rust

I doubt it, weregeld and ransom were not directly related, in fact they were usually traditional customs of very different cultures. Otherwise one might have the problem that the relatives of a captured person would hesitate to pay his ransom because they could demand weregeld if he were killed by his captors ... "keep him, kill him, and pay up".

Another month later ... any news on River of Heaven ? While I know that I should be more patient, I really want this game and have put my favourite science fiction setting ideas on hold until I have it ...

For me it would depend on the actual profession. For example, a typical brewer buys the raw materials from the farmers and processes them, which in my view would make him a type of crafter, while a typical vintner grows his own grapes, which in my view would ma- ke him a kind of farmer. It would also depend a lot on the setting, for example whether a member of the profession can be expected to be literate, which would make an alche- mist a possible choice, or whether the huge majority of the setting's brewers or vintners are illiterate, which would not fit in well with my idea of an alchemist.

The problem is that STR can be defined and measured quite well, while POW and CHA are difficult to define and impossible to measure. Besides, I suspect that most refe- rees could agree how to handle STR in their games, but comparatively few referees would agree how exactly to handle POW and CHA in all kinds of situations. So all the game designers probably can do is to tell their readers what an average POW or CHA is, and then leave it to them to come up with their own ideas what an unusual high or low POW or CHA could be like.

Indeed. While it was certainly intended as just a joke, it was the kind of joke which can easily turn into a forum nuke, especially since there are lots of people out there who are actively looking for opportunities to start arguments. No need to offer food for such trolls.

Yes, for example the Expendables roleplaying game by Stellar Games did.

It is certainly possible to increase the granularity of the game's mechanics, and it would certainly make the game a better simulation of the real world. Unfortunate- ly the increased realism would require an increased complexity of the rules, and as rules get more complex they tend to reduce a game's playability. It is a matter of personal preference where one sees the best compromise between realism / rules complexity and playability, I always liked the d100 family games because they are comparatively rules light compared to games like GURPS or Rolemaster.

According to Mongoose there are currently negotiations concerning the license.

The usual aim of the musket drill for military units was to achieve a hgh rate of fire and the ability to sustain "rolling fire" (= different parts of the unit fire at different times so there is no pause), the precision of the fire was of secondary (sometimes of no) importance - the aim was to hit the enemy with a permanent hail of as ma- ny musket balls as possible. A well trained soldier could fire three times per minute, some soldiers of elite units could even fire four times per minute, but few could con- tinue at such a speed for more than a few minutes - which was no serious problem, because muskets were usually fired at a comparatively short distance at advancing enemy troop formations, and the enemy normally closed in for melee combat or bro- ke and retreated after a very short time. Naval gunnery fire was different. Naval en- gagements could last for hours without interruption, and precision could be as useful as a high rate of fire - while any hit with a musket ball could incapacitate a soldier, a ship had more and less important targets, and where it was hit was often more important than the fact that it was hit at all, bringing down a mast and its rigging or silencing a cannon was a lot more useful than pumping another cannon ball into a cargo hold.

Good news, I will buy the PDF as soon as I can fit Monster Island into my campaign. Edit.: Downloaded it today, it became "Kapala Island" in my current setting. After a first read I am impressed by the quality - highly recommended, I gave it 5 stars on DTRPG.

No, Call of Cthulhu uses a very different concept of magic, it actually does not have a real games mechanic for magic.

If you are more into the real history than into the Hollywood version of it, there is a good chance that you will love BRP's Rome, in my view it is a true masterwork. So are most of the other historical supplements, for example Celestial Empire, Merrie England and Mythic Iceland. I used to be, but I have not visited CotI for a very long time.

It may well be, or at least it and the other members of the d100 family almost certainly have the necessary tools to create that game. What I like most about BRP, in addition to what has already been mentioned by others, is that the system can easily be modified to fit a specific gaming style or setting. It can be made more complex through the use of the many available options, or it can be made more rules light by using only the bare core of it. It is no problem at all to add elements of other systems or to design house rules for elements one does not want because they do not feel right for one's gaming style or campaign. So, if you decide that BRP may in- deed be the game for you, you could take the time to look at the many other members of the family, like Classic Fantasy, Magic World, Renaissance and so on, or the upcoming science fiction game River of Heaven. They are all close relatives of BRP with their own focus and interesting ideas, and good examples of the way the game can be tailored to fit a specific concept.

In this case it is indeed doing very well - Congratulations !

In my experience Chaosium is a very real company with a very serious communications problem.

A marketing strategy which has become increasingly common in the roleplaying games "industry" (well, "cottage industry" at best) is to offer a first book as a PDF for free or almost for free, ho- ping that enough people will download it, like it, and therefore become willing to pay for supple- ments and perhaps even a future print run of the originally free first PDF. In order for that stra- tegy to work, that first free book should be a truly convincing, great product. Unfortunately the strategy does not work that often, and when the first book turns out to be a heartbreaker or another kind of failure, the effort and money of usually many months of work has been wasted. So, spending the money on a lottery ticket might well be a better investment ... Or, as a friend of mine once remarked, it is very easy to become a roleplaying games author with a Lamborghini and a nice villa in Malibu, you only have to start your career with two Lamborghi- nis and two nice villas in Malibu.

While it is comparatively easy to create an excellent book as a hobby in one's spare time when one has a steady income, it becomes a lot more difficult when the hours spent on working on the book have to be paid for by the book's sale, because then the book's acceptable price and its print run limit the number of hours one can work on the book.

a) Marketing is expensive, and the profit margin of a company like Chaosium is small. Settlers of Catan was produced and marketed by what is an international megacorpo- ration compared to the tiny Chaosium. The market is indeed small and already almost saturated when it comes to fantasy roleplaying games. There are days when looking at the many systems offered on for example DTRPG I get the suspicion that there are already more such games than ga- mers.

According to the Chaosium website Magic World has now been downloaded 374 times. Since only a very small percentage of the people who bought a game writes reviews, one can expect only a very low number of reviews on the Internet. The interests and opinions of a few hundred people remain al- most invisible on the general Internet.

It depends a lot on a campaign's degree of player character script immunity. For example, in my campaigns this degree is rather low, death tends to be permanent, and as a result those player characters who decide to fight a too dangerous opponent are usually killed, without any second chance to fight the same enemy again with a better battle plan.

My settings are "sandboxes", and like the real world they contain weak, average and powerful characters and creatures. It is up to the player characters to gather the ne- cessary informations to decide what they can do or not, when to fight, when to avoid and when to run. I would dislike a predictable setting where the player characters can expect to only encounter suitable "challenges" for their "level", this would seem too im- plausible for my taste.

The use of optics not only increases the range, it also increases the average time required to spot something, because the magnification of the optics comes with an equivalent reduction of the field of view.

Yep, a perfect instrument for the use of a multitude of obscure words in an attempt to avoid any transfer of information.

Any news on River of Heaven ?

I think the voyage should take about two weeks and cost about 40 Pounds.