smjn

But what is OpenQuest Basic edition? I like small and compact volumes - Age of Shadow is one good example. What is it missing from the OQ2 Deluxe edition?

Page 9 (or 10 in the PDF) has this to say:

What this Book doesn’t Contain

There is an expanded version of the Rules called OpenQuest Deluxe which contains the following additional content to expand your OpenQuest Basics game.

Characters. An expanded chapter with Ready Made Character Concepts, Optional Motives rules, Random Character generation and the Lifecycle of a character.

Skills. Optional Relationship and Wealth skills.

Introduction to Magic. A short chapter explaining the three systems of magic of OpenQuest.

Battle Magic. Expanded to include rules for Spirit Combat, Shamans and Hero Cults.

Divine Magic. The second of the three approaches of magic and the preserve of advanced magicians. This chapter deals with the magic of the gods, their worshipers, temples and the religious cults that serve them. Generic Cults to use as is or base your own religions on.

Sorcery. This type advanced magic that sets out magic as a set laws of the universe to be mastered by wizards and sorcerers.

The Quest and afterwards. Practical advice for players on what to expect on an adventure, how to improve their characters, and what their characters can do in-between adventures, are included. Guidelines for Other World Questing, Domain Level Quests, and War!

Creatures. An expanded chapter with many more creatures for you to use in your game.

Plunder: A chapter about magic items and other treasure that can be found on a Quest.

The Empire of Gatan. A setting for OpenQuest, to either use in your games or as an example to base your own creations.

The Road Less Travelled. An example Quest, suitable for beginning players and Games Masters using characters that have just been created.

M&M? That's Mazes & Minotaurs, right?

Well, I hope its not Mazes and Monsters.

RQ6 has a chaos creature called a Boar Man that might be useful to you.

And in OpenQuest 2 there is a creature called Beastman, with a picture of a humanoid boar with hooves. The stats are meant for all kinds of "Hybrids of animals of beasts and men" that "typically take the form of a man with a beast’s head". They are stronger, healthier, larger and less charismatic than humans plus very good in Nature Lore.

Ok, so the lure of cults in Monster Island and new beasties caught me and whilst I was there, well it would have been rude not to buy one of the last collectors' editions.. wouldn't it?

Well, it depends on how many you owned already. If you had more than one, then it probably was more rude to prevent someone else from having their only copy.

I'm sure this is posted somewhere else, but when can we expect Chronicler's Companion

Ben just posted here: http://basicroleplaying.com/showthread.php/3641-What-s-that-dragon-guarding#post52695

1) What form of magic is most common in your games? Sorcery, magic or Elric style summoning?

The only RQ campaign I've played in the past ten years is based on the computer game Dragon Age: Origins. We have ported the spells over to RQ3.

Before that I used to play RQ3 in Glorantha, Stormbringer in the Young Kingdoms and CoC in the 20's, so the choice for magic was obvious.

2) How do you adjudicate magic resistance for PCs or NPCs? Do you allow it at all? I am looking through the BGB, Elric, CoC and RQ looking for how to do it, and not really finding any ruling on it.

For resistance there is the resistance table, although newer versions of RQ have done away with it and use skills instead. So the spellcaster (active) rolls on the table to overcome the resistance of the target (passive). Usually it's POW vs. POW but can be vs. CON or DEX depending on the spell. RQ6 has Willpower, Endurance and Evade.

What happens if the roll is not made depends on the system and the spell used. Some spells might not work at all, some might have their effect halved etc.

3) For your games, do the balance issues between non-magic users and magic users arise? I ask because in BRP games that I have been in do not seem to have the imbalance in between fighters & mages that other games have (specifically the D&D "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" trope)

When we ported the magic over from DA:O we also took warrior and rogue talents, so in our campaign everybody has special skills, although most of it is not magic. Personally I don't like our system very much, because it makes parts of the game feel a bit too much like D&D, which I'm not a fan of.

In RuneQuest spells are usually either skills or tied to skills, like everything else, so in a way it balances out a bit. Still, I'm not a big fan of "game balance". I don't mind magic being powerful as long as it is in plausible in the setting, so it may very rare and costly or everybody may have access to it like in Glorantha.

I made a little transcript of what Loz said:

6:25 Michal O'Brian who wrote Sun County for RuneQuest 3 the Avalon Hill edition is back on board with us, he's a great fan of RuneQuest, a great fan of what Pete and I have been doing.

