Robsbot

I go average as well. Combat is generally frowned upon in my campaign so when I force PC's to live by the sword, it's generally against some henchmen, guards, assassins, or something with little personality. Against large antagonists I always hand craft them with back stories, stats, etc. anyways and throw them at the PC's repeatedly until they can overcome them, so there's no need for a roll and play style of combat generation. I can't really see why I'd take the time to roll henchmen on the spot when in all reality they're probably just going to get pummeled into the dirt soon anyways.

Has anyone ever run an evil-centric campaign? Back in the day I used the Book Of Vile Darkness and ran a short campaign where the PC's were various degrees of evil. The worst one of the bunch was a Cleric who gave himself to evil, sadistic gods. He constantly wanted to sacrifice and torture people. There was also a Rogue with no morals who was more like an Assassin than a silver tongued Thief, and a Druid who wanted to watch humanity burn for what they had done to nature. It's hard to run because of the things you have to roleplay, but it is interesting. This was back in High School though and the player group ended up parting ways before it ever took off well. I may well have to do it again sometime. Back on topic though, I wish the OP would come back and tell us a bit more about his campaign. I'm quite intrigued now. I do agree with Seneschal though in regards to NPC's. Just give them whatever you want and hand wave it off to forgotten lore they acquired, a dark gift, or just he's the villain, kill him! I've traditionally found that in magic heavy campaigns Players don't generally poke too much "why can they do this?" of the NPC's and try to figure out moreso how to defeat them and rid the world of whatever gave them the powers. Also, Seneschal, great links. WAY before my time but very entertaining nonetheless.

That brought a bit of a tear to my eye. Interesting to see some of the back story to it all. Thank you for your hard work and dedication Zomben, as I love the Elric! and Bronze Grimoire stuff and seeing it get a new life is simply awesome. Your work on Magic World is sure to bring many converts (it already has!) and bring countless people hours of enjoyment.

Since you gave me those a while back, that's exactly what I thought of when I saw them as well!

To run other sources of magic in a campaign including Sorcery I just make Sorcery harder to obtain, or make it ostracized. In my current campaign Sorcery is evil. There is both the Light and Balance types of Sorcery but even dabbling in those elements tend to make the users want more power and lean towards the dark side. This causes Sorcery to be shunned uniformly and only secret societies dedicated to the eradication of Sorcery use the Light spells as they would probably be punished as well due to the number of Light sorcerers who fell to the dark side. Since it is so shunned this makes Grimoires hard to find as they are burned and disposed of unless secreted away for study later. This balances out the power of the MW Sorcery system with those of RQ6, the BGB, and even Enlightened Magic. Enlightened Magic runs surprisingly well next to the other systems as a more subtle and preparatory form of magic that can achieve much more than other forms if given time. However, dabble in Sorcery (Elric / MW style) and you'll be forced into a life of secrecy and constantly be hunted for your efforts as you try to fight the consuming effects of Shadow.

Well I was ripped from the D&D black hole in part by 4th edition and part CoC, but I'm about to start a new campaign with three people only ever exposed to D&D. Due in part to your works making my GMing job easier and encouraging me to run campaigns, you could chalk up three more converts due to your work. I tend to prefer the Elric! / Magic World system to RQ6 system so your work always helps me out.

For my uses the POW gain is a bit hard because a character has to overcome an enemy with greater POW. This means in a duel they are already at a disadvantage and as we all know combat is already deadly as is. That's fine in my opinion for epic battles fighting strong sorcerers with 20+ power but I don't regularly pit my PC groups against monstrously powerful sorcerers. If you have a group of 2-4 PC's find an enemy sorcerer who's just mildly more powerful than them (say 18-19 POW) he's not going to risk a fight with multiple opponents. PC's can try to deescalate the situation instead. So this leaves the situation where they are fighting a sorcerer that's not too much more powerful than they are but has recruited or raised enough henchmen to make the fight even enough and the reason to fight great enough to risk their lives in the bout. In my campaigns this is just a narrow enough situation that it doesn't come up often enough to give my PC's an overflowing font of POW gains. As always, YMMV. That's why I use the magic reservation system for both the enchant spell from RQ6 sorcery and Necromantic activities from Sorcery in my current running campaign. It makes it so I don't feel the need to push my PC's into these narrow situations. When they are I usually tip the favor a bit towards the NPC's so it feels like a reward when they get that POW gain instead of them picking fights solely for the purpose of gaining POW. However I run a rather combat averse campaign mostly centered on the actions of humans. Other humanoid intelligent species are rare and are used as huge plot devices instead of going down to the market and seeing elves, dwarves, and other races. This keeps POW's rather closely matched. If your game has a myriad of species and some of those include very powerful but very frail races then the POW gain could be kept up rather easily without too much risk to PC's. Like you said, it depends on taste, setting, and vision. Also, ChtulhuFnord that was one point of the system. I wanted to tie certain users to more magical endowed sources. This forces very cool roleplaying in the form of creating the braziers and wizard staves (from the BGB). This also gives an outlet for POW expenditure and again focuses on the preparatory nature needed for those who choose more permanent casting effects. You don't just use Brazier of Power to prepare for a big demon to summon and bind, you use it as a battery to enhance your limited casting. I still haven't fiddled with allowing PC's to reserve mana from stored sources (again, brazier and wizard staves) because I'm afraid this would cause an imbalance, but I may shortly. We'll see.

