Ravenheart87

GM's call. Depending on your campaign this is down to choosing between common sense or rule of cool. Limiting the move to head, chest, abdomen hit locations is already a bit weird, considering you can pull down someone by their arm or ankle too.

I'm not a fan of fudging, it enforces bad habits and some players find it downright insulting if they find it out. It's okay to let them fail if they overestimate their power, don't flee from lost battles, and don't try to surrender/fake death/parley to save their hides. I do assume for sentient opponents for example, that they would try subdue them if possible, because prisoners can be a good source for information and ransom.

I'm kind of naturalistic in my GM-ing style though, which might not be every group's cup of tea, but even if you are keen on saving your players' hides there is usually a better and more sensible way to do so that doesn't require fudging. I already mentioned taking hostages as an example above, but you don't have to wait till the battle is over - enemies don't like wasting resources either, they can easily intimidate the losing side into throwing down their weapons. Or an NPC can show up who owes them a favour (or wants something from them) to resolve the conflict, which might be cheap, but works in context and can has its own interesting consequences.

Miniatures and battle mats are tools. Like all tools, they should be used when they help, and left in the drawer when not needed. For a duel in a bar roomI wouldn't pop the battle mat open - everyone will know from a short description and using common sense, what's around them. For a battle with height differences, objects that can provide cover or can be interacted, of course I will take them out to make things easier to follow.

You can't act if you run out of Dex ranks.

I don't plan combat encounters. I design environments, which have places, people, and problems. Rarely comes "combat encounters" out of the blue. If they want to break in somewhere it is expected there will be guards, and it's up to them to do the scouting in advance, learn their numbers, devise tactics to deal with them. If man-eating giants live somewhere, there are romours or signs of it, and it's up to them how they want to deal with the monsters. If they anger someone powerful, they can expect ambushes - and the more powerful they seem, the harder these become over time. Another thing you should keep in mind, is that most living beings don't want to die: they will surrender or flee if things go south rather than get massacred. None of these are BRP-specific things though, just common sense - I build my D&D sandboxes like that too, though there some places do have implied level ranges (but very vague, with some surprise "eff you" monsters way out of the range to mess with careless players).

That cover reminds me of Arduin.

29 minutes ago, Gwyndolin said:

The other setting I have prepped is dark fantasy, based in a kingdom that has taken refuge underground while the sun has gone out. Essentially adventures in the underdark with some political intrigue. 

So it's literally dark fantasy. Sounds a lot like Arx Fatalis.

That's mathematically possible. But rolling an 19 with a 3d6 or 2d6+6? I call bullshit on that!

I do "write down whatever number you want just make sure it's not bigger than 18 so it's not suspicious".

Only those books that explicitly say so are covered by ORC. That means BRP:UGE only at the moment.

Might be an artifact? Reminds me of this from Call of Cthulhu: "If melee weapons are being used against firearms, all aimed and ready firearms shoot once before any melee combat takes place. This simulates the relative ease of pulling a trigger as opposed to swinging a melee weapon in an attack."

The only thing I found in the new BRP rulebook is this though: "Within a particular DEX rank, attacks usually go in order of weapon type. Attackers armed with missile weapons (bows, guns, etc.) are considered to act before those in hand-to-hand (melee) combat. After these go characters armed with long weapons (spears, lances, etc.), then those with medium-length weapons (swords, axes, etc.) and finally those with short weapons (daggers, etc.) or who are unarmed."

19 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

I am curious to know what made them choose it? Was it overwhelmingly/no contest or a close call?

First vote was between DCC RPG, BRP, and Dragonbane. Surprisingly Dragonbane was left behind by a lot, and DCC RPG almost won. The second round was about the flavour of BRP, where I offered only two options: a BRP smorgasbord and Mythras. There BRP won by a lot, probably because most of my players don't really want to get immersed in the wondrous world of per hit location HP/AP and plethora of combat special effects.

Being "old-fashioned" is a feature, not a bug. Honestly, many of the improvements of CoC7e and RoL don't feel that intuitive for me, despite their mass appeal and being considered streamlining by many.

