nclarke

Looks like you've done a good job on assessing the best way to make published D&D modules work with Legend. I found that the best ones to convert were some of the older ones for 2e AD&D which had a decent plot with less complex stat blocks. The most difficulty I've had is in making Legend Sorcerers provide an adequate challenge without resorting to something like Classic Fantasy to provide spell lists. I tend to look at the NPC and decide a style for them and give them magic to suit. That's usually a combination of Common Magic and Sorcery but if I'm doing the conversion for a particular style of game I do a far more focussed conversion. Many modules have divine magic users/priests that fit a single stereotype so you can usually do a Priest of X evil religion and slap together a quick prayer book containing a set of spells for that cult and reuse that for every priest from the same cult. Doing the ground work with the cult books/grimoires first to get the flavour right seems to be the best way of doing these conversion.

Having been doing a bunch of conversion work from older D&D modules and an occasional one using 3e/3.5e material I can tell you that the best way of converting anything to Legend is to know those rules well. I've been working hard on tribal shaman types to use in place of users of magic in humanoid (orc/goblin) societies. Turning a bugbear "shaman" who uses clerical and mage spell into something appropriate is easy if you have a good handle on spirit magic/spirits and convert some of their 'spells' into Common Magic or the results of spirit magic. Converting mages is relatively simple as I use CM for the lower level stuff without doing any sort of direct conversion spell by spell and adding some Sorcery for higher level 'spells'. Clerics are equally simple with an Exorcism, Dismiss Magic or Spirit Block taking the place of their ability to Turn Undead (Skeletons and Zombies are animated by magic and many other undead are spirits of one form or another). If you use spells that were written up in many of the Glorantha books published for RQII as well as those for Legend then there is a lot of extra potential to work with. Here's one I did earlier :-) Kwairno, (AC 9; MV 12”; MU 4; hp 9; #AT 1; D by weapon, spells; S9, I15, W11, D15, C9, Ch 10; AL LE). Kwairno wears a ring of free action and carries a wand of negation (5 charges). Kwairno’s spells are: First level: friends, magic missile, read magic Second level: stinking cloud, web 1st level friends = Dominate (human) (Sorcery), mm = multimissile, mobility for the ring 2nd Level stinking cloud = Smother (Sorcery), web = Holdfast (Sorcery) wand of negation = CM Countermagic 2 in wand recharges in 5 minutes for Kwaimo (2MP for Magnitude 1 = 4 MP cost drawn from slave mongrelmen CM - So Multi missile cast on her dagger to start with, a wand with Countermagic 2, Mobility Sorcery spells - Dominate (Human), Smother, Holdfast I made her seasoned (350 skill points) with 76% in CM, 80% in Sorcery and 66% in Manipulation. The biggest issue I find with Legend is that there are inconsistencies between the various materials - Enchanting in Arms is different to Enchanting in Blood Magic. The material for Spirit Magic is all over the place. I've had to drag material from RQII, S&P and the free Spirit Magic PDF to get a good handle on it. BTW Pete, if the monsters aren't in RQII Colisseum then they aren't in MoL. I don't think anything was added and some that should have stayed were removed even though they weren't Glorantha specific. Nigel

One of the other free alternatives for on-line gaming are the Google Plus Hangouts. G+ Hangouts effectively combine a video and audio chat feature with the ability to restrict your meeting to named participants. On top of that you can add any number of die rollers and Virtual Table Tops. The Google Docs feature offers the ability to have an on-line document store for the game for handouts. G+ has a screen share feature that allows you to bring up a picture on your PC and share it with all the participants. Roll20 is the most used of the VTT add-ins as TableTop Forge has recently merged with the Roll20 platform to add in G+ Hangouts as an option to the existing roll20 server based (like FGII) hosting. There is a D100 community already set up but it's easy to make your own circle for your own gaming group and post just to that.

Having been in the play test I can assure you that it is perfectly compatible with older scenarios. As for an ETA I can only say that the Horror on the Orient Express KS is due first but I might suspect that we'd see 7e released for Gencon this year, but knowing Chaosium it could be December this year, Gencon next year or even sometime in 2015.

You're missing something Puck. I've previously used TableTop Forge for my on-line G+Hangout gaming but they've lost their development team and so merged with Roll20. I hope that they will bring their much better (IMO) die roller to the Roll20 application. The issue I had in the past with Roll20 is that they required you to use their US-based server which was crap for anyone outside the US lags, dropped connections etc). However they have now added the ability to run out of G+hangouts and that works much better although I haven't tested it under load yet. The benefit over TTF is the ability to retain maps etc., over multiple sessions although TTF did provide ways of saving some material locally and reloading in a new session.

The Renaissance Black Powder SRD says "Ranged weapons can be reloaded with this Action – this takes as many Combat Rounds as noted in the weapon’s description." This implies that when it says 3 rounds to reload it means three full rounds and not fire at the end of the third but fire on your normal strike rank on the fourth turn.

