rust

Competition is good, but those competitors are a real nuisance ...

For my purposes the BGB was almost perfect. I have been using a modified Call of Cthulhu system for a very long time, and for me the BGB was a huge collec- tion of useful bits and pieces I could add to my system, more a box full of inter- esting material for the improvement of my system than a system on its own.

Just go ahead and start the discussion.

You should try the German DSA roleplaying game, there it seems that each pebble along the road has a name and an (implausible) history ...

Seconded, thirded and ... ah ... fourthed ?

Yes, of course. I would change neither the setting nor the rules of the game, I only help them to deal with the setting and the rules where it is necessary. But I think we should end this here, we are really off topic.

Yes, I did, for a couple of years, until we moved in 2007. Yes, they did. Where she finished school it was possible to choose the subjects for the final exam, and she did of course not choose mathematics or physics. This would not have made reading any easier for her. She did not improve her mathematical skill and hardly improve her reading skill, but meanwhile her problem is recognized as a medical problem (it is now on the World Health Organization's list as diagnosis F83.1), so the people around her accept that she cannot overcome this, no matter how hard she would try. Right, but at the same time I am well aware that there are people who cannot follow the mathematics and physics, and that asking them to do this is like as- king a blind person to paint in colours - it just is not possible for them. The only remaining choice is whether I want to play with such persons, and if there are no other problems, I do.

Forgotten Realms, Sembia. The authors had left this nation undescribed as a kind of playground for the referee and had promised that they would never publish any description of Sembia. Young and stupid as I was, I spent months to design "my" Sembia. Just when I had completed it and wanted to introduce it into the cam- paign, a player came to me with the latest edition of the Forgotten Realms - with a detailed description of Sembia, of course.

Yes, indeed, no more unnerving new supplements with sudden implausible chan- ges which ruin the setting ...

I also do not understand it, but nevertheless I hear it all the time whenever a game gets out of print. In my view it is a silly idea, for the reasons you mentio- ned, but I have given up to try to fight this windmill.

But this is exactly the problem I see, because I am aware of many Glorantha fans here, but not of many (ex-)MRQ II fans. For example, using the Search of my ho- me forum, I find a number of posts where Glorantha has been mentioned, but on- ly one post where MRQII has been mentioned, the Burg Stahleck program of this year. I really do not want to be a spoilsport, and I really wish Legend all the best, but if what I hear is anywhere close to representative (which may or may not be the case), Legend is very far from being a guaranteed success. Over here, that is.

Sorry, I forgot to add the usual "over here". Here Runequest with the Glorantha setting was still a rather well known brand, which now disappears from the shelves and is replaced by Legend, which is un- known and for most roleplayers just another generic fantasy system in a market where there are already dozens of that kind, most of which come and go rather quickly. For those who liked the Glorantha setting, the game is now dead, and for those looking for a generic fantasy system it is just one of already too many options, and it will be very difficult to convince them that it is good enough to spend money on an English language game when there are so many in German. From my point of view, and from what I hear over here, divorcing the system from the well known setting and changing its well known name into an unknown one eliminated the one real advantage, brand recognition, it had over other sys- tems available over here. Add to this the fact that Mongoose has a very bad re- putation over here, whether deserved or not, and the start for Legend will be a very difficult one.

No, not really, in fact MRQII has been welcomed and treated very friendly by most - but the publisher, Mongoose, is considered as having a rather tarnished reputation, and his decision to basically kill MRQII by removing all Glorantha con- nections and turning it into a generic fantasy system was not exactly applauded.

Yes, indeed. Many years ago I worked as a teacher's assistant at a school for children with learning problems, most of them mentally handicapped. Our "night- mare case" was a girl with both dyslexia and dyscalculia - and an IQ of 170+. She was a psychological wreck, because until then her teachers up to the 7th grade had treated her as either simply too lazy to learn or plain stupid, and the latter was the reason why she was sent to us, a psychologist had used an IQ test which was based upon reading and numbering skills, and came to the result that her IQ was below 60 - mentally handicapped. Since she understandably took quite a while to open up, it took us months to realize that she was a lot more intelligent than that psychologist, and to hand her over to the right school for her, ironically one for highly talented children. She is the one who is now the scientist I mentioned above. Oops, sorry for a long off topic tale ...

Apart from that, not keeping an eye on what the third party publishers are doing with the license ("our property") would seem rather ... unwise.

I know several people with Dyscalculia, small wonder since they make up approxi- mately 5 % of the population, 1 in 20. They usually try to hide this and succeed, because it is easier than with illiteracy. One of those I know is a scientist, an ex- pert on Germanic languages ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia

And put the blame on you, see Planet Mongoose, 24/05/11:

Yes, a very nice system, I borrowed it for various settings, including science fic- tion. I would still like to use it, but the players insist that they can roleplay their characters with fewer bookkeeping (e.g. only a note "cowardly, fears elephants" on the character sheet), and I have to admit that these players really can do it.

Hmmm ... "Matthew Sprange - I am Legend" could be a good line for Mongoose's marketing ...

I hope you are not really trying to tell me that you like that crappy, shoddy, un- imaginative, bug-ridden and ... oh, wait a moment, this is the BRP forum ...

It could still be acceptable for someone who publishes by print on demand.

Or they would discuss to replace the light, fast 5.56x45mm NATO (4 g, 940 m/s) with the heavier, slower 6.8mm Remington SPC (7.45 g, 785 m/s), as they actu- ally do, and many special forces units already did. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6.8_SPC

I really would like to have these, but it is not difficult at all to use the vehicle and starship rules of other games with BRP. At least for my preferred historical settings they do not make much sense. I have no problem with this, but combat is rare anyway in my campaigns. Not completely, see Stunning as a temporary non-lethal damage. Yes, indeed, and I really wish there were different values for mass and volume. Yes, a good system for Fatigue would be nice. All in all, in my view BRP does quite well as a generic system which is aimed more at fantasy and historical settings than at science fiction, at least as well as the competing generic systems. And, again in my view, it has the advantage that it is quite easy to modify the rules, add house rules, or use elements of other ga- mes with BRP. It is a toolbox, there are some less than functional tools, and some tools are missing, but I have not yet seen a toolbox which would be better for my purposes.

The problem I see with this approach is that the players actually are in no trouble at all, they can just shrug and pretend that their characters are never afraid or shocked, no matter what they have to face. Think of Beowulf. When he and his chosen warriors faced the dragon, all but Wiglaf ran and left their king to his fa- te. If these chosen warriors had been player characters in a system without any fear mechanism, this part of the story would have to be rewritten, our fearless heroes would have fought bravely for their king.

They would of course say so and offer an immediate and full refund ...