I too heartily recommend Magic World and it's supplement Advanced Sorcery for your Necromantic needs. Advanced Sorcery has all the good bits so make sure you pick that up. One way I deal with permanent powers in my games is power reservation. I use it whenever I want a caster like a Necromancer or Enchanter that can have lots of permanent spell effects going but I don't want the constant POW donations to become too taxing. Let's say a PC with 16 POW creates a zombie that costs 6 magic points (or whatever your chosen system calls them), the PC then has only 10 magic points he can use. Those points stay spent and do not regenerate for any reason until the spell keeping the zombie alive is dismissed by the caster. Then, they come back at a normal rate. A player does not get an immediate 6 magic points to use when they dismiss the zombie, although you could allow a spell that consumes the corpse and the spark of life to give them the reserved magic used by the corpse immediately, which could be interesting. This reservation system very easily lets you tweak the points cost of spells to be as powerful as you want (most casters will have 16-18 POW early on) so that they can have 1-2 zombies, 3-4 zombies, or even more. The system also balances itself out in the fact that the more of their magic points a PC has reserved the less flexibility they have in spontaneous spell casting. Someone with a small group of zombies probably only has a handful of points to cast with each day making their other options much more limited. You could even add another rule similar to how demons work. Each zombie could cost a certain amount of your INT reservation to keep alive thus lowering the number of spells you could remember if you try to keep a horde of zombies alive. Either of these systems creates an actual trade-off for PC's: Do I have consistent meat shields and sacrifice utility? Do I need more flexibility and less zombies? However, for NPC's, do whatever you like. I plan on having one encounter for my NPC's where three sorcerers head to the site of an ancient battle, erect monoliths and imbue them with power over time, then using each other and the monoliths as a battery they cast a spell that resurrects hundreds of undead in hours slowly scouring the ground and resurrecting each buried corpse it crosses. Just keep it interesting. Advancing the story is more important at this point than balance. Just hand wave it off to corrupt power from dark gods, demons, or an ancient spell they found that they immediately hid when they learned it. Although balance could pretty easily be achieved, I'm not sure PC Necromancers are a good idea. Is this a world where everyone is running around with skeletons? Do they all walk zombies like your average middle class American housing development at 7 am? Are you planning to run combat constantly that PC's would need undead for? Combat is very deadly in BRP and should be used as a last resort. If you're planning for that much combat maybe this isn't the system for you. However Pokemon type battles with undead could be fun...

Another great piece I'm looking forward to from you good sir. I can't wait!

This is amazing! Thank you so much for this! I'll certainly use it for the occasional foray back into dungeon crawling and for inspiration for my campaigns. Your work is much appreciated.

Thank you guys for the help, I really appreciate it. I probably didn't word this section as well as I could have. In BRP it's obviously up to the GM to make the situations interesting. However, in scenarios that lack casters I feel like it can boil down to choose a weapon, swing, see if they block or dodge, and wait for someone to take a massive hit. Magic spices this up by adding the ability to affect combat in different ways and add more options without adding too much undue complexity. Even simple things like buffs, disabling effects, and debuffs, while not mechanically interesting add interesting options to break up the monotony of just rolling for damage. I feel magic allows even the occasional duel like face to face fight between aware opponents seem much more interesting. I was mostly trying to ask if RQ6's special effects system, while it seems to add the extra little spice to combat, really adds the ability to affect combat in interesting and meaningful ways, or does it boil down to pretty much using 1 or 2 effects most often and leave combat in the same situation it was without the undue burden of extra rules? Regardless I think you answered my question. I'm not going to see amazing mechanics or effects just different ways to handle dealing damage and winning the fight.

