Warhammer 1ed

[Warden]

Not sure if this belongs here, so I apologise if it doesn't.

I'm looking to run 'The Enemy Within' Warhammer campaign, using MRQ2. I chose this because it's fantasy to begin with, whereas BRP is genreless.

I'm having trouble moulding Warhammer's magic to MRQ2 though, so I wanted to ask, would it help me if I purchased the...can't remember what it's called now, it's the BRP supplement of magical spells. I'm not sure if this will help me at all.

Warhammer magic styles consist of:

Alchemist

Wizard

Elementalist

Illusionist

Demonologist

Necromancer

MRQ2:

Common Magic

Divine

Sorcery

Spirit

Or, should I ditch MRQ2 and go for the pure nuts and bolts of BRP?

Thanks all

[General Panic]

I know nothing about WFRP, but just to look at the categories of magic styles you can cover them all off by slicing and dicing MRQ2 sorcery and categorising spells - Necromancer gets Animate Corpse, Elementalist gets Animate Fire (etc). You could very easily determine some basic spells that any magic user (apologies for the phrase) should know - Mystic Vision, Spell Resistance etc, but other spells split by type into specific grimoires for each style. Necromantic Arts would help you pull together some stuff for the Necromancer type to add depth and colour. A&EII has alchemy rules (but they are not terribly well placed for use by PCs rather than NPCs), Cults of Glorantha, Abiding Book etc would have plenty of info on sorcery orders you could loot for creating your styles too - not to mention the Elric stuff. And Age of Treason (forthcoming) has alternative Alchemy, Enchanting and Conjuring approaches. So there is probably more than enough to construct what you want, even if you take little steps with the MRQ2 Core Rulebook. The basic spell list is very malleable.

[soltakss]

I wouldn't bother buying Basic Magic - you can get pretty much everything contained there from the MRQ1 SRD (Which should be in the Downloads section, Deluxe PDF ???).

As the good general says, you should probably have spell lists for each style.

MRQ has different magic types, but they don't really matter unless you have gods knocking around. They all seem to be wizardy types, so you could use sorcery for all of them as a default and then use divine or common magic for unusual cases.

You could mix the BRP spells into these as well, if you wanted to. I'd use the MRQ2 Common Magic rules or the MRQ1 Rune Magic rules for BRP magic, though, as having loads of different systems might be confusing for very little gain.

[Warden]

Thanks all for the advice

I'm off to tinker!

[TrippyHippy]

1st edition used a basic points-spend magic system, which is as near as dammit to the basic magic system found in RuneQuest (they even called it 'Battle Magic' IIRC). I'd just use all the systems as is, myself, plus some of those found in other settings and supplements - a decent Alchemy system can be found in Clockwork and Chivalry for example; there is a good system of summoning demons and elementals in Elric, and you could take Necromancy from the supplement of course.

2nd edition developed a much more colourful and interesting system based upon Colleges of Magic. That would be quite hard to replicate.

[Verderer]

BRP Classic Fantasy might be suitable for complementing the spell list? WFRP 1st ed. spells are quite 'old school' ie. resemble D&D a lot.

[Warden]

I may just go with them as they are. Not change a thing

[Mugen]

What about using both Cults and Sorcery rules from MRQ2 ?

For instance you could say that :

Rank 1 = Apprenticeship

An apprentice learns the Common Magic skill.

Rank 2 = Wizard

A Wizard learns the Manipulation Skill.

He can learn Grimoires from the "Common Sorcery" school.

Rank 3 = Specialist Wizard

A Specialist Wizard can learn Grimoires from one of the following schools :

-Demonology;

-Elementalism;

-Illusionism;

-Necromancy.

Rank 4 = Arch Magus

An Arch Magus can learn Grimoires from any school.

Of course, that means you'll have to create Grimoires for each of the 5 schools.

