't handle the truth. If we can assume that all full Jedi are at master level skill with their lightsabers and are therefore in for a long haul when they duel with others, perhaps this parallel psychological duel is as important as the combat. If you can unnerve your opponent maybe your skill increases or his decreases for the round, modifying the inexorable critical chance enough for victory?

It sounds interesting. I'm all for mechanics to simulate the 'quicker, easier, more seductive' Dark side of the Force, or the struggle to keep to the light.

Traveller also had the Ancients, who seeded humans on different planets (Solomani, Zhodani, Imperials, Darrians and a whole lot of others who never independently made it into space) and created the Vargr and the Aslan (?) through genetic engineering etc.

There is an online game called Pardus which has been going for years (I still play it) which was inspired by of Master of Orion and Elite. It has gradually evolved into three parallel universes. Each contains the factions Empire, Federation and the Union, as well as many player alliances who may owe allegiance to one of these, or be neutral, or a mixture. A 'Neutral' Zone lies between the territories of the three. There are also two 'Syndicates' which operate between and outside the factions: the Esteemed Pilot's Syndicate (EPS) of supposed 'goodies' who are opposed to slavery and the drug trade; and The Shadow Syndicate (TSS), an intergalactic criminal organisation devoted to all that is sinister yet profitable. There are four player races spread across the galaxy. Sectors are connected by wormholes; sixteen or so sectors make a cluster. It wouldn't be a bad setting for a Star Wars like RPG. Map of Pardus universe

Could you explain how the Force works in the Edge of Empire game and why you like it so much? Could such a system be adapted to BRP?

I admit I am a dabbler when it comes to Nephilim. The movie 'Highlander' is one way to approach its concepts. In that movie the Connor MacLeod character "awakens" in the Scottish Highlands in 1536. He is immortal but has no awareness of past lives. He became an awakened human at that point. Other 'Nephilim-like' characters in that movie had been around for longer, including the big baddie.

I've played the introductory Edge of Empire scenario and it was pretty fun -- though we didn't get up to using Force powers. I played a Droid anyway, so I doubt I'll be seeing any (unless "I never knew I had it in me"). You roll a lot of special dice and there's a certain amount of what I call mechanised roleplaying. By that I mean, the dice truly decide if 'something bad happens'. It takes a bit of power away from the gamemaster and gives some to the players, in the interests of shared roleplaying. It's not oldskool and it's not all bad. Probably better for new GMs and roleplayers. It's an important lesson for GMs and players that roleplaying is not a competition between them; a lesson which we second-generation grognards didn't always learn well.

Readers, I purchased it.

Buddhism has the concept of enlightened beings who have found their way out of the suffering of the world but who choose to stay out of compassion to help others find the way. In Doris Lessing's Shikasta the world is monitored by beneficent aliens ('Canopus') who from time to time choose to be born into human bodies in order to influence the planet. However when they do so they are necessarily exposed to the corrupting influences of the galactic baddies ('Shammat') so it doesn't always end well. Each of these concepts could work with Nephilim. In each case there is less conflict with the simulacrum or body although it may take time for the advanced psyche to take full control.

Yes, everyone has to make up their own shield rules or pull them from somewhere else. Historically, many cultures used shields in combat. Many devised the technology themselves. Why would they have done it if shields were useless? BRP struggles to make this clear.

A significant part of the background reading for this topic will be in comics form. I am not a marketer but I think you could do worse than to comic-ize the rules (BRP rules are lightweight) and sell them in a trade-paperback graphic novel format. Dragon Warriors in the 1980s included some quite good explanatory comics (by Leo Hartas) for its rules. It was aimed at teens and came originally as cheap paperback books. As for settings, Alan Moore's Watchmen is not the only superhero setting he's made. There's also Top Ten (everyone has super powers; this is just the cops) and Tom Strong. There's also Kurt Busiek's Astro City, where the supers have clubs and cliques, and many psychological problems. There's also the boardgame Sentinels of the Multiverse which has heroes, villains and weird settings on cards. Everyone likes to make their own settings so they don't offend the IP sensibilities of DC or Marvel. I never played Superworld or any supers roleplaying. And I probably won't. But I do still read and enjoy some superhero comics.

I'm inspired to give it another look. I've collected sci-fi rules like a sparrow: River of Heaven (I was a backer); M-Space, and non-BRP ones like Coriolis and Fading Suns. Haven't run a campaign with any of them yet.

This is not really about publishing any more so you might want to start a new thread. There are many about magic systems here. Mythras Classic Fantasy is one way to directly convert the D&D experience to d100, if that is your goal. A 'new' character in BRP is not the same as a first-level character in D&D. BRP characters are moderately experienced when they begin, and become somewhat more so over time, but not with the same 'zero to hero' arc as D&D characters. Beginning sorcerers in either system don't have access to many spells, but the few that the BRP sorcerer can access might be quite powerful. Magic is one of the pain points in BRP conversion, and one of the few areas which gets lots of variants and house rules. I think it's because magic mechanics are very setting-dependent. If you want levelled spells (and therefore sorcerers increasing slowly in power like low-level D&D), I did a BRP adaptation of Rolemaster's Spell Law which I use in my games. It would work with any collection of spell lists with levels, such as D&D -- though the work there has already been done by Classic Fantasy, mentioned above. In my system the chance to cast the spell is influenced by the spell level. This means that higher-level spells are not castable until the skill increases; the spell caster automatically 'learns' the higher level spells when their skill % increases sufficiently. To cast the most powerful spells generally requires more POW than the average sorcerer possesses; more can be gained from bargains, braziers of power, sacrifices, rituals and/or magically charged places and times.