I had so much fun with this scenario with some new BRP players that I thought I'd share it with you guys. I had three scenarios lined up for them to introduce them to BRP. Each one was designed to require different ways to solve them so as to show them the strength of BRP: it doesn't always have to boil down to combat. I started off having my two players make characters. One chose a simple rogue. Charming, able to lie through his teeth, and good with a dagger both up close and from afar. The other player chose a very interesting character. He wanted to play an agent of the chaos god. Luckily, I had the rules lined up for just an occasion. The god of chaos uses his servants as playthings. If they entertain him, he focuses more of his efforts on them, eventually twisting and mutating them horribly. So how did the PC stumble upon this cult? Simple: he was part of a dominant religious order. As an initiate monk, he studied his religion fervently. Eventually, he stumbled across the banished cults and became ensnared in the draw of the chaos god. As a monk he didn't have much so he was trying to find ways to make money to move out from under his religion and connect with others of this cult. I gave him two small, unnoticeable mutations (regeneration and pheromones) to show his descent into the chaos god. For a quick scenario we could jump into I used a very simple narrative: Three nobles have asked three different tasks of the religious order. They could take whatever ones they pleased and all would pay out to the church if undertaken. The setting was a very Neverwinter type city. One in which many religious, magical, and cultural societies collided. The chaos servant teamed up with the rogue, who was looking for some quick gold, to undertake these tasks then pocket the money themselves. A rather tenuous relationship, but it worked for a quick and dirty introductory session. One task was a disease spreading amongst the lower class and was intended to require a bit of investigative skills. This turned out to be a magical plague spread by a black witch to point the blame at a white witch. She was trying to undermine the white witch and get her locked up or disposed of by the nobles for selling fake cures to the plague as her cure disease potions weren't curing the magical plague. The black witch didn't like the healing and protection the white witch offered to people she could torture and manipulate. The second scenario was a simple combat exercise. A noble noticed the mausoleum his family had been buried in had been disturbed, and wanted it investigated. He walked the PC's to the mausoleum outside the city, wherein the PC's found a necromancer prepping and raising skeletons. A simple combat followed. The last task, which incidentally was chosen first, was by far the most fun. Several farmers and small groups of merchants had been ambushed outside town. They simply woke up in the road with all their goods and animals missing. The PC's were to investigate. First, I asked them how they were to proceed. They decided to ask the monastery for use of a pack animal and a few sack of grain. They said they were going to help out victims of a famine occuring in a nearby town. After lying their way into their supplies, they decided to proceed. Just as the town was a speck on the horizon, they heard a rustle in the bushes. Both PC's were lit up with needles, and one resisted the poison long enough to see the vague outlines of small humanoids before he passed out. They awoke tied up in a room made of rock with only a rickety wooden table as furnishings and an old wooden door leading out. Their donkey was chained from the wall, and looked like it was mauled and mostly eaten by wild animals. Their weapons were missing. Upon trying to discuss their situation they alerted the guards of the room. Four goblins charged in and demanded the two bring them more animals for food. The PC's tried to bluff and say they knew nobility and could negotiate for regular animals to be fed to them, they just had to let them both go. They failed, and the goblins decided to let one of them go as good will (the rogue) and bring them more food. If he did, they would have enough confidence in the two to let them both go and they would stop attacking the settlers as long as they kept the food coming as often as the goblins asked for it. They poisoned the rogue again, and dropped him off within sight of town. That night the rogue proceeded to steal a donkey from a farmer and then went back down the road, only to find himself poisoned once more and tied back up in the room again. However, before he left town he picked up four new daggers. Two for his belt, and two to hide in his boots. Upon waking up back in the room, he found his belt daggers were missing but his boot daggers were still there. Further negotiation with the goblins failed as well. They would either have to fail to solve the mission and accept less pay for just giving the noble the information they had, or they could try to solve this themselves. I gave them one last window of opportunity. One goblin set down his spear and untied the monk as a second came forward with the poison. As the spearless goblin started untying the rogue, he grabbed for his daggers and the monk lunged for the spear on the ground. The fight was on, and it was epic indeed. The rogue was fighting a goblin with no spear, and another with a small spear. The monk was fighting the head goblin, a bit bigger and more skilled than the other three, and one other goblin, both equipped with spears. The monk quickly injured one goblin, and it dropped its spear and tried to run from the fight. The monk, having none of this, decided to throw his spear and promptly caught the goblin with a critical impaling it and leaving it gurgling in a pool of its own blood. He then dodged through the head goblin's spear, picked up the second spear off the floor, and continued the fight. The rogue had a hard time even connecting and when he did didn't do much damage, and while he managed to dodge the spear ate a few hooks from the unarmed goblin. That's when things turned for the worst. The monk ate a bad spearing from the head goblin. He was badly injured, but could still fight with badly decreased rolls. The rogue had a hard decision. Try to dodge out of combat and save the monk, or possibly let him die and hope he could get some good swings off soon. He chose something completely different... he threw one of his daggers at the head goblin fighting the monk and got a critical. He wrecked the head goblin, also hurting his rolls and sticking a dagger in his back. With that, the monk was able to finish him off and with their leader dead and one slightly injured spear goblin and a goblin without a spear left, they took off running out of the room. The two tried to chase but with injuries couldn't keep up. They decided to try to sneak out of the area, only to find it wasn't much but a tunnel and a rough room in the rocky hills outside town. They found their weapons in a cutout down the rock tunnel and their stolen donkey tied up outside unharmed. I asked the two players after the scenario why they tried to chase, and why they tried to sneak out of the tunnel. They said they had no idea how many goblins there were and were worried about a possible large contingent of goblins. When I told them there were only four, they quickly realized why they still had their second donkey. I hadn't given them any indication of how many goblins there were, and they were worried they would have to fight dozens of goblins to get out alive. It might not be as entertaining down on paper but it was super fun at the table. Although I tried to make this a non-combat scenario, offering multiple times and ways to negotiate and the option to take a lesser payout instead of combat outright the PC's did the combat very well when the situation degenerated and they tried their hardest to find a non-combat resolution. The combat was almost fatal for a PC, and showed how quickly things can degenerate in a fight. It was absolutely roaring fun introducing two new people into the BRP system and watching them have so much fun. The settings, while they could use some tweaking, really allowed the PC's to tell me what they wanted to do and me call for rolls to see how well the accomplished it. It really is a good feeling seeing new players get into the system and telling me they wholeheartedly prefer it to D&D and other alternatives.

