TrippyHippy

The best sci-fi is infused with politics - from Brave New World all the way to Star Wars - the two are not seperable, and really it's just a case of how you react to ideas, rather than separate them.

The movie is politicised against misguided U.S foreign policy in the same way the Bourne movies are. Not a problem for me, and more of a reflection of current prevailant views rather than anything really radical. It depends upon your own views as to how you take it, I suppose. For the record, I thought the Starship Troopers movie was hilarious though - and a more prescient movie than given credit for, concidering what happened in the following decade....

Yeah. If you aren't into that thing. If you are, it offers a genuinely different experience to the usual dungeon bash or other purely escapist stuff on offer in pretty much every other game. As we can see, the horror motif is effective enough....:thumb:

Yes, that's true. Call of Cthulhu has always been useable as a generic 'ordinary people in the real world' game system. It's probably one of the first games that you could run a straight modern thriller with (as opposed to cinematic action stories), never mind the horror motifs. I mean, you could pretty much do any Hitchcock movie, or The Da Vinci Code, or Reservoir Dogs, or The Third Man, or Chinatown....., as well as Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie.

They investigate mysteries. The fun comes from discovering answers and digging deeper into those mysteries - which can then frequently lead to death or insanity, in an absurdly nihilistic and futile manner, which can also be fun for the shock value. It is a kind of like an exercise in existentialism. Lovecraft's universe is very existentialist.

Most games are analogous to bands, I think. Every great rpg has it's own soundtrack. I mean, everybody knows the link between the psychedelic rock band, Hawkwind, and the Eternal Champion stories, don't they? Led Zeppelin made explicit references to Lord of the Rings too, but I felt could easily be the soundtrack of RuneQuest (think folksy, anthropological, myth-making and escapism) or D&D (think adolescent lyrics! ). Add in a bit of Steeleye Span, and you'd have the whole caboodle. Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures is pretty much a transcript of the world described in Vampire's World of Darkness, although one could also link this to Nirvana's grunge (similar sentiments but commercially a lot more successful). Traveller was a sort of New Wave/European electro/techno, I think - or actually like the band that Joy Division turned into - New Order. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was an 80s British Heavy Metal band, like MotorHead. Champions is a sort of Van Halen/Bon Jovi, stadium rock thing. Ron Edwards' Sorcerer is a bit like The Libertines - clever and 'indie', but not entirely coherent or as original as their fans think. D20 is The X Factor or Pop Idol.

Think Star Wars in other words. And I'd say it was on a par in most instances (with the original trilogy; better than the prequels), with the exception that it doesn't have the chemistry and witty interchange between Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher to carry the romance/comedy aspects convincingly. In all, I thought it was good entertainment although there is this abiding irony (common to most US sci-fi movies really) that, even when preaching leftist 'tree-hugging, hippie crap', the only solution given to any problem is still just to kick some more ass! Really deep. :ohwell: I'd give it 4/5 - but not a classic in my book. I found District 9 more interesting. EDIT: I would also not the thematic, possible influence of the Blue Planet rpg background on this movie - except they used a different type of habitat.

I think Call of Cthulhu is more popular in Europe. It may be because it appeals to the sensibilities of Europeans, pertaining to World War 2. That is, American audiences prefer to open up a can of whupass on the bad guy, whereas European's see more heroism in endurance and stoicism in the face of overwhelming adversity. Playing Call of Cthulhu is a bit like listening to late-Pink Floyd or The Smiths maybe.

Not exactly a big sample either....

There is a free downloadable introductory quick play booklet.

I think the major attraction for me for Call of Cthulhu isn't actually the Lovecraftian element itself (although it can be interesting), or the rules per se, but actually because it gives the tools for telling relatively modern mystery thrillers. It's a change of pace from fantasy (action) adventuring. The monsters aren't really the focus of the game, insofar that they just set an atmosphere and an overriding threat. But anyway, I'm not sure why there is such concern about making BRP more popular at the moment? The BRP release is only about a year and a half old - compared to other generic systems like GURPS which have been around for decades. It needs a bit of time to build up - but it's doing pretty good already, I think. there is certainly enough variety of support to keep us lot interested. Why put pressure on it?

I haven't called you a liar. I've merely pointed out that you are dismissing my views - they aren't just *my* views either, they represent the views of the groups I've played with - whilst holding up your own opinions as fact, when they are not. The factual evidence I have already presented, which you didn't actually counter was that every successful generic game system out there is supported by a vast amount of supplements, and multiple settings. The ones that don't do not last long. You appear to want to assert that the reason all these gamers play these systems is because of the system alone. What I'm saying is that a sizeable proportion, including myself and the groups I've belonged to, actually get 'hooked' into systems by particular settings first. Indeed, with the exception of GURPS, I'd also add that pretty much all successful generic systems - HERO (Champions), Savage Worlds (Deadlands), Unisystem (Witchcraft, AFMBE), D20 (D&D) and indeed BRP (RQ) itself have actually evolved after the successful establishment of rules used in a setting based game first. And even in the case of GURPS, it was using licenced settings and the like from the very early days. Cool settings attract gamers in ways that sophisticated systems do not. Heck, how do you account for the incredible success of Vampire: the Masquerade and the OWoD, when it utilised one of the most clunky unplayable systems around? Ditto, RIFTS?