That's what I was hinting at in my post about Law/Chaos. Those forces own a piece of you in exchange for their supernatural (or hypernatural in the case of Law) aid. In the original game such a commitment was a much more dubious one, as either of those forces were bad for humanity when applied in excess. Neither was good at reigning themselves in. The Cosmic Balance was their counterweight, and serving it was the closest thing to 'good' you got in the Young Kingdoms. Another particular thing about allegiance to the three forces in Elric! and Stormbringer was that things were heavily skewed towards Chaos in the Young Kingdoms. Chaos allegiance points were much easier to acquire and spend than Law or Balance points. They were like the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars: "quicker, easier, more seductive". In other words the allegiances were deliberately unequal. I'm not sure whether the Light/Darkness allegiance in Magic World has a similar Balance force. Been a while since I looked at Magic World. One of the great things about the allegiance system is that it is a game mechanic which relies on and supports roleplaying. You gain allegiance points through your actions, including some which provide no mechanical in-game benefit. You need a consistent 20 more points in one force or another to be committed to that force. That consistency requires roleplaying; most people accumulate points for all forces randomly unless they try.

The allegiance system in Magic World evolved from Elric! In that game the Powers were Chaos, Law and the Balance rather than light/darkness. Chaos and Law are more ambiguous forces to serve and in fact you had to think carefully about whether you even wanted to be so strongly associated with either. The sense of 'selling your soul' was stronger, especially to Chaos and Law. Balance was the hardest to achieve by roleplaying, and provided the least mechanical benefits to your character, but that worked in the context of Young Kingdoms metaphysics. Having said that though, yes mechanically there is a tendency to accelerate the accumulation of Allegiance beyond a certain point. And yes it can make characters powerful. I've had two Elric! characters achieve Apotheosis: one in Chaos and one in Law. The Chaos one, a sorcerer, did sort of stop playing soon after, effectively retiring. Later I thought of using his character as an NPC villain. The Law one continued for a time, founded a kingdom, had a few adventures and basically retired too. So character Apotheosis could be a marker 'end game' or retirement (or even NPC-dom, like characters who lose all of their Sanity in Call of Cthulhu). In fact in Elric! that was explicitly stated for Apotheosis of the Balance -- that such a character has 'won the game' and could ignore the general doom of the Young Kingdoms. Another approach (a more D&Dish style) would be to have champions of Light and Shadow routinely challenged by more powerful beings of the opposite side such as demigods, other champions or warlords, depending on your campaign. Basically move the campaign to a power-gaming stance. To delay all of this you can invent or adapt ways to spend allegiance points, either on spells, magical effects or other benefits from the Power. A bit like Fate points or Hero points. Then you can put off the accelerating accumulation of points which ends in Apotheosis. A simple example is calling for intervention from the Power you serve. You could have a character make an Allegiance check. If successful, the Power called helps her immediately somehow (maybe very subtly, depending on your campaign magic level) but she then loses allegiance points equal to her dice roll. Failure has no effect. The character then straps herself into a hamster-wheel of Power-pleasing duties to recover lost allegiance points, and endless adventures ensue.

Or sorcery. But blood will flow copiously when a a master starts fighting.

I found the many factions appealing, but it makes first-time character generation take a long time. I allowed a fairly free-hand with the factions and ended up with some odd combinations in the party. However we didn't get far enough into the campaign to find out their impact.

I started Kingdom and Commonwealth, but only got a session into it. Unfortunately my players didn't 'get' the historical era and basically we went back to bog-standard fantasy (with a different GM). I felt a bit bad that I wasn't able to make it fun for them. One player was a bit more adventurous and enjoyed the religious debates etc. but it wasn't enough to sway the group. I'm still hopeful that we can dust it off again some day.

😃 sure, sure. Everything's possible in BRP.

There's also the Khajit from Elsweyr in Tamriel (the Elder Scrolls). They have a reputation for being thieves and traders.

Yes the K'Kree and the Hivers were very interesting aliens. On the Cat-people theme, there were also the Kilrathi from the Wing Commander games, who were sort of Klingon- or Aslan- like (honour-obsessed warriors); and the Emirates of Hacan in Twilight Imperium, who were basically wealthy traders and deal-makers but not particularly cat-like except for their picture.

The Chaos allegiance power mechanic as written in Elric!, which awards Chaos points for casting spells and then allows Chaos allies to draw on allegiance points as magic points as well, makes sorcerers pretty powerful. There is an obvious 'power corrupts' message behind Chaos allegiance points, but it is a Hell of a power trip along the way for the individual sorcerer. It was fine for the Young Kingdoms but I found it a bit too powerful for my low-magic Nehwon campaign. But some sort of corruption mechanic is appropriate for a sword-and-sorcery campaign. For me, using allegiance points to power spells works well for priests because it forces players to roleplay some fawning to their god in order to get (or recover) access to the most powerful spells, and also explains why such spells wouldn't be used every day. I suppose sorcerer's allegiance to Chaos is not much different -- the power comes from outside the wizard in exchange for obedience to the cause.