Copyright law differs from place to place in the world but with a legally owned PDF you can in most jurisdictions indeed have it professionally printed. The problem might be (and I think I've only heard about it in the US) is that the printer might want to have some proof that you have the right to print the pdf. This is often as easy as pointing out the statement that if often on pdfs from professional companies that says something like "you have the right to print this for personal use only". AFAIK that statement, for example, appears on just about every character sheet in most RPG's even where a separate sheet is provided for download from the authors web site.

The BGB - BRP 4e is mostly a toolkit for running a game by picking and choosing from a multitude of design choices. Here's a copy of the Table of Contents. 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2. Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 3. Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 4. Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 • Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 • Mutations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 • Psychic Abilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 • Sorcery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 • Super Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 5. System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 6. Combat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 7. Spot Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 8. Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 The following chapters are for the player who will take the role of GAMEMASTER. 9. Gamemastering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 10. Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 11. Creatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 12. Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 • Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 • Character Sheets & Important Tables . . . . . . 381 The settings section has bunch of various settings with suggestions on what to use for them. The Planetary Adventure section has a set of suggested character types and powers for that setting for example. Character Types: Professions suitable for a planetary adventure or equivalent setting include Artist, Assassin, Athlete, Craftsman, Doctor, Engineer, Entertainer, Explorer, Gambler, Hunter, Laborer, Merchant, Noble, Occultist, Pilot, Politician, Priest, Sailor, Scholar, Scientist, Servant, Shaman, Slave, Soldier, Spy, Student, Teacher, Technician, Thief, Tribesman, and Warrior. Common Powers:Generally, the powers in a planetary adventure setting are either mutations or psychic abilities, or some extraordinary abilities best modeled with the less flashy super powers. If you've seen Call of Cthulhu or download the free BRP Quick Start rules you'll know how the various character types are dealt with - a set of skill choices to match those used by that type. As far as non humans go there is a sidebar on non-human races of about one half a page which explains how to use monsters as player characters (Note monsters include dwarfs, elfs, trolls). RQ6, while also a toolkit, is designed mostly for fantasy games but has many similarities to BRP in the game design field. There is a section on creating non-human player characters and the magic is very varied and totally different to any D&D game you may have played. The sorcery system doesn't use spells as such are described in many FRPGs but is more building blocks to create effects i.e. Animate Substance quite literally invests an inanimate object with a semblance of life, permit-ting it to move under its own power. RQ6 is a little light on the examples but has a very useful set of sidebars which go through many of the processes by which characters are created and played.

If you email Matt with your order number he'll include a free PDF copy to get you started.

I'm wondering if having two 'staffers' off doing research in Istanbul is having a knock-on effect on Chaosium's regular business of shipping paid for material out the door. Having had a big success with HoTOE's kickstarter may have directed effort away from what they should be doing in getting paid for material out the door. Sending two people off half way around the world without doing basic research on the institutions that they are going to visit sounds like a group of bad investigators in one of their own adventures. Presumably they didn't plan on them taking too long and are hoping that people will wait for material until the two staffers get back again to go to the Post Office.

You might want to grab a PDF of The Laundry from Cubicle 7. This is modern BRP occult/Mythos espionage set in the UK. It has a bunch of modern occupations, uses wealth ratings and is the most recent iteration of the BRP engine in print.

The D100 G+ community I mentioned above is at: https://plus.google.com/communities/114627856101233542605 Currently up to 109 members with sub communities for just about every D100 game system going.

Why not use the existing D100 RPG group on plus?

Laundry and Delta Green would seem to be the best BRP-based choice for current in-print material dealing with modern weaponry. With DG being updated Laundry is the most recent BRP-based modern game and uses a number of variants from the base BGB. It's mechanics are done by the same people responsible for the 4e BGB so they seem to have just chosen more suitable, albeit still BRP, mechanics for a modern game. It uses a higher number of skill points for characters (650 compared to 350 in the BGB) with a more focussed distribution (no free skill points) as all skill points are allocated by occupation and profession to better represent modern characters. I'd say that there are better systems for running this genre. I've played a number of games using the Hot War mechanics for horror/Cthulhu games but guns are merely a tool and left very undefined in HW.

The RQ6 one from Design Mechanism might fit the bill.

You could simply keep the combat between a character and the GM and post a summary of each round. Example: Arg the Orc wins initiative [email to all] and strikes Gobbo the dwarf [email to Gobbo's player] Gobbo parries [Gobbo to GM] If Gobbo is hit - narrate the result [GM to all players] Arg swings at Gobbo who parries but fails to prevent the orc's sword biting into his arm. Next up Antherion the Elf strikes Ig the goblin [Antherion to GM] Ig parries Antherion and gets a special success [GM to Antherion] [GM to all players] Atherion strikes at an orc but the orc's parry turns his sword and the riposte causes Antherion to lose his grip on the swords hilt and it clatters to the floor. See it's easy if you take a combat outside the usual post every other day or once a week system that you use for normal play. A quick flurry of emails over a couple of hours or a 'chat' session between the GM and one player can sort out combat quickly. I think that it makes for a great story but for players that aren't so keen on the roleplay it can drag a lot.

