Michael Hopcroft

I remember a game in the 90s that was so torturous in terms of character creation that it came with a spreadsheet map that the user had to input into their pre-Excel spreadsheet software manually. Which not only shows my age but also how far we've come in the business. Chaosium, if they want this sort of support out of the box, would have to choose carefully. I imagine Lone Wolf Developments publishers of Hero Lab) would welcome a new license with a large audience. If the new Runequest turns out to be a huge release, it might not take much persuading for them to buy in.

I'm planning to get some RPG writing done and would like a little guidance from more experienced BRP/d100 gamemasters on how POW is gained and expended. The reason I ask is that some forms of magic and psionics are so demanding that even to learn the technique requires the character to sacrifice a point of POW or even more. There are many places that POW can come from depending on the setting, but let's assume it's the user's own POW. IIRC, that POW can eventually be regained and even improved, though that might not happen for quite a while. But how does that work in-story? And are there stories where a magic user sacrifices enough POW that he dies to achieve a particularly potent effect (assuming one dies when they reach 0 POW, which is not a given).

A sudden life change has given me a bit of urgency to find and do a project I want to write. There are a couple I'm thinking of. One of them involves a sort-of Alternative Napoleonic Wars setting for which Renaissance would be ideal. I'm ruminating on a few ideas but need to get something into electrons. Would anyone buy a book like that? What would it need more than anything else to be viable?

I don't know whether the term "third-party" is really appropriate when discussing M-Space supplemental material, but what would you ask of a press that wanted to make a book for M-Space?

The license was later picked up by Green Ronin for their supers game Mutants and Masterminds. But I'm not certain of its current status. Green Ronin has developed the habit of taking a license and pursuing it finitely, as opposed to as ongoing projects (witness their recently-lapsed DC Comics license, which is basically a snapshot of the comics just before one of their more recent universal resets). Green Ronin also currently holds the RPG license for the Game of Thrones series (novels, not the TV series).

It clearly changed into something different. IIRC, it wasn't until the second edition of AD&D that alignment was clarified as a concept, as Gary Gygax was dragged kicking and screaming into the idea of actual roleplaying. Before then mixed-alignment parties were common because alignment was a much more abstract concept and Good and Evil could easily work together for the common goal of slaying things, collecting stuff, and getting rich. IIRC, the main point of alignment in 1st edition D&D was that it restricted what classes you can take and enabled spells like Protection from Evil or Detect Evil (a spell that would do a great job of short-circuiting many adventures outside the dungeon -- if you know the merchant hiring you to plunder the orc lair is Lawful Evil, you would be well advised to turn down the job!). Passions are much better for roleplaying, even if dungeon crawling is still the major feature of the campaign. (There is a Detect Evil spell in CF -- thinking about this topic caused me to look it up. How would it be used in the wild?)

There were some pretty silly articles in the early years of Dragon. The one I remember most is the assertion that Chaos is evil and you cannot really be Chaotic Good because Elemental Chaos is seeking to destroy everything -- a Moorcock-like view that wasn't really applicable to standard D&D. Thankfully CF does not make that sort of conclusion -- this isn't Stormbringer. Nor does CF seem to be built world-sweeping storyarcs in mind, as some players who like this sort of style might not have the patience for them. I'm looking forward to the new book now. How does one go about adding new spells to the game. I'm kind of fond of Explosive Runes (as presented in Order of the Stick), especially if the spell remains intact indefinitely until someone reads the writing -- then BOOM!

While Star Trek would be at about TL15 or possibly higher (they can convert energy into matter, including foodstuffs, have working teleporters that have a range that includes orbit, etc.), M-Space strikes me as something that could still work with that setting. You would need to come up with careers that match -- Starfleet Officer is hardly generic, because the same organization combines military, scientific, and diplomatic functions. It would also be interesting to do a universe like Blakes 7, where you are probably-doomed rebels against an evil galactic government that will stop at nothing to maintain its grip on absolute power. If you can find something of a higher TL than the campaign and figure out how it works, you might survive for a while and possibly make some real headway.

It's strikes me that the powers these cults worship are not the most reliable of beings when it comes to keeping their promises. And even if you become a Prince in Hell, you are still in Hell.

I've always wondered how fantasy and horror settings find so many people willing to found, lead, and join Evil Cults(tm). Given that the End of the World(tm) will result in their own deaths, and evil deities tend to punish their followers rather than reward them, it's hard to see the incentive.

