BPRD game

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:06 am

So... I keep wanting to run a BPRD (Hellboy) game. I think if I tried to run a irl game, I'd break people, or myself, or it just wouldn't work, due to already having two irl game nights, one irc game night, three work nights, class one day, and... yeah.

So, if I were to set one up online, would anyone here be interested in the basic premise? (game system to be determined. May try my idea of running a modern setting using Tome, since Fiendish Brute, and maybe some fighter or something should replicate big red himself pretty damned well). The one caveat is that I'd need people to be patient with me because I've never successfully run an online game (though I'd try IRC this time, rather than pbp, that never seems to actually work).

tl;dr: Interest check for BPRD game, no specific system yet, and I sucked at prior attempts to run a game, so, yeah.

Dr_Noface · Post by **Dr_Noface** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:03 pm

You could also consider using After Sundown.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 5:50 pm

True, though it would need some tweaking to work well for two reasons:
1) Frank has said he basically designed a social game, not a combat game, and the combat system would need tweaks for a more combat oriented game.
2) BPRD seriously does have the occasional steve, it seems, so I'm not sure if the character creation system would be right. I'm open to people telling me I'm being dumb on this count, though.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:27 pm

As my thread indicated I'd definitely be up for After Sundown since that'd give me a minimum of rules to re-acquaint myself with.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 3:37 am

There is a Hellboy RPG - it's GURPS Lite, shaved down a bit.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:55 am

Thanks, I'm aware, but not terribly concerned about tracking it down and learning something new.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:52 pm

If you want rules-lite, re-skin danger patrol. It's easy to use and learn, and I think it would work well for Hellboy (two-fisted adventure interspersed with dramatic investigation?)
http://www.dangerpatrol.com/

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 7:49 pm

Hellboy is actually relatively combat light compared to like D&D and stuff. i would expect After Sundown to work pretty well.

-Username17

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 8:03 pm

Yeah, Necromancy & Path of Blood came to mind immediately because being able to say things "I am like the ghost whisperer, except I spit poison" and "I can tell what is special about this transdimensional satan blood because of herp and/or derp" sound like the sort of things that'd look good on your resume in a hellboy game.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:21 pm

So, plans have changed. With the unfortunate turn out of my attempt to play a paladin, this idea is being taken to tabletop. Could still use advice, though.

I've done up basic constructions of four characters in the four systems I'm looking at, Mutants and Masterminds, Tome, After Sundown, and Old World of Darkness.

OWoD works, but brings in systems with which I'm unfamiliar and ends with an odd placement, that frankly does work, but it's weird to say Hellboy and Abe are both best represented using Thrall rules from Demon the Fallen. Liz is obviously just a human with the pyrokinesis Numina, but that's a system I don't know, and I don't know enough about Wraith to place Kraus perfectly, but it seems like he's a Wraith with Embody and Inhabit.

AWoD brings some slight oddities, with Hellboy being a PC Akuma with an allowance for a different diet, Kraus being a Khaibit with permanent Empty Body, and Abe being a Deep One with a weird backstory.

Mutants and Masterminds shows it's strength as a "do whatever the hell you want" system, but I don't actually like M&M combat.

Tome works remarkably well. Hellboy is a Tiefling Fiendish Brute 1/Samurai with a bunch of combat feats. Abe is Tiefling Carceri Conduit3/Monk that uses guns and some feats. Liz is once again the easiest, because, hey, everyone loves pyrokinetics, and she's just a fire mage. Kraus seems best represented as a Bard (possibly variant)/Speaker for the Dead.

Soo... yeah, it's pretty much "First System K and Frank gave us" or "Second system Frank gave us".... Pending going to Kinkos and printing out the AS book, and beating my friends over the head with it and tome saying "THESE. ARE. THE. BEST. SYSTEMS. I'VE SEEN! FUCKING. GET. OVER. YOURSELVES. COMPANIES. ARE. NO. MORE. LIKELY. TO. KNOW. WHAT. THEY'RE DOING!"

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Oct 30, 2011 8:59 am

so, talked to my prospective players. fun. I've got one non-vote of "just let me know what we're using" and one person who for some reason dislikes anything from the Den. he thinks Tome is too powerful, and AS too restrictive, seemingly because it doesn't replicate power armour transhumans to his liking.

So I'm looking some more. Standard D&D seems too restrictive to me, and my answer to that ("tell me what you want, and I'll make a template, item, whatever as appropriate.") defeats the purpose of using D&D.

