BigJackBrass

Delighted to see this. Clear PDFs will be especially welcome.

Now that's a cracking cover! 

Still not sure that the RPG will cover anything I don't already have games for, but I'll certainly be taking a serious look. 

Tékumel: Suns of the Desert uses Tékumel rather than Glorantha for the setting, but is a HeroQuest adventure run by Michael Cule (direct link to MP3). 

When it comes to making cover art that really, uh, grabs you, that's how to do it. 

Grenadier, Games Workshop and Theater of the Mind Enterprises all produced CoC in the eighties. The adventures tend to go for collector's prices these days, rather out of proportion to their quality. 

Yes, that's what I expected. Understandable, but disappointing. HQ is what made Glorantha appealing to me after decades of barely dabbling in it and it's a shame to see it sidelined (or perhaps repurposed would be a better way to put it). 

Apologies if I've missed this information elsewhere, but does anyone know what, if anything, is in the pipeline for HeroQuest / QuestWorlds as far as Gloranthan material goes. All I could see was this at the start of the thread:

The Dragonrise, the “offstage” material from The Eleven Lights, for HQG - Ian Cooper
Fonrit setting book for HQG - Ian Cooper

With the SRD released I'm sure that we'll see new games and supplements from other publishers, but as far as Chaosium's Gloranthan material goes it looks as though RuneQuest is very much hogging the limelight from now on, which is a shame. Are there really only two books pencilled in at the moment? 

Nice to see the base system getting some love again. 

5 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Is the horror RPG that much of an asset over plain generic game rules?

Yes.

Generic systems are ten a penny these days and it's hard to demonstrate that one has much of an advantage over another unless you play and compare. On the other hand, a setting or strong theme is something that potential players can be interested by without needing to know anything at all about the rules.

I missed the original version of Dead Light so don't have any opinion on the previous cover art or the updates, but this certainly sounds like a very useful little collection. The games I run are often short or strung together as mini-campaigns of self-contained episodes, which makes some of the more epic scenarios tricky for me to consider using; something like this seems ideal and the reviews appear to be quite positive. 

Call of Cthulhu always worked wonderfully well with magazine scenarios (White Dwarf in particular is fondly remembered by many as a source) and this could well fill the same sort of niche.

If you're running a game before another but set after it then the obvious problem is what you include of the past. Careful choices would need to be made so that you could present the players with something specific enough to tie it to the historical game without forcing that game to a predetermined conclusion.

Certainly not impossible, and rather intriguing, but very easy to mess up I suspect.

On 11/17/2019 at 10:29 PM, MOB said:

A million souls, exposed to the madness of Call of Cthulhu! Critical Role's acclaimed one-shot "Shadow of the Crystal Palace" has just clicked over 1 million views on YouTube

That's very impressive. It's a pity, from my personal point of view, that they don't do it as a podcast instead, but then I suspect the core demographic engaging with the video prefer that format and have more time to devote to watching it. As a podcast it probably wouldn't have that level of popularity.

Nice to see evidence that CoC is alive and well when so many games have fallen by the wayside over the years.

Marcus L. Rowland's Forgotten Futures has had a sourcebook and adventures for William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder since 1996: The Carnacki Cylinders

FF is a great game in its own right, but the sourcebook, stories and adventures are easy to run with CoC.

Thank you. That's far more than I was able to glean from my own searching.

Are Cakebread and Walton still in business? I was interested in seeing what was happening with Renaissance, but the official website seems to be kaput and the most recent Twitter post is from 2017.

20 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

I have a fantasy campaign going on (currently Mythras but planning to switch to BRP) and I have a SciFi settings cooking.

You might find Magic World worth considering for fantasy, or at least looking at for some options. Despite the uninspiring name it's a solid and nicely streamlined version of the Chaosium system, (generally) quicker in play than the full standard BRP and with a number of useful tweaks to character generation. In many ways it's a simplification of RuneQuest for fantasy in the way that Call of Cthulhu is for horror.

There are a number of issues with it, to be sure. The final product includes a number of errors indicative of being published at a rather turbulent time for the company. As you can see from the Magic World forum these have been addressed, but working through the text to fit your particular requirements might be more hassle than is worthwhile. Even so, it's an admirable compromise between depth and complexity and a fine example of what the underlying system can do.

A new edition of any game, as opposed to a new printing with minor corrections or updates, ought to be done with a strong specific goal in mind. That can be different for the publisher than for the consumer, of course. At the moment I'm not sure that there would be an obvious benefit and direction for an eighth edition to take. The 7th seems to be doing well enough and I've certainly heard no rumours about its imminent demise.

Gygantar, are you asking so that you can avoid getting caught out buying something about to be updated, or do you have particular thoughts for something you'd like which doesn't seem to be part of the core books at the moment?

Thanks for the reply. That's a real shame, it looked very promising. 

Does anyone have any information as to the status of MetaArcade? They seem to have virtually disappeared without a word: the website is down, Twitter account gone and I'm told that their Tunnels & Trolls Adventures app has been removed from the Apple store, although when I checked yesterday it was still on Google Play, albeit seemingly abandoned without updates or new content for over a year. 

It's certainly very playable via video (some games are less suited to it than others, generally those requiring lots of cards, tokens or a Jenga tower) and my group went through a very enjoyable run using Google Hangouts a while ago. You really don't need any fancy extras, just a few people to game with; that can be the rub, of course. 

5 hours ago, ProfessorDetective said:

From what I've gathered, this is another adventure compilation. Specifically, three short (about two hours) one-shots. My guess is it's meant for newcomers who still need to get their feet webbed... I mean, wet.

Sounds like a useful product, not just for beginners either. There are certainly times when a short, easy to run adventure is just what I need. 

No definitive word on the tone of the adventures, but the lack of any mention of comedy or a light-hearted approach suggests they're actually in the serious, traditional style, which is certainly more generally useful and probably better for newcomers to the game. 

20 hours ago, klecser said:

I appreciate the quality of the art that Chaosium commissions and don't think there is any "danger" of this art style miscommunicating the game's flavor.

In which case it looks like you're off the mark on this one. 

1 minute ago, Addison said:

 I don’t know, as great as the Berlin book is, from the little I’ve seen, there were a few pieces of art which I felt were definitely a bit off, with goofy central characters

Oh, really? That's a pity: I've only seen the cover so far, but frankly it's one of the best game covers I've seen in years, from any company, the sort of piece that truly sells the book. Shame if the internals fall below that standard. 

3 minutes ago, Addison said:

Yes, I too am concerned that the art for the world’s premium horror roleplaying game is becoming way too goofy.

I'm not concerned exactly, since I don't know if this is going to have a less serious tone or not. The cover makes me think it's more of a Blood Brothers sort of thing than a horror adventure, which I'm absolutely fine with. On the other hand, if it is actually a book of more usual CoC adventures then yes, I'd agree that the cover miss-sells it entirely. That's why I'm after more info on the contents. 

Is there any further info on the contents? From the cover I'm guessing it's comedic horror, but that seems to be out of step with recent releases. 

6 hours ago, Newt said:

I must turn this navel-gazing into action 

You must! you must!