6:37 And he's going to rewrite Sun County, he's going to expand it and that will be our first campaign book for RQ 6: Adventures in Glorantha. So there will be all new adventures in there, updated material. There's a lot that he wants to redo, so we'll have a brand new version of Sun County.

6:55 And following off from that we're talking about revisiting Borderlands, the (other?) classic boxed campaign set, that MOB would like to go and retackle a lot of what was in there, again expand it, rewrite some of it and bring it fully up to date.

7:10 So there's a lot that's gonna be happening and we then have plans to look at Griffin Mountain again and maybe some other areas too. But they're down the line, we got the immediate pipeline that we need to fulfil.

The most interesting things for me were related to RuneQuest. I believe Loz said MOB was going to make a updated and expanded revision of Sun Country and after that The Design Mechanism would give similar treatment to Borderlands and perhaps Griffin Mountain.

Sounds good to me.

A little off topic, I admit, but has anyone tried to hit any of Newt's sites today? (openquestrpg.com, d101games.com) None are resolving for me.... <sad face>

No problems here. Have you tried another DNS?

Welcome aboard! I hope you find this forum and the people to be as great as I have.

I concur, it looks great and having read part of it during the draft phase, it IS great.

Interesting. On the cover page it says "Art by Andy P. Timm, Kenneth Solis and Oneika Vegatoth" etc. Before that is says "By Willis and Friends". And on the front cover it says "Willis, Monroe, Morrison & Friends".

Back Cover says: ISBN-10: 1568823657, ISBN-13: 978-1568823652. Inside it reads: ISBN 1-56882-353-3. So many ISBNs.

I suppose your both right. This just seems like an exception to the way the resistance table works.

In the resistance table active is the attacker, the one trying to affect the defender aka the passive. The roll is made by the attacker to see if it is able to pass the resistance and to affect the defender.

So if a POT 17 poison is trying to affect CON 15 character, chance is 60%. If CON is 13, chance is 70%. The smaller the passive characteristic, the easier to influence. The larger the active, the easier also.

So Character is passive, Hole is active. Hole rolls on the resistance table. If hole succeeds, affects Character, Character unable to pass through.

Example:

• Char SIZ 10, Hole size 3. 15% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 10, Hole size 8. 35% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 10, Hole size 10. 50% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 10, Hole size 12. 60% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 10, Hole size 16. 80% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 10, Hole size >20. 100% chance to affect character.
  

• Char SIZ 16, Hole size 3. 0% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 16, Hole size 8. 15% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 16, Hole size 10. 20% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 16, Hole size 12. 30% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 16, Hole size 16. 50% chance to affect character.
  
• Char SIZ 16, Hole size 20. 70% chance to affect character.
  

Every time I skim through my copy of the BGB, this funny little example catches my eye:

Your character with SIZ 16 (passive) tries to crawl through a crack with SIZ 12 (active). In this case, the crack’s SIZ is restricting your character’s movement, so it is the active force (even though it would seem to be the other way around).

So knowing how the Resistance Table functions, it would seem to me, that the bigger you are, the easier it is to resist the effect of the hole to prevent you, and the bigger the hole is, the harder it is to get through. Big character vs. small hole is therefore easier than the other way around. I wonder what went on in the designers' minds when writing this? Is truly the very silly mistake I take it to be, or is there some hidden wisdom that I just can't grasp?

OpenQuest is actually a very light version of RuneQuest, so if the problem is too much crunch in RQ, OQ actually solves it, as I believe Magic World is a bit more rules heavy. Also, OQ is in no way tied to Glorantha, although I don't think RQ6 is either.

But if you are interested in the combination of Ravenloft and BRP, you should check out Chaot's campaign, which has two thread over at RPG.net:

• [bRP Ravenloft] Fall of the House of Shadowbourne
  
• [bRP] Ravenloft
  

Incidentaly he has chosen Magic World as the base with some additional bits from elsewhere, if I remember correcly.

Do any of the BRP magic systems allow for extended POW contests between a ghost/spirit and a magic user or group of magic users? I really want to find a mechanic that would allow me to have exorcism rituals that are a battle of POW between a ritual Shinto/Buddhist priest or group of priests and a ghost/demon. Do any of the systems in the Magic book have a mechanic for anything like that?

Yes indeed. The RuneQuest 3 spirit combat has been reproduced in the Magic Book. It seems to be exactly what you are looking for. Also, there is the summoning ritual magic, which may also be of use.

