Questbird

I like simple yet effective rules like this.

Anything weird and magical could be called a demon by superstitious locals, including undead but on the more powerful scale you could include elder gods etc, such as your average cult shrine demon, ranging up to Nyarlathotep or Cthulhu -- super powered science-fictional beings with godlike powers. It sort of depends on religiousness of your campaign too. In the Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe and also in Chronicles of Future Earth, 'demons' are aliens or interdimensional beings; but in paintings by Hieronymous Bosh, demons have a religious or moral function of punishment. Having said all that, I use demons only for magic in my campaign, when I use them at all, and I just explain them as amoral other-dimensional beings with needs that seem to us bizarre, obscene, dangerous or all three.

There was a Hawkmoon game released by Mongoose related to their Runequest release. I think it was pretty much a standalone game.

The implication was that in those Misty Mountain tunnels there was more chance that it would be picked up by an Orc than by Bilbo Baggins, and therefore more chance of getting straight back to Sauron. The One Ring has a kind of evil intelligence but is still a fairly passive artifact. It's still a ring, not a robot.

It's an interesting settin but it's not exactly sword and sorcery. It would require some effort to make it so. There are black-powder guns, pirates, voudou. Classic swords and sorcery generally represents all sorcery as evil and profane. Voudou as described in this book is not entirely that.

Cosmic Fantasy is closer to the mark than Science-Fantasy for this one. I have the BRP original but haven't managed to use anything from it yet.

Like the One Ring!

Areas such as battlefields, mass graves, medical schools and cemeteries (possibly only unconsecrated ones) would be locations where Necromancers could get the most 'raw material' for their spells. Perhaps the spells could animate all in a particular area (or all who fought and died in a particular battle) for a single POW investment. A budding Necromancer wanting an army of undead would need to research and seek out such places. I like using situational or strategic magic systems where the spellcasters need to plan ahead. Certainly an 'army of undead' is not some random occurrence in fantasy films or literature, but a planned and dangerous exercise of power.

Fortunately Harnmaster isn't really necessary to enjoy Harn. I've played it with Maelstrom and Dragon Warriors; and BRP would be pretty easy too. Before Harnmaster the Harn world was envisioned as system-agnostic. From what I've seen of Harnmaster it has percentage rolls and levels of success, but I don't have the game so can't add more.

But POW can be gained back in various ways, eg. POW:POW struggles on the Resistance Table.

I agree. When I look at games or adventures to buy there is a certain calculus required as to how easy it will be to incorporate it into my favourite Elric! campaign. Some systems do provide that 'conversion chart'. I remember seeing a Rolemaster -> Runequest conversion chart in one of their supplements for example. Even between 'close relative' modern BRP systems such as OpenQuest, Mythras, Runequest and d100 Revolution there are subtle (albeit minor) frictions that make it harder to just 'pick up and play' an adventure from one of the others. Fixed armour or variable? Hit locations or no? Different names for equivalent skills (Spot, , spot hidden, search etc.) or skills separated in one system but combined in the other (eg attack and parry skills in RQ3). But it will still be easier to use any of those than an adventure designed for Savage Worlds, D&D5e or, dare I say it, Aftermath.

In that case you could include Fire and Sword by Ray Turney, one of the original Chaosium designers of RuneQuest. It's 'published' on this BRP site, in the Downloads section, but it is a complete fantasy game with roll-under d20 skills and many other interesting innovations such as hitpointless combat and social mechanics.

PDF just doesn't cope with books well. It's fine for things like printable character sheets and reference tables.

Swords of Cydoria is a great pulp/science fantasy setting, which was released as a monograph for Chaosium and later as a separate game called Exiled in Eris. You have others in your list which are no longer in print, so you should include Swords of Cydoria. I still play it!

Yeah I'm still playing Elric! and that hasn't been supported for years. I have two copies, which helps to reduce wear. Plus I only play about once a month. 😥

OK I haven't done any work on this for a while now and must admit that it's a dead (or at least not alive) project. There are a few other things around for RQ. I think Hkokko has an encounter generator. I was getting close to a 'generic' character generator which could account for the differences between Magic World, BRP, Mythras etc which are small but slightly annoying. I still think an online thing would be more useful than a run-on-<fill in your OS platform here> application. And Python seems to be the language of choice for many BRPers.

