I'm not particularly fond of mook rules either, in any system.  It just seems weird that PCs should be better, just because they are PCs.  For me, it smacks of narrativism and seems artificial.  However, I do think it is an integral part of the cinematic swords and sorcery that BoL covers; the image of slicing through hordes of enemies.

In any case, I think mook rules  (rabble) are already baked in to classic D&D with levels. "Agents": PCs, Monsters, NPCs whatever are of vastly different power in D&D.  You can easily scale your rabble up or down with a few lifeblood or other benefits/deficiencies.

As for monsters. I just think you have to eyeball it.  I don't think you'll come up with a satisfactory formula for conversion. I would pay close attention to special attacks and defenses as well as spell like abilities and powers as those are the interesting bits. The rest are just numbers.  Heroes of Hellas has some classic mythology monsters that might be useful.

I think the hardest thing to do for a BoL to D&D dungeon crawl hack would be spells.  IDK.  I just ordered Simons BoL hack from LuLu so we'll see what goes on there.

Narmer wrote:

How did I miss all of this?!?

Agreed! I just don't stop in often enough, and I just discovered this. As a medieval historian who loves BoL - oh man is this cool!

Peter, I am sorry to cast necromancy but this is really awesome stuff.  The whole idea of the meadhall, and gaining glory and praise from the lord of the hall as the central focus is brilliant. I remember trying to run a "Land of Giants" campaign for Pendragon that was very much like what you trying to accomplish here. But I only had moderate success adjusting the extremely Malory focused rules of Pendragon into the Beowulf type setting.  This is a much better approach.  Are you still working on this? Have you tried it in play?  If so, how did it work out?  Are there any points that still need work?


 

Fantastic news!  I lost my copy of HoH in a recent move and was considering ordering another.  I don't have much specific to recommend, but new BoL material is always welcome. 

Off the top of my head I can't remember everything that was included in the old HOH, but I would like to see some kind of mechanics or suggestions that help represent the various machinations and influence of the gods, as this seems to play pretty heavily in all Greek myth style stories.  I also wouldn't mind seeing more for mythic/quasi-historical/theosophist sword and sandal cultures such as Troy, Amazons, Atlantis, Scythians, Persia, Egypt etc.  A strong bestiary would be appreciated.

Hi Nero,

I love hexcrawls being a big fan of the original JG Wilderlands, Nod, and just about anything that Rob Conley does.

I don't mean to get all simulationist, but I tend to think that for me a 10 x 10 mile hex, approximately 100 square miles, is too big for relevant gaming.  I mean it is a minor quibble, but the enormity of the space makes the world hard to detail unless you are doing broad brush strokes for a political map with kingdoms and empires.   Even if you are only doing 100 x 100 hexes or 1000 miles x 1000 miles that is still an area the size of western Europe, India or China - which to an ancient observer traveling by foot or horse might as well be the whole planet. For me, this kind of scale is better hand-drawn.

Hex paper is better for detail and a more localized setting.  5 mile hexes cuts the total area by 75% so the characters aren't lost in empty space.  Its a better scale, I think, for dungeons, ruins, temples, towns, local warlords, a number of  warring city states (ancient Greece was even smaller), etc. The kinds of things that adventurers interact with. For big geographic features like oceans and steppes, you don't need a lot of it, just a dozen or so hexes on a corner and a label "the endless wastes of Zord" or whatever.

Of course, this is all a very nit-picky and fiddly argument.  In some regards, you don't even need a scale just a concept and some cool locations so take it with a grain of salt, but for me, map scale implies a lot about a setting.

madprofessor

Hmm... well, I see what you are trying to do and unfortunatly, I don't have a solid answer.  The two games don't translate very well mostly because of character levels and what HP represents.  BoL characters have fairly static hitpoints or lifeblood with a narrow range centered on 10.  With an average weapon doing D6+STR, damage in BoL is slightly less abstract than it is in D&D.

 In D&D, a first level wizard might have 4-5 HP, and a 10th level Barbarian might have 100 HP so there is a huge swing in the amount of damage that a human body can take.  HP in D&D are more abstract representing sweat, confidence and other intangibles that are represented in BoL with hero points.  If you really want to systematically translate D&D HP and damage to BoL lifeblood, you should probably pick a D&D level that you want your BoL game to represent.  2d10 claws will flay a first level party like a cheese grater but are less scary against a 12th level party.  Mathematically, you could pick a level (say 5th), find average HP for each character type, take a common weapon like a sword for a baseline, convert to a pecentage or ratio, and translate into D6 plus or minus vs lifeblood, and then do the same for other damage types.

It is doable, but then BoL characters have hero points, so the whole formula is for naught unless you remove or limit them.  I have three suggestions for you to consider - though it is your game so take them with a grain of salt:

First, just try BoL as is.  It works.  In fact, it works better than D&D.  The drastic swing of abstract character level HP is one of the things that sent me searching for other RPGs way back in 1982 and it has never been "fixed."  I like D&D warts and all, but HP and damage is one of the D&D's "loveable" flaws IMHO.

Second, eyeball it.  That's what I would do.  You are talking about random numbers so exact translations aren't necessary.

Third, and this is a bit wonky: do you have Chaosium's BRP?  The reason I ask is t