rust

It still looks to me like a casting desaster, comparable to Paris Hilton playing a Navy Seal or a crew of cuddly koalas as bloodthirsty pirates on a viking longship ...

I did not read anything of that kind, all I know is that his concept of the Ducks/Durulz seems to have changed several times, the latest one I am aware of is this: http://www.glorantha.com/greg/q-and-a/ducks.html

At first I also had no problems with the Ducks and considered them a rather funny idea, but after a while characters ordering "Peking Roast Durulz" at the inn and shouting "Durulz and Cover !" whenever someone fired arrows at the party became too much fun for my campaign ...

Hmmm ... three days and no replies ... My excuse is that I am a simulationist who prefers science fiction settings, your Odd Story system is just too rules light for my taste, and seems bet- ter suited for fantasy settings anyway.

The Germans ... ? - If this were only remotely true ... Over here the impression is that we are dancing to British and French tunes.

Well, Mickey Mouse is already officially in the public domain in quite a number of countries, for example in Russia, and Disney's chance to win a court case there is almost nil. I am not sure about all the works of Robert E. Howard, but I think that they are now also in the public domain in many countries. It depends on when a country ratified the Berne Convention and whether it is applied retroactively to titles which had become public domain before the con- vention was signed - in some legal systems the view is that "once public domain, always public domain".

If I remember it right, Esrolia was ruled by Trolls for most of its history, until the time of the first Pharaoh. Therefore I would tend to describe it as a somewhat ar- chaic culture with lots of Trollish cultural influences, not as a very highly civilized society like that of the Egyptians or Minoans - but this is of course a matter of taste.

I would not consider this as absolutely impossible, but at least as extremely difficult, because the Nephilim rules use a very specific terminology. Just try to imagine the rules without all of the obvious Nephilim terms like "Ka" or "Si- mulacrum", because the use of any such rather unique terms could be seen as a theft of intellectual property. If you want to stay on the legally safe si- de, the best you could get is a set of rules which is remotely similar to Nephi- lim, but not a real conversion which is a recognizable Nephilim clone - in the case of Nephilim the rules terminology and the game's "fluff" are too closely intertwined to separate them without a loss of content.

Thank you both very much for the info.

Only some very minor changes ...

Rust is back again - greetings from the mountains.

Yep, that was my search result, too. There currently seems to be none in Sonthofen itself, except perhaps at the youth center, although there are some in neighbouring towns. It would probably be easier to fast talk some relative of Mylady (her family lives there) into letting me at his or her PC, but I am not yet sure that this will work.

I have, but I am not yet convinced that Sonthofen has an Internet Cafe ...

Yes, indeed. One reason why I like BRP is that even powerful characters still feel "heroic" in the sense that they take a very real risk to achieve something, while in D&D and simi- lar more cinematic games a high level character after a while begins to feel more like a schoolyard bully who considers himself a tough guy but actually picks only fights he can hardly lose. This kind of script immunity may feel nice for a while, but for me it tends to become shallow rather soon, I cannot really appreciate a success which was gained with- out taking a serious risk of failure - to me this is like bungee jumping, maybe an interes- ting experience once or twice, but ultimately only a fake adventure.

As mentioned elsewhere, in a few days I will move from Augsburg to Sonthofen, Germany's southernmost town (see below). Thanks to my somewhat inefficient Internet provider I will be without Internet access until at least November 19th. So, if I do not react to any posts or PMs until the end of November, please blame it on my lazy Internet provider.

Sorry, but an attempt to translate 30+ pages of setting and game stats into English and the English version of the Call of Cthulhu ru- les would seem too much like work instead of hobby ...

Thank you very much for these informations. They fit in very well with my concept of the setting. Although I have changed the name of the country and much of its history and geography, because I wanted to make it diffi- cult for the players to use the Internet or the local library to look up useful informations, my San Juan de Pipil is still very close in "character and feeling" to what I could find out about the real world El Salvador. The main differences are that the population is much smaller, because there never was much immigration of Europeans, and that the historical massacres of Indios never took place, so that the huge majority of the inhabitants are still Indios who kept most of their cultures and traditions alive, related to the Aztec culture in the west and the Maya cul- ture in the east (and tribal conflict along the river separating their settlement regions). Since there are two volcanoes in my fictional country, in the western part of the coun- try where the Aztec-like Tayot live, a remote village where foreigners might end up as sacrifices to a volcano god or spirit is a welcome addition ... As for publishing the setting, if I should decide to do that, it would almost certainly be in German.

