seneschal

What can I say? It’s a genre convention. Also would describe Twin Peaks (the show, not the restaurant) or The Shadow Over Innsmouth or even Anne of Green Gables. Just goes to show that a gal on her own is better off if she has a large, friendly dog along.

Thing is, you wouldn’t have to spring for a Dark Shadows license to do what its writers did in the first place. Take Jane Eyre/Turn of the Screw style Gothic romance — isolated, eerie old setting with the PCs as newcomers trying to figure out what gives in a tight lipped community that has plenty of skeletons stuffed in plenty of closets. So far we’re in Agatha Christie territory. Next throw in local superstitions and maybe an ancient curse or two, a pinch of Hound of the Baskervilles. Are the stories true? Don’t know, but the fog, the dark trees, the steaming bogs and the growling incessant surf don’t help dispel them a bit. Next, a dollop of seeming supernatural. Strange noises and glimpses late at night, the children or the mansion staff acting oddly (or at least more odd than usual). Personal belongings disappear, or pop up in places the investigators didn’t leave them. Ghosts, or maybe the butler got caught before he could pawn them? Well, gang, it looks like we’ve got another mystery on our hands. Finally, confront investigators with the real deal. Crazy old Ma Murphy’s love potion actually works. Lecherous Harry Binth can’t follow the female PCs through the herb garden because of that garlic patch. The grocer’s daughter got chewed up by something on her way home late last night. Is there a good reason that anteroom in the guest house was sealed off? Maybe the PCs could open it back up and put in a jacuzzi. What could possibly go wrong?

No, no, those are the Special Forces ducks.

It also depends on whether you’ve got the whole rules set to refer to or just the module. If the former, you can sort of dope out what a tough guy or a brainy mad scientist looks like (or what damage a trap does) in that system and put together the BRP equivalent. If you've only got the adventure for an unfamiliar system, you’re really winging it. Never have run the Lords of Creation modules I picked up cheap, not only because the stats are arcane but because the adventures themselves are so random and off the wall. And you thought Rifts was gonzo! The Horn of Roland would confuse Doctor Who (all of them), boucing from sci-fi coventions to encounters with mythic and historic figures to dinosaur-infested islands straight out of Land of the Lost. Omegakron stuffs multiple competing post-apocalypse tropes side-by-side. Whole tribes of mutant animals? Sure! They’re two blocks over from where Buck Rogers and Twiki hang out, but watch out for that stretch where A Clockwork Orange style gangs hold sway. Did I mention the graveyard haunted by bog monsters as well as ghosts? (No, these aren't spoilers because in Lords of Creation apparently not only can anything happen but anything WILL happen. Try to keep up, dang it!)

I had assumed "Elf-finger" was a James Bond reference. Ducks in tuxedos with guns! Because if they worship a death god, having that License to Kill just makes sense. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spy-Bath-Duck-James-Pond/dp/B0013V73R8#immersive-view_1536238736820

Another thing to watch out for when comparing and converting among games is how the numbers scale. Gangbusters!, DangerQuest, Rolemaster, and Call of Cthulhu 7 all use percentile stats, and some of the attributes may even be analogous. However, the normal average may be different in each game, and things really start getting wonky once you reach exceptional or superhuman levels.

What we need is a setting where happy-go-lucky teenagers dance, party, cook out and chase their ideal guy or gal on the beach, always looking for the perfect spot to catch the ultimate wave: DuneQuest! Can Chloe Grace Moretz channel Annette Fuicello? Thisvis a BRP game, after all.

I dont think we’ve been dissing other people’s favorite games. But i do think the criteria are over broad, putting games on the list whose settings you couldnt use without a lot of work. Sure, i could run my beloved Daredevils modules or DangerQuest’s Newmerica setting with BRP but I’d be writing up NPCs from scratch because the rules themselves have few or no common points, even if they do all use percentile dice.

Do we have a transcript of the radio show or translation of the Twitter feed?

Dont know about Aftermath! but Bushido struck me as D&D-ish and Daredevils was simply incomprehensible. Nothing like BRP at all ( but the modules are pulp adventure gold). I ran them with Justice, Inc.

If it repurposed Magic World rules they could call it “Advanced Spacery.” 😉 When i was introduced to BRP via GORE my first thought wasnt of Lovecraft or Ducks but of science fiction.

I know fans generally loved Gal Godot and Lynda Carter in the role and sneered at the 1974 and 2011 television pilots that offerred alternative takes on Wonder Woman. But a part of me would like to have seen the blonde secret agent and grumpy toy tycoon versions fully developed. Perhaps in a Doctor Who style crossover event among the various iterations, teaming up to save the day. After all, the comics themselves have given us a de-powered Emma Peel style Diana, an angry stressed out heroine (after a series of crises) willing to injure bad guys, and a blonde substitute Wonder Woman with a militant attitude. Also, i cant help recalling that the TV show M.A.N.T.I.S. turned out to be fun despite having a rough and (to me) rather offensive pilot. Between the concept film and the actual series they worked out the problems. Television Wonder Woman got a second chance in the 1970s but not in the 2010s. Cinema aside, i stumbled upon an omnibus volume of Wonder Woman stories similar to the Superman tome i had discovered earlier. In her 1941 debut, the Amazon princess took over the identity of U.S.Army nurse Diana Prince in order to stay near an injured Steve Trevor. The real Diana Prince, meanwhile, followed her soldier fiance overseas so they could get married. In the pulps, The Shadow had come to a similar arrangement with the real Lamont Cranston Army Intelligence never discovered the switch.

