seneschal

Hmmm, it occurs to me that RuneQuest + Call of Cthulhu = Conan. Instead of timid, elderly investigators, you've got brawny Bronze Age barbarians ready to whack 'em and smack 'em.

Sounds like Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone ... in 3-D! or Dungeons and Dragons (movie) to me.

I'm not Steve, but yes. Critters in one variation of the system are pretty much like critters in another variation. The main differences will be whether they use a Hit Point total or whether Hit Points are broken up by body part; the way movement rates are calculated may vary; and whether your desired combat system uses Strike Ranks. This based on comparing the RuneQuest III critters in Basic Creatures to the critters in the Big Gold Book to the critters in the Mongoose RuneQuest I SRD. There may also be minor variations in Armor values and things like that. You can pretty much rip a monster from one source and run it in your favorite BRP flavor. A vamp is a vamp is a vamp. Except, Real Vampires don't glow! Bela Lugosi would be spinning in his grave ... had he not already left it!

That's the way Action! System handles it. PCs have only 1 or 2 Action! Points per session to spend. So they can grunt out that extra effort during the world-saving grandstand play ... but they can't alter the laws of probability on a regular basis.

I translated Olivier Legrand's French Jane Austen RPG, Weatherley, using (I think) Babel Fish via cut and paste. This was possible because it's a relatively short, rules-lite game (10 PDF pages, large print and with pictures). The results were ... interesting. It helped that English borrows a lot of French words and that I'd had previous e-mail contact with the author. However, Babel Fish's way of translating French idioms was strange and often hilarious.

The Big Gold Book lists stats for the boomerang. Look on the primitive missile weapons chart, Page 248. G'day, mate!

The Hero System 5th edition hardcover (aka Fred) was reputed to be able to stop a bullet (in addition to leaping tall buildings in a single bound). Can the BRP hardcover do the same, or does it merely Dodge and Parry?

(Apologies to Sir Percy Blakeney) They seek it here, they seek it there The supplement on the Pimpernel. Is it online, or at a used book store? Buy it and put it in your drawer!

Hmmm, but didn't the Republic launch the empire? I mean those roamin' Romans were conquering and annexing other folks and lands long before Augustus Caesar took charge.

Riiiiight! And the whole David vs. Goliath thing was just a misunderstanding about a bad baseball play.

http://e23.sjgames.com/media/SJG30-6045_preview.pdf GURPS Scarlet Pimpernel? followed by ... http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/ageofnapoleon/ GURPS Age of Napoleon?

Also, if you want to confront your players with some oceanic action, most cruise lines have deck plans of their ships online. It's the Love Boat. Just add fish men and tentacles.

