Wolverine

If people are interested, for all the latest updates for Empires Rising, then you are more than welcome to check out my developers blog: http://empiresrising.wordpress.com/

Thanks. The first drafts of the main ER book and Tales have been completed. I'm also a third of the way through writing up the campaign, which has been play-tested by my weekly gaming group. New interior artwork has been commissioned and I'm already checking out artists to see if I can find one to do a nice front cover for the new edition. It's all go on the ER front!

The epic fantasy role-play setting Empires Rising is to re-published in a revised and expanded second edition! The new edition will be published under The Design Mechanism's RuneQuest Gateway license, through my own publishing house called Lion & Eagle Press. Empires Rising is a stand alone fantasy campaign setting for RuneQuest filled with adventure, warfare, conquest and empire building! Set in the fantasy world of Athennia, Empires Rising is a setting about two new empires: the Commonwealth of Atalansia and the Grydorlan Empire. Both are beginning to take root and expand, and making a mad grab for territory, consuming smaller nations within reach and waging war on their neighbours. In the middle, a group of terrified nations have decided to band together to form The Alliance, a loose confederacy whose sole aim is to make a stand against the ambitions of these two empires. Empires Rising is a campaign guide, and can be used as a sandbox setting in which you to play out your own stories. The new edition features: • An revised and expanded world gazetteer. This includes the myths and legends of Athennia. • Campaign Criteria with complete guidelines for character generation using the RuneQuest 6th Edition rules. • A rundown of the major cults and factions within the setting. • Rules governing the use of the five RuneQuest magic disciplines in Empires Rising. • A complete bestiary of creatures. • Populus: The capital city of The Alliance and detailed for use as a base for your player characters. • All the Kings Men: An Introductory scenario to the campaign setting. The release will be followed up by two supplements: The first is Tales From Athennia. Six stand alone scenarios are detailed in this book and are good examples of such adventures your characters can have in Empires Rising and can be used as a starting point for your very own campaigns. The six scenarios are: • The King Thief • Curse of the Necromancer • Pirates of the Black Isles • Winter’s Song • Ghost of a Silhouette • Tricks of the Trade The second is Destiny of the Crown. This is a full campaign set in the kingdom of Atalansia during a civil war and power struggle for the empty throne. The characters become embroiled in the plotting and scheming between two opposing royal factions. Release dates to be announced. As a RuneQuest 6th edition campaign guide, Empires Rising is compatible with Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying & Magic World, Mongoose Publishing's Legend and D101 Games' OpenQuest.

Hi Ben, That's looking really good. Any idea when Magic World will be published?

The book is technically systemless. There are very few mechanics in there, and you can easily ignore the HeroQuest keywords. As Newt has said, there will be a free PDF release containing OpenQuest statistics, which can be easily converted over to BRP.

This is still in the works. It's just been put on the back burner whilst I finish off other projects. Just keep an eye on this thread.

Nick, thanks for your suggestion. It's a good one. Thanks for that, Steve. I understand now. So it makes those "Game Points" a precious commodity then? Interesting idea. As I'm not keen on traits, it would be great to hear what other people have to say about them.

I'm very familiar with HeroQuest, but that doesn't go to say you cannot do the same with the BRP and run narrative adventures. It is my opinion that the mechanics are there to fall back on when needed, are shouldn't be the crutch or driving force of the game. A skill roll should be used when no other way is possible or the players undertake a course of action that warrants it. Is that what you're suggesting, Rust? If a player says they are searching the desk for clues then let them find the letter that will lead them onto to the next part of the scenario. If they are examining the desk for hidden traps then make them roll their Spot skill. I find that some players will actually suggest a skill to use and give the reason why. "I'm going to search the desks for booby-traps, so am I allowed to make a Spot roll?" In which case the players are driving the plot forward themselves and I prefer character driven games. Mugen, the three steps you describe above are what I believe to be the core of any good role-playing session. Like Rust, I think you sum it up quite nicely. A good GM will follow a similar process to that and a good player will role-play that situation accordingly. What else you describe is pretty much what I've seen from quite a few poor players over the years. "I'm going to attack the guard. Roll the dice. Did I kill him?" And believe me I have had my fair share of those in my games! They are usually the ones that sit back, wait for you as a GM to call for a dice roll, and seem to lack passion for role-play. I guess these guys could be called "Roll-Players".

