BMonroe

Excellent question, and good research!

I'll add something about this in the enchantments section of the Chronicler's Guide. Seems a good place for it.

I had a few last minute edits to make to the book, and that pushed it up against the wall of nick's vacation. We opted to hold sending the book to press until he was back, in case of any problems.

He's back, now, so it should be off to the printers soon. I'll post here as soon as I hear anything more.

Also! With any luck the first MW monograph, "Horsechester" should be going to the printer at about the same time. It's a neat little book set in the Southern Reaches,but easily used anywhere else.

I ran an OQ game for the better part of a year. We had plenty of combats, and nobody really missed hit locations at all.

Yup. You get free any "trade tools associated with your occupation". If you're some kind of trained soldier, you should at least have a sword or spear of some sort.

That's an excellent point Simon makes. In MW, much like in other BRP-based games, you define your Adventurer however you so choose. You pick where to put your skill points, what spells you have, etc. By default you roll your stats randomly, but in my home games, I never bother with that. I just let the players decide what stat numbers they want within reason.

"Go with the flow" is my motto as a GM.

Stats in BRP are really best seen as the building blocks of your character. They're the materials you use to give shape to various elements, in different ways. Stats give a general overview of the possible capabilities of your guy, but the ultimate definition is created through application of skill points, choice of magic, equipment, etc.

In that regard, I'd argue that stats in BRP are possibly more important to the system than in many other similar games. You have to have all those numbers down in order to combine them to varying effects. In some iterations of BRP they are obviously more or less important (IE: stats are quite important to figuring skill modifiers in all versions of RQ, as well as Magic World, etc., while they have no bearing on skills in CoC).

IMHO, YMMV, and all that jibba-jabba.

OK, here's a better example:

You are the pinnacle of health (CON 18) and you happen to break your leg. A jerk you hate, who is no where near as healthy as you (a mere CON 13), also breaks his leg.

Instead of you getting out of the hospital several days before he does, since you both have the same Healing Rate, you both get out of the hospital at the same time.

Now how do you feel about it?

PS- I do realize that in skills the 18 is going to be superior to the 13...just wondering why in these other areas it can't also be superior, since obviously it is superior.

How was the leg broken? If these guys both took equal damage to the same hit location, chances are the guy with the 18 CON didn't actually get a broken leg, but a bad sprain. He didn't take the detrimental effects of a disabled hit location, etc.

Likewise, the guy with 18 POW has half again as many Magic Points as the guy with 13. He has a greater capacity for magic, etc.

This extends throughout most of the characteristics, really. You've chosen one example for each, rather than looking at all the different things each characteristic modifies.

I certainly hope you enjo it. Also, look out for th Advacned Sorcery supplement. Should be out in a month or two, and will offer you a ton of extra magic options.

And, if you have any questions about th game, this is the forum to ask!

I'm sure they'll get to it eventually.

All you need is a POW of 16, and you can cast magic. If you want to make a "Fighter/Mage", just make sure you've got a competent fighter and meet the POW requirement. Easy-peasy.

No comment....

Sorry, I thought that was clear enough. It simply means that instead of INT, use DEX for Manipulation skills, STR for Physical skills, APP for Communication, etc.

And yes, the 15/51 typo has been caught, and is in the list of errors I sent off to Chaosium a while ago. Eventually they'll update the PDF with the corrected information.

Quick update: I've been told the book should be going to press within the week. Sadly, this means it'll miss the holidays, but should be available early in the new year.

But! As a bonus, the delay's given me the chance to pull together a new chapter, consisting of 24 more strange spells: "Fey Magic of the Southern Reaches" includes a host of powerful spells such as "Baleful Eye", "Become Werewolf", "Herolight", "Key of Shadows" and more. Many of these spells are so potent that the caster sacrifices points of POW to cast them (don't worry, the POW will return).

Now, none of this material is technically "new". This chapter is another part of my fiendish plot to get as much 'classic' BRP/RQ material updated and available again.

The bulk of this material comes from two old White Dwarf articles on "Celtic Magic" by Dave Morris. A few extra spells come from the Avalon Hill edition of RQ Vikings. All have been suitably fiddled with to make them Magic World compatible, as well as balancing out the cost/effect ratio.

