Questbird

Well, the site is called basicroleplaying.org so there is probably a bit of bias here 

Holy crap, that looks like Rolemaster! I'm a fan of the resistance table (I use it for my hitpointless combat) but..uhh...this looks complicated.

Thanks. Simple is best for BRP!

I happily use Spell Law in my BRP games. I treat each spell list as a particular magical skill, which can increase with use as normal. To cast a spell you roll your skill - (spell level x5%). Magic point cost is the spell level if it works, or 1 if it doesn't. As your skill increases in each list you automatically gain access to the harder spells in the list. Works quite nicely, and the diversity of the spell lists allows you to make very different spell casters.

For Channeling spells (equivalent of Runequest Divine spells) they automatically work. The magic point cost is 1 from the caster and the rest from Allegiance points to your god (go do some deeds your deity approves of to get more).

 For Mentalism spells there's no magic point cost. You use (POW - spell level) x5 to see if it works. If it doesn't you get more and more Fatigued, as per BGB p.32 (except I added one level). If you want to learn to cast the most powerful Mentalism spells in Spell Law you'd better work on increasing your POW.

Fatigue levels:

Psychically drained: Mentalism skill rolls Difficult
Tired: All skill rolls Difficult (equiv. CONx3 rounds of physical exertion)
Spent: Stamina roll required for any activity; skills at one quarter normal (equiv. CONx4 rounds of physical exertion)
Exhausted: Difficult Stamina roll for any activity; skills max = POW x 1 (equiv. CONx10 rounds of physical exertion)

The average of 3D6 is about 10 or 11. Player characters are generally assumed to be above average, so they roll 2D6+6, which changes the average a bit. So Rurik is of average intelligence for the normal population, and possibly a bit less intelligent than the 'average adventurer'.

As one of those older gamers you mention, I do have more disposable income than I did in the 80s. I still regret not buying Beyond the Mountains of Madness when I saw a copy in print. But at the time it was $80 (this was in the 90s) which was expensive then, and I had lots of unplayed Call of Cthulhu campaigns (and still do). I do buy new and 'vintage' RPG products more readily than I would have back then. Still, there are constraints. Shelf space is one, and currency conversion rates, and shipping. I'd have to think about a $120 super Magic World bundle. It's not out of the question. For my ultra RPG product I would look for a well-written large scale campaign in a setting which could be slotted in somewhere -- not a whole world. I'm not particularly interested in a megadungeon, unless it has a really good reason for existence. I would want Magic World statted NPCs and creatures, cults etc. Location maps and maybe player handouts (Cthulhu style). Examples of what I'm talking about: The River of Cradles (Runequest 3), The Traveller Adventure (GDW), Masks of Nyarlathotep (Call of Cthulhu), Against the Giants (AD&D). I understand the 'Enemy Within' Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign was also pretty kickass, though I've not played or GM'd that one.

He's not cheap and he'll never work for free. But he's still around, still working. He is doing illustrations for the Fabled Lands kickstarter The Serpent King's Domain.

When you mentioned you were converting the Fiend Folio I chimed in, but lost the post. I enthused about the Githyanki, Githzerai, Slaad, Death Knights and Sons of Kyuss, many of which were written by Charles Stross (who later wrote some interesting science-fiction and The Laundry I believe). Another reason to like them was that they were illustrated by Russ Nicholson in the original book. 

A variation on this topic is described in Accelerando by Charles Stross. The starship is the size of a box of Coke cans and contains the uploaded personalities of a number of crew, who exist in a virtual world on board. This solves the problem of acceleration to high speeds and keeping meat bodies alive, though not the one of colonising an alien world at the destination. (In the book the starship was journeying to meet an alien router).

You can also use fate or hero points to change rolls or avert death. Do skill increase and allegiance checks at the end of every session but award fate points at the conclusion of each chapter (kinda like the experience points in Paizo).

It's not more work at all. 

You don't roll damage -- you use the maximum for the weapon, adjusted for armour (don't roll that either).