I've never run a full Runequest 6 combat system, or even most of the optional rules of the Basic Rule Book. As such, I'm looking for a comparison of how some of the optional rules of the BRB and how RQ6 as a whole system runs in comparison to the base BRB combat and Magic World. Some key points I'm looking for: Deadliness: I really like the fatality of combat in the Elric / BRB / MW system. When someone rolls a hit, I like seeing everyone at the table hold their breath. I like to run campaigns that try to avoid combat, using it only as a last resort, so the deadliness of combat helps me to remind the players to exhaust all their options before reaching for their swords, bows, and spells. How do the differences in mechanics affect the deadliness of combat? Does RQ6 and BRB optional rules add anything to this type of atmosphere? I'm not necessarily looking to increase the deadliness of combat per se, but possibly enhance and the tension in combat that the possibility of fatality creates or at least maintain the current tension. Fluidity: The main thing keeping me from running RQ6 as a complete system is that although the additional rules for combat seem to add some flavor, they also seem to bog the system down, especially the special effects section. Does familiarity with the system help keep the system smooth? How do all the systems run at the table compared to one another? Are there any rules (optional ones in the BRB or RQ6) that specifically hamper fluidity? 33 RQ6 pages compared to 24 BRB pages seems like a lot of heft to add on. Flavor: BRB combat has a tendency to get a bit bland if you don't use magic and powers to spice it up. While I generally run magic heavy campaigns, I've run into a few players in my current group who tend to favor RQ6 folk magic like effects over more flashy and impactful forms of magic and tend to favor martial combat. I've been forced to plug them into more interesting combat situations than allowing them to use their characters to create the interesting combat situations. Do the extra rules in RQ6 and the optional rules in BRB help spice up combat or does it just add more bland options to combat?

I think this conversation alone shows some strengths of BRP as Slade has outlined. Want an advantage / disadvantage system? Bolt one on. Like something that someone else doesn't? There's optional rules for a reason. Make the game as simple or as complex as you want. That said, the general complexity of BRP, like Slade stated, is rather low. It all comes down to basically looking at your skill %'s and rolling dice. It's easy to GM this and keep the flow going. One major selling point for me these days is the lack of Min-Maxing. I play with hardcore MMO / MOBA / Tabletop War Gaming players. They have a tendency to min-max as that's what the competitive environment requires. They sometimes have issues switching modes into fun, casual, role playing get-togethers with the guys. Since role-playing skills are just as important as combat ones, if I get a player who's more powerful in one aspect than the others I can tailor the game to include the other players more. For example, You have this insanely overpowered combat based PC using the Sorcery rules from BRB / Magic World who's stomping all over your encounters. Solution? Get the PC's into situations they can't use combat to get out of. Have them kidnapped and have to talk / negotiate their way out. Have them attacked with subtle magic and have to use research and connections to find and counter the source. All three options, combat, social, and research type challenges are equally fun and allow players to have niche skills they are good at that others aren't and with clever GMing allow for everyone to stay involved in the narrative. I really feel the narrative aspect of BRP is its biggest strength. I always have those stories of the cool / crazy / impossible thing my PC's did that made the whole group die laughing, sit there stunned, or cheer at overcoming the obstacle. You never hear the awesome story about how your level 16 wizard used his encounter power to kill that rock elemental and get enough XP to get to level 17.

Has this been basically thrown into limbo? I'm extremely interested in this system of magic.

Sorcery is the magic of the Chaos gods. Elric! presented Sorcery in a way that was selfish, powerful, and evil. Sorcery generally buffs only the caster and often to great benefit. It also can achieve power levels other magical traditions can't even reach. It's evil with its inherent connection to demons, chaos creatures, undead, and mutation. This presented several challenges when I was crafting the setting. I wanted Sorcery in for sure as it's my favorite system and offers some great potential for villains. However, I wanted it to be a neutral magic (not Law or Chaos aligned) and I could easily see how a PC with access to Sorcery could dominate many of the group dynamics inherent to role playing as the system really has no downsides. As an additional hinderance I either had to have demons / chaos creatures be generally accepted by the populace or all Sorcerers could easily be shunned due to general association with vile creatures. That's not something I wanted as I needed the juxtaposition of Law and Chaos to frame the conflict in the world. So I could lock off Demonology to its own system but I just didn't like that idea. Demon summoning is too core to Sorcery. So what do I do to make Sorcery useful and thematic at the same time? Instead of making it a neutral magic system, make it inherently evil just like in Elric! It sounds pretty intuitive, but I was really fighting it while I was trying to make the setting. I'm going to keep the POW 16 requirement for Sorcery but there will be no aptitude restrictions for other traditions. Why? I want it to be innate. All it requires to cast is a flex of will and the right words uttered to bring forth the effect. This means it can be used with armor and weapons since there are no somatic components. Sorcery is based from the same well of inner power other systems use however, and is not itself a demonic or Chaos gift. A high POW requirement enforces that it's something more innate. So for someone with low POW to learn this strong magic they may have to bargain with unsavory characters to be given the ability to gain Sorcery. This can quickly lead to an evil descent for some people, but what about those who are naturally gifted with high power? It's not hard to imagine Sorcery fitting the evil bill in this setting. It's much more powerful and rare than normal magical traditions so if someone discovers a Sorcery spell they are more likely to keep it to themselves. This can quickly devolve into a desire to acquire more powerful Sorcery at any cost. Delving into ancient ruins and chasing myths to gain power would be how it starts. Then, if a Sorcerer encounters a more powerful Sorcerer the lust for power could easily consume them and drive them to murder to obtain that Sorcerer's grimoire. Eventually the morality line blurs to demonic pacts (like Corum), and then eventual demon summoning and binding (like Elric! and The Bronze Grimoire). Necromancy could be an alternative path to demonic influence, or may be a result of demonic influence but reluctant to make pacts. So instead of separating Sorcery into Demonolgy, Necromancy, Pacts, and base Sorcery, I'm going to role play it like a descent. I'll repeatedly tempt my stronger PC's with Sorcery and if they choose to use it (with fair discussion and warning ahead of time) the player could role play their inner fight and eventual descent into power hungry madness and possibly even become a major villain of the PC party. I may have recurring villains appear to challenge PC's a different stages in their descent into Sorcery. Sorcery from the BRB and Elric will be more common (although still rare and shunned), while Demonology, Necromancy, and Pacts as presented by Elric!'s demon summoning rules, The Bronze Grimoire, and Corum will be much harder to come by due to their potential power and their general intolerance by the general populace. It's not exactly what I wanted Sorcery to be but I think the system plays to this role extremely well. I'll have 3 chaos gods as of now. One will be the god of necromancy. Another will be the god of demons. The last will be the god chaos who grants mutations to his followers (as per the BRB mutation rules). These are the three major things that I think a high fantasy setting would frown upon and sorcery plays right into this trifecta of evil. Demons, Undead, and Mutation, things that diverge from the natural order. Although Sorcery just didn't fit into my setting like I initially envisioned it, I think in this capacity it has a greater potential to be role played and be extremely thematic.