My settings usually have a title melody, and I think for this setting this piece could fit quite well:

By the way, this is what my fictional replacement for El Salvador, named San Juan de Pipil, looks like, and its flag, the Central American colours with a Feathered Snake:

Thank you for some more ideas to play with.

Thank you very much, I will try to get it from the library.

Looking at my third adventure outline for this setting, it really has a bit of a Wild West feel. This one will be about the consequences of a guerilla war in neighbouring Guatemala, with refugees as well as guerilleros and government soldiers in pursuit of the guerilleros crossing the badly marked border and causing lots of problems: The refugees need food and shelter and medical treat- ment, the guerilleros steal from the locals or attempt to press them into the service of their revolution, the soldiers arrest innocent locals as sus- pected supporters of the guerilleros, smugglers and other criminals use the situation for their business - you get the picture. The army can protect the major settlements along the border, but some- one has to look after the inhabitants of the small villages in the jungle, to convince or force the guerilleros and the foreign troops to return across the border, and to prevent the criminals from making a bad situation even worse. Obviously another job for the government's best troubleshooters, the player characters, probably supported by the local "Voluntarios", the country's rural Indio militia. Of course, there are still some remnants of the ancient Indio cult which the characters destroyed during the setting's first adventure in the area, and these people would welcome an opportunity to take revenge, and it is quite possible that some of the refugees brought with them an epidemic of a nasty tropical disease - to name just two of the many possible com- plications on my list ...

Exactly, such complications are what I intend to use to make this adventure a true (non-Mythos) nightmare - thank you for some additional ideas to work with. One major complication not yet mentioned will be the church, with Franciscan monks of Indio descent quite willing to become martyrs of their peoples' cause and a bishop who tends to back the rich land owners' side (he knows where the donations come from), but will not hesitate to smite each and every one who dares to aim a gun at a monk, Indio or not. By the way, I have now "sanitized" the setting, which happens to almost all of my settings of that kind - there is no more Mythos left, the ancient cults are mysterious and frightening enough without any Mythos creatures involved, and the idea with the Chthonians and the earthquakes and volcanoes has been de- leted after all my ideas for the details of that adventure felt far more ridiculous than horrific. Now earthquake and volcano remain, probably as the background for a rescue mission, but the Chthonians retreated to Arkham.

The Hollow Earth Expedition roleplaying game contains lots of interesting ideas for a Hollow Earth campaign, although the focus is more on pulp action than on Cthulhoid horror. Still, if you could get a copy, preferably plus the "Mysteries of the Hollow Earth" supplement, you could save a lot of time and effort by using the locations and organizations described there. http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=Hollow+Earth+Expedition&quicksearch=1&search_filter=&filters=&search_free=&search_in_description=1&search_in_author=1&search_in_artist=1&x=8&y=6

Thank you very much, I will take a look at it. Right now it seems the most difficult adventure I am working on for this setting will have no Mythos connection at all. The background is the country's recent land reform, a decision by the liberal go- vernment to return all the land owned but not used by the rich land owners of Spanish descent to the Indio communities which originally owned the land. As a result the country's richest and most influential land owner has dug in on his ranch with his extended family, friends and loyal retainers and has vowed to shoot any Indio who dares to step onto his expropriated land. The Indios reac- ted by threatening to storm the ranch and kill everyone there in retaliation for any Indio wounded or killed on their ancestral land. Both sides are convinced that they are right, armed to the teeth and willing to shed blood, and the tense situation is very likely to turn into the beginning of a civil war. The government has no idea what to do, mostly because its members are not sure whether they can trust the army under these circumstances and fear that sending in the troops would only escalate the situation one way or the other. Instead of the soldiers the government therefore sends its trusted troubleshoo- ters, the characters. Of course, common sense and wise words will lead nowhere, and the fanatics of both sides want the characters killed in a way which puts the blame on the other side ...