The Venomous Pao

On a different (and highly-tangential) note: I just started flipping through CF again after quite a while and I remain very impressed with what Rod has done here. God only knows if I'll ever actually get to put together a BRP/CF campaign, but I sure want to. It just calls out to be played. Maybe in 2012 I'll get to dust off some old modules and give 'em the proper CF treatment. Fingers crossed.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled irregular postings about sources of monsters

I love random AP (and major wounds). It's a much more exciting & pulpy feel to combat and that fits better with how my group and I play.

And the way you meshed Elric! with the magic system from Maelstrom was really sublime. Totally agree on the Digests by the way. I get so much use out of them it's ridiculous. One thing I've lifted from those write ups are the 'throw away' skills that sometimes get included. Things like Always Take a Bet or Piercing Stare. I like to allow PCs to take personality skills that operate in some vague way.

And thus BRP introduced free-form skills (or FATE-like aspects) before anyone else had ever pushed such things. Yay, BRP!

Hey everyone. I just thought I'd point out Crimson Shoals, which is a Hyborian adventure for Barbarians of Lemuria that also has stats for BRP.

I'm hosting it at my blog on behalf of one of my readers (who makes good adventures), G-Man. If you're looking to take your BRP game into the land of Conan, this might just come in handy.

Very cool news, Tywyll. I can't wait to get my hands on this baby. Congrats!

My book is also free of the misprint, for whatever that news is worth.

Just one "stupid" question: what are the dimensions and the weight of the book?

I don't have a scale handy, but the measurements are 22.5cm X 29cm X 2.5cm (more or less, my ruler kinda sucks). That's 8.75" X 11.5" X 1" for us Americans

My copy arrived today as well. It's dandy fine and looks like it'll take a beating and keep on rockin' for years. Of course, I have no intention of letting my copy get beat. That's what my now old softcover is for

Hooray errata! I'm doubly glad I ordered a copy now. Of course, I'm also doubly angsty waiting for it to arrive. But that's a personal problem

I got my print copy from Noble Knight a few days ago. I haven't read it cover to cover yet, but it looks very tasty indeed. Cheers to Alephtar for continuing to provide us with some great BRP supplements!

Pick up a copy at Dragon's Lair in Austin today. It was on the shelf, not a special order or anything. I haven't had a chance to peel open the shrinkwrap yet, but it's at the top of the pile. Looking forward to digging in!

Happy Winter Solstice Holiday of you choosing, everyone!

You know, I've had supers on the brain lately and even though shiny new things tempt me (ICONS, which I like the concept, but not really the execution, of) in my heart of hearts I want to play Superworld (or at least BRP Supers). I had the Superworld box back in the day (and wish I still did!), and I have the PDFs of it and the Superworld Companion now. I feel it's pretty likely that I'd dip into those if I do wind up running a game just because there's more there to work with. So in that sense, yes, the Big Gold Book leaves me wanting and I'd love to see a good supers supplement (even if it's not a boxed set - just a good book) come out for BRP.

That said, even without the old Superworld content I think you could run an entirely reasonable supers game using the BGB. Looking over the powers it seems like most of the basic archetypes could easily be built. They wouldn't necessarily have all the tricks and stunts and stuff that "modern" superhero RPGs support, but they'd be playable. So in that sense, I'd call them sufficient. But they're not likely to win over any new players due to awesomeness

I do think that allowing in additional power types, while helpful from a flavor point of view, is asking for trouble. The superpowers rules are balanced against themselves, not against the other power systems. The idea is (and always was, I think) that you could build up your "sorcery" or "mutations" out of the supers rules themselves rather than grafting on an additional system to handle such things. I'm not saying it won't work, of course (a good GM and good players can make anything work), just that it would likely be a headache even if everyone involved is aces (and good friends, too).

Was there anything in the tweet about incorporating the errata, clarifying the things that have been confusing people, etc.? In not, I'll probably wait for a new edition, myself.

Nope. Nothing to that effect was included in the tweet. But my fingers are crossed that the errata makes it in.

I'm seeing it in my Twitter homepage stream (from 3 hours ago) but it's not showing up in the big list o' tweets at their actual Twitter page (http://twitter.com/#!/Ab_Chaosium). I don't know what, if anything, that means. But it's odd and vaguely dampens my excitement about it. The tweet lists an early 2011 release, though, which if true would be right cool indeed.

This looks pretty cool. Thanks for the link.

Oh hey. I just poked my head in here because your WNMHGB thread at RPG.net had my brain ticking Trek thoughts again and lo and behold, it's you Small internet, eh?

Anyway, for those who are looking for a nice, simple Trek for one shots and such should definitely check out Where No Man Has Gone Before. It's d20-based, but let's be magnanimous in the proper Trek fashion

For what you're looking at doing specifically? Probably not. Unless your cobbling efforts involve using the Magic (not Sorcery) rules from the Big Gold Book, in which case all the additional spells are bound to come in handy.

Because it's freaking awesome, full of great stuff, and Rod (aka threedeesix) deserves your support? Hell yes!

My players don't want to roleplay sex, either, which is why I asked. Like you, I'd have to gloss over that part.

Yeah, we're just a bunch of 35-45 year old guys who get together to kill things and act out stories like we did when we all played together back when we were kids. The sex thing just doesn't come up for us all that often. And when it does, the scene fades to black pretty darn fast.

My two questions would be: Which version of the Thousand Nights and One Night are you using as a reference, and what other references are you using besides that. I ask because I'm looking for reading inspiration for my upcoming campaign. At the moment I'm reading Sheba by Nicholas Clapp - a modern travelogue that seeks the Queen of Sheba in Palmyra, Yemen, and Aksum.

