NickMiddleton

Both depend on context - what's the setting like? What technology / magic etc is available. But as a general rule of thumb in my BRP games a character drops unconscious if THP are reduced to <=3 (but First Aid / Medicine can bring them round again). THP <=0 means the character is dying - bleeding from major wounds, in deep shock etc. Magic or trained paramedics might stabilise them, but if so they will still need substantial treatment rapidly, and I usually penalise such characters a hefty reduction in their CON which takes weeks or possibly months to recover. As for resurrection, again, depends on the tech or magic available. I don't see any particular reason why Divine miracles should be hampered by anything as trivial as the absence of physical remains, and if sufficiently high technology is available and has scanned the individuals brain sufficiently recently, I don't see why in a tech setting a blank clone can't be force grown and have the individuals personality and memory uploaded. But equally, there is that wonderful sense of resonance that says the soul cannot return to a broken house (and the dark legends of what the Queen wrought when she defied the priest and had her son the Prince restored to life despite his missing arm...). And there are reams os SF and philosophical speculation about whether a cloned body, recreated personality and copied memories is the same individual or just a good copy... So, as I said: it's all about the setting, really. Cheers, Nick Middleton

Only those supplements that choose NOT to use that optional rule though... Err, IIRC the playtest manuscript had the SPELLS and brief notes on summoning from Stormbringer 5, the Magic from Magic World, A Psychic Powers system elaborated from ElfQuest, a mutations system elaborated from Hawkmoon and a Super Powers system, um, "rationalised" from Super World. And IIRC there were notes on how one as a GM MIGHT mix them (the "Opposed Powers of Different Types" section). I certainly don't recall seeing any HUGE issues with using Sorcery and Magic (would still rather it was called Wizardry though... ) as alternative paths for magicians, and I think you could probably also have Mutation and Psychics in the same setting (Psychics might make life a bit awkward though). MY intuition is that the only one that won't "play nice" with the others is the Super Powers section, simply because it includes powers that duplicate their effects and role of the other powers, so the overlap would just be a mess. Cheers, Nick Middleton

I still have some GW RQII sheets with little spaces for those... *sniff* happy memories... I've always preferred the asymmetry of crit/special/success/failure/fumble precisely becuas it feels like it accentuates the positive for characters. Also I've used the RQII/III scheme so long that the mental arithmetic is second nature, but I would never be too hard on old fogeys# like Grampa Whitaker who can't keep up More seriously, the obvious simplification isthe original SB 10% for crits, as it's very easy. Cheers, Nick Middleton # he is after all at least months older than me...

One of the settings I am noodling away at for BRP is a Mecha setting, and I have no plans for a Mecha design system for it - it would take far too much time and effort to create and check, whereas a set of predefined mechs is perfectly feasible. And I played a LOT of Battletech in the late eighties and never used a Mech design sequence#. BRP games / settings in general tend not to be detail oriented, and complex design sequences (GURPS, MegaTraveller) by defintion ARE, so I think in general they are a poor fit with BRP. On the other hand, Classic Traveller Book 2 has a very simple, almost abstract design system for Starships that is far closer to the BRP approach ("Put logical number on what must have numbers only"). The difficulty comes in building a similar system for other technologies. Personally I much prefer what I saw in the equipment chapter in the playtest to any elaborate design system, but its clearly a potential supplement that someone could pitch to Chaosium. Cheers, Nick Middleton #indeed, I don't remember there being one in the set we used: there must have been I suppose, but I remember none of the features of it at all.