Although I assume there will not be an "official" setting for M-Space (no need to come up with your own Third Imperium, though I can see adapting it to M-Space as a bit of a snap), a few samples to give GMs hooks into their own games may be helpful. I'm thinking of ideas like "life in the Star Navy" as a release, with additional info on ship design, the role of a space navy in a campaign, and things like how one fights back against an opponent with vastly superior technology. Now that I think about it, a lot of the Classic Traveller material can be translated to M-Space without too many calisthenics. The main different is that CT PCs are typically old and experienced, while M-Space really has no such limitation. You can start as grizzled veterans, but you can also start as talented youngsters. Are there alternative methods of interstellar travel that M-Space can handle? Imaging how difficult it would be for space navies if once you get into hyperspace you can emerge anywhere. Distance and even physical location would be irrelevant to such empires. What would matter is how easy it is to navigate to a place and how well-known it is.

Anti-Paladin. That's a name I haven't heard in a while. Good for you! Are those the only "villain classes" you'll be adding?

I noticed that in my reading the basic assumption for character creation is that player-characters will be Good, or at worst Neutral. Fair enough -- a game with Evil PCs would roll downhill pretty quickly. However, it occurred to me that for NPCs all bets are off. As they should be. The deadliest monster in any fantasy world is what the deadliest monster is in ours -- Man. And while you may not find them waiting around in dungeons so PCs can kill them, they can still be forces of genuine worry once the PCs emerge into the sunlight. Imagine a high-rank Cavalier whose Passions lead him to do terrible things. Cavaliers, as noblemen, can be pretty arrogant to begin with as they're ingrained to believe they're better than anyone else. Now think of an NPC who let that all go to his head and the problem that can be for the party, especially if his family is powerful enough that the authorities have to humor him. We're talking the sort of guy who lops off the heads of peasants as he passes because he thinks it's fun. And although he can kill adventurers with impunity, the reverse is hardly true. If you don't want to go that dark, it's easy to have NPC Cavaliers or Paladins that are in it for the glory and love showing off more than they like actually fighting. They may not help much against the monsters, but you can be sure they'll find a way to take the lion's share of the credit regardless. You sort of expect an NPC Thief to be a lazy coward. You don't expect that from a Paladin.

Assuming there isn't a prophecy that they are assumed to be a part of, which is an idea cliche enough that I would avoid it, there can be completely irrational reasons for the way people respond to the newcomers. Maybe word gets out of something they did (or possibly did) and that changes how people respond to them. The story of :Jack the Giant Killer" comes to mind -- the characters say or do something whose significance they do not fathom and, mistaken for the great heroes they aren't, get sent on a seemingly impossible and/or suicidal quest. To get through they will need sharp wits, but if they succeed people will respond to them differently than if they were simply rando0m, oddly-dressed strangers. It could be as simple as where they emerge. If they get their start in a deep dark forest that nobody dares enter, for example, and come out of it alive, people will definitely come to conclusions about them. You just have to find a story reason for the locals not to kill them outright, The rest is up to them.

To bridge the gap in dimensions/worlds/time this way would be very high-powered magic for a Mythus setting. So if you're using this much power as a deliberate act, it might take you weeks or even months to recover. If the summoner is capable of acting, he or she would be doing their darndest to keep to kids alive while they work this all out -- if they are capable of doing so, An other way to play this is for this summoning to be accidental. Maybe the kids accidentally cast the spell themselves back in their own world, and it's a surprise to everyone they survived. Perhaps random doors between the worlds open and close every so often, closing as rapidly as they appear. Perhaps there is no way home and our teen heroes discover they like their new world better than home and decide to settle down for good. Or they realize they are stranded and have to make the best of it even if they don't like it,

Another problem is that Iron Age cultures were pretty xenophobic -- perhaps not of the level of "Look! Strangers! KILL THEM!", but people would have a hard time trusting people they don't know. After all, if there are bandits running around and you're in a town threatened by them, you have to assume that if you see someone you don't know they're probably a bandit unless they deliberately display a sign that they're on your side -- and even then you'd be wary for a trick. If the PCs don't speak the language, that only adds to the challenge.

On the question of small animal injuries to player-characters, how big a jerk would a GM have to be to bring infection and disease into the picture? You probably wouldn't want to do it in this setting, because the game style usually doesn't support it, but unless you get proper first aid or healing spells a small cut or puncture can be really nasty long-term. I came very close to losing a foot to one when a small puncture became infected and gangrenous. It's an even bigger problem when people have no idea of san itation or proper wound care. But to compensate they have some people who can magically cleanse wounds -- if you can find one in time....

