Convert Chill to BRP or CoC

[Mjollnir]

There are a series of modules on DTRPG I find interesting, "FRIGHT NIGHT CLASSICS", seemingly designed to be run with Chill (1e).  Does anyone know how one would convert from that system to BRP or CoC?

[Lloyd Dupont]

Chill! Never heard of that! How is that?! 😮

[Mjollnir]

I've never played it. It's an percentile based, investigative horror rpg, 1st edition emulates the themes of hammer horror movies, 2nd tends more towards later, slasher-type films from what I understand. Cryptworld from Goblinoid Games is a clone of Chill 1e.

[AndreasDavour]

Last time I looked, Chill 1st ed used percentile skills, so not much conversion needed. But, I seem to remember that you used the stats for most things, and the skills where few and mostly for your specials. It was decades ago since I played it.

[Atgxtg]

I Have Chill (I prefer it to CoC0, and as far as conversions go, it kinda depends on which edition of Chill you have but...

In general, the basic abilities (i.e. characteristics) of Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Willpower, Personality, Perception, Luck and Stamina are on a percentile scale similar to CoC7, but are rolled on 3d10x2+20 for a 26-80 range for characters. So dividing by 5 will give you a good approximation of a BRP score, but you might want to tweak the conversion a little to give a full 3-18 range as opposed to a 5-16 one. MAybe something like:

Chill	3D6	2D6+6
5	0
10	0
15	0
20	0
22	1
24	1
26	2	8
28	2	8
30	3	8
32	4	8
34	4	9
36	5	9
38	5	10
40	6	10
42	7	10
44	7	11
46	8	11
48	8	12
50	9	12
52	10	12
54	10	13
56	11	13
58	11	14
60	12	14
62	13	14
64	13	15
66	14	15
68	14	16
70	15	16
72	16	16
74	16	17
76	17	17
78	17	18
80	18	18
82	19
84	19
86	20
88	20
90	21
92	22
94	22
96	23
98	23
100	24
102	25
104	25
106	26
108	26
110	27
112	28
114	28
116	29
118	29
120	30

Luck is a sort of special characteristic in that only PCs get it and it is used similar to how the Luck roll is used in BRP, namely to give a PC a chance when something bad happens, or to survive a situation when they otherwise would have no chance.  Luck points can be spent to increase defense against missile weapons.

The game does allow players to determine thier character;'s height and weight and this could be used to determine a BRP SIZ.

 

Skills in Chill are based on one or more basic abilities averaged together, and modified by whatever rank the character has with the skill. The Ranks are Unskilled (which can either mean the skill is unsualble or can be used but with no modifiers, depending on the skill), Student (+15%), Teacher (+30%) and finally Master (+55%). Some skills might have other benefits associated with a higher skill rank, such as faster reloading time for weapons.

Some PC can have Pshyic Powers withc lets them do supernatural things and somewhat helps to offset the Evil Ways of the unknown. Psychic Powers tend to be far weaker though and demonstrating one in front of a creature might put a target on a PCs back, depending on the power and creature. 

Tasks Resolution is handled by rolling against a skill or basic ability score to get a "attack margin" and cross indexing the result to the defense column (or difficulty) of the task on the action table to get a letter Code, which is similar to BRP success levels. The codes are:

S: Success, Scant or Scratch: Basically a marginal success

L: Light, a somewhat better result

M: Medium, a still somewhat better result, probably akin to a normal success in BRP

H: Harsh or Heavy, a better than average result, similar to a special success in BRP

C Crush or Crtical result, similar to a crtical in BRP, the best result possible.

Some M, H, and C results can have a K added to them, which indicates a knockdown.

In BRP terms the action table is somewhat similar to to resistance table except that instead of modifying the chance of success it only alters the success level. For instance is a master swordsman were attacking an opponent with a low defense (1) , he would critical with a margin of 10 or more (that is rolled 10 or less under his success chance), but the same master swordsman would never be able to critical an opponent with a great defense (10).

The action table is also used for fear checks, which character have to make when encountering creatures from the unknown or other scarey situations. THe result determines how much willpower the character loses (if any) and if the character frezzes up, cowers or flees. This is similar to CoC SAN rolls except that the character is just afraid, not insane. 

For BRP it probably makes sense to just ignore the table and handle skills and abilities as you wound in BRP.

Combat Damage is handled with both Stamina point loss and Wounds. Unarmed combat only inflicts Stamina loss while armed combat inflicts stamina loss and wounds. Running out of stamina points means a character is unconscious. A character can take two of each type of wound (Scratch, Light, Medium, Heavy) with wounds accumulating (i.e  the third scratch would become a light wound and so on). Once the critical wound box is marked the character will die if their Stamina reaches zero.

 

Animals and Creature of the Unknown use basic abilities (and often skills) the same as characters, but their abilties scores can be outside of the normal human range, for instance a werewolf might have a Strength score of 90 which would be above the normal human limit of 80. 

