D&D Monsters in Runequest

[Melkor]

I was just curious - with the Open Game nature of Mongoose's Runequest, would it be legal for someone to take all of the monsters from the D&D System Reference Document and convert them over to MRQ - possibly releasing it as a supplement for MRQ ?

While I am interested in Glorantha and playing Runequest in all of it's original glory, if the system works as well as I am hoping it will (from playing BRP in the past and seeing the MRQ previews), it would be great to use it as a rules set for D&D setting adventure as well.

 

[Lakritsploppen]

I suppose so unless the creature is "trademark protected" like the mindflayer and beholder..

 

[HyrumOWC]

As long as you take just the monsters from the d20 SRD you'd be perfectly legal. That's one of the beauties of Open rule systems.

Hyrum.

 

[SteveMND]

As long as you're talking about the "generic" monsters they added to the SRD, I suppose so. That said, you're really not going to end up with something that's all that D&D-ish beyond perhaps the name, since most all of them would have to be rebuilt for the new mechanics...

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

The licenses would have to be compatible too.

 

[atgxtg]

THe big question is, what unique monsters does D&D have that are worth converting?

Most of the D&D monsters are based on "classic" monster concepts (troll, vampire, giant) that all in the public domain, being part of our collective myths and legends.

A lot of the other monsters are vieled versions of beings from other legends or works of modern fiction (LOTR in particular).

So by the time you get to the good & unique monsters, you probably don't have enough left to be worth a sourcebook.

 

[Utgardloki]

It would be worthwhile having RQ treatments of monsters even if they did come from traditional fantasy, myths, and legends. Of course, I don't know how much overlap there is between the Monster Manual and the RQ sourcebooks. After all, they're still stats, and the reasons the monsters have been with us is that they're cool enough to have survived the years.

 

[atgxtg]

It would be worthwhile having RQ treatments of monsters even if they did come from traditional fantasy, myths, and legends. Of course, I don't know how much overlap there is between the Monster Manual and the RQ sourcebooks. After all, they're still stats, and the reasons the monsters have been with us is that they're cool enough to have survived the years.

THat's the thing. A lot of the tradtional monsters like Dragons, Vampires, Trolls, Giants, Harpys, and Manticores already have RQ writeups.

D*&D has a lot more monsters than other RPGS, in part becuase the progrssing HP system needs them. A 2HD wolf is D&D isn't as challenging to a 7th level fighter as a RQ wolf is to a RQ warrior with 85% weapon skills.

There are a few really good, unique D&D creations, but probably not enough to fill out a Monster sourcebook.

 

[Utgardloki]

I found it very easy to convert Runequest monsters to D&D, by calculating their average hit points and converting that to D&D hit dice. But I'm not sure how things work going the other way.

I guess the question is whether you want a D&D lamassu or ki-rin converted to Runequest as it is, or if you want a monster like a lamassu or ki-rin, only designed for that system. D&D monsters are typically designed to challenge characters of a certain level, and it is not clear how that would apply to the runequest world.

What would be useful would be a sourcebook that had monsters from various cultures (African, Japanese, Greek, Nordic, etc), whether or not these were described in D&D first. I'm sure there are lots of monsters out there that didn't get into the RQ book.

A "how to" guide explaining how to convert monsters from D&D to Runequest could also be useful. That way, instead of converting all the Monsterminicon monsters to Runequest (which would not be legal because the Monsterminicon is not open source), a GM could just apply the rules to convert the Monsterminicon himself if he wanted to run Iron Kingdoms in Runequest, and ditto for Eberron, Rokugan, or any other D&D setting he wished to convert.

 

[atgxtg]

There used to be some conversion guidelines from RQ to AD&D, inclduing a few third part supplements.

Genrally, I like the idea of converting mythica creatures, and they wouldn't be a problem legally. Ki-Rin and Lamia are not D&D creations. I think Ki-Rin might have been Writtien up in Land of the Ninja, too.


At lot of the D&D cwritupes thoug, are way off from the soruce material, and a GM would be better off reworking of the creatures from legends, or converting from a different source. I did this with a lot of greek and celtic monsters back when I was running my campaigns.


Doing the coversions is realtively easy. I can probably dig up amd or rework some of the old conversion rules. THe big change is that RQ monsters tend to be deadlier than thier D&D counterparts (since RQ PCs don't have the high HP totals as in D&D), but also more vulnerable (the monsters have fewer HP, and are more susupcitble to brains over brawn).


BTW, If someone had a list of monsters they wanted to see, those of us with the old RQ stuff could check my books to see if there are RQ stats for such creatures already. Supposedly MRQ creatures are not going to be much different that in RQ3.

 

[Adept]

There are a few really neat D&D creatures, but I'm afraid those are the ones that aren't free game for the taking.

I'm using the Underdark concept in my (Conan and Lankhmar inspired) Dark Fantasy game, and have adopted creatures like the deep gnomes, the drow, Illithids and Beholders. The latter two are especially iconic, and some of the few good things to have come from D&D. Unfortunately they are off limits.

Then again, it wasn't such a chore to do my own version (conversion, with some tweaks) for Unisystem. MRQ shouldn't be any harder, once one is familiar with the it.