Sorry that was non-intentional. Reading back on your comments, you never made it clear in your post that you were suggesting traits shouldn't be used. However, you did suggest that players pick their own traits and that GMs should reward them for good role-play if they are brought into play, which isn't a bad idea. Do the players take actions that go against their chosen character's traits? Then the players set their own boundaries and know exactly when they are stepping across them. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is something being implemented into MRQII, in the new edition of Elric? I have come across this before, but never used it myself. Rather than having traits, passions seem to be an interesting way of motivating the characters. I take it they are not strict boundaries as such but more of flexible story hooks that can get the ball rolling as it were? If you have a character with Hate Luna passion, it is more likely they will want to save the village from the rampaging Lunar army patrol. This would help springboard the adventure along, rather than having the players say "Why should our characters bother about a bunch of villagers of no consequence?" Steve, that's exactly the kind of suggestion that I was looking for. So what you are suggesting is a mixture of Hero Points and Improvement Rolls taken from MRQ? I already use Hero Points, borrowed of course from MRQ, which does make a big difference to the gritty realism of combat. When it comes to Experience Rolls, do you allow the players to simply add D6 percentiles or do you make them roll a traditional Experience Roll to see if they get the bonus? For me it is all about the story telling. I find too many skill rolls simply get in the way of the story. My playing group prefer being involved in the in-game story development of their characters, rather than the numbers on their character sheets. They rather reach the resolution of a scenario without having to result to too many dice rolls. On the other hand, if your players are more comfortable or find it more exciting to resolve everything on the throw dice, then that's exactly what you do. From experience I prefer players not to become to reliant on dice rolls, as it makes them lazy because they are waiting for you as the GM to say "make that roll" to resolve the situation. That is a good method to use for character generation, especially for new players to the setting, and one that can have a knock on effect in-game. If they do not conform to society, which technically they should as characters, it can have dire consequences for them.

I still don't like the idea of traits, no matter how flexible they are. People in their life will do questionable and out of character things because they are motivated by a higher purpose. Plus I like the flexibility of not having guidelines for players to follow. The character in question who committed the aforementioned act did so for the greater good, even though the act itself was questionable. Technically, even though it was out of character, it was done because the character thought it was the right thing to do. That sounds awfully like roll-play, as Damon would put it. The biggest problem with BRP is GMs relying on a successful skill rolls to determine the out come of a scene or a scenario itself. I've seen many CoC scenarios grind to halt because players have failed dice rolls and therefore missed a vital clue. And simply doubling the skill and making them roll for the sake of it makes you as the GM look as if you're trying to fudge the outcome. I have done that before, like in instances in which player characters have crept up on a sleeping enemy, an NPC of no consequence, to slit their throats or to put a downed enemy to the sword. If the fight is a foregone conclusion and the players are going to win anyway, what is the point of making them roll for it? I always determine the outcome of fights between two NPCs without making dice rolls. It bores players to death when you try and play out a fight between two NPCs by rolling dice. It's easier to say the soldier is cut down by an arrow, or Lancelot slays the attacking marauder with a single thrust of the sword. Skill augmentation is one thing I already use, whether it be a group of players assisting the leader character or a single PC using a relevant skill to augment another. And I use the Special success range. Come to think of it, it does make sense to introduce such passions as Hate Enemy and allow the players to augment skills with them.

Hi chaps, There is certainly some food for thought there. What I think it boils down to is the fact there is a lack of role-play driven mechanics in BRP, which other systems like HeroQuest seem to thrive upon. Like Rosen and Damon have both suggested, you could award an experience check next to a relevant skill if the players role-played their way through a situation. Quite often I find this to be the case, as a line of questioning can provide answers from an NPC rather than picking up the dice to try and persuade them. Of course, when I deem the situation calls for a dice roll, I will ask for one. Therefore what you suggest sounds quite sensible, easy to implement in game, and wouldn't upset the balance of the system. It rewards role-play rather than roll-play. The idea of Pendragon Traits has never really appealed to me, but I have seen the optional rules in the BRP rulebook. The one thing I don't like is alignments as they confine a character to a strict set of guidelines, and to me I feel traits are a similar thing. I find if you do away with boundaries such as alignments, players have flexibility to make their characters more human. One player in one of my recent games did something a little questionable and out of character, yet the fact of the matter is the character would have done it in because the situation warranted it. It was not bad role-playing or out of character, but desperate times do call for desperate measures. In an alignment based system that character would have been penalised for stepping outside the boundaries of their "alignment", even though in a role-play sense it was the right course of action to take. I cannot comment upon a trait based system, but I'm sure those Pendragon players amongst us will be able to shed more light on it for me. As for relationships like those you find in HeroQuest, that doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. Like Status skill, which wouldn't increase through experience checks, a "Relationship" skills could be rolled against when the character needed to test the boundaries of their friendship, and where no other skill would be suitable to roll against. Then again would you need to roll against your relationship? I do believe Loz has added something similar to RQII, with Hate, Love, and Relationship skills, very similar to those found in HQ. With the exception of Relationships, the only problem I see about having these trait like skills is that it may impact upon role-play in a negative way, pretty much in the same way as alignments can, restricting the characters who should be the ones making those sort of decisions. I feel that players should decide who their characters love and hate.

