fmitchell

Magic World Sorcery is almost identical to Battle Magic(*), so you can port most of the spells over without much difficulty. You may have to convert player races' skills from BRP to OpenQuest names (which may produce duplicates) and recalculate one or two attributes, but I don't think that's too difficult. (*) Differences between the two systems: BRP Sorcery requires a POW of 16, but spells always succeed; casting OQ Battle Magic requires a Battle Magic Casting skill check, defaulting to POWx3%. You can probably ignore this distinction. BRP Sorcery caps the magnitude of variable-magnitude spells, usually at 4. Apparently Battle Magic doesn't. Targets resist BRP Sorcery with characteristics using the Resistance Table, essentially (Active - Resisting + 10)x5% where Active is the caster's attribute (usually POW or MP) and Resisting is one of the target's attributes. Targets resist OQ Battle Magic with Resilience, Persistence, or occasionally Dodge. Converting one to the other should be fairly straightforward: POW, MP, or INT = Persistence; DEX = Dodge or Resilience, based on context; everything else = Resilience. BRP uses APPearance, OpenQuest uses CHArisma. Spells that target APP increase/decrease physical beauty; whether you want to translate that to CHA or not is up to you. The format for spells differs in each system, but it should be easy to figure out.

Not so much if target numbers are multiples of 10. d20 can manage a Players Roll All The Dice variant because only the "active" party rolls a single d20 in every situation. BRP isn't that simple: not only bigger numbers but opposed die rolls that make odds calculations nonlinear. If you really want PCs to roll all dice without having to rewrite and rescale large parts of the system, the only reasonable way I see is to modify PC skills either as straight percentiles or as multiples of the PCs skill. My preferred way to handle things, which is mathematically equivalent to Rolemaster and several other methods above, is that NPC stats list a penalty (or bonus) that adjusts the player's effective skill (including critical successes, etc.). E.g. If Skarl meets an NPC shopkeeper with Fast Talk -20%, his Fast Talk 48% becomes 28%. The same shopkeeper might have Intimidation +30%, so Intimidation 24% turns into Intimidation 54%. If the GM wants to keep these factors secret, players call out their skill and their roll and the GM applies modifiers. As I said above, it's easiest to work with difficulties that are multiples of 10, and +/-0% would be the most common value. Penalties/bonuses should stay above -50% except in extraordinary circumstances, e.g. dragons or demigods. Anything above +50% might as well be an automatic success unless the player is really incompetent. (I still prefer a difficulty ladder using skill multipliers, but without a lookup table the extra calculations consume more brainpower than single-digit addition and subtraction.) Ultimately what we all like about BRP is its simple and fast resolution mechanics, so more complicated procedures will make many players long for another system.

Most of the "PC rolls only" systems I know of use roll-over dice conventions: players roll dice, add modifiers based on their own abilities and assets, and try to match or exceed a Difficulty Number set by the GM. If you're willing to re-work all skills as bonuses on a percentile (or d20?) roll, that may be the way to go. You'd have to distinguish +0% from "no skill", re-think difficulty numbers for normally un-opposed rolls, and re-define experience rolls (e.g. skill + die < 100%). The most BRP-ish system I can think of would use an extremely coarse-grained system: to hit or parry "average" foes require only a normal success, while more challenging foes may require a "special" or even "critical" success just to hit. One could also use the Easy - Average - Hard modifiers from BRP (double or half skill), or the bonus/penalty die from COC7 (roll two "tens" dice, and pick the higher or lower depending on whether the player has a penalty or bonus to his action). None of this will yield the same probabilities as the old two-dice system, and I doubt they'd even be close. But I think these options play faster at the table and/or follow the "BRP Way".

This was mainly a thought experiment, sparked by another thread but too long to post there. I'm aware of HeroQuest; PDQ (the system behind Truth & Justice) works almost the same way with smaller numbers and 2d6. I'm just not sure if I could whip up enough local interest in games without a) familiar touchstones like characteristics and skills, and brand recognition like D&D (any edition), Pathfinder, or Numenera. But I liked a number of suggestions, especially special rules for Super Strength and other enhancements of natural abilities, and a separation between skill and scale (at least in some cases). Super-heroes aren't really my thing, but seeing how far I can push "everything is a skill" in BRP gives me ideas for conspiracy, horror, science fiction, weird fantasy, and other genres that interest me more.