[Jae]

This is one helluva necro, but did this conversion of the Enemy Within WFRP campaign ever get anywhere? It would be nice to see one of the best regarded campaigns converted into one of the best game systems ever (any BRP/d100 game). 

[Paid a bod yn dwp]

Whats the chances of chaosium getting a license to adapt warhammer FRP to a BRP version? Enemy Within campaign conversion would be great. Although having said that, the current GW setting has changed dramatically and detrimentally (as far as i can tell), and lost a lot of its potential for the & story line & subtleties found in the  Enemy within campaign. It could only work thematically if they kept to WFRP 1ed background. 

[Simlasa]

I'd bet the chances are slim and none... but that it's not a huge deal to run games in that setting with that feel using BRP. Both games are fairly gritty/deadly and the setting fluff is the most important element.
I've been running an on/off game with some friends online that's used some Warhammer and Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures... toss in some Val du Loup, Renaissance, and the BRP Witchcraft book. Probably more satisfying, for us, than anything 'official' that GW would allow (particularly since they blew up the fantasy setting in favor of... whatever AOS is).

Edited July 11, 2016 by Simlasa

[Sean_RDP]

And FFG has a version out now, not sure how much support they have for it.

[TrippyHippy]

I don't think the FFG version, written for WFRP 3E is an exact adaptation of the original Enemy Within Campaign, unfortunately.  

Edited July 11, 2016 by TrippyHippy

[Questbird]

I'm playing this campaign at the moment (2nd ed. I think). However we are just leaving it as WFRP, rather than trying to convert. In practice, the differences aren't huge. You still use d100 to test certain skills. Combat is still quite dangerous. Spell casting is rare, powerful and a bit unpredictable. The most fun thing about the system for me is the semi-random character generation. You pick a broad category (if you have the attributes for it) such as Rogue, Ranger, Academic or Warrior, then dice for your specific starting profession. As you get experience you can improve the skills of your current career or jump to a new one. You might change career based on roleplaying, or just min/max it to get the skills you want (looks like both styles of play are allowed for).

Edited July 12, 2016 by Questbird

[smiorgan]

On ‎12‎.‎07‎.‎2016 at 2:46 AM, Questbird said:

I'm playing this campaign at the moment (2nd ed. I think). However we are just leaving it as WFRP, rather than trying to convert. In practice, the differences aren't huge. You still use d100 to test certain skills. Combat is still quite dangerous. Spell casting is rare, powerful and a bit unpredictable. The most fun thing about the system for me is the semi-random character generation. You pick a broad category (if you have the attributes for it) such as Rogue, Ranger, Academic or Warrior, then dice for your specific starting profession. As you get experience you can improve the skills of your current career or jump to a new one. You might change career based on roleplaying, or just min/max it to get the skills you want (looks like both styles of play are allowed for).

That was my approach too when I run a (sadly dead) TEW campaign. WFRP is a nice flavorful game with a lot of BRP/RQ/CoC/Stormbringer influences. It's not worth converting it to RQ/BRP in my view. I did convert to the second edition of WFRP though, which streamlines some mechanics. You can find the 2nd edition conversions of all TEW stats online.

[fulk]

Hey.  Been a while.  I love the WHFRP world, and while I like careers, I also find them somewhat restricting.  I've often thought of using BRP instead.  As noted above, much of the rules could be transferred easily (d100 rolls). 

For Magic, it depends on the version of WHFRP magic that you like.  For 2nd edition, where you can roll more dice as you get more powerful, you could just link that to Power, adjust the damage to BRP levels and use the v2 rules mostly intact.  Pow 16 = 1 die, Pow 17 = 2 dice, etc. 

You could use Arcane Lore as a skill indicating magical proficiency.  You wouldn't actually roll vs the skill in most cases, but instead use it to determine the number of spells you have ( I think Classic Fantasy did something like this, no?).  I forget the details of v2 magical progression off hand, but 50% might give you the basic starting list for your College.  Every 5 or 10% increase would allow you to add a new spell. 

Something like that.