Rhialto the Marvellous

The more you reveal, the more I like this approach. Cheers!

Thanks, that is very helpful. As a big fan of Stormbringer, too, I very much like the random armor protection. Carry on Newt, please!

This idea has exceptional merit, Newt, and I would also welcome an OQ version like this.

But the BGB would never be mistaken for Basic Roleplaying: An Introductory Guide, would it? It's comprehensive, which most introductory guides are not. An Introduction to the Chaosium Basic Roleplaying System would be an homage to the previous introductory guide, but perhaps too similar in name.

With respect alternates to Quickstart: FastPlay?

A roughly 600-page "settingless toolbox"? Well, thanks for the clarification: still wish them luck, but now I know to steer far clear of it, much as I liked the system in WFRP 1st & 2nd (and you were too kind to 3rd ).

More than 600 pages? Way more than too much for a game, for me, but good luck to them.

2 hours ago, rsanford said:

Both good books and I payed a good deal more for them! Not sure why the Mongoose Elric never become better known...

Probably because of Mongoose's penchant for 2nd editions, and not always well-edited ones. I have the books, and they deserved a better fate.

Nice new look... 

3 hours ago, Mankcam said:

Regarding such, I just hope that it isn't named Battle Magic like in RQ2, as this does not fit with a large number of non-combat orientated powers. Likewise RQ3's Spirit Magic was almost not a great fit for flavour for some cultures. MRQ/Legend has a better title in my opinion, calling it 'Common Magic'. However I think I prefer 'Basic Magic', which was actually the title of the chapter in RQ2 that contained the Battle Magic spells.

I think it was OQ2 or Legend which proposed calling them "Heroic Feats" or some such: that way a PC who didn't want to use "magic" could take some of the "feats" and reimagine them as non-magical heroic abilities. There was no mechanical difference, just a descriptive difference.

3 hours ago, Mankcam said:

Regarding such, I just hope that it isn't named Battle Magic like in RQ2, as this does not fit with a large number of non-combat orientated powers. Likewise RQ3's Spirit Magic was almost not a great fit for flavour for some cultures. MRQ/Legend has a better title in my opinion, calling it 'Common Magic'. However I think I prefer 'Basic Magic', which was actually the title of the chapter in RQ2 that contained the Battle Magic spells.

I think it was OQ2 or Legend which proposed calling them "Heroic Feats" or some such: that way a PC who didn't want to use "magic" could take some of the "feats" and reimagine them as non-magical heroic abilities. There was no mechanical difference, just a descriptive difference.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

I have come to a stance where I think that skills often become limiters to what a character can do rather than enablers. With every area of activities you specify a skill for you declare that all characters lacking this skill will be condemned to inactivity or at least gross incompetence.

Maybe it is my experience playing HeroQuest, but I wonder whether one should keep the amount of skills at the level of RQ skill categories and allow specialisations within these fields.

 

This is pretty much what Bare Bones Fantasy does: broad skill categories with cascading specialities where desired.

10 hours ago, Warthur said:

Yeah, the contrast between T5 and Mongoose Traveller (which as I understand it were developed in parallel, though Mongoose managed to get their version out well in advance of T5) is... well, it's pretty drastic, to say the least.

T5 does seem to have its advocates and there's an active fan project to re-edit it to produce something a bit less clunky, but it's telling that I've never spoken to anyone who was big into T5 who wasn't already a big Traveller fan through being introduced through some other edition, whereas Mongoose Traveller seems to have been many people's introduction to the game.

The contrast is so drastic because of the drastically different design goals: MgT is meant to be more along the lines of what we've heard so far about newRQ (broad, introductory appeal), and T5 is meant to reflect the designer's vision for his preferred game. It just so happens that vision doesn't appear to have a broad appeal.

OpenQuest2 for me, since I have a bias towards lean rules. I consider Age of Shadow (OQ1) to be an exemplar in this regard. I just find it easier to add to a lean base than subtract from a thicker one (e.g., RQ6).

6 hours ago, Jeff said:

I agree with all of the above. Just to add on it:

• This is a self-contained book. You don't need the Sourcebook, let alone the Guide, to start play. It is intended that you can use this book to run the RQ2 scenarios (it will contain material on how to handle Rune magic, which is a bit different now).
• The book will be somewhere in the vicinity of 240 pages. Maybe little more, maybe substantially less (as I plan to then cut, cut, cut). It currently stands at 200 pages, and will go up once the monster stat blocks are added. My expectation is it will be about the size of HeroQuest Glorantha.

Hope that helps!

Thank goodness...not to dump on another hoary game, but just look at the great misfortune that was/is T5: a great brick of a book that is the antithesis of this, and should be an object lesson in what not to do to try and attract a new audience.

7 hours ago, Jeff said:

For what it is worth, I have a copy of the 1993 Elric! book right on my desk. I've been looking quite a bit at Stormbringer, Elric!, Hawkmoon, even Ringworld. And since Jason Durall will be coming into the process at some point pretty soon, I'm pretty sure that elements of those rules will have been considered carefully.

This is good news as far as I'm concerned (granted, one small, quiet voice): while I appreciate RQ6 and its thoroughness, Elric!/Stormbringer is indeed a simpler system. 

On quick inspection it's not in the rules until The Traveller Book, the one-volume rulebook of 8.5" x 11" you refer to.

Here's hoping they can!

Well, I'll chime in with my support: Alephtar's books are splendid, and this sounds like a promising development path. 

Thanks much! Installed on OSX, will report back...

River of Heaven: for OpenQuest, so not strictly BRP, but compatible.

I wouldn't state it as strongly, but there is definitely room for improvement: I got no answer from my e-mails, so finally called after a "shipment" still hadn't arrived three weeks after the "shipped" notification. Turns out one item is back-ordered, so nothing has actually "shipped". The explanation was that it had something to do with the new system they were using...I think, it was hard to hear with the dogs going nuts in the background.   Ken offered to ship the other two items now, to his credit. But, the next time I might just be tempted to pay a few $ more to order through RPGNow and get the POD + PDF.