peterb

Note that my suggestion for the MP cost of spells assume that you'll use Convocation skills. The effective skill level of a convocation skill is modified my Spell Level * 5 when you cast spells. So a 3rd level spell is -15 to cast and a 5th level spell -25. If you don't want to use Convocation skills then I would suggest the following: Skill Level Base MP cost Up to 50 3 51-75 2 76+ 1 Then use the multipliers as per spell. For example, the 3rd level Fyvria spell "Ketherian's Persistence" has a FP cost of (15-SI) x 2.0. In MRQ the Mp cost for a mage with a skill level of 56% would be (2 x 2) 4 mp. MP cost is also influenced by the level of success: CS = ½ cost, MS and MF = normal cost, CF = cost x 2. A MF/CF might (should) require a resilience test.

On page Shek-Pvar 9 you'll find the fatigue rules. One fatigue level in HM2 is = 5 FPs in HM1. The spell descriptions I linked to are written in the HM1 format. So 1 FL = 1 MP. My suggestion is that whenever a mage has used more than 3 MP he must make a fatigue roll => Resilience skill - (5 x FL). Failure should leave the character at least Tired (IMHO). Magic in Harn is not as powerful as in Glorantha (the setting for which MRQ is written). A spell that does 1 or 2 d6s to each hitlocation and only costs 1 MP is still of course quite good. So you might consider Spell Level = MP cost. I don't think you'll need to change the damages that much. Some spells might have a base damage + a number of d6's. IMO you could leave it like that or treat the base damage as the average of a dice. So a spell with a base damage of 4 should do 1d8+1d6 points of damage on a normal success. Divine magic in the RQ sense does not exist in harn setting. Harn is magic weak compared to Glorantha so divine magic needs to become more costly. I would recommend making it a bit more costly to get by requesting a permanent sacrifice of POW (as per RQIII).

My take at a quick MRQ conversion of the HM magic rules: HarnMaster magic is skill based. It uses Fatigue instead of Magic Points (a good conversion is 5 FP per 1 MP). All spells belong to one of six convocations. There is also a seventh "grey" convocation called Neutral magic. The 2nd ed. of the magic rules uses "convocational skill" instead of individual spell skills. A mage has one prime convocation and his skillbases are calculated based on the relationships between his prime convocation and the other convocations. In MRQII terms the primary convocation would have a base of INT + POW + POW. Neutral would be opened at INT + POW and all other convocations could (in game) be opened at either INT + POW (if the experience roll needed to "attune" to a new convocation is a Critical) or just POW. A huge list of HM spells are available from lythia.com. Note the links to more documents in the box to the right. I'd recommend using these spells, since they are designed to fit the setting.

The Harn price list is in fact a very good simulation of middle age prices. The price of an item is (obviously) based on factors such as general availability of the base materials, labor cost (ie. the time it takes to produce it) and if goods has been imported or if its has been produced locally. The effect is e.g. that mail armor is less expensive than high class clothing, which is not the case in for example RQ III.

The Harn market is probably largely made up of die-hard fans, and as fans they collect Harn stuff. The printed product is printed on high quality three-hole punched paper which somewhat explains the steep price tag (of the printed stuff...). Obviously the PDFs could be sold for much less...

It's quite good, but as lots of stuff for Harn it's a fairly complex simulation. Here's a link to the PDF at RPG Now.

You might want to check out HarnManor. It contains rules for running fiefs (and the price list from HarnMaster works like a charm with it...).

The concept of a given fantasy race is always fair game. A specific description is not. Some fantasy races might have aquired a trademark status (or even been registred) , Hobbits have been mentioned as an example in this thread. That being said, if your objective is to create a commercial product you would be wise to use only your own original concepts, generic races or races from folklore and such sources.

I should also probably point out that there are only two VTT (AFAIK) that has a working BRP like module. Fantasy Grounds and RP Tools both has CoC modules. There is a Kloogwerks module for CoC but it's not maintained and I can't get it running, since it throws lots of errors.

There are quite a few Virtual Table Top (VTT) software offerings available, some are free, some are not. Check out some basic info at: http://www.rpgvirtualtabletop.com/vts.html

For even more hit location types you could check out the "1990's handbook" for CoC. It has hit location rules for use with CoC and a lot of CoC creature hit locs. Those charts have no missile hit locations but many creatures that have alot of locations have the same die ranges for melee and missile hit locations (and quite a few of the CoC critters have a lot of locations...).

There is another useful publication called Basic Creatures, which is the creatures section of RQIII minus any Gloranthan creatures, that might prove helpful. A few years ago I created a Creature Generator using Excel and VBA. It's available from my webpage (here). One of the is named HitLocs and contains data for a lot of hit location types. The data is available under OGL. I converted the data to Lua tables when I was working on my own hit location solution for FG (that work stopped when I heard about your project). PM me if you want a copy.

[Edit: error correction!] It really depends on whether the mark has been declared as Product Identity or not (see my post upthread) and/or whether or not the mark qualifies as a trademark. If the mark does not qualify for trademark protection and it's not declared as PI you may of course indicate compatibility as you see fit. Otherwise section 7 of the OGL prevents compatibility statements. The OGL allows you to create derivative works. A translation is a derivative work. Thus translations are covered by the license. The license is an agreement between you and the party who issued the license (the publisher). The OGL do not create any contractual obligations between you and any third parties, who may have entered into another kind of license relationship with the publisher. If you translate Traveller to Italian, making use of the offer in the OGL, then a Italian publisher, who has entered into an agreement with Mongoose, cannot sue you for breach of contract (the OGL). You and they have no contractual relationship. Further, they cannot sue you for copyright infringement, because you are acting in compliance with the OGL, the license explicitly allows translations.