Greetings! I'm working on a magic heavy fantasy campaign. I'm looking to throw around some ideas to help me craft this world, as I'm planning on making it quite large and very detailed. So, enough introduction, let's skip right to it! First, the influence of gods. I will have a pantheon that will have lots of influence on the world. I'm going to shape it similar to Elric! in that I will have a pantheon of Law gods, Balance gods, and Chaos gods. Balance gods will be more neutral, focusing more on the god's desires (like a god of trickery that enjoys illusions and deceit) than influencing day to day life of humans. However, gods of Law will be strict, judgmental, and and hateful. They will have a very rigorous view of morality and condemn those who do not uphold this to destruction. Chaos gods are power hungry devourers with no morality at all. They focus their efforts on gaining power at any cost to self, others, or the world. God influence is important and will set the stage for conflict in the setting. So what I'm looking to do is include several magical systems, each stemmed to a locale which is shaped by the magical tradition inherent to the area. Each tradition will have a different impact on the society it is in. I currently am using these magical traditions as PC accessable but a PC may only have access to one at a time: Wizardry (BRB: Magic / Classic Fantasy): This system takes the form of classic Wizards. Magic is taught in the many Mage's colleges running under the umbrella of a University. Each college is dedicated to a seperate "school" of magic. Illusionists, Elementalists, Arcanists, etc. The heads of each college form a counsil that govern the general direction of the university. The society will probably be a dictatorship (with the head being called the Emperor) to which the University's high council will be the advisor (and aid in choosing new Emperors). This gives the well educated and highly intelligent Wizards the ability to directly influence (and sometimes manipulate) the ruling caste. Wizards will mostly be ignorant of gods or general spirituality as they aren't something their magical practices give them direct access to. However, I will have a few gods that would cater to Wizards as god influence will be rather heavy in my campaign. I'll mostly be running it as is from BRP magic and using Classic Fantasy for ideas on how to specialize the colleges. Wizardry will have both somatic and verbal components which will be enforced with penalties to casting when wearing little more than tunics, cloaks, or robes. One free hand will also be required for any casting done by Wizards. Wizards will have access to potion making. Witchcraft (BRP Witchcraft, Magic / God based): Witches and Warlocks are the only tradition that doesn't have a full society to themselves however they do form their own cultures on the fringes of other societies. They cover the niche of hermetical magic and oral tradition. I'm pretty much going to be running them very similar to how the monograph describes them but how each society views them will be slightly different allowing different covens to have completely different outlooks and influences on society. Wizards view them with slight disgust but not outright hatred as they see themselves as far superior and Witches and Warlocks as simply a poor man's Wizard. Animist societies highly fear black Witches as they can have a terribly disruptive influence on the spirit world, but they welcome white Witches as naturalists and healers in their society. Mystics have little need for Warlocks and keep a completely neutral view towards them but generally do not encourage their participation in their society. Enchanters, likewise, have little need for Witches or Warlocks in their society, but as they are more isolated in their own culture the more common folk see witches as the more accessible form of magic in their society (see witches in high fantasy, pg 5). Theists loathe Witches and persecute them heavily due to not following their religious structure (see witches in dark ages, pg 4). In remote areas of the world, Witchcraft will be the dominant form of magic. Witchcraft will have both somatic and verbal components, again restricting their garb to light clothing and one open hand. Witches and Warlocks will have access to potion making and talismans. Animism (RQ6 Animism): Animists will serve as spiritual leaders of a slightly less "civilized" society. They will have a more tribal structure with Animists taking the role of wise men and direct links to influential ancestors. I'm not sure if I quite want to make them mud hut living people or just have a more loose knit governing style like city states. I certainly want their religious structure be more naturalistic and ancestral. Animists will not have direct influence on their government, but their leaders will certainly come to them to seek advice from their ancestors and seek general guidance. Spirits will have a heavy role in my campaign as powerful sorcerers will be using Unknown East rules to hide their soul, and any other means of soul hiding and transportation to repeatedly come back to undermine the PC parties. To kill a powerful sorcerer PC's will need to seek the help of an Animist if they don't have one in their party, or will need to bind the spirit and find a way to destroy it (again, requiring the guidance of an Animist). I'll be using RQ6 Animism pretty much as is. Animism will not require anything but Verbal components (and of course physical access to your totems) in combat, but trances will require concentration generally unavailable in stressful combat. Mysticism (RQ6 Mysticism): I'm thinking more of a combination of Greek, Buddhist, and Confucius societies for Mysticism that focuses heavily on self-actualization and philosophy. Their religion will be focused more on self improvisation rather than godly influence on the world. Monks and other types of secluded religious practitioners will be common but will probably not have individual gods they worship. This school of thought of course manifests itself in the Mysticism tradition the society will have. I'll absolutely have different schools of philosophy which will have access to different Mysticism spells. Whereas Wizards will often be haughty or proud about their magical school, Mystics will treat the other schools with respect and simply see them as different paths to self-actualization. I think I'm going to do a small council of a few individuals (maybe more) who are highly virtuous and wise (a Confucius type model of leadership) for their cultural leadership. Ideas on to what governing style this society would form are absolutely welcome as I'm not quite sure how to shape the government of these people. Mysticism will not require any verbal or somatic component (contrary to RQ6) but will require concentration so injury or disruption to concentration could lead to the inability to call forth a Mystic's talent. Enchanting (RQ6 Sorcery): Enchanting is RQ6 sorcery, with a few tweaks. The spell "enchant" is just another form of shaping. All the limitations of the spell still apply (can only have shaping points equal to intensity, only allowed to enchant "concentration" based spells into objects, etc.). You can find the rest of my tweaks here: http://basicroleplaying.com/runequest/rq6-magic-adjustments-3142/ The idea is to encourage keeping enchantments up to your maximum magic point pool and force enchanters to rely on staffs and other magical point storage for more spontaneous casting. I am heavily considering running some of the additional shaping options and the extended duration option as well. As for society, I want enchantment to focus more on tinkering and experimentation due to the nature of shaping as a mechanic. As such, Enchanters will be more like mad scientists with their labs full of scribbled notes and formulae. Since that doesn't really lend itself to any particular government type I'll probably hand wave it off to a traditional medieval monarchy / feudal system. King influence on day to day life will probably be minimal and focus on taxing and forming a military. Day to day market operations will be free markets in town squares. Really traditional medieval stuff. The idea of quirky, self taught mages in a traditional medieval society is just too much fun and too classic to be without. Enchanting will have both a somatic and verbal component forcing them to stick to light garb and have at least one free hand. Enchanters will have access to potion making. Theism (RQ6 Theism): Theists will be the most diverse of the traditions. The societies that Theism governs will be aligned with Law. Law is oppressive and strong willed, edging out the more neutral gods of Balance. However, the gods of Chaos have no moral code and encourage the destruction of others for self gain, so they are generally unpopular with the general populace. Also, gods of Chaos have their own magical tradition, to be explained later. Gods of Balance are better suited by using other magical traditions or none at all as they do not require worship, so only gods of Law will use the Theism magical tradition to reflect their desire to be worshiped and their direct influence on their constituents. The Theists will have a government similar to that of the biblical old testament. The temple is the epicenter of their society with the priests and ultimately the High Priest having the final say in matters of justice, law, taxation, and morality. I want to emphasize that the High Priests will be fairly corrupt and oppressive, much like how the bible often describes the religious leaders of their time. This stems from the oppressive nature of the Law based gods. Right now, I have 3 law based gods and 3 chaos based gods. Each Law based god will be represented pretty equally in Theist societies with each god giving their own set of spells to show their nature. Theism will have both a verbal and somatic component, but will not be hindered by armor. A Theist simply needs to enter a position of supplication (bowed head for example) and pray aloud to their god. Folk Magic (RQ6 Folk Magic): Folk magic is presented pretty much exactly as RQ6. It's a tradition of the every day person, passed through community leaders, parents, etc. to help improve daily life. Think of it as the appliances of the high fantasy setting. It's not necessary to live, but makes life much easier and is fairly cheap or easy to come by so is fairly common throughout society. As far as PCs go, I can either tailor a class for them from existing systems (like a rogue that specializes in illusions or a bard that likes to charm or a barbarian that has a self-cast only version of fury) or they can just have a few Folk magic spells if they want a fairly power light character. I want almost every character to have some form of magic as that is the goal of this setting and Folk magic allows for cheap utilitarian magic without the need to be involved in magical societies. Folk magic will have only a verbal component, so it will not be hindered at all by armor. However, most folk magic manifests itself in touch form so a free hand is usually required to cast it. That's it for learned traditions. I'll split Sorcery into its own post as it plays a fairly important (and complex) role in this setting.

