A Basic Role Playing (BRP) Fringeworthy?

Over the years, I've waited and hoped that someone would put together a BRP version of Fringeworthy.  It might be time to do something myself. 

The rolling of percentile dice is still well known thanks to the continued success of Call of Cthulhu and Runequest.  What flavor of D100 though?  The last decade has seen a number of percentile-based RPGs released, from quite crunchy to more, uh, basic versions.

To get close to the gritty and deadly original Tri Tac game system, you'd need to go with hit locations, critical hits, and major wound levels.  I'd be okay with that for more of a one-shot adventure, but for an actual campaign I'd like to see the characters have better odds of survival.  Plus, that kind of combat is the most time consuming.  For a D100 game you can have an attack roll, a defense roll, a roll for damage, and even a roll for armor!  I'm probably forgetting some other roll too. 

OpenQuest is one of the newer flavors of D100 gaming, and is firmly on the side of quicker and streamlined rules.  I own a cool sci-fi RPG called, River of Heaven that uses a variation of OpenQuest.  I recently started to wonder how hard would it be to convert the RoH game system for use with the Fringeworthy setting.

I've spent the last couple days playing with a PDF editor to convert the basic RoH character sheet.  It has gone really well so far, and I'm encouraged to keep going with this idea.  Once you get your character sheet filled out (and it will be a fully fillable PDF character sheet when I'm done) you don't really need much else to play, as the rules fade into the background.   

Anyway, the plan is to finish up the character sheet, then see what else might be needed. Stats for the Mellor and other alien races, some stats for various animal types, but I can pull those from most any version of a D100 RPG.  The same thing applies to various types of equipment/vehicles. 

BRP of some flavour is perhaps an obvious choice given how similar some of the Tri Tac System are, but for me it would have to be modular and not reliant on crunch from the outset.

Something often overlooked about the Tri Tac games is the inclusion of simplified systems within the game, which can replace the complicated stuff in some or all cases according to taste. I'd also like to see a rationalisation of the skill choices. In particular, something like the template/bundle of skills approach seen in things like the BRP fantasy game Magic World, which allows for customisation but speeds up character generation.

I still want to run Fringeworthy using Flying Buffalo's Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes, a project I'm calling Mercenaries, Spies & Portal Explorers, but it's a long way off.

We got permission from Grey Ghost for a FUDGE conversion and Richard approved of it. 

And I noticed that D6 has an OGL version called OpenD6. 

Or we could codify EZ by boiling down the Tri Tac system. 

I will set aside team only workspace for anyone who wants to work on something we can publish. 

Fudge would be my top choice (it also makes sense for the EZ style of supplement, since it works so well as a standard scale for conversion to other systems), but I can see that a D100 approach would be less of a jump for existing players.

I just checked and BRP is OGL.  Rock on.

You people take your game conversions seriously! 

I was really thinking in terms of my own gaming table and the occasional RPG event, not so much an official gaming product.  As noted, BRP is OGL, as is OpenQuest, but not the River of Heaven version of it.  If I ever got ambitious enough to try it, I'd want to build more from the ground up for a D100 system.  Most people can grasp the odds when looking at a percentage chance on a their character sheet. 

Speaking of game systems to use for Fringeworthy, I was part of the Kickstarter for Mythic D6, which is due out this August.  A variation on the OpenD6 system, if I remember correctly.  I think the intent for Mythic D6 was as a more universal game system so it should support a variety of settings. Dice pools systems tend to be really easy for newbies to play too. 

What would be the best approach for Tri Tac?  I'm thinking pick one game system and at least people will know what they are getting, or you go with the EZ system and let people pick the game system they want to use.  Trying to support 2-3 game systems at the same time seems like the least desirable approach, IHMO. 

Tri Tac has been putting everything new in the EZ format so people can use their system of choice.

But there has been some interest in a simplified original system and an EZ version of FW as well as the still unfinished Fw Savage Worlds.

overall I think sticking to the EZ format for modules and supplements keeps things usable by more people.