So, those of you who have it, have you had a chance to play around with it and create some heroes? How did it go?

“Aye-yi-yiiii! Zordon, we need Macro-Mondo-Megazord power NOW!”

So, Voltron, Gigantor and Raydeen walk into a bar and ... it collapses. (Because, you know, they’re giant robots.) I’ll just get my coat ....

I guess my brain doesn’t work that way. I need something more like “10 build points gives you X units of energy, which will power Y devices” (depending on how much juice they require). I don’t want Aftermath! levels of complexity, but I do need a consistent system to work with.

Thing is, you need the straitjacket to provide the structure needed to makes a concept gameable. You can always loosen the stays or cut them if necessary. To return to my starship analogy, Traveller rules don’t model all sci-fi franchises well, and no franchise is more loosey goosey than Lost In Space. However, because there are specific rules I can come up with a reasonable facsimile of the Jupiter 2 even if I have to bend them somewhat.

I never got past the mecha building rules. I was supposed to look up stats online for my favorite anime robot (partial if they were there at all) then guess at the power output in megawatts for a pretend, nonexistent technology and base my construction from there. It would be like the Traveller starship rules saying, “Hunt down the specs for the Enterprise or Doctor Zarkov’s rocketship and wing it from there.”

I wanted to love BRP Mecha but it just didn't work for me. It was "make it up as you go" where I needed consistent game mechanics to hang my Science Police helmet on. I tried several times to write-up a sample machine and just couldn't do it following the instructions.

Or go the Fantastic Four route and have public identities, celebrities with powers. Doc Savage went that way, too. Must have quiet retreat with good security.

Slow and steady wins the race. 😉

Yes, I remember that. It was after one of their many reboots of the DC universe. The gimmick was that Kal-El’s face actually changed subtly when he switched identities. They quickly dropped that and went back to the magic glasses schtick. Things were especially dicey after the Death of Superman saga. Superman and Clark Kent vanished and returned at the same time — the former sporting a flowing mane and the latter noticeably beefy with his hair pulled back in a ponytail. The Daily Planet office is stuffed with bright, nosy investigative reporters. Riiiiiiiight. The transformation from Clark Kent to Superman was most convincing on radio, where actor Bud Colyer’s voice dropped a full octave when the soft-spoken newsman ditched his street clothes. The change in attitude and personality was utterly believable. Of course, there was the storyline where a minor hood burglarized Kent’s apartment and stole his costume. Superman called on Batman to help him get it back and prevent gangland from figuring out where it came from. By the way, aren’t you glad the Cthulhu Mythos doesn’t get rebooted like the DC and Marvel universes do? We’d have had Cthulhu for president and epic rapp battles with Godzilla for sure. 😳

Precisely. Danger Quest is all about percentiles but is nothing like BRP. (The retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic setting is a missed opportunity.)

Decades of comics, movies, and radio and TV shows have persuaded us that if Lois Lane could ever catch Clark Kent without his glasses the jig would be up, his true identity as Superman would be revealed. The spectacles must be magic or something. However, I’ve been reading an omnibus of Forties Superman stories. In the August 1942 tale “Muscles for Sale” the unthinkable happens. As part of investigating a crime spree, Kent joins a gymnasium and has a boxing lesson with the brawny proprietor. He’s sans suit and glasses, boxing trunks only. Lois is surprised at how buff he is but still doesn’t recognize the hero she has the hots for even when he’s standing two yards away. As Kent easily dodges the instructor’s blows, she sniffs at what a chicken he is and walks away. Wait, it gets better. The crooks, believing they have their latest customer hypnotized, dress Kent in a Superman costume and send him to help rob a fancy dress ball Lois Lane is covering. Lane doesn’t gasp that Superman has turned to crime; she wonders why her co- worker is in costume and with the bad guys. It isn’t until Kent falls (apparently to his death) out a window then returns through the same window as his alter ego (still wearing the substitute costume) that she identifies him as Superman. And she buys the explanation that Clark was made-up to look like Superman and was rescued by the real thing seconds before Superman bounded in to save the day. It isn’t just Lois. None of the other characters in the story, having met Clark Kent, Kent in costume, and Superman scratch their heads and say, “Hey, wait a minute!” Yeah, yeah. Comic book logic. But still, really?

The god in the machine? An idea stolen from Stephen Lawhead's "Empyrion -- The Search for Fierra": Devotees have a "magical" ability to manipulate and repair ancient technology because they are somehow linked in to alien technical manuals or maintenance protocols. They can't explain it but they have the equivalent of the Big Gold Book's Super Skill in Repair (Electrical and Mechanical) and Heavy Machine.