I'm surprised nobody has suggested Classic Fantasy! Classic Fantasy tries to bring the d100 system more in line with d&d. It has a lot of the rules adjustments that RQ6 has like hit locations and whatnot. The BRB also has all the RQ6 optional rules listed in it as well, as well as lots of other optional rules you can try out. You need the BRB to use Classic Fantasy as it adjusts and references lots of the spells from it but that gives a good fantasy background that is setting independent that your d&d players may enjoy more. Both books can be purchased from Chaosium. RQ6 is a good system and is completely found it one book, albeit it's a bit expensive. It has no optional rules and assumes you use all the adjustments they make to the d100 system and I tend to find a few of them kind of clunky. The magic in the book, while very good, tends to favor being part of magical societies and progressing in them so you may have to spend adventuring time back at a sort of base camp for your magical society although it makes for very easy way to add epic quests to advance in the societies. Like others have said the new RQ6 chucked all the gorlantha stuff out the window so its very setting independent as well. I heavily recommend looking at all the magic systems available out there. Some of them are extremely innovate (Elric sorcery found in the BRB and expanded in The Bronze Grimore is my favorite) and can have different power levels and costs. Some of them require massive sacrifice, but give huge power (BRB, Elric Sorcery) while others are more utilitarian but require no study or sacrifice (RQ6 folk magic) and some of them are more middle of the road with their own pros and cons (BRB magic, Classic Fantasy). I have a thread entitled Magic Heavy Fantasy Supplements over in the general section with a list of supplements I've found helpful crafting my fantasy campaign that may give you some ideas. I have zero experience with Legend or Openquest, so please let us know if you pick those up and how they work for your group because I would love to hear your experience and what about those systems you liked and what you didn't like. EDIT: I just wanted to expand a bit on my post, as I think it sounded a bit unfair to RQ6. Personally I love the book and I think it's worth every penny. However, I'll never run it as is due to personal taste, and that should not put you off of using it as is. The beauty of BRP is that you can always supplement a system from any other book with little effort. Just pick it up and plop it in. The benefit of picking up several systems is immense, and I think RQ6 is one that EVERY BRP fantasy player should have on their shelf. It gives some great ideas and magic systems based on societies which can be great for roleplaying but is something that may be different and unwelcome to your current group as they may feel unnecessarily restricted but it's a great tool for you as the GM to limit their power and reward them with quests for their society that yield powerful spells. Personally, in my fantasy setting I'm using every system I can get my hands on. I'll have Mages from BRP / Classic Fantasy that run one culture. They have a sprawling Mage's college that has several schools of study. The deans (still working on nomenclature) of each school make up a counsel that rules their area. I'll have Mysticists from RQ6 which are tweaked a bit. They aren't tied to a society and instead gain new enhancements through self reflection and good roleplaying. I'll have Sorcerers that follow the BRP/Elric/Bronze Grimoire system. Sorcerers are egotistical, secretive with their spells, and are going to be some of the hardest adversaries my PC's will face. I'll have Witches and Warlocks from BRP Witchcraft that lack more offensive magic but have a wide array of great utility spells and more subtle ways to kill their enemies or manipulate people. That's just a sample. I currently have 10 seperate systems which I'm actively crafting societies around to enhance my setting. Each system has its pros and cons which can help your PC's find a unique character they enjoy that fit your setting but can also help you make different cultures and NPC's that don't all feel similar. If you have the money pick up several books and take the rules and systems you enjoy and use them to bring to life the setting you have envisioned.

