Joseph Paul

Thank you for your efforts Mr. Hibbs. Joseph Paul

Hmm... a divisive issue you say? How about Gloranthan Gods vs the Cthulhu Mythos- which is more powerful? Joseph Paul

happened in a BRP game. We have some time to kill until BRP gets here why don't we reminisce about good times with the various iterations of BRP? In an RQ3 non-Gloranthan campaign we were attacked by a giant ape thing. Managing to get behind it my character leapt upon it's back and proceeded to stab it in the head. The ape got to act first and swatted me from his back. Unfortunately for him he also drove my short sword clean into his own ear! The GM did a great job with facial expressions of the ape. Joseph Paul

I think that being welcoming of people that are not enormously invested in previous settings is a perfectly valid point for compartmentalizing setting discussions, as is yours. Now we have two reasons for a settings forum! Joseph Paul

Bromgrev- no need to apologize- these are the early days of a great new forum. Many things will be done and later undone. I was pointing out that the grognards on this forum can easily inundate a new person with so much information gleaned from 30 years of play that it overwhelms their capacity to get information out of the posts. This can be a turn off for some. Essentially I am saying that it is time for us to think about how we want this forum to work and who we want it to appeal to. The history of BRP, as expressed in the collective memory of those that have played its many incarnations should be represented here. But it should not overwhelm the latest incarnation of BRP. Thank you for considering these points. I will now get out of this Gloranthan thread or contribute something suitable myself. Joseph Paul

One of the things that drew people to Glorantha was the rich depth of the setting. One of the things that detered new people from getting into Gloranthan stuff was the rich depth of the setting. Let's give BRP a fresh start by keeping it's past incarnations suitably separated from the new release. Having to wade through a metric tonne of Gloranthan jargon to understand a post/get the joke may be a deterence to new posters. I say that the past needs to be remembered- but it should not overshadow the present. A separate forum would be welcomed by me. Joseph Paul

OK, this is evidence that a Glorantha board(s) should be added. That way it keeps all of the Glorantha stuff in one place! Glorantha specific rules, setting, and debate on what Mr. Stafford changed this week could be consolidated for the convenience of those that want to do Gloranthan things. It also keeps it out of the way of those that do not have experience with Glorantha so that posters don't have to keep explaining the inside jokes etc. Joseph Paul

Badcat- Has anyone started posting conversion info for Second Age stuff back into RQII/III? That would be a telling commentary on fans' preferences for the original systems. Joseph Paul

Enpeze- There are several reasons that BRP failed to gain popularity. Read Shannon Appelcline's history of Chaosium on RPGnet. They did some things that were not so great including failing to convert Runequest II into a universal system soon enough and supporting it. Also TSR/WotC has been the big boy on the block for quite some time. It has controlled 40-50 percent of the gaming market for years. Those products are very likely to be what a person new to gaming is exposed to and, as Trifletraxor points out, that oftens sets peoples' expectations of games. BRP has no levels-What? It has no character classes-What!? All skills and magic are available to any character-WHAT! Heresy! It doesn't matter that the rules make better sense and model things better- they are different from what the person knows. D&D also serves as a gamer right of passage. Nearly every gamer has played some D&D in their time. Often there are fond memories of particular modules which serve as a basis for bonding and comradeship between gamers or at least as material for boasting about how fast the party took down the evil XXX ...or how fast the party was eliminated by same! BRP currently lacks such material. Currently the universal system niche is being filled by GURPS and HERO and every other game that a GM prefers to use for a setting because it games well and not neccessarily because it models things well. Other games that have done well seem to do so because they are structured around a compelling story/background. Vampire for instance, Exalted, Ars Majica. Glorantha derives a lot of its market share from people that are hooked on Stafford's world. They will jump systems in order to continue to get it. See the people buying from Mongoose? It willbe interesting to compare sales of MRQ rules to sales of MRQ Gloranthan supplements. GURPS and HERO both have worked hard to bring material out that would allow the buyer to model particular genres. GURPS went further and produced books that allowed buyers to participate in adventures set in their favorite literary or media work. That seems to be just as important as producing a good set of rules. Chaosium was doing the same thing with Elfquest, Stormbringer, CoC, and Ringworld. Then things blew up and they lost Ringworld, Glorantha, Pendragon, and stopped supporting ElfQuest and Nephilhim. They were left with CoC and Stormbringer and too small a staff to work out other things. It would be a big gamble to produce things that did not support the core products so Chaosium became Cthulhu Central with a dash of Elric thrown in. BRP currently lacks such material. Advertising- Roleplaying has gone mainstream and the big companys are advertising and can get their games in chain stores. Chaosium probably cannot afford to do so. I think that a better question is what can we do to help popularize BRP? I have an 6 point plan: 1) Buy it. 2) Play it. 3) Run it at conventions. 4) Talk about it on forums. 5) If there is a weakness in the rules produce fan material to patch it. You might be the next "Perrin Conventions" dude. Or Dudette. 6) Produce material useable with BRP. Joseph Paul