Interesting discussion... On the OGL and referencing trademarks. The relevant article in the OGL is: Product Identity (PI) is defined in 1.e as: So RuneQuest would be PI if it's clearly identified as PI. AFIK there are no PI declarations in any of the RQ SRD. If you compare with the d20 SRD, that document does have a PI declaration. It reads: [Edit: Mindflayers ate my brain. I mixed two subjects up really badly.. Here's the correct answer...] [New section] So If RuneQuest is a trademark in your jurisdiction then art 7. would still kick in. If not then it would kick in if RuneQuest had been declared PI. If that would not be the case then, from a formal POV art. 7 of the OGL would not kick in if someone indicated compatibility with “RuneQuest”. Would Mongoose complain? Probably... Would they stand a chance in court? Well, that would depend on where in the world you live... NB! RuneQuest is only a registered trademark in the US... The owner would have serious trouble proving that it has acquired a secondary meaning here in Europe. [Old section] So... from a formal POV art. 7 of the OGL would not kick in if someone indicated compatibility with “RuneQuest”. Would Mongoose complain? Probably... Would they stand a chance in court? Well, that would depend on where in the world you live...

Well, this is (to some extent at least) true for a commercial project of course. But if all you want to do is to publish your own adventure or setting on your own website (or a site like this) then go ahead. Just don't copy text, art etc. If you plan to do your own BRP clone, then the OGL route is the fastest approach. Still, you could write your own d100 compatible game. Just use your own words.

So what? What's the fuss? There's no damage done to Chaosium in any way.

That's not the point. The point is that game mechanics as such lack copyright protection. Restating game mechanics is OK. It's OK that GORE contains descriptions of game mechanics that is similar to what can be found in Elric! or BRP. There's nothing wrong here.

This is all perfectly legal and OK. The GORE text uses the same mechanics as BRP, but that's OK. The game system used in BRP is not covered by any copyright and the texts are not identical. In fact I doubt that texts in your example are copyright protected here in Europe (exl. the U.K.). They are a bit to trivial IMO.

Why should it be something immoral or wrong about GORE? It's a restatement of the MRQ SRD. I've always seen GORE as trying to fill the same niche that Classic Fantasy has entered lately.

The problem here is the claim that a word that only appears in a descriptive text is a trademark. Such a claim is groundless. In order for "Beholder", "Strike Ranks", "Armour Class" and "Magic Points" to be trademarks they must have been used as such. A trademark is a symbol of a commercial connection between a product or service and its source. In order for a mark to operate as a trademark it must be used to symbolize such a connection in market activities, such as for example in adds, in business correspondence, on packages etc. Very few names, terms etc. from RPG:s have actually been used in as trademarks. Beholder, Broo and Jack-o-Bear are three examples that might qualify as trademarks. Spellnames, skillnames, class names etc. most certainly don't qualify. Since names, game terms, spell names etc. must qualify as "original" in order to be copyright protected and in most jurisdictions they won't, they are fair game from a copyright perspective as well. In fact, from a European perspective (NB!), I see no reason why a supplement (an adventure, setting or sourcebook): * created by a private person; * published in a non-commercial context; * in Europe (e.g. on a web server situated in a EC jurisdiction); * that only refers to and/or quotes from a RPG source book (or any other source for that matter); would infringe on any copy- or trademark rights.

Yes, before the 1977 patent act you could. But now you don't. Off Topic of course, but for the interested: since 1973 it is possible to register a EC wide patent and the European Patents Convention from 1973 includes a ban on patents of: [see: European Patent Organisation (EPO): Patents, Convention, 05/10/1973 (10/12/1998) for a HTML version of the entire text.] Which is why you, today, wouldn't have any success trying to patent the rules of a game in Europe. Btw, I do realize this is particular discussion might seem a bit boring and nit-picking (besides being off-topic). But, unfortunately, there's quite a bit of misunderstandings and myths regarding the IPR 's of games circulating on the net, and I just wanted to debunk one of them. Sorry if I came across as over-bearing.

The only place (AFAIK) that one can patent the rules of games is the U.S. In Europe patent legislation explicitly disallows patents on algorithms, rules for games and business methods, etc.

Open Quest was suposed to be released in late june this year, however the site seems to be down (at least I cannot reach it). Are there any news?

Ventrilo seems to be able to do this, see the following thread on their forum: streaming music woth Vista 64 and Vent - Ventrilo Tech Support

The problem with the RPG business is that it's not a very profitable business, very few of the RPG companies generates large profits. The most profitable RPG company (as the rumour goes), Games Workshop, decided to drop it's RPG line when the profits fell. I think that we, the BRP community, will have to bear the lion part of the burden of making BRP a viable game. Like the Glorantha community did with the Glorantha setting and like the Harn World community is still doing. The key is to produce good quality add-ons and supplements that are available for free over the net. Having a vibrant community that produces game-aids etc is an excellent added-value to any RPG. So the question then becomes - how could we and Chaosium best cooperate to give BRP a high profile? A good starting point is to have a look at the Harn community site, www.lythia.com. For example check out the quality (and quantity) of the downloads. What we need are tools that makes it easy to use BRP, easy to switch from other games, we need scenarios, maps and the like and of course one or two good settings. It's certainly true that the Glorantha and Harn communities have a huge benefit from each having an excellent setting to build upon. We, the community, could however build one (or two) of our own. Shaira mentioned a Swashbuckler setting. Building on the wealth of information that exists about 16th and 17th century Japan is another example. Expanding the Cthulhu Dark Ages setting, toning down the horror part and retooling it a bit and move it to the 15th century is another option. A steampunk setting would also be cool. In short - create options for using Earth as a setting in different eras and with different mixes of fantasy, horror and science-fiction.