WOW. Just, WOW. I really enjoyed Elric!'s rules but I did notice it tended to focus on keeping one defined demon at a time. Otherwise you obviously run into POW problems. I've actually been reviewing the rules heavily as I want to have a separate sect of Sorcerers that are Demonologists and lock off demon spells to those who wish to give a large portion of their spellbook for that type of thing. I figured it was rather balanced as is, but keeping a more flexible array of demons at your disposal is just mindblowing. That pact system does the whole Demonologist thing so much better. I can have Sorcerers keep demons as imbued pets, whereas Demonologists will have that "hordes of demon" feel without it being game-breakingly overpowered. I could even divide them into two separate entities. Possibly devils would be craftier so they'd be more willing to enter pacts but demons would be more vile and force bindings. Wow... that is really, really cool. I'll have to sit down and digest that for a bit. Man that's cool. I'll absolutely be picking up Corum now. The fine details on that system, chaos creatures, the setting bits, and tattoos and whatnot would all be cool to have. Could you give some examples of what the "pact cost" could be or what has worked in your games? Also, do the pact demons have any sort of abilities when they aren't item bound or would I just give them, say 100% swords if I wanted them to be combat ready?

Complete re-edit. I appear to have missed the Enchant spell in RQ6. That does everything I want it to. It allows for permanent spell upkeep while limiting magic regeneration. Well done on RQ6's part! To create the Enchanter class I'm going to impose a few house rules on RQ sorcery: 1) All Enchanters start with Enchant, and it doesn't count against their spells known limit. It's simply another shaping component. 2) When a spell is weaponized (Wrack, Tap, Venom, Palsy for example) in an enchantment the spell contains all the properties it was imbued with including range, duration, magnitude, and number of targets. 3) To use a weaponized enchantment you must succeed on an invocations (artifact) skill roll. There is no MP cost for invoking an enchantment. On a failure, the spell fails to rise from your enchantment. On a fumble the enchantment fizzles and you must re-enchant your item. On a special, you gain 1 MP as the spell is channeled through you. On a critical the spell does maximum damage and you gain 1 MP. This essentially allows you to create your own ranged weapon imbued in items! 4) The book seems a bit unclear on suppression and dismissal, so I'll clear up my version. Enchantments can be dismissed by their owner at any time. Any attempts to dispel an enchantment only suppress it for the duration of the dispel. Enchantments can only be dispelled by other enchanters. It seems rather well balanced. Enchanters could basically make their own weapons and enchancements, but have a smaller casting pool for spontaneous casting. They'd rely on magical staves and other MP storage if they decided to have multiple upkeeps. In between adventures it would be good for the enchanters to drop their enchantments, refill their staves and other foci (thus making them vulnerable to ambush!) and then re-enchant their stuff. The only issue I could see is if they dropped their spells before they went to sleep, regenerate the magic, then re-enchant their things. However, this doesn't seem like too much of a problem as it would still tie up their MP for the day but give them slightly more flexibility from day to day. Thoughts? Has anyone ran RQ6 Sorcery as is, and what are your impressions of it compared to say RQ3?