While posting on a Superworld thread I started brainstorming an alternate super powers system that captures the four-color feel of comics without getting bogged down in "realism". I've almost certainly floated this idea before. Essentially Narrative Super Powers are plot-dependent magic, inspired by the indie game Truth & Justice. Narrative Super Powers are expressed as simple percentages, gained much like spells under the Magic system. They have no set limits for weight, speed, damage, and so forth. Instead, the player tells the GM what he wants to do and which Super Power he wants to do it with. The GM may decree the test is Trivial (automatic success), Easy (x2), Average, Hard (x1/2), or Impossible (automatic failure). The player rolls for the Super Power like any other skill, except in the case of Trivial or Impossible feats. Based on the degree of success, the GM narrates the results. Super Powers can partially or wholly negate other Super Powers or mundane effects. In broad strokes it works like a parry or dodge; the defender tests an applicable Super Power, and based on the relative levels of success of each party the attack has no, full, or double effect. For purposes of Super Powers mundane attacks usually count as Normal successes, even if the attacker rolled a Critical. The GM may rule a mundane attack counts as a Special or even Critical success if a) it represents massive damage or it targeted a weakness of the defending Super Power. Most of the time, Super Powers will enable "impossible" actions or constrain targets in some way. Attacks against a designated target will do additional damage that scales with the power, e.g. 1/20 the skill in D6s. E.g. Super Strength 60% grants extra Damage Bonus of +3D6 for melee attacks, or half that for ranged attacks; energy bolts would do 3D6. Likewise Invulnerability, Super Armor, and similar powers grant "free" Armor Points proportional to the power, e.g. half the skill, so 30% is equivalent to 15 AP. The armor will have a mandatory flaw, e.g. fire, ferrous metals, or vulnerable spots at the eyes, ears, and mouth. Super Powers can do any amount of property damage the GM finds reasonable, expressed as a change of condition rather than specific D6s of damage. As an optional rule, villains may inflict collateral damage on NPCs or non-powered individuals. For example, an NPC dropped by a hero will miraculously find a soft landing in a convenient pool or dumpster; if a villain drops the hero's girlfriend from a great height, she will hit the pavement and take standard falling damage. For example, Super Woman wants to throw a truck at Doctor Mayhem; she rolls against her Super Strength skill to see if she succeeds. If Doctor Mayhem is another super he can roll an applicable super power like Super Speed or Invulnerability to dodge the result. If Doctor Mayhem fails or he has no (applicable) Super Power the truck miraculously lands so that he is only stunned, pinned, knocked over, non-fatally hurt, or whatever Super Woman intended. The sidewalk, nearby buildings, and other objects in the way would suffer the effects one would expect from a truck hurtling through the air and crashing to earth, but passers-by would all leap out of the way. Like T&J, this approach allows Superman to punch Lex Luthor without invoking the chunky salsa rule, and lets Batman's crazy preparedness defeat Superman's planet-pushing strength. There may need to be extra rules to determine what happens at the interface between the conventional rules system and Narrative Super Powers. Mostly these would be limits and lists of mechanical "conditions" any power could inflict. A list of powers might help players generate their hero, although the advantage of this system is that players can essentially invent their own power as long as they can explain it coherently to the GM. Optional rules might cover improvised powers (i.e. stretching the scope of a power), stunts (i.e. specialized a/o well-practiced uses of a power), and extra-flexible powers (e.g. an improvised penalty, plus dividing the skill by the number of concurrent activations). A world that works like this would resemble the recent Web series Caper, switching between real actors and comic-book animation. In the latest installment, for example, human actors portray a character lighting a fuse (with simple digital effects), and Superguy's actor rushes out of scene. Cut to low-frame-rate animation of Superguy leaping on the explosive just before it goes off. Switch back to Superguy's actor walking back into scene with shredded clothes. Granted, it may seem jarring to use standard BRP combat and hit points to represent a fist fight but dueling super-powers and "conditions" to represent super-power attacks. It's as if super-power effects aren't "real" in the same way mundane damage is. If Super Woman really wants to hurt or kill somebody she'll use a sword, not her powers. Note that if you leave out the Super To Mundane damage/armor conversion, you'd have a psionic or urban magic system that only affects "sensitives" or magicians. That in and of itself might make a weird but interesting campaign: mundanes would see only two people making hand gestures at each over until one keels over, while those with Second Sight would see a mighty occult battle. So ... thoughts?

Figuring out if Kryptonians can actually leap tall buildings in a single bound under conventional physics does help understand a) whether it's super-strength or something more and just how rubbery your physics has to be. For a more "realistic" example, consider the full-body cyborg Motoko Kusanagi from the Ghost in the Shell franchise. Canonically her metal body is denser than water; although she has the dimensions of an average woman, I've seen her weight estimated at 300 lbs or more. She can't leap upward very far, but she jumps off tall buildings a lot. At some point I'll have to work out how much momentum her legs would have to absorb not to turn her squishy human brain into jelly, and how much damage she does to roofs in the process. Also, in Stand Alone Complex she jumps upward, does a quadruple spin, and lands on her feet, just to show off; how much strength and control would that take? A physics-ignoring super powers system is in this thread.

