Enpeze

Yes of course I know and use this rule. But PC sorcerers are rare in my games. I like to use them rather as neutral NPCs or enemies. (like their classical role in REHs hyperborea) In my games I am caring for the inherent logic of the setting. So there is no D&D grouping like: here is our thief and here our fighter and over there is our sorcerer. Not my style I think.

Of course. But as far as I understood you spoke not from material weapons which interrupts spell casting. You spoke from spells like disruption which do this as additional effect because the rules allows it. Maybe you can explain it ingame why your character has the knowledge how to gain the interruption advantage but this also means somehow that magic is handled in a way like a gadget and finally it de-mystifies it. In SB the magic seem to be very powerful. But there is a serious payoff for the sorcerer, as it is mentioned in many classic sword and sorcery (eg conan) stories too. In SB a spell could easily last many hours. More often than not he has to do his summoning magic in absolute secrecy. And he is almost never sure if it works out or how long it will last to find a good demon servant. There are many ingame events I, as GM can introduce during the time a spell is cast and it makes alot of fun to play the summoned creature. Ars magica is very nice. It has a Jack Vance flair. (Lyonesse, Green Pearl) But its much too complex for me and I dont like the rest of the AM rule system. I dont agree. Its great for roleplaying, because it matters which efforts and sacrifices the sorcerer has to make to get his demon. Or do you think that I as GM tell the player just to roll his dice after he intends to bind a new demon servant and that was it? Never. Getting a certain demon can be a whole sub-adventure. (with every cruel consquence for the player) So I think the difference between your games and my games is that in your games "magic knowlegde" is to know how to cast a 1 point spell to interrupt a 2 point spell cast, while in my games "magic knowlegde" is that your powerful demon could acutally eat you if you dont sacrifice every 66 hours a virgin to him. With this I am with you. But I dont play games anymore where magic is handled with many funny colored effects, 100p pages of crunchy rules etc. This reminds me too much to a game called...you know which one I mean.

I agree. Liking a layout or not is mostly an individual thing. I my job as graphic designer I learned that there are many different tastes out there. I met even people who thought A. Warhols art is bad. Of course this makes the hobo font not better.

This chill handscript font was really awful from a modern designer point of view. But "catching the mood" by artistic exaggeration and using funky headline fonts was not uncommen at these times in many publications. I guess it had something to do with the new and cheap DTP machines where everybody and his dog suddenly could be a "designer". Now thankfully we return more and more to understatement technical or serif fonts. (ok there are still alot grunge fonts in use too). Agreed.

There are fundamental differences in SB magic and RQ magic. Most magic is built on elemental/demon summoning. And the other magic system (if you like to use it at all) which relies on spells is also different. Spellcasting lasts always 1 turn and is conducted in a special magic subphase before the action subphase, with highest INT begins. Using the rules to snipe around because of rule knowledge is nearly impossible. The only you can do magically against an enemy sorcerer is to have a higher INT attribute or cast the spell a turn before. There are 2 counterspells in the system but the sorcerer has to plan in advance before casting them. They are not metagaming informations like "I cast disruption because I - the player behind the PC not the character himself - know that its just a fast 1 point spell which can interrupt the 5 points heal spell of this mage over there". If you like to play the game more tactical thats ok for me. I am just wondering if you see magic just as another gadget to reach your PCs goals similar to a pocket calculator.

Ok. Lets list some: (a journey to my past ) literature: KEW REH Lovecraft M. Moorcock Gene Wolf Jack Vance P. Anderson J. Brunner Prince Valiant Comics movies: everything from Ridley Scott (except White Squall) everything from S. Kubrick Some films from J. Carpenter (eg. NY1999, the Fog, The Assault, The Thing) the medieval films from I. Bergman (Virgin Spring, 7th Seal, The magician) 2010 Aliens2-3 The Abyss Ghost in the Shell Excalibur The Omega Man Soylent Green Terminator 1 Conan 1 The Musketeer trilogy from R. Lester Chinatown, The Two Jakes Bad Lieutnant Apocalypse Now Dracula (the Coppola version) Monthy Python Clash of Titans Jason and the Argonauts inspiring legends and myths: The german Nibelungensaga some local medieval stories from the country I live in Edda

Thats the reason why I dont like the magic system of RQ anymore. It feels too technical and thus can be easily exploited by rule mongers. Nowadays I prefer much more the magic systems of SB1 or SB5.

KEW was a master. His work heavily influenced my gaming style when I read it 20 years ago. (and does it still I guess)

Yes its cruel hobo. When I design newspaper ads for my customers I use this font only if they explicitely want it. Voluntarly I would never use it. But whatever... if Charlie is a fan of it... The rest of the layout looks functional. Nothing spectacular but ok. What I like about the pages is that there is alot of text and stuff on it. Not like the Mongoose cheat with wide borders and alot of line pitch. So my first impression is good.

Another great proof of the elegance and realism of the RQ/BRP rules. I dont know many systems which enable combats where the participants have to rest for a few rounds before continuing the combat. Reminds me a little bit to the lengthy sword fight scene between Arnold and Brigitte in Red Sonja.