Player Two's suggestion is Hero. No. I found the den thread about it, and it lost me at "roll 3d6, subtract this number from (ocv+11), this is the highest dcv you can hit" and I seriously will use OWoD before I abide that shit. Also, I'm not spending $80 on a system like that *and* learning how to run it. Especially if it actually can't serve as modern small arms fire protection while being thicker than most text books I've used.

A way to represent Hellboy and the "I'm a fish, bitch!" part of Abe in OWoD remains elusive. though I'm looking into Changeling for both, just fanwork for Abe. Can fae be sorcerers?

Dresden Files is the next thing I'll look into, though it'll also cost me $90 for hardcopies from flgs. I really don't want to spend all my costume contest prize money on this...

Immediately accessible, I have Mutants and Masterminds, Rifts, some OWoD, D&D of course, a game called fantasy imperium that's earned my ire for being so purely Christian in it's rules, and GURPS (which will, I'm sure, receive bitching from both players). I'm really not looking to spend more than $40, Max, on this.

help?

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:05 am

Prak_Anima wrote:so, talked to my prospective players. fun. I've got one non-vote of "just let me know what we're using" and one person who for some reason dislikes anything from the Den. he thinks Tome is too powerful, and AS too restrictive, seemingly because it doesn't replicate power armour transhumans to his liking.

It's okay, we dislike him too

What about writing in some power armor transhuman rules>

Player Two's suggestion is Hero. No. I found the den thread about it, and it lost me at "roll 3d6, subtract this number from (ocv+11), this is the highest dcv you can hit" and I seriously will use OWoD before I abide that shit. Also, I'm not spending $80 on a system like that *and* learning how to run it. Especially if it actually can't serve as modern small arms fire protection while being thicker than most text books I've used.

Tell Player Two that you'll run it in Hero if he buys you the books.

I don't actually recommend using HERO without multiple players well versed in it, but either this shuts him up or you get the newer, thicker, more bullet-resistant edition on his dime.

A way to represent Hellboy and the "I'm a fish, bitch!" part of Abe in OWoD remains elusive. though I'm looking into Changeling for both, just fanwork for Abe. Can fae be sorcerers?

OWoD is mechanically shit. I'm biased, but I don't think it can be run without enough houserules and MC calls to qualify it as a homebrew system.

Immediately accessible, I have Mutants and Masterminds,

Which has a couple issues, but is basically HERO-lite, in that it's a superhero system which can approximate any type of game.

Rifts,

er, um, if you're going there, have you looked at "Beyond the Supernatural", is it even still available?

help?

Feng Shui would work pretty well if you de-emphasized the Fu archetypes and reflavored the arcanowave tech to more standard cyborg gear and can talk the problem guy out of powered armor.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:20 am

I'm not even sure he actually wants to play a power armour user, it's just a sticking point with him and AS.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:51 am

Prak wrote:I found the den thread about it, and it lost me at "roll 3d6, subtract this number from (ocv+11), this is the highest dcv you can hit"

Hero can be converted to standard 3d6+X vs DC by using a global DC of 21. Attacks can be resolved as 3d6+OCV vs 10+DCV, identical to the way D&D AC works. I think that gets rid of all the fucking roll under skill bullshit. May be +/- 1 errors on those numbers.

Not that I'd recommend Hero even with that. It is complicated and slow. Just thought I'd throw it out there that it's relatively easy to tear out their shitty roll under skill crap and once you do that the resolution mechanic looks like D&D with 3d6 instead of 1d20.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 4:13 pm

The biggest issue with After Sundown and power armor type stuff is that even with a home brew power set it's a bit of a poor fit given that things like the Iron/Wood/Silver and Water/Sunlight/Alcohol weaknesses don't really mesh well with backgrounds that are intended to be have more of a hard science theme and you can't really just excise sorcery counters and call it equal to other character types.

With that said, being an inhuman supernatural creature with magical powers is damn near the entire point of After Sundown and even the animates and androids have as much in common with the chess machine from Moxon's Master as they do with Data. If someone at my table grumbled about not being able to make power armor suits as a general criticism of the system I'd ignore them and if they brought it up despite not even wanting to make a spess mehreen I'd call them a prima donna because that shit be irrelevant.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:07 am

So we met together, and settled on Mutants and Masterminds (rumble, grumble, stupid combat system...)

I know I've got one player who wants to be a fae, and one who is looking at super science or telekinesis. The third doesn't know yet.

I'm planning on the first adventure dealing with "black hounds," the generic folk lore category of creatures which contain yeth hounds and such. Beyond that, I'm looking at a story focused on neo-nazi's attempting to summon a demon Hitler from Limbo (I'm still going to use a lot of stuff from AS, just not the system, unfortunately.)