Okay, now that images are a thing, I wanted to show the modified River of Heaven character sheet I am doing for Fringeworthy play.  It is a work-in-progress, as I need to modify the Skill list some more (adding 'Temerlern Tech' might be the only real change so far).  I'd like to increase the space for character art, but that would mean a shuffling a ton of other boxes around, so I may just leave it alone.

Here is a character sheet that would be prepared for Gunner Warner, a Texan turned Fringeworthy explorer. 

Very nice!

When you are ready, I can set up a play by post area for you if you like.

When you are ready, I can set up a play by post area for you if you like.

Thanks, however I've yet to see a PbP adventure not slowly fade out.  Playing some games online is still an idea I plan to look at in the near future -as you would get that immediate feedback that is so important to the table top RPG experience. 

As an update to this thread, I've got the Fringeworthy characters sheet tweaked a bit more and the Skills list adjusted.  It looks mostly the same as the one above though, so I won't bother to post it again.  Why is this news?

There is a Sci-fi/Fantasy convention this coming February a bit more than an hours drive away.  Called, RadCon, it has been around for decades, but has been heavily focused on the Pathfinder (and now Starfinder too) RPG.  Like, 90% of the RPGs are Pathfinder adventures.

Looking at the gaming schedule, it seems to be only 80% Pathfinder/Starfinder for 2019. A couple Beyond the Supernatural RPG scenarios (I didn't even know Palladium had released a new edition), several Savage Worlds and D&D 5E adventures, and even one guy running an AD&D game.  Finally, throw in one adventure each for GURPS 4E and Call of Cthulhu.

Assuming work does not ramp up again with lots of mandatory OT, I plan to try and run a game over two over the long weekend.  Radcon runs from Friday, February 17th to Sunday February 19th in 2019.

Fringeworthy would be perfect, as the adventure time slots are FOUR hours long.  Plus, I've had a really cool setting I wanted to run as an alternate Earth.  Paris, 1905, the city is in that awkward transition from horse powered transportation to combustion engines and building a subway system.  The adventure I have in mind is more focused on the subway tunnels and what gets found while all that digging is going on.  The rest of the alternate portals will be mostly pulled from the previous Fringeworthy adventure I ran for Free RPG Day 2017.

The other game I'd like to run would be a super hero adventure using the Supers! RPG, or an adventure for Tales From the Loop.  The Cat RPG I have been playing around with would be neat too, but I really need to run it for my own gaming group to see how it goes and what will need tweaked. 

After an exchange of emails with the guy in charge of scheduling the games, I will be running several games during RadCon 2019.  A Tales From the Loop adventure, one for Supers! Revised, and a Fringeworthy adventure using the 1992 edition setting and BRP (Basic Role Playing) for the rule system. 

I get a free badge for my efforts, and as I think I mentioned in an earlier post, I am within driving distance of the convention.  That's about as cheap as it gets to attend a gaming convention these days.

I will of course post details about how the Fringeworthy game goes.  The players will be assigned to explore the alternate portals at +102 and I'll leave it up to them which alternate worlds they want to explore in detail. 

One thing I thought of the other day was to create an IDET Alternate Report Form for the players to fill out.  Just basic details about the world (climate, life forms, intelligent life, resources, danger level and so forth) and whether there needs to be a followup for some reason.  Has anyone here written up something like that?  Or is there something along those lines in one of the newer editions? 

Now a week and half out from the con, I am putting the finishing touches on the pregen characters.  While I liked the idea of an expanded form for the players to fill out for alternate worlds, I decided that would work best for a regular campaign -not so much for a convention game. 

Looking back over the forms from the 1992 Edition book, the Alternate Map form is just fine for letting the players jot down some quick notes about each world they visit.  In fact, just half the form is even better, as I can blow it up into a full size page and give them even more room for notes.  I filled out a GM version so I have an quick reference for each Prime portal and the alternates. 

I said I didn't need to post another example of the character sheet, but after adding color to the character art (Heromachine dot com) and some quick background notes I think it's worth doing so again.