Isn't it possibly to roll the damage dice at the same time as the attack/parry roll? Then you just need to do the calculations based on one shake of the wrist....

This is sound, cautionary advise. However, the one thing I will say that is to the advantage of MRQ2, beyond a few years of extra marketing feedback, is that the current market is quite different to what it was 3-4 years ago. D&D4.0 and WFRP3.0 are palpably different games to what they used to be, and RuneQuest remains one of the few recognizable 'classic' brands that actually adhere to something like a simple, traditional fantasy RPG game system.

You are merely quoting your own anecdotes and assertions back at me. You are not quoting evidence. You are just too bloody minded to realise it.

Your experience isn't any more valid than mine. Well the proof in the pudding is the gazzillion different generic systems that have been published and have gone the way of the dodo when they haven't been supported by a volume of supplements. If BRP didn't have all the supplements it has made already, and the promise of more to come, it would have disappeared off the shelves in no time, like yesterday's news. The same would be true of GURPS and HERO or Savage Worlds. There is no functional point to having a generic, universal system unless it supports and is supported by multiple settings.

No. In my case, it was the Transhuman Space setting that got me interested in the core GURPS rules. Not the other way round. Notably, I would add, that Champions came nearly a decade earlier than the generic HERO rules were published. Sure, this is just my personal experience, but I don't think you should just dismiss the idea on that basis. Heck, if it was just the system that sells games, then why bother producing setting supplements for BRP at all, from a business point of view? To my mind, what sells generic systems is the volume of support they get - be it setting supplements, rules supplements or whatever. Different gamers find different things appealing. The broader the net of supplements, the more chance that individual gamers will find something that appeals to them, and 'buy in' to the system accordingly. That is all.

I'm not so sure about that either. While I can see that some gamers are attracted to the rules, it's really the volume of support that makes GURPS and HERO viable. I was attracted to GURPS a few years back simply because of the Transhuman Space line - but I was never keen on the various generic rules-crunch books (and ultimately was put off because the game seemed straightjacketed by needing to stick to GURPS conventions in the rules). Similarly, my brief flirtations with HERO and other systems like FATE (Spirit of the Century) have usually been curtailed by reading through a book full of rules, but no real setting originality. Savage Worlds had some appeal, because the Solomon Kane and Low Life settings looked interesting, but ultimately, I don't feel the need to flirt too much with systems - just have an engine to hang setting ideas on.

No it's not a comment on the stories themselves - which have been re-evaluated over time. But it is pertinent to remember that Lovecraft made very little money from his writing while he was still alive. Actually most 'pulp' rpgs seem to be slightly powered down supers games to me, but actually pretty much the entire genre selection of rpgs could be termed 'pulp' on one level or other. D&D is pulp, Traveller and Star Wars are pulp, CoC is pulp, Champions is pulp, Deadlands is pulp, etc. There are a few games that aspire towards more serious literature representations - Pendragon, for example - but most games just aspire towards 'fun'. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Actually this is more of a gamer fad definition than a universal one. If you asked someone what 'pulp' refered to 10 years ago, they'd almost certainly start refering to a Tarantino movie. 'Pulp' is any type of cheap fiction, including action, romance, westerns, sci-fi, fantasy and horror. Lovecraft's work would be part of this.

I think the thing with the Yog-Radio broadcasts is that they are always playing in some famously 'classic' campaign, like Masks of Nyarlathotep or Horror on the Orient Express. People tune in to get the beef on why these campaigns are celebrated, as well as being able to see a functional gaming group, that has a nice blend of male/female ratio and educated light banter. Whether you could get the same with a BRP broadcast, and a market for it currently is questionable.

I think the confusion comes from the EDUcation stat, which equates to 20 professional skill points per point (years of education) - but is increased by 1 for each 10 years after the initial amount. Then again, I think the BRP rules indicate that you don't add extra skill points as part of the aging rules, either (I guess it merely takes into account that the character will have accumulated some xp during that time).

Well, astrological studies have been going on for millennia - archeological evidence has found that pre-historical man still traced the movements of planets, the sun and the moon. The medieval mind seemed to like to divide everything into Greek elemental signs, which the Zodiac is related to of course. Indeed, Carl Jung's more modern 'personality types' (extrovert, introvert, thinking, feeling, etc) are all still based off an astrological data set, so really not that much has changed beyond terminology. Links about Gauquelin can be found on wikipedia: Michel Gauquelin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia You could also check Jonathon Tweet's contribution to Unknown Armies - which can be found in the opening chapter: www.atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/ua2_preview.pdf

I think it was a study by Michel Gauquelin in the 1960s that provided a statistical link between star signs and various types of profession. Personally, I think the Jonathon Tweet idea of having star signs (eg Capricorn, Leo, etc) as archetypal personality types is a very easy way of representing this aspect in a RPG. Everybody gets them, and they are very easy to play. You could also check on the way astrology is organised into character types in Nephilim, I guess. If you want more detail, the the 16PF inspired Personality Traits can be used also, although I personally think that Allegiance is a bit different to personality, as such.

There is, I think, a free downloadable sheet by one of the supporting Traveller companies that helps you plan out new careers. The big thing is having Mishap and Events entrees in tables. The other numbers can be simply converted as relevant characteristic rolls, I think. It is a pretty much central feature of the Traveller experience though, in my view.