Haven't tried Bootcamp yet, but then I'd pretty much decided I was going to wait for Leopard and then try it... But I'd prefer an OS X native tool, or at least a platform independent one really. Did some Googling and predictably found loads of PC/Windows stuff. Some of the existing ones: For Windows: http://www.edu-web.de/roleplaying/chaosium_brp_en.html Call of Cthulhu specific version: http://www.edu-web.de/cthulhu/cthulhu.html Hugh Fosters stuff: http://home2.btconnect.com/hughfoster/Downloads/Downloads.htm Peter Keel's site: http://seegras.discordia.ch/Roleplay/BRP/Software/ Matti Järvinen's http://www.nysalor.net/runequest/generator.html Paul Sommer http://hjem.get2net.dk/royalpanto/rq4.zip There's a couple of programs (again PC based IIRC) in the files of the RQAddicts Yahoo Group (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/rqaddicts) and one if the files section of Ben moroe's RQIII group (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/rq3) Then it all gets a bit thin on the ground really... Found this project on source forge (not touched for over two years): http://sourceforge.net/projects/rq4gen/ This Java Call of Cthulhu CG: http://www.io.com/~jwtlai/CoC/CoCchar.html Byakhee is now available from the Downloads section of Yog-sothoth.com And that's it. Looks like there was a Mac native Call of Cthulhu character generator, but couldn't find a download site with a copy... Cheers, Nick Middleton

OK, I know of a few Windows PC based Character generators for RQIII and Call of Cthulhu, and one rather good one that styles itself as for "monograph" BRP. But does anyone know of any for the Mac, or even better cross platform ones? When I've run d20 in the past I dabbled with e-Tools and PCGen, but both were somewhat burdened by the complexities of the rule system they were trying to model (and the Byzantine complexities of the licensing...), whereas BRP seems like it ought to be far more straight forward to do. IIRC there was some talk a few years back at the Tavern, but nothing came of it alas... SO, anyone got any ideas? Cheers, Nick Middleton

I'm still regularly playing and running D&D 3.0, Arcana Unearthed/Evolved and Stargate d20 in my two game groups and moderately enjoying it precisely because whilst we've added LOTS of setting variation from published material, core rules-wise we haven't added much beyond the original core 3.0 books... Indeed. Assuming the published version is close to the playtest draft we saw, one could run a game with BRP that from a rules point of view resembled the original BRP pamphlet. Alternatively, pick the right options, and you could have something that is nearly indistinguishable from RQIII, but has X-Men level powered Super-hero's... My immediate plans for BRP are to re-work my (currently on hiatus) "After the scouring..." post-apocalypse England RQIII setting in to a BRP form, plus further work on the "Gate Warden" SF setting I used during the playtest, and a few fantasy settings(Gwenthia, what I used to call "fantasy Mars" and a Fantasy/Horror hybrid called "the Last Refuge"). How far I'll get with any of course is another matter (fewer 9.45pm nights at work would probably help...). Personally, I don't see huge need to revise BRP, as I'm very happy with the synthesis and development of prior work Jason has achieved - but once the core book is published, it wouldn't be a tabletop RPG if people didn't start house ruling and changing it. As for forums here - can't really comment fully as I don't get here enough at present. Given the title of the site, I don't think a HeroQuest section makes sense:its different game and has support; what nest, a GURPS or d20 forum? Once the BRP book is out, adapting to the interests of subscribers as to which settings they use and discuss makes sense - I'm not personally convinced that many will use BRP with Glorantha (if they are that keen on the old way they have RQIII, otherwise they have MRQ which has it's own forums, which is also where discussion of new MRQ Glorantha material will tend to gravitate), but if it IS a setting people use with BRP don't see it being a problem. Cheers, NDM

Pick the right optional subsystems (Skill category modifiers, Hit locations, strike ranks) and you will have something virtually indistinguishable from RQIII in how it plays (albeit there are a lot of nice refinements in defining skills, levels of success, and other details e.g. opposed skills). Pick a different set of options and you will have something very like Call of Cthulhu, or Stormbringer. The big difference is in the "powers" - the playtest had two magic systems (modelled from Magic World and Stormbringer), a mutations system (Hawkmoon), a super powers sytem (Superworld) and a Psychic Powers system (ElfQuest). The RQIII Magic Book is currently available from Chaosium as the BRP Magic Book, and is pretty compatible with the new BRP imo, although whether it will remain available after BRP sees print I don't know - I hope so. Cheers, Nick Middleton