You roll a resistance roll of baddie's HP vs. the damage. Success - keep fighting; failure - Down for the Count. No more tracking how many nicks each pirate has received. I don't particularly care if some NPC pirate is going to have ugly scarring or long-term breathing difficulties from a major wound either.

I guess it depends if you are a fan of the Resistance Table or not.

You still track players' health (they use average of POW+SIZ+CON instead of just HP to resist damage), but you only find out how healthy they are after the fight.

Your suggestion also abstracts out HP -- but only for the players. It creates even more bookkeeping for the Chronicler who now has to track players' hitpoints secretly as well as run the adventure.

I can give a partial report on this.

While en route from Tagrum to Pyrnis via the Strangling Sea, the aeroship Tears of Chador was ambushed from the clouds above by a fast pirate aeroflyer. Nine pirates were aboard armed with cutlasses and ballistic pistols (powered by compressed air), and their captain was a skilled pilot who soon closed. Unfortunately for the pirates, the Tears of Chador was transporting a group of Norukarians, well-equipped with alien weapons. Two Norukarian nobles and their bodyguards had Plasma Pistols, and a cyberdroid (one of the PCs) was armed with the expedition's registered Plasma Rifle. Others had ballistic weapons.

So, the results were somewhat one-sided.

The plasma weapons had greater range and maximum damage than the ballistics, and were aimed with good skills. The pirates had wore ineffective armour. Within two rounds, five of the pirates had been taken out, and the pirate aeroship disengaged.

My observations:

1) It was quick to resolve the fight and continue play. I didn't have to use any special 'mook' rules to achieve the same effect.

2) It was easy to keep track of the pirates -- nine boxes; when I crossed them off, they were out of the fight. After a while of being punished their captain decided to flee

3) Because in this case the pirates were outgunned I can't yet say how the system will work in a 'fairer' fight. (But no one says life or RPGs are fair...)

More as the campaign continues...

There's various in-play ways players can find out about the powers of items.

Research, legends, oracles, dreams, visions, lore.

But then, my campaigns are generally low-magic and I tend to use only a few special magic items in my campaigns, each with history and a reason for existence.

For the equivalent of a D&D +1 sword, I would just say it's particularly sharp or well-made or something and tell the player as soon as they used it in combat or inspected it with some sort of craft skill.

Your mentalists might be able to get some insight into an item (past owners, powers, a vision of a dramatic moment in the item's past) by handling it.

In a Classic Fantasy campaign I've been playing, one of the characters had a special power. He was a barbarian and he could do a Power Shout or something once or thrice (I can't remember) a day. He would make a POW x5 check for it to work and if it did it would stun a whole rank of enemies. Unfortunately he only had 8 POW...

I have a lot of Harn stuff and have used it in the past with Maelstrom and Dragon Warriors games. It's probably the closest thing to a recreation of medieval (not really renaissance) Europe on a different planet. It's a very detailed setting for politics etc. but very specific to itself. The religions are quite nicely done, and fairly easy to transplant to other settings. There is a lot of outdoors in Harn, though once again fairly world-specific.

But I still play Elric! because I think the physical size of the rulebook is perfect. For me, Magic World is just a little too big, and the BGB is way too big.

That is a great set of hard science-fiction rules in the vein of Alien. It's probably under-appreciated because of the Cthulhu title (most people probably play Call of Cthulhu in the 1920s because of the volume of source material). You can leave the Cthulhoid stuff out of Cthulhu Rising with no problem (maybe a name-change would be required; you'd have to call it Rising ;-). I would like to run a sci-fi game set in the Solar System (no FTL, no hyperspace) and it's good for that. I've used its good psionics rules too, sort of BRP meets Traveller.

I always said that about Elric! and I still play it.

