GreatBear

Star Trek/Wars/Gate go without saying. I've wanted to do them with BRP forever. Sure I could have done them long ago based off say RingWorld but I never got around to it. Now I'll wait for BRP.

If you dig around on the web you should be able to find EPT:RQ by none other than Sandy Petersen (CofC and DOOM). Jorune could be interesting. It was always handicapped by having a crap "system" riddled with typoes. I'd be surprised if anyone wanted to officially resurrect it but BRP would be my choice for Jorune or any genre. I'm toying with an 'After Disaster' themed campaign idea in the tradition of Kamandi, Planet of the Apes, Gamma World, etc.

I say thee NAY - Last time I checked SB5 went for big buck second hand. It's easier to get copies of Elric! Wait for BRP. It sounds like Jason has mined the best part of SB5 and digested it for us.

Brain...Shutting down. Impossible to imagine...Mind ... can not grasp ...

In the descriptions of Mars, Jason, you should be sure to note the unusually high Princess population. While we're waiting on DBRP and JD sourbook, anybody interested in this genre really should check out Gareth-Michael Skarka/Adamant's MARS RPG of Planetary Romance. It is D20 and I'm firmly of the opinion that d20 sucks. But he did a great job threading the maze to create a Mars that feels like Barsoom and other pulp Red Planets, but doesn't require the ERB stamp of approval. It would be very cool if there could be some kind of arrangement to produce dual stat BRP/d20 adventures.

It sounds great Jason. I've wanted to do BRP Barsoom for about 25 years and never got around to it. Adamant Entertainment's MARS was a good effort but being d20 I'll never play it. RE: John Carter Shaped Hole in RPG hobby. Many people me included have tried to talk to ERB Inc. about the license. TSR actually did a TARZAN RPG but it didn't go anywhere. ERB Inc. are not really interested in dealing with small time RPG publishers. You have to start talking in the millions before they'll give you the time of day.

Patents applications are cheap. You can file a patent application for less than a couple hundred bucks IIRC. But who knew back then it might have been worth it. Legal action in the RPG industry is not unheard of. TSR went after Gygax's Dangerous Journeys and Palladium used to threaten legal action against anybody that even refered to their games. But I agree it's quite possible we would have ended up with one game system and not a very good one as you say - but that's exact what we have in d20 in my opinion. That's why I'm looking forward so much to BRP. It's too bad Chaosium never had the backing to go bigger. At the time they sold of RQ to AH they seemed like they were poised for greatness. But alas AH kept RQ off the market for about 2 years (while doing a couple RPGs of their own) and Chaosium never had anything else except Cthulhu that had any staying power. I sure hope BRP opens some doors because I can't see Chaosium continuing much longer as the "boutique" publisher they have become.

That's not my point. The title of the thread is "System Ownership" and I'm trying to point out the legal basis for owning something like a "system" doesn't rest in copyright law, trademarks, etc. If you want to secure ownership of a design you patent it. You can't patent a "term". But I bet Tapping is trademarked by WotC. Hasbro/WotC applied for and was granted patents from the US Patents office on the game mechanics of MtG and CCGs in general. I heard this directly from Pete Atkinson at the GAMA trade show back in the day (1997 Collectible card game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). I stand by what I said. If the early RPGers had patented their designs, things would be different. I think we'd have a smaller selection of systems but with much wider variety in mechanics. It might have been a good thing. We probably would have avoided such "D&D on steroids" games as Rolemaster and Palladium. But we might never have gotten Call of Cthulhu or RQ either.

Both games were announced as Chaosium products in an early issue of Different Worlds IIRC. It was probably a case of Chaosium being unable/unwilling to publish them that saw them released by FGU. I think rather that say it was a swipe job it would be more fair to cite this as an early example of Chaosium's lax attitude to their IP. For the record while game rules cannot be protected by copyright, they can be patented. WotC applied for and got a patent for several of the key game mechanics in MtG. If any of the early RPG publishers had gone this route, the hobby would be very different today.

The Harnmaster system is RQ derived. I know people who were involved in it's "playtesting". It has diverged somewhat but it's still recognizable.

I believe the MRQ OGL specifies that publishers have to refer gamers back to their Players rulebook for core rules. In otherwords you can't publish a complete game. What game publisher in their right mind would consciously decide to limit their market to the faction of rpg'ers that already own MRQ?

Boxes and modules with loose components get shrinkwrapped. Game hobby books are not usually shrinkwrapped by the printer/publisher. If you see a book in shrinkwrap it was done by the store to protect it from shop wear. Or because they are anal comic collector types.

Great Bear here - I've been a BRPer since playing RQ and CoC back in the early 80s. I also played most of the 1st generation TSR games as well as Tunnels & Trolls and Traveller back those early days. I have owned/read most of the Chaosium RPGs over the years and tried a broad range of games. It seems to me many gamers' idea of "improving" a game is to make it more complicated. This has always mystified me. It invariably means fewer people play it. I thought RQ was a bit over done but in making CoC Chaosium actually simplified things to the point where role-playing is balanced nicely with game-playing. I've been wanting to use BRP for settings like Star Trek and Barsoom for 20 years. Yeah I could have used existing BRP materials but I've waited this long; I'll wait for the new rules set.