I was flipping through an old copy of Morrow project when something caught my eye. Appently my edition (3rd) has a roleplaying expansion stapled into it. The credits for the expansion read:"With sincere thanks to the Chaosium and Tadashi Ehara, who made possible the form this expansion takes." I looked more carefully and by golly the BRP skills system is there! *Percentile rolls against specific skills *Base skill percentage set *Attribute modifiers to skill groups *Experience check system Any other non-Chaosium games that have incorporated BRP mechanics? I have heard that Earthdawn has many similarities and I know that Other Suns was submitted to Chaosium, failed to make production status, and was changed enough to avoid copyright and published by FGU. Descended Morrow Project 2nd ed Other Suns Drakar og Demonar Gotterdammerung BRP with the #s filed off Blakes 7 Element Masters/Gatewar Similar Mechanics Earthdawn Fifth Cycle Twilight 2000 v1 Joseph Paul

While I too am waiting to see the new BRP book it is perhaps a little obvious that I am not of the same mind as others about the project. I would like to thank the members here for being tolerant and not lynching me right off the bat. I can understand that my own opinions could be considered heretical by some.:eek: I have put forward that BRP could use an overhaul. I base that on what I know of various BRP iterations over the years and comparing those to games that are currently in production and in the same niche that BRP wants to be in. So looking through some of the material for GURPS 4e I find that it's combat system now includes new options that bring more realism to the fight. By realism I mean that what has been added to GURPS seems to mirror things that have actually been taught by Ancient and Medieval masters of combat. Mighty blows, flurries of blows, deceptive attacks, feints etc. are the sorts of things that I like to have as options in a combat because my studies on the subject indicate that they work. GURPS 4e hit the shelves in 2004. In going over the RQIV draft I find things like Feint, Flurry of blows, and more kinds of parries and dodges had been added as well as the Maneuver skill. This was done in 1992 twelve years before GURPS 4e. I am irked that yet again Chaosium was on the track to better, more elegant, mechanics and could not bring them to market. It has been stated that BRP plays an awful lot like SB5. Does anyone know if SB5 incorporates any of the RQIV advances? IIRC Riposte was mentioned. Any others? I don't want BRP to have to play catch up to others in the universal rules sets arena and that is what it looks like. In any case I hope that this explains some of my testiness and anxiety about the upcoming release. I am going to try to be a bit more positive about the whole thing. I promise. Joseph Paul

Jarulf- I think that you are right about COC and GURPS being different beasts in regards to adventure book sales. I think that one of the histories of Chaosium pointed out that they had some slack there for a while but recently released a new slew of adventures. Testing with the monographs seems to help them make decisions as it looks like some of the stuff on the shelves of my FLGS was done as monographs first, in particular the "Secrets of..." series. I do not think they would tie up resources in stock if they did not have a good track record of moving the stuff. GURPS may not have such a record. I can't say that I have any knowledge of what sells for GURPS but frankly I can't recall ever wanting to play/run a GURPS adventure just wanting the details of the worldbooks/genre settings. Enpeze- I understand that there is a market for as much of the original rules as can be had. My concern is that those don't cover some of the things that more recent games have thus limiting the utility of the release. I can see an initial release happening to take care of the collectors but then I would want to see an upgrade that adds those things that are missing currently. Better firearms rules, combat options; perhaps by genre, breaking, breaching, and destroying things, laying out the formulae so that GMs can figure out what it takes to break stuff that is not listed, making stuff in game by PCs etc. Joseph Paul

