Michael Hopcroft

1640. Germany. The Thirty Years' War is approaching its climax, and Germany is in dire straits. But rampaging armies that pillage, loot and rape wherever they go will soon be the least of the people's problems. For something lurks in the depths of the Black Forest. Something that thrives on blood and chaos. Something that makes fighting worse and turns battles into mutual annihilation. Something that destroys for its own sake, without reason or mercy. Something that can't be fought, reasoned with or understood. Something with the potential to swallow the world. And only a rag-tag groups of deserters from two opposing armies and a young girl threatened with charges of witchcraft are able to stand against it....

Although it wouldn't be included in anything because the original is Closed Content, I wonder what a reasonably-potent Hexblade would look like in BRP/CF or another d100 system. When the class first came out, I knew it might not be popular in play but there was a lot of story potential in them. In fact, I quickly started imagining a Hexblade anime series whose anti-hero was falsely accused of killing a King. The King's daughter tried to kill him, so he originally thought to sell her to slavers but they ended up traveling together -- until the real assassin (a rival Hexblade) turned up and started making even more trouble. Hexblades are anti-social enough to make poor PCs except for a one-on-one game. That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see one, perhaps pursing the PCs to collect a bounty on them (and skilled enough, and with potent enough probability-molding powers, to be a challenge for the whole party -- and hopefully with some built-in story reason the PCs can't simply kill him to get him out of their hair).

After picking up CF on Drive-thru, I am sorry to say that I have been having trouble making heads or tails of it. For some reason, I can't parse how character creation works. I also have a hard time seeing the point to the alignment system, but I would probably go without it anyway, but in general I'm having trouble with it. Do you get any bonuses in the Class Skills to make you want to take them as opposed to others? And how much is it encouraged to mix things up in chargen? Sorry if I need a good whacking with a clue-by-four on this topic.

On a tangent, one of the trends in cat "ownership" (which veterinarians are actually encouraging) is the "indoor cat" -- cats who never leave the house, even to go into the yard. The theory is that indoor cats are safer (no cars, no rivals, no predators) and will live as much as twice as long. But I wonder how the cat, who is programmed to roam and wander, feels about all that.

Does anyone know if there are any character generation aids available on the PC (even spreadsheets) for BRP or the other d100 games? I know that there's a Hero Lab module for CoC but that appears to be it as far as official material, and plans for an MRQ HL template never materialized. That said, fans are notorious for putting together anything and everything in terms of play aids. So maybe there are things out there.

In some ways the cats of the Dreamlands were superhuman. They had their own culture and language (which Randolph Carter's dream form intuitively understood due to his friendship with them). They could show up in overwhelming numbers and take down creatures much larger than themselves through sheer weight of numbers. They made potent allies and terrifying enemies. The more realistic cats in the campaign you're thinking of wouldn't have it nearly that high. Given how ubiquitous they are in fantasy I was surprised not to see cats in the BRP core book. One would think they'd be in there. Their INT would be much lower (though try convincing any cat "owner" of that!) and their DEX would probably be in the 2d6+6 range at most. Cats can't do fine manipulation of objects, though they dodge pretty well.

The problem in Escaflowne is that since the mecha only really fight each other, there are no other weapon systems to measure against. Sure. for a guy to hit one with a sword is pretty much useless, and its sword effortlessly turns humans into ground chuck (we never see it do that, but it can penetrate mecha armor so we assume it could) but we really don't have much else to compare with. Mecha in Escaflowne don't have guns or energy weapons because they don't exist in that world -- the ones with invisibility and an actual ranged weapon are nigh-invincible and utterly terrifying. Another example of a fantasy series with mecha is the classic CLAMP series Magic Knight Rayearth. Again, the mecha in that series only fight other mecha, and only a few exist. They are also sentient and mentally bound to their pilots, who can control them essentially by thinking about what they want them to do (no physical controls required).

How would you model a "mecha fantasy romance" series like Vision of Escaflowne (heavens, that dates me) where the mecha are powered by something unknown and indefinable? Given that sometimes The Big Guy is taller than Tokyo Tower and sometimes -- well, sometimes he isn't -- that must have been an interesting exercise.

Big enough that a tank is about two-thirds the height of its foot, for ease of stomping. An M1 Abrams MBT is eight feet tall, or for ease of calculation about 2.5 meters. Not sure how to do the rest of the calculation.

I have a technical question. In mecha design the GM is asked to determine several physical characteristics of a mech in real-world terms. Size I get, but power supplies (used to determine STR among other things) are completely beyond me. It appears the GM is asked to determine how much power the plant puts out in Kilowatts or (more likely, Megawatts. Megawhats? I'm a Theatre major. I wouldn't know a megawatt from a metamorphosis. How does someone with limited technical skills build mecha? (Oh, and where are the mechs big enough to take on kaiju?)

