Converting Blood Bowl to 4e... possible?

[Herobizkit]

I think my solo player would get a huge charge out of this, as I have been tying to duplicate/approximate a FFX Blitzball-style game for one of my ongoing campaigns. He's a huge football fan, and once I discovered that BB is essentially a game where fantasy races play football with weapons, it was a perfect match... conceptually.

Problem is, I'm not familiar with GW's products (unless you count the d20 Iron Kingdoms setting, and even that isn't right, I don't think), nor if it's it in any way compatible with 4e's tactical mechanics.

Any ideas how I might do a Blood Bowl lite, or somthing football-y that works with 5-on-5 tactics (including having 2 of said 5 'mounted')?

 

[Thanee]

In one D&D (3E though) campaign, we played something quite akin to Blood Bowl.

Just need some appropriate attribute or skill checks for throwing/catching/blocking and so on.

You could even model that as some sort of skill challenge, I guess.

Blood Bowl is a very fun game, btw.

Here's the complete rules for download, in case you want to take a look.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Herobizkit,

As linked to by Thanee, the latest ruleset (LRB5) is available for free on the Games Workshop website. LRB6 is due to be released (also for free) any day now but the changes aren't anything too major and LRB5 works pretty well anyway.

I've also attached a couple of variant rule sets that are based off of the main rulebook but play the game with only 7 players per side instead of the 11 players. The game is a lot quicker so it could be a good alternate option.

I would also suggest you post your questions on TalkFantasyFootball.org. It is the biggest Blood Bowl forum on the internet and I'm sure you'll find multiple people there that could help you out with some suggestions.

I could see a pretty fun campaign where you are a coach or a player taking a team through a Blood Bowl season. You use D&D to narrate the campaign parts of the game and then, when game day rolls around, you have an actual game of Blood Bowl to determine the result. What happens in the game could then give you plot hooks for what happens after the game (i.e. During the game one of the team's best players is fouled to death by a couple of Orcs on the other team. A few of the team's fans then decide to attack the whole Orc team, starting a massive brawl!) The possibilities are endless.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Herobizkit]

Thanks for the links. I will give them a look-see.

The real difficulty is not knowing the 4e rules at all, so there's really no way I can immediately see to "make it work". That'll come with time - and it'll be worth it if it works.

 

[amysrevenge]

not knowing the 4e rules at all,

If you're learning new rules anyway, I'd say just run BloodBowl as-is.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Run Blood bowl as is and arbitrate the results into the D&D campaign by DM fiat.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Yeah, don't worry about conversion and just run Blood Bowl as is.

BTW, my experience with Blood Bowl meant that Attacks of Opportunity gave me no trouble at all. Would it cause a Dodge roll in BB? AOO.

 

[davethegame]

I highly recommend checking this out: » The Dungeon Reality Show PDF is available now!

I can personally recommend it, even as D&D to play while drinking heavily.

 

[Gort]

Apropos of nothing, the new Blood Bowl computer game is really rather good. It's just the standard Blood Bowl game ported to computer. Saves all that pesky mucking about with tokens and minis. I'd love it if they gave Necromunda and the other minor Games Workshop games the same treatment.

Heck, I'd love it if they gave D&D the same treatment. Maptool is great and all, but just a little bit clunky.