(Yet another) Rifts / BRP conversion.

[TEHodden]

Hi. Long time fan, first time poster. I stumbled on this forum while googling community content for BRP, and thought I would join in the fun.

I know I’m not the first person to try and convert the Rifts setting to the BRP rule set, but as this is one of the more ambitious projects I have worked on in my spare time, and not having run a game in years, I wondered if it might be worth sharing my notes as I make them, to see how they felt to players with fewer cobwebs in their dice bags.

 

So, first principles:

1) I am not looking to make the BRP rules replicate MDC or game mechanics. I want to make the *setting* feel right using the toolkit to hand.

 

2) I will be using the “yellow slab” edition, because that is the version of BRP I have to hand. 
 

3) I want to play to BRP’s strength, by meaning you can play a Dog Boy or Psi Stalker who happen to be… whatever kind of character the player wants, rather than replicating an RCC where all Dog Boys have the same skills and life experience.

 

At the moment my vague plan is to create vague guidelines of which type of powers might best represent the various mainstays of the setting.

 

Most Racial Character Classes will lean into Mutant powers.

Augmented RCCs, like Borgs and Juicers will be built on superpowers, as will Mechs and other Robot based classes. This should offer more freedom from the standard “big and strong” or “super fast” defaults, so… a Juicer variant might be a Jason Borne character whose intelligence and tactical acumen have been increased, for example.

This should also allow players to customise their Borgs and Mechs with all kinds of tools and equipment that feel like they have more in game effect: force fields, telescoping limbs, layers of armour, enhanced sensors… and anything else they want to create from a power.

Psychics, Leyline Walkers, and other classes will lean into whichever magic, or psychic power best suits the class.

Setting wise I’m ditching Rifts England, as neither I, nor my players, were fans. I have vague plans for something with an elven civilisation with a “sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic (and the inverse is also true)” feel to it.

So, any thoughts or suggestions?

 

[Kettlehelm]

Have you looked at Savage RIFTS for ideas about building out RIFTS powers from a few small blocks of text and mechanics?
Though it does stay pretty strictly to the idea that the RCC/OCCs do not fully intermix except for a select few.
No MDC either, though it has to twist the Savage Worlds rules a bit to make it work.

Edited February 11 by Kettlehelm

[sladethesniper]

Having done this a few times already, what I have found works is:

Use the damage ratings out of Palladium. Converting TO BRP or FROM BRP is just a chore that doesn't need to be done at all.

For Character Classes... use ALL of the stuff in the Rifts book as is for the classes special abilities. Every +1 to something just change it to a +5%

When it comes to all skills for the class, what I do is say that the character gets 10 skills of choice to spend their Education points on, and they can dump their Intelligence points skills on whatever they want. Don't use "base skill %" from either Rifts or BRP.

Since Rifts characters are a bit more competent than standard RPG characters, you can just use any skill percentages the class gives, so if you choose X skill at 25%, but the OCC gives a +10% bonus, just add that 10% to the 25% so the character starts with a 35%.

Finally, create a skill of "Toughness" that you can dump skill points into that will take the place of SDC and count as extra damage the PC can take to make up for the dangerousness of Rifts weapons.

For skills that increase by "level" like the Hand to Hand skills you can add in those bonuses every 6% the skill increases, so that a HtH Basic at 36% is the same as a Level 6 HtH Basic in Palladium, and gets all of those bonuses. This makes hitting a target quite easy, which is the case in Rifts, since beyond about 3rd level, you can only really miss on natural 1's anyway and the game becomes focused on parry/dodge/roll with impact/etc.

Using the HtH skills and Robot combat stuff does keep the flavor of the setting, but it severely slows down BRP combat, which is one of the draws of BRP in the first place.

-STS