To be fair, Numenera has a) Monte Cook, an extremely streamlined system, c) D&D-esque player-facing rules, and c) a massive media blitz (by gaming standards). Also, as much as I like BRP, it's 30 years old and showing its age. For example, the principle that any "monster" can be a PC is interesting, but these days time-constrained GMs prefer a system where they can invent NPCs or creatures on the fly. Yes, you can invent skill percentages and characteristics off the top of your head, but it takes more effort than picking a few numbers (or as in Numenera one number) and modifying to taste. CoC 7 is I think trying to streamline BRP while retaining some backward compatibility, although whether it will succeed in the marketplace is a big question.

Sounds more like the Dalek/Thal conflict ("Genesis of the Daleks"), with more sides: plasma rifles, then slug-throwers, then crossbows, then thrown rocks. (Then twisted mutants in scaled-down tanks.)

If this were Champions or GURPS, I'd suggest Flight with the limitation "Parabolic Trajectory Only", which presumably would be cheaper. Realistically speaking, to go from standing to sufficient velocity to leap over a building he'd put two giant craters in the sidewalk, one at the point of origin and the second at the point of landing. It's much more "plausible" to assume he can generate constant upward thrust somehow, and uses that upward thrust to decelerate on the way down. Another possible way to model a Super-Leap is to assume Supes can temporarily ignore gravity. The upward jump could continue forever, under (Isaac) Newton's laws of motion, but he can make himself weigh just enough to waft back down to Earth. Also, his mass would still remain the same, so both he and his opponents would still have to overcome his inertia. This still poses the problem of the initial thrust, but at least that takes the downward acceleration of gravity out of the equation. EDIT: Let's assume the "tallest building" is 300 m, about right for the 1940s. If I've used the right online calculator, at the end of his journey Supes would smack the concrete at about 172 mph. If we assume he's simply jumping, that would mean he'd have to accelerate to 172 mph between the time he bent his knees and the time his feet left the ground.

Moorcock wrote a Doctor Who novel a couple of years ago. Doctor Who fans panned it, but from the plot description it sounded he was trying to work the Eternal Champion mythos in. (Which is maybe what went wrong.) Science fiction doesn't need space travel. Charles Stross has argued that starships are just another form of fantasy. What distinguishes science fiction from fantasy is attention to scientific plausibility, although extrapolating how societies and individuals respond to technological change is essential to the "fiction" part. By that measure, Moorcock is definitely a fantasy writer.

Reminds me of a Cordwainer Smith short story where humanity made first contact with an alien species of ducks. Then one of the ambassadors accidentally died in a fire ... and mankind rediscovered orange sauce ...

Since I own The Bronze Grimoire and The Unknown East, I know what most of the systems will be like. So I'm most interested in Herbalism (which I don't remember from either) and Nick Middleton's "Arete" system. Also, is this the book that describes how to use Allegiance for gods, cults, and religions? Or is that a later book?

IIRC they're grown in artificial wombs or vats. The first Daleks (in Genesis of the Daleks) were grown in a lab, and the Daleks who survived the Time War lost the technology to grow more of their kind ("The Daleks Take Manhattan"). The Dalek Emperor resorted to sifting through human tissue ("The Parting of the Ways"), and Davros engineered a new Dalek race from his own flesh ("The Stolen Earth"). In Victory of the Daleks the Davros lineage(?) had acquired a device to reproduce the original Dalek race, albeit in new color-coded travel machines. It's never stated where the genetic material comes from. I always assumed it was some blend of cloning and genetic engineering.

Remember, also, that other Daleks called it an "abomination", because it didn't look enough like a Dalek. (Or because radiation from its enhanced weapon drove it mad. It's been a while.)

I've probably said this before, but "Intelligence" as a concept bothers me. Never mind how problematic the real-world definition is; in an RPG it can be frustrating to play with one lobe of your brain tied behind your back, and even more frustrating to pretend you're smarter than you are. Part of the problem may be the name; other games use Cunning, Reason, Wits, Knowledge, or Learning, and yet others split the functions of INT among two or three other attributes like Magical Aptitude, Technical Aptitude, and Perception. Since BRP already has EDU (in modern and future games, at least), I prefer to think of INT as memory, presence of mind, and/or quick thinking under pressure. Like Charisma or social skills, INT represents the difference between being a certain kind of person in the situation and being a player sitting at a table. An Idea roll to think of something represents having lived an entire life continuously in an imaginary world, not being a modern gamer who only becomes this person for one session every week or two. Under this interpretation, a person with INT 8 might be a deep thinker but slow to react and not very studious, while a person with INT 16 may or may not be "smart" but easily notices, memorizes, and (unfortunately in a Lovecraftian universe) correlates the contents of his mind.