Legend is a good start. It's relatively easy to learn (compared to OSR and D&D) and the various systems are pretty interchangeable as far as creatures and adventures go. Glorantha is the grandaddy of campaign worlds for D100 but there are others about. If you want to set up your own world than it's as easy to do with a D100 system as anything else. Draw a map for yourself and put in a city (that the PC's could start in), place the various tribes or other civilizations that the PC's can come from. Throw in a few abandoned temples or catacombs ( you only need to fill these out when your players go that way) and that should be it. If you want to add a plot fine, just make sure you know where the plot locations will be and who the protagonists are.

You're too late, it's been taken down to avoid possible problems.

Machen's The Great God Pan might add an interesting twist to the idea of a search for a missing person.

At least you had access to a copier, I had to type my earliest submissions to fanzines on mimeograph paper. Typos were a nightmare to correct so if your page had too many it was easier to start again than correct them. Writing up material by hand for scenarios meant doing it twice, once for the players and then again with the secret notes to run it.

You could reduce it a little more by not listing the stats for weapons. If you have applicable weapons on a list with their stats they don't need to be repeated in the stat block. It will however be slightly more cumbersome as you'll have to look in two places for information. My suggestion would be to write a scene with say 5 enemies statted up and run it in session zero after everyone has made their characters. Use it as a training scene to show everyone how combat works. How that runs will allow you to refine what you need and don't need during the campaign. For mook types i.e. goblins, what I do is write out the full stat block at the top of a sheet. Below that make a chart with boxes labelled 1 to 20 down in the first column then put their primary weapon as the title and weapon and skill% in the second column, shield as the title and skill% in third, AP in the fourth column, HP taken in the fifth and Dodge skill % in the last. As each one gets hit adjust the HP and when killed put a line through the NPC. Use a pencil and the sheet is re-usable. Full stat block goes up here. No. Spear Shield AP Hits Dodge 1 50 50 8 -- 5 2 50 50 8 -- 5 etc.

Well you can put all of the Attributes in a String 11,12,13,12, etc., you need these for STR rolls for example. But if you have Hit locations there's little you can do to reduce that - you'll have seven boxes next to 7 values for the HP and another seven boxes for Armour points. Using Total HP will keep the size of stat blacks down a bit, but the list of skills will take up a lot of room. Keeping it only to the combat skills plus interpersonal skills might minimise it a little. So Attributes, weapon skill, dodge skill, interpersonal skills and total HP is probably as small as it will get. If you are looking for a replacement for OD&D Openquest will probably be easier to work with.

Hey Newt it's more of a drip than a drip, drip. But seriously I couldn't find out anything until getting an update here from Nick M. Surely the fact that John is planning to take CR to a indie publisher and intending to update the product should be newsworthy and warranted something on the D101 site before the more recent updates. A running drip, drip of data on the progress of RoH would build anticipation rather than a very irregular now and then approach. A decent bit of regular, say monthly on the same day, self-promotion would help keep D101 and it's ranges in the public eye. Nigel

It's my understanding that John is busy with River of Heaven and once that is out of the way a newly revised and updated Cthulhu Rising is on the cards. As far as I can tell it will be done using Open Quest and published by D101 Games - but I might be wrong as getting blood out of a stone would be easier than getting information on progress of this line.

Here's how I do it. I read the rules (although if it is a BRP variant I just check the variances). With that fresh in my mind I print out/copy any tables or charts that I'm likely to need that aren't on a QR sheet that I can often find on the net. I slip those charts etc. into plastic sleeves and put them into a binder - this can be as few as half-a-dozen double-sided pages. When I write a scenario I usually include useful snippets in-line with the text - a map or sketch, background info etc and prepare a handout to go with that verbiage. So PDF's with the ability to copy and paste sections of text are invaluable in my pre-game preparation. During a game I can run with my notes and the binder together with a QR sheet (often passed to the players as well). If I do need to find an obscure piece of information then an electronic search of the PDF is far quicker than thumbing through a book and a smart phone can do this. So by planning ahead and putting the rulebook in the cloud any player could look up the information while you continue with the game. So I'd rather have a PDF and dispense with the fluff just keeping the meat of the rules (that half-a-dozen pages) to play with which makes for cheap printing in b&w. I keep the fancy paper and colour for props where they have much more utility than pages of often indifferent art and crappy fake scroll backgrounds. Nigel