There is the Classic Fantasy supplement for BRP which is about running BRP fantasy in a D&D mode... AND, IIRC, the new edition of Classic Fantasy is going to be for RQ6.
The first one was pretty useful when I was looking to run ToEE using BRP.

Here's a description of the original on BRP Central

Quote from: baragei;829968Scenario design is more about scenario than game. If we use the old Shadows on the Borderlands for RQ as an example, it contains enough monsters and evil priests to make your average D&D-module hang its head in shame.
Which can make it very nasty for inexperienced, foolhardy and bloodthirsty characters. But inexperienced characters were probably not meant to enter the bowels of the Dyskund Caverns.

Having played MRQ and various editions of D&D, and hearing this, I have to ask, what IS the difference?  I mean, I've seen all sorts of adventures go both the apparently, 'D&D' way as well as the 'RQ' way for just about any gaming system, D&D and RQ and any other you may think of.

There doesn't seem to be a set pattern.  Some RQ adventures have a lot of mini mobs you have to fight through, like a D&D game, whereas some D&D adventures, every single fight is meaningful and potentially life threatening, like in RQ.  There doesn't seem to be a differentiating factor, outside of game system.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;830137what IS the difference

Personal preference and cultural (such as it is) inertia?
I've latched on to BRP as a go-to system, I don't particularly care for D&D. So when it comes to games, I tend to think in d100-terms.
The monster- and trapfilled dungeon crawl is the archetypical D&D-playstyle, while the heavily cultured and religioned up setting is the archetypical RQ-playstyle. Even if there are plenty of examples that break those molds.

D&D does dungeoncrawling well with its attritional mechanics and resource management. RQ can do as too, but as it lacks the battle attrition and goes straight to the crippling/killing blows, it makes fighting and hidden traps much more potentially devastating. So wise RQ-players learn that the hard way seldom is the best way.

Quote from: Bren;829955

• Focus on the individually meaningful fights.
• Get rid of any crappy, boring monsters. The resources the PCs have available tend to be less in RQ so you don't need or want the waves of resource exhausting encounters that some D&D adventures use.
• Empty many of the rooms because the dungeon doesn't have a zillion monsters and RQ tends towards a more naturalistic ecology for its dungeons and ruins than does D&D.  
• Limit the total number of monsters available so that even a wandering monster table will end up with blanks on the table as monsters are eliminated.
• Some (possibly many) of the encounters on the table should be pre-defined, pre-statted groups that no longer appear once eliminated and that have a lair in or around the dungeon. So if table entry #7 is party of six goblins and the PCs eliminate those goblins, then six goblings are gone from Level II, Room #5(the goblins' lair).
• RQ monsters have motivations of their own and may want to avoid or negotiate with a well armed group of PCs. The goblins might be willing to ally with the PCs to get rid of the ogre who demands a tribute of one goblin a month on the ogre feast day.

Quote from: markfitz;830043This is a very good start. Although D&D can also of course be played like this, I'd pay a lot of attention to the more naturalistic ecology and motivations and interrelations between the monsters. RuneQuest is much more likely to favour negotiation and playing one faction off against another. Check out Snakepipe Hollow for an example of what a great and deadly old-school RuneQuest dungeon crawl can look like.

Thanks!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;830137Having played MRQ and various editions of D&D, and hearing this, I have to ask, what IS the difference?  I mean, I've seen all sorts of adventures go both the apparently, 'D&D' way as well as the 'RQ' way for just about any gaming system, D&D and RQ and any other you may think of.

There doesn't seem to be a set pattern.  Some RQ adventures have a lot of mini mobs you have to fight through, like a D&D game, whereas some D&D adventures, every single fight is meaningful and potentially life threatening, like in RQ.  There doesn't seem to be a differentiating factor, outside of game system.

It's not a hard-and-fast requirement for D&D to be one way and RQ to be another, but in general D&D tends to favor a more combat/trick/trap-centric design and RQ tends to be more naturalistic (to steal others' descriptor for it).  I'm not at all surprised that each game has published scenarios which fit the other's stereotype, but those seem to be the general trends for each.

Part of it is about what's baked into the characters at creation. In D&D you have character classes which often tell you something about the role a character will play in a dungeon exploration style game. Thieves for scouting ahead and dealing with traps and locks, fighters for the muscle in battle, clerics for healing and combat back up, magic users for big damage area effects and utility spell puzzle solving ... In RuneQuest you don't have these easily defined roles and each character to differing degrees may be able to do a little of them. However, you do have characters being far more defined by their cultures, religions, cults and brotherhoods. Even if you don't play in Glorantha where it's practically a given, RuneQuest adventures still often turn on the characters' place in society, ranks within cults and guilds, and they often quest for magical and religious purposes. Clash of civilisations and faction politics is very important, and you find that even in a dungeon crawl like Snakepipe Hollow, the religious aspect of the Broos' enclave, the characters' attitude to Chaos, the remnants of a previous civilisation and its religious and cultural history all come into play.

This is OF COURSE not to say that there aren't many D&D games that also revolve around these things, but in RuneQuest it's baked in at character creation. What culture your character is from is one of the first questions you ask, followed by what magic does the character have. Each different magic system, and within that each source of magic, says something about your character's world view and cosmology. And all of these details are sources of conflict and adventure hooks. Even NOT using magic can be a statement about your character's attitude to the world, if you're playing in a magic rich campaign. Even then, you're likely to have some relationship, if not be a member, of some cult or brotherhood, which is a great source of adventure ideas.