Conan is less a matter of rules, more a matter of attitude. Since all your magicians are going to be bad guy NPCs, you don't really need to dope out a magic system. Just have spells take a long time to cast. Their effects are powerful, but they have such a long start-up time a guy with a sword and some moxie (your player-characters) can usually clobber the caster before a spell goes off. Here's some thoughts on sword-and-sorcery in general to guide your campaign: Sword and sorcery is a pulp fantasy sub-genre created virtually single-handedly by writer Robert E. Howard, who filled popular magazines of the 1930s with tales of anti-heroes such as Conan the Barbarian, King Kull of Atlantis, and Bran Mac Morn, the Dark Man of the Picts. But he was quickly joined by others, and the genre remains popular today. What set the so-called sword-and-sorcery yarns apart from other fantasy stories was the post-World War I cynicism and world-weariness that also informed the hard-boiled detective stories of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett or the grim sea and wilderness adventures of Jack London. If you sat Conan, Wolf Larsen, and Philip Marlowe down together at the same table, they’d understand one another (assuming they didn’t kill each other first). This new attitude led to certain genre conventions that were expanded by those who followed in Howard’s footsteps. Civilization is ancient, evil, and decadent. Advanced societies (some not human) have been around for an unbearably long time, and that’s not a good thing. Civilization weakens a sentient being’s body and morals; a society’s inhabitants invariably become more and more corrupt as it becomes more powerful, until it ultimately collapses and starts the cycle of rise and decay all over again. By extension, city-dwellers are effete, money-grubbing snobs who will betray you as soon as they finish cheating you. It is better to be a barbarian raider who steals honestly than one of those urbane hypocrites. Magic is powerful but subtle and corrupting (like all book learning). Its study and use slowly poisons and twists a practitioner’s soul and mind until he becomes a monster, morally or physically or both. Sorcery usually involves summoning a nasty supernatural or other-dimensional creature to do one’s dirty work. A good broadsword beats a good spell. Magic can’t be performed without long, complicated rituals. Usually in a toe-to-toe fight, a warrior can chop a magician in half before he finishes chanting his incantation. Smart spell-slingers have a brawny henchman (or three) handy at all times to prevent this. There are no sterling heroes. Previously, fantasy literature had its noble outlaws and tricksters, but the protagonist in a sword-and-sorcery story tends to be an outsider who rejects the dominant society’s mores entirely. While he may have a personal code of conduct he adheres to, it’s a dirty world and you have to look out for Number One. If he must commit a crime or stab a colleague in the back to survive, or to follow his personal code, so be it. Virtue, valor, and honor do not guarantee survival. Not everyone is a selfish jerk. A number of folks encountered by the protagonist are decent, hard-working, courageous people who really are trying to do the right thing. However, virtue is truly its own (and sometimes only) reward. The loyal guardsman who stays by his king’s side when all others have fallen and the stalwart farmer-settler who defends his wife and children are just as likely to die from a surprise raid or ravening monster as the slimy ex-sidekick who sold the protagonist out. Fate has no favorites. Man is dominant. The protagonist’s foes are almost always humans whose goals conflict with his own. Typical opponents include ruthless monarchs, scheming nobles, sinister high priests, greedy bandit chieftains, and power-hungry sorcerers. All of these folks are attempting to use the protagonist to further their own agendas. They’ll promise him wealth and power while planning to discard him as soon as he finishes the task they’ve hired him to perform. Such employers will rarely be forthcoming about the true purpose of the hero’s mission. We who were once men. A theme of degeneracy runs through many sword-and sorcery stories. Members of previous great but forgotten civilizations sometimes survive into the current era, corrupted and changed until their humanity has been lost. Non-human races are extremely rare and always hostile. They may have been men once, but that was eons ago. Any trace of mercy or compassion or compunctions against cannibalism has long since been bred out of them. Frequently, they’ve lost even the physical characteristics of mankind, becoming animalistic in form as well as behavior. Gods and monsters, on the other hand, are as common as the ruined temples and lost cities that house them. Gods are not sympathetic, beneficent beings but harsh taskmasters anxious for the blood and flesh of their would-be worshipers. Even though it would be wiser to resort to flight rather than fight when confronted by them, these otherworldly beings can be driven off or even slain by a determined, clever human (such as the protagonist), particularly if he’s equipped with an heirloom magical artifact or weapon. Such useful tools can often be found in the being’s own temple treasury. Easy come, easy go. The protagonist routinely acquires important jobs, magical artifacts, and treasure only to lose, pawn, break or spend them just as quickly. Live for today. Your investment banker (assuming you can find one) would only embezzle the funds anyway! On the road again. The protagonist’s adventures and crimes force him to be constantly on the move. He’s not so much questing as escaping from the authorities, a former boss, a former wife, or the merchant prince he cheated at the bazaar. Any woman worth looking at is worth seeing nude. Nubile temptresses are forever having their raiment removed by evil priests or shredded by hungry monsters. The adventurous life is hard on clothing, which is why the protagonist frequently wears only a loincloth. You can’t change the world. A protagonist can improve his personal fortunes, vanquish his enemies, even win kingdoms, but he can’t effect permanent, positive change upon the world. Human nature is what it is, and the cycle of progress and decay is unstoppable. Even should the protagonist build a vast enlightened empire, all his noble achievements will be wiped out by the next Great Collapse. Up by his bootstraps. Given the mobile nature of his lifestyle, the protagonist changes careers constantly, usually gaining slightly greater opportunities and responsibility with each new job. He typically begins as a penniless wanderer or slave, graduates to assorted types of thievery, takes over the leadership of a bandit group he’s been working with, then joins a military company sent to destroy the outlaws and eventually becomes an officer. Career advancement isn’t guaranteed, treachery and bad luck can easily send him back to the dungeon, but if he’s tough and ruthless enough, the protagonist just might make something of himself. Historical verisimilitude. The hero frequently (but not always) undertake his adventures in a world composed of recognizable, if fictionalized, ancient cultures and countries. Whether they’re drawn from Europe, Central Asia, or Africa, the cultures presented are typically pre-Christian and pre-gunpowder, with polytheistic faiths the norm and Iron Age technology the highest available. The cultures involved need not be from the same historical era; the fantasy element glosses over anachronisms. (Howard began this trend by adding fantasy elements to straight historical adventures that hadn’t sold.)

I don't know about the Native Americans, but here in former Indian Territory us Caucasians are definitely redskins, especially during the summer. Need ... SPF ... 5000!

I have to second both previous suggestions. Warlords of Alexander is an excellent free supplement detailing the post-empire era. Mazes and Minotaurs (http://storygame.free.fr/MAZES.htm) is a D&D retro-clone, more fantasy-oriented, but provides eight 40- to 80-page magazines worth of fan-created scenarios, monsters, adventure locations, etc., to fuel your campaign regardless of what system you use.