I wish I could claim a bunch of scholarly effort here, but I can't. I've only ever read Burton's translation, and that was close to 15 years ago. This is more "Arabian Knights" than "Arabian Nights" proper by a wide margin. My players and I generally favor a pulp/action approach to our games. So what you've got is a bunch of half-remembered bits from the Nights themselves, a lot of imagery and inspiration from lessser works like the previously referenced Arabian Knights cartoon (from the Banana Splits Show), Sinbad movies, and even a dash of Disney's Aladdin movie. Blend that up in a Moorcockian stew (thanks to using the Sorcery rules from Elric! and The Bronze Grimoire) and serve with a reasonable side of pulpy cheese-n-corn and you're getting close to what we're doing. So I probably shouldn't call it "Arabian Nights" since that can be misleading. It's just the shorthand my group uses to indicate which game we're playing in a particular session.

Oh, and I shouldn't forget to mention the "Caliphate Nights" setting book for True 20. It had some good gaming-related takes on the setting as a whole, too.

The Sheba book sounds interesting. I'll have to give it a look. Thanks for giving me inspiration when you were, in fact, hoping I would do the same. Sorry I failed ya

Him too, but only in later times: http://symboldictionary.net/?p=3006

Ya learn something new every day. Thanks for schooling me, Thalaba

I'd love to hear a little more about the Arabian nights game. What kind of scenarios and episodes did you come up with? The tales have inspired some of my own campaign scenarios, but only a little. Did you manage to work in some of the sex runs through so much of the tales? And if so, how did that work in practice?

No sex in these here tales. That's just not a thing my players, pardon the pun, get off on. So it's been much more "Thief of Baghdad" and "Sinbad" stuff than it has been the Nights proper. And one could probably argue that a great chunk of the Arabian influence has really just been set dressing.

We started off with a group of three characters who were in a major city for the Sultan's riddle contest, got involved in some intrigue with a theft in the marketplace, and wound up being recruited to go rescue the kidnapped prince. This involved riding a flying carpet deep into the desert where they were attacked by a group of desert raiders/sky pirates also on flying carpets. The characters were jumping from carpet to carpet, narrowly avoiding falling to their deaths. It goes on from there, with ghuls and rocs and side trips to the City of Brass and the City Beneath the Waves. I'm not much of one for writing up actual play diaries, though, so that's all I can give you for now. But if you have any specific questions, I'll be glad to answer 'em.

Like the new avatar, BTW - it's a Kulullu, if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks! I'm pretty sure it's actually Dagon, though.

Still running the "when we can get together" BRP Arabian Nights game. Still playing in a "traditional fantasy" game using a FUZION-based TFT "clone." Still writing stuff for Labyrinth Lord, Barbarians of Lemuria, and BRP at the blog. That's about all I've got going right now, which isn't enough but it'll have to do

I understand Agentorange's concerns - and I'd certainly love to see the book he describes - but at the same time, I think there might be a bit of unnecessary panic going on. I freely admit to having zero idea of what's up with the terms of this deal, but isn't it at least reasonable to assume that this is strictly a distribution agreement and nothing of the content has actually been transferred to Mongoose? That's how I've viewed it thus far, anyway.

Oh, and for the record, the thing I'd most like to see Chaosium put out is a full book that's essentially nothing more than Elric! (plus the Bronze Grimoire) with all the serial numbers filed off. The Big Gold Book rocks my work, but it's a terrible introduction to the BRP system for people who just want a game to play. It's a marvelous toolkit, but there's just too much stuff in there (and plenty of it, not conflicting per se, but not exactly compatible, either) for new players to get into. At least, that's how I see it.

Anyway, I'll take the PDFs being available again and cheer, both for legal access to the material and for the possibility that it provides Chaosium with a little more revenue to keep on chugging along at the best speed they can manage.

I find that a cattle prod does the job nicely

Molto Congratulazioni (at least, that's how Google Translate thinks I should say it... )

Another thing to remember is that parrying skills (shield or weapon) aren't reduced by Encumbrance, while Dodge is.

I would say that the YK or even the 15 planes are defined in any way by a long shot.

You don't have to go with canon. Hell I encourage you not to. Just make it your own. I find that many of my players have not read as much Moorcock as I have and some won't even have heard of Elric, Hawkmoon or Corum. They then feel intimidated as they do not think theyl fit in. It doesn't matter, just fly with your own version of the world and play as if it was a sand box you just made up.

It's really the YK specifically that feel defined to me - mostly that whole "the world ends" stuff In any case, for the bulk of 30 years now neither I nor my core group of players have ever really been happy when we've dabbled with established (which might be a better word than pre-defined) setting. I make no claim that what we've done is always original and groundbreaking (quite the opposite, in fact, I'm sure), but we just like to be in our own sandbox doing our own thing without the long shadows of the known protagonists looming over us (or waiting just around the corner). This applies to everything from Elric to LotR to Star Wars and Star Trek. It also aplies to official RPG properties like Glorantha, The Imperium, Greyhawk and so on. We're just bloody-minded independents

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Arabian Nights-esque game I'm running using BRP (very Elric! in selection of rules and supplemented by things like the Bronze Grimoire) doesn't evolve to be tied to the 15 planes somehow. There's just something about those settings that draws you in no matter how much you seek to resist

Oh, and to the point about players not knowing Moorcock, I'm not so lucky. The guys I've been playing with (many for the entirety of that 30 odds years I keep mentioning) cut their teeth on Elric, Hawkmoon, and Corum. That's handy in a lot of ways, but it's a challenge in others.