Enpeze

Maybe you are right. I had never such powerful priests in my games but I think we can add divine magic to the "very powerful department".

The demon magic of SB1 has its own very impressive powers. (Demon of Protection anyone?) Demon summoning in SB5 is quite open to your own POW attribute. If you have a high POW you can summon and bind mighty helpers. In RQ3 I admit that spirit and divine magic is somewhat low powered. But sorcery can be totally impressive if paired with high FREE INT and high POW. Imagine what you can do if you have 30 or more FREE INT and 100+ POW. Most spells in other systems are not near as powerful than sorcery can be in RQ3. Another very mighty magician is the experienced shaman with a fetch. So the day-to-day magic of RQ is low. But the system is scaleable up to extremely high powered magic.

We experimented several years ago with a similar concept. The players got no sheet or even skill numbers. They didnt roll the dice, they just described their actions and the GM did all rolling behind the screen and told the players what came out. At first it was a good and intensive experience but the longer the game lasted the more I (as GM) tended to revert back to normal gaming. Much more convenient I assume. Or its just that I am too lazy.

Well I dont think that apple has a worse marketing than MS. (rather the opposite) But MS had much more luck and better lawers.

Thanks for joining and for answering some questions Jason. Mine is:How did you solve the close relationship of the strombringer spell system to the moorcock universe if it is ought to be rather generic? Are the sorcery rules from Stormbringer complete? (spells system and demon/elemental summoning) Whats with rune magic of the bronze grimoire? Did you include it? Did you rename spells? One more please: which base chances of normal skills and weapon skills did you choose? More along the line of CoC or any other edition of BRP? Or completely new? best regards

/totally agree Moorcock has some interesting humanoid races in his books. (eg Melnibonean)

Its not directed toward Tolkien personally or against his books. (these were not great fantasy but ok) Its rather against the fact that 90% of todays fantasy (book and roleplaying) is infested with Tolkiens creatures. It seems that some writers are thinking that Fantasy without elves and orcs is not Fantasy. Such shallow attitudes restricts creativity and hinders the genre to develope more interesting and diverse settings, if you know what I mean. Whats wrong with Talislanta? Its a a well done setting, IMO. A thousand years humankind was without Tolkinesque Elves and Dwarfs in their mythological stories and they loved them too and were also comfortable to those. No need to reintroduce Tolkien creatures today in nearly every Fantasy book.

Interesting question. I am too a fan of gurps setting books. Many of them are excellent. IMO Gurps has missed 2 things. First a detailed good non-tolkienesque fantasy setting. Banestorm is not that bad but it has orcs and elves and other silly Tolkien stuff included. And the strange mixup with real world religions is not everybodys liking. (at least not mine) And second there are not many good adventures. They produced many great setting books but nearly no adventures for them. (not even as pdf) I dont think that a rule conversion Gurps to BRP would be interesting for more than a handful of people. While both systems are quite realistic, BRP is too different in its philosophy.

I am also very fond of celtic inspired adventures and the Gurps Celtic Myth sourcebook is great for this.

I too. (only the hobbit kitsch at the end of the 3rd part was really bad)

/totally agreed. They should seek assistance from their collegues at Pegasus Press. These german Call of Cthulhu publishers are able to produce wonderful artwork and layouts for some years now. here are some of their covers: http://www.pegasus.de/cthulhu.html

Well I dont hate it, but I think its ugly and totally out of fashion. Its not even stylish retro, its just retro. If you have to work with fonts the whole day as I do, you get a different perspective about them.

I dont like the new cover very much. Its bland and uninspiring. I mean do the Chaosium guys have such a bad taste? The 4th ed. Gurps books shows how good a cover of a generic rpg could be done. I am graphics designer and layouter in normal life and my customers would throw something after me if I delivered them such a picture. Alone the guy with the bow....big ouch. There are many young talented painters and designers out there. Why not using one of them? And I agree, the font for Basic Roleplaying is plain ugly and old fashioned. It looks like a typical font from the 80ties. Do the people behind Chaosium still live in the former century? If Chaosium is not able to put up a better cover, they should IMO use no graphics at all at the front page. Cover just in Black with big silver metallic BRP or similar.

Before cancelling this promising project I would wait and see how good the new Iceland setting really is and if it is published. At which stage was your islandia setting? Early stage or already fleshed out? I would love to learn more about it.

sounds very interesting. Hopefully there will be some premade adventures for it too.

