rust

It is of course a matter of taste, and with this in mind I would recommend Monster Island. It contains so many good adventure opportunities that it should be easy to find one to your and your players' taste: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116267/Monster-Island

Thank you very much for the interview, Clarence.

Which is why I am not concerned. Even if the core system would not include such rules, there would doubtless be someone (perhaps Chaosium themselves, perhaps someone from the community, with a monograph or in some download section) who would provide them soon enough.

While there are somewhat similar elements in other roleplaying games, like the Brotherhoods of Runequest 6, the Tribes of HeroQuest, the Factions of Stars Without Number or the Janus-Gesellschaft of the German version of Call of Cthulhu, this Clan idea really is most interesting, and so I would also very much like to see an English version of it.

After a little research I found the link to Järn's character sheet (which is of course in Swedish). In my opinion it does not look that much simpler than the usual BRP character sheet, for example the number of skills seems to be almost the same. https://rollspelssmedjan.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/handlingsval-2-17.pdf

Since the forum board calls itself " The chief Basic Roleplaying forum for the Great Family of D100 RPGs", I would not count this as a foul.

One only has to look at the many, many d100 games where the designers have attempted to streamline BRP's system and/or add elements of other games' systems to the BRP core. Unless I misunderstand Krister, this is what he has attempted to do with his Järn, too: A simpler BRP-based d100 system with some of the - in his view - good ideas from various other mainstream and indie games.

Well, I do not agree with most of Krister's analysis of BRP's supposed weaknesses, but I am rather curious where his ideas have led him, so I am looking forward to the rest of the interview.

Looking at my Oxford Dictionary, I get this definition of Art: "The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power." I have little doubt that roleplaying games usually are an "expression or application of human creative skill and imagination", and that the results at least sometimes are "appreciated" for their "emotional power". So, yes, I think that roleplaying games can be seen as a form of art.

Lovecraft himself introduced such a being into his Cthulhu Mythos, the deity Nodens.

The Seventies and Horror, hmmm ... Well, one rather horrific element of the Seventies was the beginning of a new wave of terrorism when "love" failed to improve the world and "force" seemed a more convincing method to change society and its politics. This way Europe had to face the RAF in Germany, the ETA in Spain, the IRA in the United Kingdom, the BR in Italy, and so on. I am not sure about comparable developments in the USA, but I seem to remember organizations like the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Weather Underground. The various terrorist groups I am aware of had no "occult" connections, but it would not be too difficult to combine their search for a way to force society to change with a search for "occult" power.

No, I just gave five stars, no time to compose a review.

Got it - and it looks really very, very good, worth the five stars I gave it. It will need a few minor modifications to fit my water world setting, but it covers all the elements I expect of a d100 science fiction rules set, and I really like the pre- sentation. Well done indeed, and highly recommended.

Well, the Modern Equipment Catalog covers all kind of modern gear except weapons, so you might find it of little use if you are mostly interested in weapons. However, al- most everything else is there, with all the information one could want for game purpo- ses.

PDF bought, liked very much, and recommended ...

They certainly do, although most animal languages lack the granularity of a human language, they can express only what is important for the specific type of animal and often use body language instead of sounds. A famous example of the language of a supposedly "low" animal is the "dance" of bees informing other bees about the location of food sources they have dis- covered. This ability of an insect to communicate comparatively complex informations makes me believe that all "higher" animals also have the means to communicate whatever their so- cial relations require. From personal experience I remember that one of our cats considered me an unusually stupid kitten and always warned me with a specific growling sound whenever a dog came near us. As for animals' souls, I think that a creature which is aware of itself and of its surroundings and which can feel joy and pain definitely has the equivalent of a soul.

The one I seem to remember was a BBC production titled "The Secret Life of the Cat": http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02xcvhw

More from a few decades of living near a lady who was a member of an animal protection society and who rescued and kept lots of cats over the years, which gave us an opportuni- ty both to learn from her and to experience the social behaviour of a wide variety of cats, plus what we were able to learn from our own cats over the years.

They indeed tend to do so when they are becoming adults and looking for a territory of their own. Once they have discovered or conquered their own territory, they tend to become more "stationary" in order to control, patrol and defend it.

It depends a lot on the type and personality of the cat and on its upbringing, some cats take well to spending their life indoors, especially when there is a second cat which they like, others try to escape their "prison" whenever possible. Our Norwegian Forest Cat mentioned above grew up on a farm, was used to roam freely, and hated to be kept indoors for more than a few hours. A friend had two Siamese cats which were raised by "indoor cats", never left the apartment, and actually were extremely afraid of "the wilderness outside". As for the life ex- pectancy, our rather adventurous Norwegian Forest Cat had learned how to avoid dangers from her mother and died naturally at the quite high age of eighteen years.

This seems a bit over the top. Looking at the domestic cat's wild relatives, the average male one "owns" and patrols a territory of approximately 6 square ki- lometers, the average female one "owns" and patrols a territory of approxima- tely 2 square kilometer, and the largest territory claimed by a wild cat that was recorded in Germany's forests was approximately 13 square kilometers. In an area with a low population density of wild cats and low availability of suitable food for wild cats a male wild cat's territory might be larger, but even 20 squa- re kilometers would be far from an area with a radius of 20 or 30 kilometers. As for our own cats, the one with the largest territory was a female Norwegian Forest Cat, the closest thing to a wild cat that one can get. She rarely went further than about 2 kilometers from our house.

I very much doubt that any generic rule could cover all or even most animals' natural weapons and combat tactics, there seems to be too much variety for any simple rule. I think that in the end the referee will have to know a bit about every type of animal he introduces into his setting and will have to make specific decisions for specific ani- mals and circumstances.

Constitution and Stamina are also used to determine whether a creature can be active un- der conditions of "stifling heat, freezing cold, or without food or water" (BRP page 219). Here half the creature's Constitution is used to decide when the creature has to begin to make Stamina rolls for further activities and finally survival. A low Constitution score of little animals would mean that, for example, a human would be able to survive extreme cold better and longer than a polar fox, while in reality even a tiny lemming would do bet- ter than an unequipped human. And an average snake would need to have a Constitution of at least 14, because most snakes can easily go 7 days without food ...

Since all animals are able to survive in their specific environments I usually give them a Constitution of 10 for everything relating to their health. For example, the snow owls in my arctic Asornok setting have Con 6/10, with the 10 used for Stamina rolls.