They have concentrated their efforts on CoC for a quarter century because the fans buy it. They are making money on the adventure supplements and the settings for the game i.e. original CoC covered the Twenties, Cthulu by Gas Light expanded to the Victorian era, and then there was Cthulu Now! for modern era stuff. While the core mechanics stayed pretty much the same you needed to get each rule book for the rest of the period specific info. That is the 'new products' that Jarulf wondered about. The fans seem to be really dedicated to the genre and are willing to buy the adventures and supplemental rules in greater quantity than other games Chaosium has had. They show much the same fervor as those that enjoy Glorantha.This was confirmed for me in a conversation with Chaosium personel (Charlie? Lynn?) some years ago. It doesn't help the succes of the other products that when things get tight you concentrate your efforts on the best sellers. However CoC was outselling the others already. This paradigm that Chaosium admits shaped their product decisions is what worrys me about the success of BRP. I don't think that BRP itself is bringing all that much to the table as a generic game that is not already there with GURPS and HERO especially if, as has been expressed here, that it is just compiling all of the extant rules into one spot. I think that BRP needed an overhaul to bring it up to snuff with the options available in GURPS 4e and HERO 5e(?). In thirty years we have found out quite a bit about ancient and medieval warfare as well as modern and near future and the rules should be updated to reflect that. Maybe they have. I really can't see BRP taking off with out at least some supplemental help. If they want to stay generic then I would like to see work done on helping GMs and setting designers do their thing. A compendium of technologies (and how those get used) would be good as would a dedicated system of designing new things. More on long term task resolution ala Ringworld. World books may be problematic. As similar as GURPS is it is probably pretty easy to adapt their stuff. So do I pay $20 to $30 dollars for a Roman setting book or do I buy a used copy of GURPS Rome? What could Chaosium bring to the table in regards to detailing settings that the others do not? Well detail for one. They do seem to be pretty good at that. I think they may have a shot at scenario books. I really liked what they did with Sun County for instance. However those require a rules set and a world setting unless the scenario book is going to serve both those ends. Capturing the imagination and wallets of the gaming community could be tough but it is the paradigm they used with CoC. Ooooh-and Pendragon. Joseph Paul Edit: What Trifletraxor said-Better and more succintly than I did.

I like the unknown also but I suspect that we are in the minority. Something that I keep seeing is that peoples' ideas of "fun gaming" are shaped by exposure to media. At SF conventions it is rare to see someone dress up as an original character i.e. one that they thought up. Many more people want to be a Jedi/slave Leia, Wonder Woman, Spiderman or some other figure that has media exposure. You see Spartans after 300 comes out but no one wants to do that before the movie out of a love for Greek culture. I see the same thing with RPGs. You can have a zombie game but it is much better to have the definitive Deadlands zombie game. That name recognition appears to help sell things. The choices come down to: 1) Stick with doing just an examination of the genre and how to accomplish it with the rules set. 2) Publish an original setting and hope to grow it into something respectable. 3) License a setting (Heinlein juvenile novels, Robert Frezza's novels, Bernard Cornwall's Richard Sharpe novels) and hope you chose the one that people want right now. I don't believe that starting out with the rules for how to do a genre setting will be enough to distinguish BRP. Having a neat setting will help. A few games have been able to gain a fan base by having rich, detailed settings that had no other media ties. They did it once with Glorantha and Travellers's Third Imperium comes to mind also. That does not seem to be very common. So licensing an appropriate title for a game setting may be the best way to gain fans and market share. GURPS has been doing that for quite awhile which is why I joked about them having all such licenses. Honestly I can't decide which way I would go if the decision was mine. Joseoh Paul