 

Creatures also know Evil Ways Disciplines which are supernatural abilities. Most of which represent the supernatural powers of the creature such as the ability of a vampire to change into mist bat or wolf, to command bats and rats, to mesmerize people and so forth, and more powerful creatures will usually have greater powers. Creatures also have weaknesses too, which PCs can exploit if they discover them. For example the werewolf vulnerability to silver or the vampire's aversion or crosses. Again more powerful creatures might have fewer weaknesses or be less restricted by them. Presenting a cross to a newly risen vampire might cause it to flee but doing the same to more powerful one might not bother it at all. 

 

Hope that helps.

If you have a copy of the rules, especially 1E or Cryptworld I suggest running the adventures with Chill rather than with BRP as Chill is a bit more forgiving to the PCs than BRP is. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2023 by Atgxtg

[Rich Tom]

I started Chill 1E way back when it was released. Man, that was fun. So I got 2nd nd when it came out. At the time it had perhaps the worst art work in RPG but was a decent follow up. Maybe 2nd ed wasn't quite up to first in game play but was 90% compatible so I bought all of the supplements. Some years back Cryptwold came out, which is 1st ed Chill redone. I guess Fridaynight classic is for the Cryptworld crowd.

Chill and the pacesetter system is rather D00 lite. You only use d10s, everything is a percentage. There is an action table, to look up your result depending on how much you passed of failed by. Reading the rule books you might think it's not up to much but the game play really works well. 

3rd ed Chill is kind of a different game in reality.

[tedopon]

Chill is a lot more forgiving in play than BRP, even with how modern BRP has adapted to make PCs a little hardier. Having some sort of Luck pool in BRP would kind of level the playing field as Chill was designed with the intent that you can win over the Bad Guys. CoC, even in the latest version, is more of an attrition simulator where there is a one way street and you can walk really slowly but you're still almost guaranteed to be walking through a train tunnel the wrong direction and it's only a matter of time before you see the headlights and hear the horn and there isn't anywhere to go.

It's OK to just play Chill, even though BRP is supposed to be a generic engine for anything (and I have used it for everything over the years), the truth is that it takes some work to make it fit any idea...IMO most people would probably be better off just using a game that fits with their concept from the get-go. Probably a heretical statement on this board, but it is a lot of work and not everyone finds that work engaging.

[g33k]

On 10/17/2023 at 8:17 AM, tedopon said:

...

It's OK to just play Chill, even though BRP is supposed to be a generic engine for anything (and I have used it for everything over the years), the truth is that it takes some work to make it fit any idea...IMO most people would probably be better off just using a game that fits with their concept from the get-go. Probably a heretical statement on this board, but it is a lot of work and not everyone finds that work engaging.

There's also a very-real issue of "systems fatigue."

10 years ago, my gaming group was often interested in trying new games.
These days, the majority of my players would rather not take the time to learn new entire new systems.

[Atgxtg]

On 10/17/2023 at 11:17 AM, tedopon said:

It's OK to just play Chill, even though BRP is supposed to be a generic engine for anything (and I have used it for everything over the years), the truth is that it takes some work to make it fit any idea...IMO most people would probably be better off just using a game that fits with their concept from the get-go. Probably a heretical statement on this board, but it is a lot of work and not everyone finds that work engaging.

Yeah, one of the things about generic engines is that they are generic. Generic systems are nice in that they can be adapted to multiple settings and are easier to pull away from a specific setting, and players who know a generic system don't have to lean a different system, but often specific game systems are better at emulating specific settings that generic system are- at least out of the gate. They should be. Chill (at least first edition Chill) is better at emulating the stetting and style of the old Universal and Hammer films that BRP, so I prefer it to BRP or CoC for that sort of thing. 

 

 

[trechriron]

I love SAVE! I'm using it as the organization in my Everyday Heroes game on SATs. 

I don't think EXACT conversions are necessary, they are similar. The adventures and setting material make great resources IMHO.

 

[Atgxtg]

On 11/7/2023 at 2:29 PM, trechriron said:

 love SAVE! I'm using it as the organization in my Everyday Heroes game on SATs. 

SAVE tends to get extreme reactions. People either love the idea of hate it. Personally I think it's a decent way to explain how and why PCs repeatedly confront creature of the unknown, avoiding the "Kolchak problem". 

On 11/7/2023 at 2:29 PM, trechriron said:

 

I don't think EXACT conversions are necessary, they are similar. The adventures and setting material make great resources IMHO.

 

I think you're right. EXACT conversions aren't necessary. It's more about capturing the capabilities of the characters, especially relative to each other and to the monsters. You want things to play out about the same regardless of the game system. 

But exact conversions are much easier to automate with a program or spreadsheet, making it much faster and easier to get a  scenario converted into a acceptable set of stats that are usable with little to no adjustment. 

[trechriron]

I'm building a Google Sheet for my BRUGE game. Happy to share it with you if you think it could kickstart your efforts. 😄 Just DM me your Google-compatible email and I'll share a copy.

Edited November 9, 2023 by trechriron

[littlewitchmaus]

i use a lot of stuff from the second edition of 'chill' in my 'call of cthulhu' games and generally find myself rarely having to do much conversion (especially with most monsters having things in the 'coc' bestiary that are close enough, stat wise.)