I'm excited to get these in the book. Even if you're not using the Southern Reaches, they're an excellent suite of pagan-ish magic to liven up your game.

I don't know how it is in WWZ (haven't read the book in a long time, and don't recall from the film), but in the Romero movies it works like this:

Anyone who dies from any reason turns into a zombie

The bite of a zombie is venomous, and deadly, unless the affected area can be amputated before the poison spreads (see Day of the Dead)

So, I'd do something like make the zombie bite poisonous, requiring CON rolls to stave off the infection.

Start at CONx7. Fifteen minutes after the bite, make the roll. Fifteen minutes later, roll again at CONx6. Then CONx5, etc.

If the character is bitten again in the interim, immediately have him make the roll again at the next lower level.

And, of course, whenever the roll is failed, the PC starts coughing up blood, collapses, and in 2D10 rounds comes back from the dead.

Of course, if someone dies from any other reason, they'll come back, too.

I'm with Pete. I lost all my WD collection during a move in the early 90s. If I was working right now, I'd totally make you an offer on them. Ah, well.

Not quite sure. Advanced Sorcery is almost done, and development is starting in the Chrinicler's Screen & Forms pack. The Chronicler's Companion is written, and will be next on the schedule. I'd expect it in the spring, hopefully.

That being said, it's not a huge book. I'd expect it to come in under 100 pages, and maybe cost around $15?

Allegiance will be greatly expanded in the forthcoming Chronicler's Companion.

Sorry, I'm mobile, so don't have the book handy. Here's what I remember off the top of my head:

Expanded advice on scenario/chronicle creation.

Digest of common NPC stats

Advice for creating magical treasure

Information on settlements and standards of living

Encounter tables from everywhere from the Big City, to the most distant spirit realms

How to use the Alleigiance system to create religions and pantheons (honestly, my favorite part of the book!)

Expanded ideas on running games in the Southern Reaches

Inevitably I left something out, but that's the core of the book.

"Watch This Space..."

(Caveat: I was editor of the Magic World book, but like all these games.)

Complexity-wise, from simplest to most robust:

OpenQuest<Magic World<RuneQuest 6

All three are excellent games; I've played a bit of each, and had fun with them all. I found RQ6 a little unwieldy for me, but then I like simpler games. It's a marvelous game, I just like less complexity.

OpenQuest is marvelous. I ran a campaign of that last summer and had a blast.

If it matters at all to you, Magic World is the "official" Chaosium fantasy game.

Also, there will be expanded guidelines for distributing treasure in the forthcoming "Chronicler's Companion."

Also, for those who don't know, all the demon powers in 4th edition Stormbringer were done by creating packages of Superworld powers

When it first came out, I played a -ton- of Superworld. Made dozens of characters, ran it a bunch, and played in a few campaigns.

My experience taught me that the game works best for street-level and a bit higher supers. It's a great system when characters have a very tight theme, and only a few powers apt hat reflect that. It can do higher-powered supers as well, but we found that the tougher the PCs were, the harder it was to manage a lot of them.

Essentially, it cod handle Superman in his own comic, but it was a pain in the ass to do the whole JLA.

I'd love to play it again someday, knowing now what I didn't know then. Looking forward to seeing an update to it someday.

Nick has implemented my final corrections, and is just waiting on a handful of bits of art. My guess is it'll be going to the printer this month, hopefully for release early in the year. Nick will have more info on that end.

If we're talking dragons here, they should be guarding something really important. I'm trying to think of a story in which a dragon was sitting on "just" a pile of dough, and that was it.

EG: in the Hobbit, the treasure was secondary to the fact that Smaug had taken over the dwarves ancestral home.

Other dragons (eg: Fafnir) might be more of an environmental issue, again, the treasure begin secondary to the fact that the dragon's poisoning the local ecologies.

That being said, you should give your monsters treasure appropriate to your setting and story. Some GMs like to give out lots of treasure, some don't. When all else fails, talk to your players, and see what sort of game they want. Maybe there's a certain artifact they want to get their hands on? Maybe they're into a gritty game where every bronze piece counts. Maybe they want to become feudal lords, and clearing out a minster-infested castle is just their first step in their long range plans.

TL;DR: splunge.