I like the unknown also but I suspect that we are in the minority. Something that I keep seeing is that peoples' ideas of "fun gaming" are shaped by exposure to media. At SF conventions it is rare to see someone dress up as an original character i.e. one that they thought up. Many more people want to be a Jedi/slave Leia, Wonder Woman, Spiderman or some other figure that has media exposure. You see Spartans after 300 comes out but no one wants to do that before the movie out of a love for Greek culture. I see the same thing with RPGs. You can have a zombie game but it is much better to have the definitive Deadlands zombie game. That name recognition appears to help sell things. The choices come down to: 1) Stick with doing just an examination of the genre and how to accomplish it with the rules set. 2) Publish an original setting and hope to grow it into something respectable. 3) License a setting (Heinlein juvenile novels, Robert Frezza's novels, Bernard Cornwall's Richard Sharpe novels) and hope you chose the one that people want right now. I don't believe that starting out with the rules for how to do a genre setting will be enough to distinguish BRP. Having a neat setting will help. A few games have been able to gain a fan base by having rich, detailed settings that had no other media ties. They did it once with Glorantha and Travellers's Third Imperium comes to mind also. That does not seem to be very common. So licensing an appropriate title for a game setting may be the best way to gain fans and market share. GURPS has been doing that for quite awhile which is why I joked about them having all such licenses. Honestly I can't decide which way I would go if the decision was mine. Joseoh Paul

What settings can Chaosium muster right now? I understand that the Ringworld setting is denied to them and they could not get permission to do a Known Space setting either. Which is too bad because adventuring in the era of the Man-Kzin Wars could be fun. It appears that Chaosium has relenquished their rights in MM's IP to Mongoose for something Mongoose had. So the Elric setting is out. Anybody have any idea what was traded? Did the RQIII setting material go to Chaosium, or did it revert to the authors? In particular the Vikings and Japanese settings? ElfQuest is owned by the Pini's and I don't know if Chaosium has any licensing that would allow them to reissue the setting. Pendragon (yes a cousin but it is a viable setting) is owned(?) by White Wolf. I agree with one of the other posters that the Carolingian Cycle would be neat as well as a Beowulf Cycle. They have Nephilim but have ceased supporting it. They have Call of Cthulu and have supported it well with Victorian, 1920's and modern settings. This link, http://www.rpg.net/columns/briefhistory/briefhistory3.phtml says that they have a Dark Ages Cthulu stand alone game. They also had monograpghs on Pulp, Roman, SF, and Post-apocolyptic settings. Expanding those without the Cthulu material would give quite a spread of backgrounds. Or maybe Cthulu will be the thread that ties all of them together? I don't think that I would like that. So they may have a base, BRP, and different flavors of settings to go with it in short order. Would that be sufficient or do they need to have a licensed product to make this thing go? What is there left to license? Has GURPS taken them all? Joseph Paul

I want to get a setting of mine off the drawing board. It starts as a hard SF setting.They have spread through the solar system with anti-matter reaction drives, and built colonies at other stars with non-FTL travel. New technology changes the status quo. FTL becomes available. They find that they are not alone in the universe. Long term plots to end the universe, ancient empires, alien technology, are discovered and along the way a lot of questions are raised about Terrans' beginnings, relation with the universe, and possible futures. Joseph Paul

Chaot, a correction if you will. From the referenced article:"In 2004 Corless sold the rights to the Pendragon RPG, along with remaining stock, to White Wolf, who has since published a streamlined fifth edition (2005) and the long-awaited The Great Pendragon Campaign (2006) which details the full 80-year chronology for Pendragon for the first time ever." Bolding is mine. Joseph Paul

Face-to-face demos are a good way to popularize BRP on a local level. But let's not dissuade others from waving the flag in other venues. I don't see a problem with reliability if fans of the system are willing to make the information reliable in the first place which seems to be what has happened so far. Joseph Paul

Badcat- Good press, bad press it doesn't matter as long as they spell the name right. If it is found on Wikipedia people will find it. If the information is wrong then get in there and correct it. Joseph Paul