Russia in the reign of Peter the Great, who is trying to drag his empire kicking and screaming into a modern way of life they don't really want. Player characters can working for or against the Tsar and his increasingly strident demands. Plus he's building a great city (to name after himself, of course) in a location where no sane person would want to live, especially in winter, and insisting on making it his capital! throw in the supernatural legacy of Old Russia, the ongoing war with Sweden, and the growing influence of Western powers.

How to pledges from North America work? I backed the kickstarter for the Canadian Costume Fairy Adventures RPG (which yo should look into as a change-of-pace game sometime because it's really, genuinely funny), and I ended up paying a bit extra for the privilege of sending them US dollars that they converted into Canadian ones (and later on international shipping when I upgraded my pledge to include a lot of printed products). I'm going to want a print copy if I back this, assuming you can get the POD release to work out, so I have to figure out how much to pledge without quite knowing how much I will actually be spending given the exchange rate....

And some companies suffered creatively from their fixation with capturing a share of the new d20 market. People forget a lot of really bad stuff was released when the d20 boom was at its height. Chaosium's Young Kingdoms sourcebook wasn't too bad compared to what others were releasing, but compared to the typical Chaosium product it left an enormous amount to be desired. d20 doesn't work for everything -- and it certainly didn't work for Elric.

I noticed the preorder price on the website is in euros. Are you not taking preorders from North America (because of the shipping costs)?

As I mentioned just now, Guardian in Portland has a standing order from me to get the book when it becomes available. If it is that mighty a tome it should be fun to carry home on the bus if nothing else. And if you need your RPG books to stop gunfire, you really need to move into a different part of town.

In any event, Guardian Games doesn't yet know when their US distributor will have the books, but I have one on order for when they do. And I can always look up stuff from the PDF on my Nook.

I did stop by one of my local retailers, Guardian Games, and they'll special order it for me. I don't know whether they'll give me the new printing or their distributor's back stock. I'm looking forward to this addition to my collection (although I do have the PDF already, and can't help but wonder how much money DM made from that ridiculously-low-priced sale).

So you would give each type of bow a substantial skill penalty to those who know the basics of archery but not the individual weapon? A penalty that can be bought off with a suitable expenditure of skill points or experience checks? As opposed to have the archer pick up a strange weapon, say "Hey, this is a bow! I know how to use this!" and suffer no ill effects from the differences?

Do you know a.) a good online retailer who you know will be carrying it and b.) what sort of price point we are talking about? I try to buy most of my books and games from Amazon these days simply because of the Prime shipping and that I can get my purchases shipped where I work (my apartment building isn't all that secure), but they are very much hit-and-miss when it comes to stocking RPG books in particular. I have the PDF from the recent special on DriveThru, but it would be nice to have a print book to sit alongside the copy of OpenQuest 2 I'm expecting next week.

My understanding is that the modern city of Phoenix was founded at least in the vicinity of a native city that was found abandoned by explorers. Not having training or interest in archaeology, they didn't think to ask why it had been abandoned, so they built a new city on the site that would be utterly uninhabitable without a modern infrastructure for, among other things, keeping the population fed and watered. Not many details are known about the original inhabitants of Phoenix. But you could run a very interesting campaign set in a city that is becoming rapidly less and less able to support its population. Perhaps changes in the climate are causing the surrounding agricultural regions to fail and drying up the rivers. PCs could be charged with the task of finding another home for at least some of the dying city's inhabitants as their situation deteriorates more and more quickly. to complicate matters, the magics that in the past would have been helpful in dealing with weather and crops are having no effect on the current calamity. "Have the Gods abandoned us? What have we done to offend them?"

I have my new copy of OQ2 on the way, and would like to play in that at some point. I want to find a regular game of something this year. I may have to do it online using Google+ Hangouts or something similar. Hoping I can afford a few more game books. I wonder how much the new printing of RQ6 will cost?

I have a hardcopy of OQ2 from DriveThru on the way by Media Mail. It's been a while since I ordered anything by Media Mail, so I don't know when I'll actually get it. Of course I do have the PDF already from the order, but I have yet to delve into it very much. Since the very first game material I ever wrote was a Doctor Who hack for the original BRP, I have some familiarity with the D100 system. I also played around with RQ3 a bit back in the day. (Yes, I'm old.) I now own OQ2, RQ6 (PDF only) and Legend (PDF only). I also got the original MRQ. I wish I had a copy of RQ3 (the Avalon Hill edition) but I'm not sure where to find one. And BRP is on my shortlist of games I want. So I'm wondering if all those games, based on the same core mechanic and system, play nice with each other. I'm also wondering how many setting options I have available and how I would model various things if I wanted to cross-pollinate. I also find myself wondering how many BRP/D100 games is too many. Most significantly, I want to see about playing at Game Storm this year. I might even want to GM. But if I wanted to set up an event, how would I "market" it? If the games play nice with each other, how do I let people know that they will be able to play with, for the most part, knowledge of their particular flavor of D100?