It's been a long time since I sat down and wrote a post on BRP Central, and now I have the opportunity to hammer out an idea with the good people here. Having run a BRP campaign for over two years I have noticed one thing. My players seem to be advancing at different rates. This is because my scenarios are more role-play based, rather than concentrating on fast-paced action all the time. At the end of a gaming session the number of experience rolls made vary from player to player, and some sessions one or two of the players have not needed to pick up the dice at all and therefore didn't receive any experience rolls! I know that players can train and advance their characters in-between adventures through Skill Training. However, I feel that the experience system is geared little unfairly towards adventures that concentrate on combat, action, and a lot of dice rolling, rather than those purely based on role-play, which doesn't reflect the overall experience of the group as a whole. I know that other compatible D100 systems use alternative experience methods, such as RuneQuest II with Improvement Rolls and OpenQuest with Improvement Points. This has lead me to the idea of an Experience Point system for BRP. I believe that this is a fair way of rewarding characters and gives balance to the overall advancement of the group. It also means that as a GM you can award Experience Points based on objectives and goals achieved by the players in game. The most simplest method I can see is when advancing a character one Experience Point is equal to one Percentile Point in a skill, which is pretty similar to allocating Skill Points during character generation. I thought the best rule of thumb would be a player could allocate between one and five Experience Points in any one skill, and no more. For skills that require training you can simply rule that the player can only place Experience Points in that skill if find a teacher with the relevant knowledge. For skills over 100%, a player would have to spend two Experience Points to advance a skill by one Percentile Point, to represent the fact it's harder to improve that skill. For improving Characteristics, a player would need to spend Experience Points equal to number you were advancing to multiplied by five. For example, Vharic the Brave wanted to increase his Strength from 14 to 15, he would have to expend 75 Experience Points in order to do so. For those of you out there using BRP to play RuneQuest, increasing the magnitude of Battle/Spirit Magic would require you to spend Experience Points equal to number you were advancing to multiplied by five. If you were increasing Bladesharp from two to three magnitude it would cost you fifteen Experience Points. This would be staggered, so if you wanted to increase the spell from one to three magnitude it would cost you twenty-five Experience points. My next thought is how to award Experience Points. As I said above I mentioned about players achieving objectives or goals. Whenever a player’s character achieves an objective, whether it is personal or quest related, the GM should award the relevant number of Experience Points. This could range from five to ten Experience Points, and a lot more when the players reach the conclusion of a campaign. I was thinking that the number of Experience points awarded shouldn’t be too high, otherwise characters would advance far too quickly, and not low enough so that the characters never seem to improve. It has to be fair and balanced, and allow room for GMs to reward players for role-play as well as action sequences. I would like to hear what people thought of my idea. It would be good for some feedback, some ideas, and some constructive criticism. Maybe you have done something similar already or suggested it before. Even if you hate the idea, your arguments against it would be appreciated. I'm open to anything.

That's interesting. I have copies of the GW RQ3 books. I might not bother buying them then.

I take it that Basic Creatures and Basic Magic books are just the text taken from RQ3 books as well and reprinted?

I'm trying to rethink the setting just a little. I am looking to showcase the new version of the God Machine this year, probably at Continuum. I know what direction I would like to take, and it isn't a step too far off my original idea - dark fantasy meets steampunk . I will fill you all in once I start work on the re-write. At the moment I'm concentrating on writing Empires Rising for OpenQuest. That project is almost complete. Then I will look at the God Machine again.

Like Glorantha, the only things not covered by the OpenQuest OGL is the settings, such as Savage North and Empires Rising. So you couldn't go off and use background material in your work.

The magic systems that are featured will be staying the same, with one or two minor tweaks. Artificer and Necromantic magic are the two being introduced. It's just the setting that needs to be worked on from the ground up.

It really depends on which direction I would like to take it. There is no point in writing something if its going to be just another stereotypical fantasy setting. I needs something to make it unique and stand out. Something that will make people go wow! So far, there has been very little interest in the setting. Only a handful of questions asked. If I want it to appeal to a wider audience, I need to come up with something that will appeal to them, and not just one or two people. At the end of the day, Chaosium need to be able to sell the books.

An update on The God Machine: The project isn't dead. I have been conducting some extensive play-testing and I have found that the setting seems to drift far too close to a conventional fantasy than I like it to. The games I've run have felt as if they were set in the world of Empires Rising, and that's not what I want for The God Machine. My next step for me is to re-write the setting from the ground up, and I will begin work on that once I've completed the Empires Rising book for Newt. Until then, I wont make any big announcements to what I am planning for the book. You will just have to be patient and watch this space.

Ditto. The some of the new BRP rules have been written with Star Wars in mind.

Why couldn't use those names?

Sounds like a nice idea, to capture the feel of traditional D&D, albeit with BRP. I preferred the title Sword and Spell, as it conjures up a more an old school feeling when you see them name. I might take a look at this once it's published.

The random AP roll is a throwback to Stormbringer, whereas the fixed AP value originally comes from RuneQuest 3. I believe Jason simply took both from their original sources and correlated them into the table. That's why they appear to be out of sync, as it were.

I've done pretty much all the background material for The God Machine setting. I've written around 40,000 words in total. I'm slowly building up the rules section as I type this. It's pretty slow going, trying to fit it around work and my family life.

I'm slowing working my way through writing a Steampunk book for BRP, called The God Machine. When published, that will be a useful tool for you, although it does contain magic.