RuneQuest 6th Edition also have rules for spirit combat with Possession and Exorcism as a subheading. It might be even better than the Magic Book version, depending on your preferences.

Just because they are imcompetent in some regards does not mean they are not "a real business" enterprise. There are a lot even more incompetent companies, and not all or even most companies have the PR and human resources of megacorporations. Chaosium is a very small firm and still manages to produce a surprisingly large catalog of quality product, despite their other shortcomings.

Too bad for the delay, but no biggie. I have the April draft version, so I guess I can survive until August if this means that the final book will be more polished and error free.

This is why I was considering doing a Lets read, review of it.

That and I'm curious just how different from RQ6 it really is.

I'm considering it too. Let's see who goes first. :-)

How did you convert the magic system over?

This campaign started long before the Dragon Age PnP RPG came out because the GM had liked the Dragon Age: Origins computer game, and its expansion Awakening. We just took the spell trees from those two games and statted them up for RuneQuest 3. The Dragon Age Wiki is an invaluable tool for us. Unlike the computer game, however, the spells all require a skill roll. The skill starts from 25 +Magic bonus.

The actual effect of each spell is generally just figured out based on what feels right for the level of RQ3, although there are fixed formulas to figure stuff like magic points cost, durations and skill modifiers based on the effect in the computer game. For example, the main attack spell Arcane Bolt takes 2 magic points, has range of 35 m, does 1d8 + Spellpower(=INT+some bonuses) damage to total hitpoints (resist w/CON halves), ignores armor.

There is no limit like Free INT to how many spells one can learn, meaning a mage can potentially learn all the spells listed. The spells in Dragon Age are all combat oriented, so we have decided that small cantrips, like shining a light from the knob of the wizards staff are available to just about all magic users.

The Rogue and Warrior talent trees were also ported and some other house rules made up, like getting rid of SIZ ('cause the GM doesn't like the stat) and all negative skill category modifiers, giving all characters (NPCs as well) five action per melee round and allowing melee rounds to continue past ten strike ranks until all action points have been used.

I don't buy PDFs...vision issues with computer screens...my eyes hurt if I read too much on the screen so I only buy real books. Unfortunately this means I miss out on many products these days that are only available as PDFs. C'est la vie, I guess.

You should consider getting an e-book reader with an eInk display. It feels just like reading paper books, doesn't hurt your eyes, because there is no backlight, and it can even be read in direct sunlight.

Typing the notes from last weekend I'm totally psyched out on our epic RuneQuest Dragon Age campaign and roleplaying in general. People who haven't tried this stuff sure are missing a lot!

Having been a bit frustrated over all the political intrigue in the nation's capital, the GM decided to give us a little change of pace by sending us on a more traditional search and rescue adventure, in the course of which we, among other things, managed to save a barbarian village in the mountains from an evil horde of uncharacteristically intelligent darkspawn. (Think orcs etc.) It sure was good to be able to tell who was evil and who was not, things like this tend to get rather muddy in the mire of politics.

The heroic defense at the Battle of Redhold sure was something to remember, but what was even more notorius is what I'll be typing next. On the way back to the city on the other side of the country was fought the much smaller but even more satisfying Siege of Tavistock.

You see, this bastard of a highwayman had decided that he wanted to be a noble too, so he had started a campaign to seize some of the lands and loyalty of the freeholders from the domain of his half brother. Unfortunately for him, our four heroes were in good terms with said nobleman, so on the way back, when we noticed the ass had had some good men decapitated and their heads struck on the tips of long poles, we had enough.

So my normally benevolent and cautious healer made up a plan, had to spend some time talking the others into it, but finally managed to sway them. We found a new tower fortification where we surmised the bandit was hiding, attacked it from four sides, killed some of the guards, a traitor mage who had joined up and seized the hapless upstart, who had spent months building his plan and support only to be foiled by a motley group of adventurers, who happened to pass through his newly conquered lands on the way back from a mission. Took about five minutes. Glorious!

You seem familiar with the game; can you tell me if you feel Rune Quest would suffice for or be compatible with a Harryhausen Sinbad type of setting?

Nope, sorry. I may be familiar with RQ, but not with Ray Harryhausen's movies, but I'd trust NickMiddleton and RosenMcStern on that one. Also, if you'd prefer a "lighter" game with a little bit less "crunch" than RQ and/or MW, OpenQuest 2 (coming soon) might be a good choice. But all three a very good and very compatible games, the choice comes down to personal preference.