Chaosium has announced the rules for its 2011 BRP and Halloween adventure contests. Time to get cracking ... again.

Yep, Mr. Hook's scenario persuaded me to avoid Colorado as a vacation spot.

Sounds like Sid Meier's Civilization (that's a good thing). And your poor, isolated colonists don't know what might be lurking out there in the unknown.

Blood and Badges and Other Adventures for Basic Roleplaying Monograph, 132 pages, softbound, no table of contents or index, ISBN 1568823533. Contains nine winning entries from the 2010 BRP Adventure Contest. Adventures include: I Sette Magnifici Bastardi by Kevin Ross – spaghetti Western Blood and Badges by Jon Hook – Western horror The Goblin Hoss by Kevin Scrivner – Western horror In the Frozen Darkness by R.J. Christensen – Fifties horror Out with a BANG by Tom Lynch – cyberpunk The Haunted Bridge by Rich LeDuc – fantasy Company Town: Stepchildren of the Night by Mike Czaplinski – humorous conspiracy From Pagania with Hate by Marko Ercegovi’c “Streebor” – medieval horror The Prison of Outlaws by Simon Yee – dystopian alternate history I've skimmed the scenarios but haven't yet studied them in depth. More maps and illustrations than in the previous monograph. In the Frozen Darkness features lots of NPCs that can go crazy in colorful ways. Company Town can best be described as Men In Black Meets Gamma World in the middle of a Bela Lugosi movie. The first three adventures are Westerns; at first I thought it was going to be a complete oater campaign book.

The adventure modules for FGU's Daredevils are worth checking out. I found the game itself unplayable but the adventures are genre gold.

Although the harsh approach may be logical and realistic, I wouldn't have the heart to punish your player. His approach was so goofy and original, so brimming with sheer chutzpah, it deserves to be rewarded somehow (especially since this is a fantasy campaign and he's the meek scholar doing this, not the brawny fighter or super-sneaky thief). I mean, what idiot would march up to the police station and ask to be arrested? So I suggest some Inspector General/Court Jester/Hogan's Heroes shenanigans to make things easier for him. Maybe the bailiff finds his conduct so strange that he's convinced the PC is actually an undercover investigator for the dreaded secret police. Maybe a casual remark by the character just happens to be the counter-sign that "proves" he's one of the Big Bad's spooks, out to check on the loyalty and efficiency of the local lockup. Maybe he's so clumsy and unpredictable during the trial by combat that he wins in spite of himself. Or his opponent has been drugged by parties unknown. Maybe his rescuers aren't the other PCs but said secret police; he's "recruited" as a double-agent to spy on his friends, enabling the heroes to feed to bad guys all sorts of misleading information. Of course, this puts all sorts of pressure on the player and his character. He's now got to talk a good game and sharpen his wits to keep everyone fooled without getting lynched by the unhappy populace or tortured by his government "friends." On the other hand, he's now got inside information, fancy spy gear, and a government paycheck -- if he can stay alive long enough to enjoy them.

Hmmm. Well, you could always take the David/Robin Hood approach and send your PCs to those already disaffected with the usurper. Is there an element or elements of society who have lost their farms, homes, families to the bad guy? If they're already refugees, vagrants or outlaws because of the villain, they have little to lose and perhaps much to gain by joining the PCs.

Basic Creatures lists the RuneQuest-standard giant as nearly 50 feet tall. However, the biblical Goliath was just under 10 feet tall. Cormoran, the initial villain in Jack the Giant Killer, was 18 feet tall. King Kong ranged from 20 to 40 feet tall (he was bigger in New York City). So how "giant" are the giants in your campaign? I'm considering throwing a giant at my Narnia PCs. The players want to use miniatures, and I've got several appropriate toy figures for the monsters. In 1/72 scale, my 3-4.5" "giants" would be in the 18-30 foot range. A 50-foot giant in scale with 25/28mm minis would be a whopping 8 inches tall. At these dimensions, 11-12" G.I. Joe and Barbie would kick butt and take names even among RuneQuest giants.

Flash Gordon, John Carter and Buck Rogers never messed with game mechanics. Recruiting allies usually involved defeating or proving their valor to suspicious parties who happened to also be hostile to the Big Bad. Once the former opponent was impressed with the heroes' courage, combat ability, honor or natural charisma, he or she usually joined up. It's a role-playing thing, not a game mechanics thing. The recruits are typically the rulers of a particular racial or ethnic group and bring their armed followers along with them. So forget tables and charts; stat up Allura, Queen of the Squirrel People; and have her fall hopelessly in lust with one of your PCs.

Disney? Nawwww .... Thunder. Thunder! THUNDERCATS ... HOOOOOOOOOO!!!