As for the preference of RQ2e over RQG by old-school players, there is nothing surprising about that. Core rulebook RQ2e is a lighter game and doesn't require much prior knowledge about Glorantha - in fact, it works fine without the setting. You can set up an RQ2e game relatively easily, create a character quickly, and then enjoy the whiff factor and flying limbs to your heart's desire. 🙂

RQG is a heavily frontloaded game compared to classic RQ, with additional sub-systems and a chunkier core rulebook. This might be a feature for hardcore RuneQuest + Glorantha fans, but can make it less appealing to old-school gamers and RuneQuest sans Glorantha fans. I dig the RQ mechanics too, but I usually run campaigns on my own settings, so if I wanted to use the system I would avoid RQG too, because there is too much I would have to cut away - RQ3e and Mythras would require less tinkering.

As a coincidence, I'm about to convert an old-school D&D campaign put on hold two years ago thanks to my son's birth to a different system, because I'm not in the mood for running the original system (I'm already playing in two old-school D&D campaigns anyway). My players voted for BRP over Mythras or Dragonbane. I'm excited to see how it will work out.

It's a BRP clone from the dawn of the OSR movement.

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

Concerning the blackjack method, the reluctancy of Chaosium to have it as an option is very strange to me. I know it confuses some players, but once you've gone past this confusion, it's both simple and effective. Far better than the "highest skill wins" option from the BRP SRD, at least. Plus, the game that introduced it is Pendragon, a Chaosium game.

It is an opotion in BRP - see Opposed Skills Using Highest Successful Result on page 174 of the BGB and page 112 of the new edition.

9 hours ago, essere74 said:

I use CLASSIC FANTASY and a new character have 240 points to allocate to abilities, how many points does a 5th level NPC have?

It's pointless to compare points. One could allocate all those points to non-combat abilities. Compare relevant ability scores and skills. If you want to balance a creature around your party for combat, then compare combat skills, hit points, armour points, and spells. If it's a social encounter compare social skills. If it's a heist, compare subterfuge skills with perception skills. Totals on their own are meaningless in freeform systems.

24 minutes ago, Stan Shinn said:

What is "blackjack reading of dice"?

When doing opposed rolls if both sides has the same success level, whoever rolled the highest wins.

23 minutes ago, Susimetsa said:

Perhaps there were already enough such comments there? I noticed one person bringing it up multiple times. I, for one, did not get a wrong impression from the marketing statements. CoC etc. are based on BRP, but BRP doesn't claim - to my eye - to include everything that exists in those other titles.

I'm getting tired of it too. CoC and RoL are the ones based on BRP, not the other way around - they are the ones which deviate from the core, but so does every BRP-based game. BRP doesn't have Stormbringer's simplified mechanics and summoning rules, or ElfQuest's characteristic-based skills, or RingWorld's skill groups either. So what?

Just like previous edition, the creatures section gives a bunch of skills for non-human species, but does not elaborate on how to handle them during character creation other than a not too useful sentence:

"It is assumed in most cases that these statistics represent full-grown or mature versions of the creatures, meaning that the GM should be able to limit the range of powers available to a player character version of the creature, with the assumption that in time, the player character creature may learn these additional powers and special abilities."

Okay, limit it, but by how much? What base chances should I use? If you like tinkering you will figure something out, but that's not too useful for neophytes of the system.

How do you handle base chances for non-humans? Do you just use human base chances? Do you have a finely crafted list of your own? Do you use the numbers given in the bestiary as base chances, but hand out less skill points at character creation? Or do you do something entirely else?

It would probably help if it was a sans serif font. I find them more readable for condensed fonts.

It looks lovely. So much stuff in 266 pages...

57 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

I assumed you were so apologies for being Captain Obvious here...

It was a mean trap to churn out unnecessary apilogies from you. 🙂

Anyway, F5.

1 hour ago, DreadDomain said:

They are in the middle of the night in the US so I think it will take a few more hours...

I know. I was joking.

I keep pressing F5 to see where to throw my money.

11 hours ago, TheophilusCarter said:

Seriously, I'm probably going to buy this more than once ...  😄

It's Easter, so buy one for each family member too!