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  1. #21
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    I'm really torn between which system to use if I ever have the time to run a tabletop Birthright game.

    D&D is nice and the setting was made for it, but it lacks the realism I would prefer in a campaign full of politics and intrigue.

    GURPS is very realistic and has a great combat system, but it creates some dark and dull atmosphere that I can't quite discern the cause for. My latest theory is that this is because of the system's lack of classes and special abilities. In D&D you level up after a couple of sessions and feel great about it because you have great new abilities to try out. It gives you something to look forward to. In GURPS you simply gain the shitty skill points, increase your skills at outrageous sp cost and still don't feel your character is much better at anything even though the campaign is close to an end.

    Warhammer 2e is somewhere between D&D and GURPS in realism. The professions are very interesting. However, the combat is weird. You will miss a lot, when you hit you will hit hard, and when you are hit your will be hit hard. In an equal fight, you will be overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness as your roll d100 for 5th time without having scored a hit, just to have the battle determined by who gets lucky enough to get the first hit.

    Warhammer 3e has a combat system that looks more like a board game. It is not that bad. The combat is very deadly, however, and the wounds can be quite crippling. Even when you win in combat, your party will probably have to pay a lot of gold or spend a lot of time to remove all the wounds.

    I have never tried Fate. It looks interesting for some other settings, but I would like to play Birthright with a system like that.

    My best choice for now would be a hybrid of D&D and GURPS which uses D&D races, classes, skills and feats but uses GRUPS combat system. Don't know if I will ever manage to develop such a hybrid. Seems more difficult than breeding a half-Elf, half-Dwarf.

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nameless One View Post
    I'm really torn between which system to use if I ever have the time to run a tabletop Birthright game.
    John Machin and I played with making a conversion for HeroWars/HeroQuest, but that never went anywhere. The version I've been working on for over a decade but have yet to actually get to run is Pendragon Cerilia. Normally, I don't have RPG character stats at all -- you don't need any underlying RPG whatsoever to play BR rules as a realm rulership system, which is what I normally do, since I've always been more of a wargamer anyway. For warcards John convinced me long ago -- I use De Bellis Multitudinis with bits of Hordes of the Things (the DBA fantasy variant).

  3. #23
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    Something I was thinking was multi-classed D&D system. Regent for the domain system, General for the Battle system, and adventure class for the adventure system. I am sure a number of ideas could come from them. Though not social class per se more like a profession that gives certain skills for certain situations and progress isn't shared necessarily between the classes but given per the task at hand.

    We are all a hybrid of classes ranging from scholars reading words every day, computer literate using the mulit-media tools that come with it, social interactions between people, driving transportation to get to our destination. Sure we can say these are just skills, but can also function as a group of skills and can be tracked in a way to reflect level of competence. For example a person that makes their own database for running a Cerilia based campaign that has its turns due daily is a very high leveled computer literate person at the same time a person that check email and plays with a blackberry is on an completely different level. Classes many not necessarily be a definition of social status but can help track a group of skills and reflect what the person is doing at that particular time.

    Of course this is just a way of defining what we want to track for game progress. They social flavor of representing a person with this kind of system would be no different than its original context. A duke who is a general who also casts magical spells is still a the lord of the land. Just because our meta-game mechanics and understanding of them are getting more complex doesn't mean character knowledge changes.

    I don't know its an idea to think about.
    One law, One court, One allied people, One coin, and one tax, is what I shall bring to Cerilia.

  4. #24
    i am thinking to run a BR campaign using the rules of Harnmaster 3.0 or HM gold (still working on them).
    The "low-level" fantasy and the daily routine for management of armies, counties, etc.etc is really keyed to HM system.
    Also, BR isnt a great "monster hack machine", the levels of the chars will not rise up to 10 actually, the magic is low keyed aswell.
    All in all, will tell you how it will develops
    (also, the micromanagement of hunting, farming, crafting and such is so well developed in the HM system that the skills > attributes by far in a campagin, and the time factor can be played a lot)

    In alternative i thought about using the BRP (basic role playing) system from chaosium or the mongoose RQI/II with the obvious modifiers.

    will let you know

  5. #25
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    I've started a conversion of Birthright to GURPS rules. I've already entered racial templates in the wiki for BRCS races. I've also converted BRCS classes to a unique kind of powers with prerequisites and mostly linear progression through the advantages they allow and convrted most of BRCS feats to advantages. My conversion represents Blood Scions as a power that allows Blood Abilities as advantages, but characters may only take Blood Ability advantages they roll on the random tables or otherwise get permission from GM. I'm currently converting clerical domains, both core and those BRCS borrowed from FRCS, to advantages which also give Clerics access to some spells not normally allowed by Power Investiture (Cleric).

    I'll add more to the wiki soon. When I'm done with everything, I might make a PDF version as well.

  6. #26
    I'm currently running my Birthright Campaign using Fantasy Craft from Crafty Games. It is basically a d20 system with many interesting customizations. I've come to this product after the delusion of the $th edition of D&D.

    The system is really good because of its better development of the non-combat situations with respect of the 3.5 D&D system. The drawback is that the magic system of the game is slightly different from that of D&D (nothing that can't be handled with a minimal effort by a DM).

    If other are interested, I'm planning to post the simple conversion rules I used.

  7. #27
    i am truly interested to see the conversion if you can put it in a file
    thanks

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by galafrone View Post
    i am truly interested to see the conversion if you can put it in a file
    thanks
    I'm planning to do it even if it is a work still in progress (being tied to my current in progress campaign).

    The only real problem is that I'm waiting for one of the expansions of the Fantasy Craft Rulebook to be released. It will be called Spellbound and is about new options for magic classes... It was scheduled and rescheduled for release many times but never published. Probably by the end of November something more will be know about it, and I will take my decision whether or not to continue to wait for the release before posting my conversion "rules".

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