Sounds like an interesting idea. I don't have the LA rules yet, but they sound like they would be invaluable for a wide range of campaigns outside the original one. It opens up a wide range of potential for the Mythras rules if the promise holds. How were you going to handle languages once our teen survivors reach civilized lands? If you're going to be this gritty, then it seems reasonable that part of their challenge will be communicating with the locals once they find them. They will probably need to find some sort of way to convey simple concepts (like "I'm hungry" and "I'm not a threat") until they get even a slim grasp of the language. Which will probably be completely unrelated to their native tongues. The odds are really stacked against your PCs, which will make their successes even more heroic.

There was a motivator I made with a screenshot of Tomo (from Azumanga Diaoh) messing around with Sakaki's Iriomote kitten (who, in the scene, scratched up her hand pretty badly when it finally ticked him off). The caption was "1st Level Commoner: You really should know better than to mess with a cat". I'm attaching the image, but you may have to download it.

I wonder what the effects on agriculture are when farmers have access to spells like Bladesharp (for plows, tools, etc.). Fr that matter, does this mean peasants who know the spell are better at self-defense?

Hex grids are a holdover from when RPGs were referred to as a subset of wargames -- back when the Dungeonmaster was your opponent and actively trying his best to kill of your character. A lot of roleplayers and roleplaying supplements use them out of habit but these days they aren't really needed in most cases.. The most famous such maps included legends that showed in which hex you could find certain things -- the original World of Greyhawk boxed set, for example, included the location of the various already-published dungeons for that edition of D&D. The Harn products from Columbia use them the same way, for the same purpose. But for most purposes in roleplaying a plan, un-gridded map will do just fine.

It's kind of difficult to find something rationally license-able that hasn't been licensed in the past, Heck, there's even a Game of Thrones RPG. I'd rather see DM explore other ideas that can hopefully still be profitable. And while it's hard to imagine something completely new in an RPG environment, there are some setting approaches that could be pursue-able. There are still things you can do with revolutions in space (that aren't Rogue One), or revolutions in fantasy environments. There's no particular reason to think that the High King of a fantasy England would necessarily be noble, good, or altruistic, Even if Arthur was a fundamentally decent person, his mythical England was hardly a utopia. Sometimes there are tyrants who need to be brought down by their own people, which is just as true in fantasy as it is everywhere else.

Now I'm curious. what is it about the rules or setting, in your opinion, that makes "low=-level" PCs so durable? And what in your experience has made medium levels more dangerous?

In traditional supers games, powers are very specifically modeled and generally speaking tend not be be in broad strokes. This differs from the pay it works in an actual four-color comic, where being "the Fastest Man on Earth" is like a keyword and gives the hero abilities limited mainly by his imagination. Which when you think about it is very much how HeroQuest works in general. Sounds like a great fit of system to genre, the only downside being that this is not how people are accustomed to playing supers games. Here's a sample modeling question to get an idea how people would handle this, based on a hero I created years ago for the classic Marvel Super Heroes. Quarterstaff is a descendant of Little John (Rubin Hood's Merry Man) and wields his legendary quarterstaff. He can do innumerable tricks with it, including slapping aside bullets, and while using it he has phenomenal reflexes. It takes a lot to damage or break the staff, and when it is damaged it heals as though it were a living thing (and it doesn't take very long, although Quarterstaff can't use it while it heals). Building that character would be an interesting test of how the system handles a "super-normal".

Just picked up my PDF of Classic Fantasy. I owned the prior edition and had many of the same thoughts about this edition as I had about this one. These included things like how alarmingly fragile characters are in D100 as opposed to D20, and wondering how that will affect the way a dungeon crawl plays. But the really interesting thing to me is the way classes work in it. The Ranks system, like level systems in D&D, provide a relatively simple way to scale the game (even if the chances of beginning PCs living long enough to advance seem remote) -- if you want to run a more powerful campaign, this gives you an idea on how to scale it. But the interestying thing is that Passions are used in place of Alignment, only much more flexible. What I would do, and I'm curious how this would work, would be to divorce Passions from Classes -- using the Classes as a sound template for PC abilities while allowing considerably more freedom in personality. You can already alter a class substantially simply by changing the Passions of the character -- an Anti-Cavalier, for example, can be made with ridiculous ease simply by changing their Passions.