Unfortunately I've hit my book budget for this holiday season so I've started a running "to purchase" list now. I could absolutely use more cult ideas especially with the array of magical systems I plan to have scattered about my setting. I plan on making the different magical talents hail from different parts of the world so they'll each need a structural back end to fit into their societies. I've also got both Nephilim and Liber Ka on my to buy list as well as from the book reviews and summaries I've read the magic system and setting seems quite awesome. I hadn't heard of the reprint though. Any idea on a time frame? Edit: WAIT, is this it? http://www.chaosium.com/article.php?story_id=512 if so 2013 can't come fast enough with Magic World and this on the way. I enjoy the Elric line immensely. I spent all last night avoiding studying because I couldn't stop reading the Elric setting information between Elric!, The Bronze Grimoire, and Unknown East. I'm looking to pick up most of the supplements for it as I feel I'll use it in a future, darker campaign. It really is great and keeps the fluff down so it seems like it runs very smooth. One of the major downsides to RQ6 in my opinion is all the optional rules start to add a ton of unnecessary complexity. While I tend to pick apart pieces of RQ6's systems I want to use and tweak them to avoid their optional rules, I can easily see me picking up large chunks of Elric (both mechanics and setting) and plopping them into my games. I would love that. I'd be pretty much buying Corum for the system adjustments. Is the setting any good? I might be willing to break my rule and pick up a hard copy of it if it's going to give me more than summoning changes.

I have both The Magic Book and RQ6. I did a cursory quick read of the entire magic book and I initially didn't like the systems at all (but I did love the Ritual Magic section, as I love the idea of power long prep spells). However, I picked up RQ6 and while it's a substantial improvement to the RQ3 magic systems I'm still unhappy with RQ6 Sorcery. While most people seem to have an issue with RQ3's sorcery I don't. For instant buffs with good effects while being lax on pure damage we already have the sorcery system in place with the BRB, Elric!, and The Bronze Grimoire. I feel the Elric! system does the RQ6 instant buff type sorcery much better with much less complexity. What I'm trying to accomplish is creating an "Enchanter" type class. I want it to differ from Mysticism in that it requires planning and pre-casting. In my setting I want Mysticism to be more for martial classes and this Enchanter to be a Wizard who sits in a tower accumulating magical staves, a familiar, a brazier of power, and all sorts of other ways to store power to fuel his powerful spells. I want the feel of the RQ3 sorcery without the mechanical failings I seem to hear about. RQ6 handled them nicely, but also butchered the Enchanter feel of RQ3. Here are a few ideas I've had: 1)Would it be as simple as using The Magic Book shaping tables for duration, range, etc.? Could I then use some of the spells from both the RQ6 and RQ3 list as I see fit or are they balanced differently and would it cause a power discrepancy? 2)Would it just be easier to use The Magic Book and use the Skill/10 or Skill/5 shaping limit like RQ6 and some of the house rules I've seen around here? 3) Could I just increase the casting cost of RQ6 shaping to 1 Magic Point base + 1 Magic Point per point of shaping and find a way to make the time scale much harder? I like the idea of it being some multiple of POW but it doesn't scale hard enough. In combination with any of the above: Could I use some of the spells from both the RQ6 and RQ3 list as I see fit or are they balanced differently and would it cause a power discrepancy?

Rust, I'm curious as to your final adjustments to the system and how they worked out. While I'm currently gearing up for a high fantasy setting with more Elric! style sorcery than Runequest, I love the idea of more ritualized magic taking research, prep time, and sacrifice (magic points for simple things and POW for more complex things). I'd love to see how the tweaks worked out for your setting so I could possibly work on a more ritualized magic setting myself.

I just wanted to pop back in and give a quick thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread. I've got tons of great supplements now and tons of ideas and possibilities for future games. Thank all of you for answering all my annoying little questions and giving great advice! I still have yet to get any books from Alephtar Games, mythic iceland, chronicles of future earth, and the full version of the green (but the supplement Puck posted was great!) so I've still got a bit to go but I've got a great base and some good books to look forward to picking up. Thanks again guys! I'll be updating the OP with my findings for future reference.

Riposte and demon summoning rules are enough to wrench free the 10$ the PDF will cost me for sure! I would love an expansion to the brb on demon summoning as I feel out of combat ritual magic is one of the most innovative things I've ever seen in a RPG system. That and the pact magic from D&D 3.5's magic supplement. I may work on a rough port of that one day. I want to be able to go to my players, ask them what they want their character to do and maybe present them a few ideas and then use the systems for inspiration or help crafting their character. I seriously doubt I'll use one system in its entirety but I'll certainly have a demon summoning sorcerer NPC, a necromancer raising legions of skeletons, A fire and ice slinging arch mage, and probably everything inbetween during their adventures. The more systems I have the more I can check to see how balanced my ideas are and the more inspiration I have for both PC ideas and NPC ideas. To research list: Everything Mankcam mentioned. Current to buy list: Runequest 6th ed., Elric!, The Bronze Grimoire, Unknown East, Corum (although I'd like a PDF version so I may wait until Magic World and the Advanced Sorcery supplement and see what it does with the system), The Green.