Unfortunately my spanish is a little bit bad. Is Aquelarre available in englisch? (I dare not to ask in german or french) Can I buy it somewhere except ebay? thanx for the info

Yep. I am doing the same. This creates the necessary authenticity for a good game. Thats why I think that a "monster manual" with generic monsters is not very useful. The basic list of the DBRP book is probably enough to start with. More specific monsters should be described in the various settings.

I think a basic monster list in the DBRP book is enough. Specific monsters should be included in the various setting books. Generally I like SB5 presents its monsters. (eg. the fact that mundane animals only have one page with compressed stats without artwork - which is quite clever because it saves space and everybody knows how a horse or lion looks like)

Yes. I think you are right in this. Up to now they had "games" with BRP/RQoid rulesets. (heavily adapted for the setting) With the upcoming book they have again a chance to build up a brand name and a quality trademark if they do it right. But I doubt that their economic skills are good enough to achieve this task. So I would not be surprised if the whole BRP project ends after 2-3 years and a few source books in a non-event.

POV Chaosium: Only if they get a percentage from the sales. Why should otherwise Chaosium allow this? Additionally they have to quality control such "powered by BRP" labeled books to avoid damaging their reputation and the overall reputation of BRP. Such books have the potential to redirect the money of BRP fans from Chaosium to another publisher. Especially if Is this material is better than that of Chaosium. POV Customer: IMO, your 2 basic assumptions why you like OGL are that 1. more publishers create automatically a bigger fan base (and thus more interested players for our game tables) 2. even if the most OGL products are crap there will be some gems in it. Both assumptions could be too optimistic.

How true. Just because one obeys the law to the letter it does not mean that he is unethical. (and vice versa) Additionally there are many different individual and cultural interpretations what ethical is and what not.

The assumption that OGL "opens" an additional market for Chaosium is just that, an assumption which can be true or not. At the moment there is just one fact. The BRP fandom is a limited number of people, which are sometimes not even very loyal to Chaosium itsself, rather to the game system it publishes. I doubt that Chaosium should risk that this limited number will use their limited game budgets to buy BRP material which comes not from Chaosium. Even SJG avoids OGL. They rather rely on producing consistent quality material with excellent edtitorial work and which makes their fans happy. No compromise, no watering down the Gurps system by accepting other qualtity standards than those of Steve Jackson. I think they know what they do. And Chaosium is in a similar positition. Another story is if we as gamers would have advantages if BRP goes OGL. Maybe its good for some of us, because they like to have more choices. I am not against 3rd party settings and I would even buy some. (like Berlin 61 which I find very interesting) But those settings should appear under labels like Gore.

Yes. And very important is IMO the support of the whole setting with some good ready to play spy adventures. Its not that I am against the mythos or such. I even think that some subtile links to occultism and horror could spice the setting up. But what I dont find very appealing is that the big enemy are again the outer gods and not the "other political fraction". This is detracting from the focus and I fear it would be degrading Berlin to nothing more than another Delta Green variant.

I would rather give such special weapons like rapiers a simple bonus on initiative (like +3) and maybe a lower STR, higher DEX requirement, but not a damage bonus. Ever seen the movie Rob Roy? If you like it more complex you can maybe introduce fencing with rapiers as "style" like martial arts. (as Nightshade I guess has already proposed) or use some advanced riposte rules.

Is there an adventure included? Or planned? I would love to see a good spy story ala "the third man" etc. (connections to the mythos are not really necessary for my liking...just a plain spy adventure) I think there are not many inprint games out there which have such a theme.

Great story! Maybe "realistic" mortal heroes like Batman or his enemy joker work with DBRP. In this respect one could even use an additional hero points subsystem (finally! yeah!) to enable him his incredible bat stunts.

Sounds more like Roger Rabbit But what do I know about Superheroes? Nothing. Ok, I read some Superman comics as I was 8. But I liked the X-men films 1-3. Are X-men superheroes? Or just mutants? If they are superheroes then I could imagine to use BRP for a x-men superhero setting. x-men dont seem to be over the top or immortal or flying around with light-speed. (which I personally found always very silly) They just have some very interesting mutant powers but are otherwise rather normal mortals.

Na. Not really. I am not that much into superheroic gaming or a comic fan. But its nice to have rules for this in the BRP book. Maybe you can use parts of them for other more realistic settings. Like Transhuman Space genetic modifications, Traveller Psionics or as base for mutations in some funky aftermath worlds.

Well I think its practical to know more than just "can be tamed by heroes" about those creatures in your fantasy game. For example some game stats just in case the PC meet the unfriendly manticore. There are some other points where reality and myth meet each other. Its not always clear what a mythological creature is and what not. Eg. in former times, many "mundane" animals have been given magical attributes by the people and so became a hybrid between mythological creature and real animal. So what do you do in your fantasy game? Do have rhinos magical horns or not? In most fantasy settings, rhinos are normal animals. They dont have any magic attributes. This is because those games are viewing mundane animals of the fantasy world from a modern zoological point of view. But a few, like "ars magica" does indeed give rhinos or even geese magical abilities.

Maybe the reason why some of us would not like to see OGL products is that they remember the good old days when Chaosium was the only source which released the RQ2 material and other BRP games like Ringworld, SB etc. We just want these times back.