I think there was a 'Maula pistol' or some such; some kind of slow dart weapon. Remember the hunter-seeker? Maybe some sort of short range self-guided projectile might be usable against a shielded user, though it certainly wouldn't be good etiquette.

I like simpler systems. How about these principles: Shield Fighting skill is added to weapon skill when attacking a shielded opponent An activated shield blocks all fast-moving ranged weapons An activated shield makes parrying or dodging melee attacks Easy for the defender Medium and Long melee weapons are Difficult to use against a shield

Yeah I was going off-topic a bit and just saluting creators who have exited this planet.

I would love to see BRP Dune, but there is a long history of licensed properties not mixing well with RPGs. The license holders are always trying to maximise their profits, and can raise licence fees on the slightest pretext. RPG companies don't make a whole lotta dough in general. It's not a match made in heaven. I think the old days of the Tolkien licence being granted to Iron Crown Enterprises because they were the first to ask nicely, or the Lankhmar rights given to Greg Stafford (and TSR at the same time, oops) by the author -- are gone. A BRP Tékumel would also be nice, but its rights holders, along with the remaining copyright floggers of R E Howard (Conan) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (Barsoom) and Dune can still cause problems. (A brief pause to remember and salute some outstanding world builders 😢) Hyboria: R. E. Howard (d. 1936) Barsoom: Edgar Rice Burroughs (d. 1950) Middle-Earth: J. R. R. Tolkien (d. 1973) Dune: Frank Herbert (d. 1986) Lankhmar/Nehwon: Fritz Leiber (d. 1992) Hârn: N. Robin Crossby (d. 2008) Tékumel: M.A.R. Barker (d. 2012) Lyonesse: Jack Vance (d. 2013) Earthsea: Ursula LeGuin (d. 2018)

You could try a hitpointless system. In the system I use for Swords of Cydoria you use the Resistance table to stay conscious and able to fight after a blow; only after the fight do you see how badly wounded you actually are. For a couple of Amberites with high stats, say STR 30, SIZ 13, CON 30 POW ??* armed with rapiers (1d6+2) and 2d6 damage bonus it would work like this: Eric hits Corwin and he fails to parry. Corwin must make a resistance roll 50% + ((Resilience – damage) x 5%) where Resilience = Corwin's HP* and damage = (max. weapon damage + max. damage bonus - Corwin's armour rating) That is (to summarise the resistance table result): 50% +((22 - (8+12)) x5%) = 60% to keep on fighting. Corwin definitely got a 'nick' though. The resistance table approach works well for similarly sized opponents, so would scale for your superpowered Amberites. We've already discussed fighting oversized opponents with this system. * My system uses a new stat called Resilience which is average of (STR, CON, and POW) instead of HP (avg of STR and CON) but the HP number works OK too, especially for NPCs. I imagine the Amberites would be well endowed with POW.

The latest owners I think are Goodman Games, who have just run a mammoth Dungeon Crawl Classics kickstarter to produce canonical Lankhmar and Nehwon adventures. My main campaign is set in Nehwon so I collect all Leiber RPG resources I hear of. Here's the latest news from them: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1409961192/dcc-lankhmar/posts/2238326?ref=backer_project_update

I'm excited by Lyonesse, which actually is forthcoming for Mythras. I use Nehwon (Fafhrd/Gray Mouser) as my BRP world and I love and recommend it, but Jack Vance's Lyonesse is a great mix of historical, fantastic and fey, a little like Legend from Dragon Warriors (where I've also played some BRP games). Jack Vance was very likely an inspiration for Dave Morris in creating Legend anyway.

The Caverns of Thracia by (at that time) Paul Jacquays was a pretty good D&D module in the way you describe (originally Judges Guild). The Dyksund Caverns from Shadows on the Borderlands (RQ3) is a dangerous dungeon with a real spelunking feel.

Your idea seems as good as any. If it's a biological substance then to craft it might need a mold or casing (perhaps some other insectoid carapace), or it might need to be 'pruned' or encouraged to grow in one way or another. That encouragement could be some sort of low level psychic power (instead of sunlight). Maybe the spider folk keep their young above the alagin pits; and the alagin grows toward 'life'.