Advice BRP For Fantasy

[Algesan]

Okay, what must be bothering me was the Mythras brotherhood/cult thing.  I'm not familiar with that (and is there something similar in RQ itself?) and it doesn't appeal to me as a GM or much as a gamer in general.  My players do love a puzzle and strategy and we actually had a lot of fun (one of the other guys as GM, me as a player) going through the old school D&D mission of leveling up, clearing an area, bringing in settlers and when hitting name level, being accepted as "Lord of X" by the nearest kingdom, but really, most nights better have a couple of desperate fights with blood flying and treasure awaits.

The ranks themselves looked fairly straightforward, but unfortunately, I've made some choices on my campaign and.... 

[Raleel]

1 hour ago, Algesan said:

Okay, what must be bothering me was the Mythras brotherhood/cult thing.  I'm not familiar with that (and is there something similar in RQ itself?) and it doesn't appeal to me as a GM or much as a gamer in general.  My players do love a puzzle and strategy and we actually had a lot of fun (one of the other guys as GM, me as a player) going through the old school D&D mission of leveling up, clearing an area, bringing in settlers and when hitting name level, being accepted as "Lord of X" by the nearest kingdom, but really, most nights better have a couple of desperate fights with blood flying and treasure awaits.

The ranks themselves looked fairly straightforward, but unfortunately, I've made some choices on my campaign and.... 

mostly it's just used as a framework in CF for leveling. In Mythras, they are more culturally focused, but certainly don't have to be. Just think of them as levels in CF. If you don't want to use levels, I'd like to hear about the choices in your campaign to better assist.

[g33k]

7 hours ago, Algesan said:

Okay, what must be bothering me was the Mythras brotherhood/cult thing.  I'm not familiar with that (and is there something similar in RQ itself?)  ...

Yes, it's absolutely familiar.

Mythras took the RQ2 "Cult" ideas, wherein you had to have, e.g., 90% in [Cult] Lore and whatever core skill(s) the cult had (Sword for Humakt, Bargain for Issaries, etc).  They broadened that notion to most sorts of organizations... guilds... "brotherhoods."  They all like your organization-specific skills to be among the higher tiers of ability, before they consider advancing you to the higher tiers of power within the organization.

And then CF re-purposed that general mechanism, saying "advancing a level in a class is exactly like upon advancing in a skills-based organization!"

 

[Algesan]

On 11/29/2018 at 10:18 AM, Raleel said:

mostly it's just used as a framework in CF for leveling. In Mythras, they are more culturally focused, but certainly don't have to be. Just think of them as levels in CF. If you don't want to use levels, I'd like to hear about the choices in your campaign to better assist.

In the Weird War 2 campaign, it worked out fairly well as the characters started out as "low powered" elites and just got more powerful bit by bit, mainly by getting some skill raises as well as expanding their skill set.  Just a touch of Cthulhu in it because Dust is at least trending that way as a setting.  The fantasy campaign is actually a bit similar and oddball.  Our occasional 4th player just runs a basic dwarf fighter, the other three are a Drow (without all the AD&D negatives for sunlight) physical adept (uses superpowers to buff his body & skills at a POW cost) & swordsman, a duelist oriented human with some focused dueling skills & a bit of rogue, a mage who is dabbling a bit in alchemy and slowly becoming a staff swinger as well as being the main occult lore guy.  Skills are all over the place, with a few outliers, but mainly in the 75ish range for the top skills.

My biggest worry is still working with the "Martial Arts" skill, it is potentially too deadly, but then looking at the supposed levels via CF, cutting through low powered stuff is fairly trivial and correct, so I'm not too upset.  Note that since these guys started as "classless" from a CF perspective, they don't have the bonus class skills.  Instead they got a "class" that gave them 8 core skills (+2 optional) that started at Base + EDUx2 + Cat bonus.  The mage got four random spells at oh, I forget how I figured the base skill of them, but it was like 31 and has now risen to 40-50ish. 

[Fenspar]

I ran a fairly classic fantasy campaign with the BGB a few years back. The setting was Middle Earth, so magic was very contained and there were fewer monsters and more human foes overall, although there were plenty of goblins, the odd troll, a wraith, and a vampire and werewolf towards the end. Almost everything I needed came from the BGB in terms of game systems.

I took character starting characteristics for dwarves, elves, and hobbits from the Creatures section. I use a custom character record sheet that I made myself, so that only the relevant fantasy skills are shown. I don't use hit points by location, and this greatly speeds up play and cuts down on GM book-keeping. I used the heroic option for starting skills, and this meant that the PCs were largely capable but not over-powered. Most combats, as expected, came down to the first critical or special hit. 

There were no magic-users or wizards in the party, although I allowed the elf to cast a "bladesharp" or "sureshot" by rolling under POWx5. If I were to add wizards, I'd use the Magic system from the BGB rather than Sorcery, although I've always thought that the cost of "offensive" spells, like Flame, at 3 MP per 1d6 damage, is rather steep for classic fantasy. I've played 1d6 per 1 MP and that worked fine.

Magic World is also an excellent option, but I found everything I needed and more flexibility in the BGB.