That's one convention that really bothers me. Were I doing a Star-Trek-like game, I'd do one of the following: Players start off as red-shirts and/or bridge crew, following orders from command officers who usually stay on the bridge. (I think ADB's Prime Directive works like this. See John Scalzi's Redshirts for an extreme example of how this might work.) Players have two or three sets of characters: away-team, bridge crew, and command staff The ship is small/automated enough that the PCs are at least half the available crew. The starship is huge and powerful, but the PCs fly a shuttle to/from/around the planet. And don't get me started on transporters. Or alien-human hybrids. Or phaser disintegration. Or ... well, lots of things.

Some variations: Perhaps dragons can hold one form indefinitely but changing form may require significant MP, enough so that it's not a combat tactic so much as a last resort. Depending on genre and the nature of magic, dragon form actually costs MP to maintain, at least in the human world. Dragons in human form might have access to draconic powers, which effectively act as themed magic spells (much like the Draconic Mysticism in one of the Mongoose RQ books). The second idea reminds me of a novel I read ages ago, Tea with the Black Dragon, which IIRC veers between urban fantasy and magical realism at a time when neither were explicit genres. I'm also reminded of the Dragons in the RPG Castle Falkenstein.

To be fair, though, GURPS 1-3e did use HP = Health and FP = Strength. It makes intuitive sense until you realize the best wizards would be (sickly) bodybuilders ... For simplicity, I'd go with reduced CON but a +5 (SIZ 6-10) or +10 (SIZ 1-5) for environmental hazards common in the creatures' native habitat. OTOH, domesticated animals like house cats and chihuahuas might feel the cold more keenly in inverse proportion to their SIZ, and get no bonus. For most drugs and poisons, maybe starting HP ((SIZ+CON)/2) instead of straight CON to factor in body mass.

To be fair, small animals will have less resistance to human-sized doses of poison or drugs. Arguably they also have less resistance to cold due to the square-cube law, which is why small animals in cold climates have heavier fur or feathers. Hm, this could get complicated.

Next Chaosium release from now or next after CoC 7?

It also depends on how familiar you are with the system. It once took me 25 minutes to generate a CoC character but a) it had been a while, I was flipping around the book and c) I was keeping notes on the process. New users allocating skill points can easily dither for half an hour; it helps to allocate five or ten points at a time. 15 minutes seems about right, though, depending on the exact system and version.

The difference lies in the degree of help you get. If you ask a merchant for a place to stay, a fair result would get you the directions to the nearest inn, a good result would get you directions to the nearest GOOD inn, and an excellent result would get you a personal introduction to the innkeeper or (depending on culture) an invite to stay with the merchant and his family.

English is a bad example. Other European languages have far more regular spelling, e.g. Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian, and Spanish. That said, your fantasy world works however you want it to.

You might be interested in a thread I started in the BRP forum. Short version: instead of a general "Literacy" skill or a "Read/Write X" for every spoken X, you could define a new skill for every script, e.g. Latin Letters (most languages of Europe and the Americas), Cyrillic (mainly Slavic languages), Arabic (most languages in the Muslim world), Hanji (Chinese characters), etc. Some alphabets are wholly phonetic, making them trivial enough to pick up (e.g. Japanese Hiragana and Katakana or Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics); others might be trivially similar to other alphabets (e.g. Latin, Cyrillic, Coptic, and Greek letters). Adapt as needed for your fantasy world.

Recently Battlefield Press launched a kickstarter for a Savage Worlds version Eldritch Skies. But what about BRP? My flawed Eldritch Skies review goes into more detail, but essentially it merges Lovecraft's Mythos with space opera. Sanity loss becomes the effects of Hyperspatial Exposure, the Mi-Go and Elder Things are inscrutable and untrustworthy aliens, and Great Cthulhu and the rest are beings that dwell within hyperspace and (fortunately for us) cannot wholly manifest in our space. Mankind has spread to a handful of other planets through hyperspace gates and a recently invented hyperdrive, largely ignorant of the horrifying dangers lurking within their spiffy gadgets. Were I doing a homebrew port, I'd start with Computational Sorcery from The Laundry RPG and make it the heart of typical near future gadgets. The world of Eldritch Skies includes ghoul hybrids, deep-one hybrids, and suspiciously advanced genetic and bio-mechanical engineering; a modified Super Powers system might suffice, although I might penalize powered individuals with fewer skill points or vulnerabilities related to their augmentations. (Unisystem and presumably Savage Worlds handle augmentations with their native point-buy system.) Fate Points (p 176) might make the game more survivable. I'd probably translate the Hyperspatial Exposure rules as is, since I love the concept, and forget SAN. Has anyone else done this, though? How did it go?