Well it's not *quite* Barsoom, but I can heartily recommend Swords of Cydoria for some sword and planet swashbuckling feel. It has monsters, aeroships, blasters and swords. I have started a Cydorian campaign, though it is but a fledgling, so I can't exactly say how it will turn out. (It is visible at https://rebels-of-cydoria.obsidianportal.com). One decision I made for that campaign was to try a hitpointless combat system (detailed elsewhere on this forum). Swords of Cydoria recommended a 'total hit points' option but I prefer to try my hitpointless system for the same reason: to allow heroic blazing gunfights and swords to co-exist in the same battle. (Gunfights in BRP are mostly messy and very unheroic). The Runequest Firearms PDF could be useful too.

So far the Swords of Cydoria monograph has been sufficient, though I might use some material from the Chronicle of Future Earth. For Barsoom that might be handy for the sense of an ancient and senescent civilisation. However I can't think of anything particular in COFE that I'd use.

The publishers of the Harn game world tried that approach - making everything fit into 3-ring binders. I've tried the same thing with my campaign notes in the past. However, in my experience it does not work: material just accumulates beyond the ability of a single binder to contain.

Thanks Pansophy. I got your program working on Linux (Debian 8) with the addition of one more library: pyqt4-dev-tools, which provided pyuic4. It looks good -- great work. Do you have a github (or similar) account to enable people to make code contributions? I've worked with Python but not so much with Qt. The only suggestion that came to mind when I looked at it would be to allow different groups of BRP options to be enabled for particular games. For example I believe Swords of Cydoria, Rubble and Ruin and maybe Classic Fantasy (I) have lists of Big Gold Book options used.

Thanks again for putting in the time for this, and for delivering a real cross-platform solution.

 

I typically play face to face with a combination of dead-tree books and a lap top. All dice rolls on my part are using physical dice from behind my GM screen. All player die rolls are physical as well. Other than that I have no problem if the players are using books or tablets for referencing rules. They don't typically use laptops for space limitations.

 

Half of my players are the same ones that have been playing with me since 1978, the other half joined within the last 20 years. We all live within 20 minutes of each other so we really have no need to play online. A few years ago, we were playing twice a week, unfortunately, with my current workload play has slowed down. I finally got a chance to play again three weeks ago for the first time in over two years.

 

We plan to pick it up again in about a month with bimonthly sessions.

A few years ago I found our roleplaying sessions were being crowded out by boardgames so I organised a monthly roleplaying-only session. It would be nice to play more but we all have families, other commitments etc. However having a regular fixed session has been good for other reasons. The 'show must go on' on RPG night, which helps faltering campaigns, wannabe GMs, tired GMs, disorganised GMs and occasionally trying new games or one-off adventures.

What Rsanford said!

I've come from a LOT of years of AD&D, and 3.5 and when I picked up Magic World I found it very intuitive and easy to grasp. The BGB was fairly easy for me as well, as long as I left out all the spot rules at first and worked them in as I got more comfortable. That said,

CJ isn't wrong. When I first started reading BGB my questions were often answered by people referencing other BRP materials that I didn't currently have. That was a little frustrating.

I took the same path. I came from AD&D to Elric! (one of Magic World's parents) and found it not only easy, but easy to never go back to D&D.

The bgb is for tinkerers. Those who want to get under the hood and build their own things. However, like most things designed for tinkering, it's not an entry level product. It has nothing to entice the average, never-roleplayed-before consumer. They're looking for exciting settings with realized worlds. If they had to buy a setting book and try to parse the bgb for just the rules they need, they'd move in to something else.

My biggest problem with the BGB is the first 'B'. It's just too Big for my taste, for the core rules I use from it. Magic World is better, but the size and quantity (ie. 1) of the old Elric! rulebook is just right for me. (That publication also contained statted NPCs, a small bestiary, an adventure and setting information for the Young Kingdoms.) But I find I usually only need to reference a few pages of the BGB anyway.

Swords of Cydoria and Rubble and Ruin are two others I've bought physical copies of which are of similar size and therefore pleasing to me.

Huzzah for the monograph authors and their content! :-)