Warlords is rather for armies no? (thousands of men) Skirmish are single combattants fighting in small scale battles. (eg. 50 vikings land ashore and try to storm a little defended motte and a village) But I will check out Warlords. Thanks for the tip. I am really curious how they stat whole armies with BRP values. (I guess there is no CHA )

Interesting idea. I tried the same several years ago. I had Cry Havoc, Vikings and Outremer, skirimish games playing in the medieval. The problem was that the rules have been very tedious and unrealistic in play but the playing material (maps, counters) was very beautiful. So we changed the rules into a kind of simple BRP (attack/parry, a simplified character health status which could either be ok, wounded or dead) The result was a very dense and fast game. We were able to fight the battles with 30-40 fighters per side out in 3-4 hours and had alot of fun.

How true. Lets hope for it.

ahem..ja. sorry.

I am for a clearly marked own thread where the Glorantha people can discuss their stuff.

Dont you think, if people want to elaborate about Glorantha they could if it is placed in a seperate thread? If it is visible marked as "Glorantha thread" then noone has the obligation to read it and the Gloranthaphiles among us can exchange their opinions. I mean Glorantha (while not my thing) is one of the core settings of BRP/RQ. As is Chtulhu and Stormbringer. And to a lesser extent Ringworld, Elfquest, Superworld etc. I think if enough interest exists there should be a place for discussion for each of the BRP settings, but it should be clearly marked to save the time of those which have no interest in it.

With the difference that the ipod has the best music software (itunes), a beautiful design and excellent technical stats.

I guess this is the way the average gamer likes his roleplaying game. See all these juvenile hypes about superninjaherowhatever mangas, invincible, armored, walking mechwarriors and so on. I am playing a little bit WoW since 2 years and I got in contact with other players. Most of them (not all and mostly juveniles) like to show around THEIR T4 equipment, THEIR mighty hammers, THEIR epic superfast mounts. They run around like peachicks. Its like in real life, if one buys a porsche sports car, instead of a practical car. (only much cheaper for a fee of 13 bucks/month) So I am quite sure in the future we will see that pen and paper rpgs and MMORPGs are melting together even more than 4.0 and WoW does it now. This I meant with my post (in another thread) that BRP will not have much chance against the primordial power of a system like D&D. But I hope it will at least have its fair shair of the rest of the market.

Many thanks for the explanation. of this system. Although it seems playable I would not like to play it. (In fact nowadays I would not like to play any rule set other than BRP) I dont know D&D players well enough anymore (its 15 y ago that I played this game) but well....maybe they are suffering a bad influenced by their rule system? I mean, my nephew is 11 and he understood the basics of BRP without problem. (...oh this clever little brat ) Ah...no. I was never fond of PV or other too high fantasy. And tossing coins is not my thing. My nephew has no problem to understand BRP so I will continue to use it if I GM with him the next time. (next is a detectives story) The sooner he will come in contact with the best system out there the better. Thats it. Its against any logic and also very "Greggy" (is this a word?) I simply dont like it. (but this means nothing, I also dont like baked potatoes) In my games the players always had this ability. I was and I am ready to give them such powers. Anytime and without any but the most extreme limits. But only if I think that these powers contribute to something (the setting, the adventure, acting experience, immersion etc.) They are NOT entitled to it. So I guess making rules for player empowering is not my thing because its pure theoretical nonsense for me. I am old fashioned in my gaming stlye and my players like it this way. Certificates? Ala "He Bob, old chap, I am entitled to alter the story three times, because I have 3 tested and true Prince Valiant CERTIFICATIONS! from our last week session." (sorry but I could not withstand) For me a roleplaying game is not a game, where I play this today with some randoms and tomorrow with some others. I am a careful GM. I plan the scenario carefully, I try to choose my players in advance and I give some attention to their personality, acting skills and private relationships to each other before I invite them to join in. In my over 20y experience as roleplayer I participated never in a game where some people just wanted to play something "today" and I doubt that I ever want to take part in such a game. In fact I would rather play a boardgame before playing in this way. (clash of different rpg styles?)

Well in Germany the phantastic CoC edition from Pegasus Press (which is even better than the Chaosium original) lured additional new players into the BRP trap, hehe. First they liked all the things Simlasa mentioned (Jazz, 20ties, Lovecraft...) and then they detected that there are games which also use their beloved CoC rules. Without CoC, BRP would not be known at all in Middle Europe. (except by some extreme nerds, like myself eg)