Finally, in terms of combat, you can certainly play heroes wading through hordes of monsters in RQ especially using sixth edition's Rabble rules, but you're never actually safe from that one spear-carrier who gets a critical impale on you. In D&D you're pretty safe from a single stab in the dark from a low level opponent. Just this fact tends to totally change the dynamic around combat, or rather conflict, as actual knives out may be a last resort rather than the general charge approach of a lot of D&D.

Admittedly, D&D 5E has backgrounds bonds and flaws for those who want their character tied into the game world more closely, and you can adjust the hit point economy and availability of healing for a much grittier, combat-wary feel, and you could always, as Ravenswing suggests, double hit points in each location for RuneQuest characters for a more epic, cutting swathes through the hordes experience, but the default in each game tends towards one extreme or the other.

To see the difference between RQ and D&D, it's often as simple as asking how a character would be described. In one you would tend to mention class and subclass, level, perhaps a signature magic weapon or other item, while in the other you would tend to define the character by their home culture, cult or brotherhood rank, and signature magic or combat style.

Another aspect to making adventures more RQ is making treasure more culturally specific than the bog standard pile of gp - ancient foreign currency, ivory figurines, fragments of a tapestry etc

Quote from: Sean !;830220Another aspect to making adventures more RQ is making treasure more culturally specific than the bog standard pile of gp - ancient foreign currency, ivory figurines, fragments of a tapestry etc

There's an awesome table in Monster Island for doing just that. It generates treasure that comes from a mixture of savage tribes and ancient snake-people empires, and even older forgotten cataclysmed human empires and embellishes the items by material, decoration, etc. There's also wicked stuff for generating narcotics, poisons and so on. Hell, if you're running a jungle/lost world/tropical island setting, no matter what the system, that book really is a must. I defy anyone to read it and not have swords and sorcery adventures bleeding out their eyes ....

For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

Quote from: Brad;830294For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

TFT gets less love because it is too hex gamey, it doesn't have enough stats, it was replaced by GURPS, and it never had the support RQ got.

Quote from: Brad;830294For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

I do too.  I thought long and hard before converting my campaign from TFT to GURPS, and nearly went back to TFT when I restarted in 2003.  I still think it's the system I'd most recommend to newbies.

I started with d100 games based on the old BRP system back in the day so I never got the D&D experience that many have. I prefer skill based systems probably due to it going back to my starting rpg (Drakar och Demoner), which set the tone and standard for me (a measuring stick if you will). Levels and so on was never something I got into until later and the horrendous AD&D experience my group and I had definitively shaped our perceptions on D&D and level based games in general.

The main difference between skill based systems and D&D IMO was that as you gained levels in D&D you gained HP and a plethora of abilities whilst in skill-based systems you more or less stayed the same wrt HP and abilities (sans heroic powers that some games have) and skills became more important as you grew in experience. The end goals were often different as well with skill based systems became more and more about handling situations outside combat and so on compared to D&D where combat gave you experience (again coloured by perception of above mentioned experience).

Combat itself was more colourful and detailed in skill-based systems than D&D mostly due to HP being distributed over the body of the character instead of being a total value (in Drakar & Demoner anyway). This was something my players really enjoyed. It did slow down the fighting though and we seldom used mooks or even knew that this existed. I guess every opponent was important whether an orc or a BBG.

We ran less of dungeon crawling games than in D&D but that was probably more of a preference of the GM (me when it came to skill-based systems) than due to the system itself.

I think that skill based systems gives you more diversity and ability to create the character you want, something that a class / level based system might not always be able to do. So for me skill-based games (especially d100 and its cousins) feels more natural to play.

Quote from: Brad;830294For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

Ditto. At least, if you are thinking about generic high fantasy, TFT gets the nod from me. If you think it's too hex gamey, you need to give it a whirl with someone who already knows how to play - it is actually really fast and fun. I played years and years of GURPs, but actually prefer TFT; its grouping of skills into talent 'packets' is simple and effective, and I like the limited number of stats. If you are interested, Heroes and Other Worlds is an in-print revival game of TFT. It modifies a couple of things in ways I wouldn't have done (strength scale; adding a fourth stat; weapon properties). But it's pretty cool and really, really well supported.

Quote from: Larsdangly;830473Ditto. At least, if you are thinking about generic high fantasy, TFT gets the nod from me. If you think it's too hex gamey, you need to give it a whirl with someone who already knows how to play - it is actually really fast and fun.

Own it. Played it when it first came out.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ao2R0hLbRymSdEpfVjlnbDVFQ20wbzh6Y2pCcW1oY3c

Shows the varieties of TFT and clones. At least one is free and will give you a taste of the system. As others have said, it's like GURPS but much simpler, basically because it doesn't have the advantages/disads, and the talent success rolls are all directly based off stats instead being tracked via separate skill levels. I.e. you either have a talent or not, and if you do, you succeed on 3d6 under the associated stat. Sometimes there are modifiers, the most common of which is having to roll 4d6 under Dex, instead of 3d6, if you're trying to hit someone who is dodging.

IIRC Brett Slocum has a lot of notes on the web for tweaking the system, if you feel it is necessary to do so. I think this includes making the talent system work a little bit more like the typical skill systems of other games, without going too complex.

Quote from: Brad;830294For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

I wouldn't call it a 'skills-based system', it's an attribute-based system, if it is 'skills-based' it's not a good example of one. It may be of course a great game, I remember playing it as a simple but limited game, great for what it is and quite clearly a proto-Gurps system.