rust

Mongoose did not bother to inform the sublicensors that they were going to rename/repackage everything. There are sublicensors with warehouses full of books with a logo that will soon be unusable.

It is not my habit to defend Mongoose, but I am not sure whether there really

was a choice, because announcing the end of Runequest before the agreement

with Greg Stafford was finalized would also have been a questionable and poten-

tially risky decision.

I am not surprised, for Mongoose the Runequest line turned out to be a kind of

black hole that made lots of money disappear. I am just not yet convinced that

Wayfarer will do much better, there are many excellent competing fantasy sys-

tems out there, and at least in my view Wayfarer does not yet have a setting

that could attract a sufficient market share to the new game. In the end I would

probably be quite surprised if Wayfarer would survive for much longer than the

Runequest line did.

EDIT: It seems this: Grimm, Jacob (James Steven Stallybrass Trans.) (2004). Teutonic Mythology: Translated from the Fourth Edition with Notes and Appendix by James Stallybrass. Volume III. Dover Publications. ISBN 0486435482 book would be a good choice for looking into these stories, its the only one in English I found.

Sorry, no. Grimm mentions the Valravn only in a single sentence in a paragraph

about the mythology of ravens, where he claims that it has basically the same

mythological role as a troll. Otherwise there is no useful information.

The few German sources I am aware of share the opinion that the Valravn is a

very late (18th/19th Century) relative of Odin's intelligent raven Huginn, who ate

the corpses of slain warriors, and who somehow got mixed up with were creatu-

res into a raven-wolf.

Edit.:

Thinking of it, Odin had two ravens and two wolves as companions, so the combi-

nation of raven and (were) wolf could indeed have such a mythological background

- of course pure speculation.

Edit. 2:

Interestingly the raven is also called "wolf-bird", there are quite a number of such

references to be found via Google. Here is an interesting site about the ravens, it

also mentions the "wolf-bird" thing:

http://www.druidry.org/obod/lore/animal/raven.html

Nice.

My own way of confusing players with ancient texts is to use normal texts, but

to replace some of the common words and phrases with archaic ones from Me-

dieval German, with a meaning which is either unknown today, or has changed

a lot over the centuries. As a result the text usually seems to make perfect sen-

se, it is just not entirely clear what that sense is. As an example, in modern Ger-

man a "Schalk" is a witty person who likes to tell jokes, while in Medieval German

a "Schalk" was a dangerous criminal.

Unfortunately not. The way we handled it the character could increase any of

the "other" skills as much as he liked, provided he found a teacher and had the

money and time for the learning.

Specifically give each culture a list of at least five skills, and let players choose say two or three from the list to add 20% to.

Yep, the more complex the culture is, the more choices the player characters

should have. By the way, cultural skills can also be used for the various profes-

sional specialities, for example a Craftsman of the Asor mentioned above could

get a cultural skill bonus of 20 % for Art (Ivory Carving), increasing his income

and making the otherwise "fluff" skill more useful for the character.

For my settings I usually give each of the cultures two cultural skills with a free

bonus of 20 % each, for example the Asor as arctic hunters get 20 % each for

either Drive (Dog Sled) or Pilot (Kayak) and for Throw (Harpoon). I try to con-

nect the use of such cultural skills to equipment or situations typical for the cul-

ture, in order to give the culture some individual "colour".

You can always try one of the free online translation programs ...

By the way, you should perhaps have asked whether someone here can read Danish,

as there is at least a chance that a Norwegian or Swede might give it a try. But to

speak Danish is impossible for foreigners, even Danes admit that it is more like a

severe throat infection than a pronounciation of words.

I've always thought that the Minoans/Myceneans/Anatolians were connected is a huge pan-culture - after all, they traded with each other for years and had religious and cultural contacts.

Not quite, the Minoans and some of the people of the Anatolian coast had very

old high cultures, while the Mycenaeans and some of the Indoeuropean newco-

mers on the Anatolian coast remained true barbarians for a couple of centuries.

These cultures only began to merge after the desaster which almost destroyed

the Minoan culture, most probably the explosion of the Santorini volcanoe, which

made it possible for the Mycenaeans to occupy Crete and take over the previ-

ously Minoan sea trade routes. Until then the Minoan culture had more contacts

and similarity with the cultures of Egypt and Phoenicia.

While I have no problem with any special resources used before a roll to improve

the chance of a success, such resources used after the roll to enable a re-roll or

any other change of the result are in my experience anti-immersion tools which

take much of the tension out of the game and harm the verisimilitude of the set-

ting's events: "You failed your Jump and fell into the canyon." - "No, I can make

it undone and try a second time." - imagine such a scene in a book or movie, far

too much like a silly cartoon for my taste.

An excellent supplement, congratulations.

I downloaded it to see whether I can find some informations and ideas for my

Bhotanta setting, a fictional version of Bhutan, and was very pleasantly surpri-

sed to find almost truckloads of most useful stuff.

There are a few typos, but only one jumped out at me, the Tibetan "Plateu" on

Map 2 on page 28.

I gave The Celestial Empire its well deserved 5 stars on DTRPG and wrote a ve-

ry short recommendation, hoping that this will help to spread the word.

By the way, if you are interested in a more modern, but very "Conanesque"

example of the genre, I would highly recommend Barbara Hambly's "Sunwolf"

novels, especially "The Ladies of Mandrygin". It has all the genre typical ideas

so excellently described by Seneschal, plus a dry sense of humour.

You could take a look at Warlords of Alexander in the forum's download section,

it is quite close to the time period.

The first twenty years of Torava's game time have passed, and things are going

well - almost too well. The main character, now Baron Richard Herriot, has rea-

ched a noble standing of about 120, the population mood is at about 300, and

the island's meanwhile six settlements have become almost luxurious, because

there was so much money for building projects and other improvements. The on-

ly problem are the many rivals and enemies Lord Richard made during his various

otherwise successful political missions to the royal court.

Fortunately Lord Richard will soon retire to his new manor on the Willowplain Ri-

ver, and his son Andrew will be knighted and take over the administration of To-

rava. Since he is young and inexperienced his skills are far less well developed,

and so the chance for interesting failures and fumbles increases. Of course I do

not hope that he will ruin Torava, but a little more tension and uncertainty after

the hugely lucky and successful reign of his father would be welcome.

Sorry, but I don't find it in the Downloads section.

Where is it ?

Look at the bottom of this page:

http://basicroleplaying.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=33&page=3

It seems that Conan BRP does exist, but to use it would require either an uncom-

mon language skill or a good translation program and a bit of work to make sense

of the program's results. Since Conan is not among my favourite genres, I never

tried to find out what exactly this Conan BRP is, but if you know someone who

understands the language ...:

http://smartfox.wordpress.com/conan-brp/

Edit.:

This is an example of the results of a free online translation program for the steps

1 and 2 of character creation:

STEP 1 it choose nation of form nation. Cultural bonuses are subordinated from choice

(election), that will be added for chosen attributes and abilities. Choice of (election of)

nation has influence (income) on professed by form religion also.

STEP 2 attributes by no means sex of form effect attributes choice (election) - choose ( not ).

It throw cases (together; times) 7 - + 6 2K6 and it record (write down) results. It allocate it

(them) according to personal preference for next following (step) attribute ( ) Strength STR,

( ) Constitution CON, ( ) Size SIZ, ( ) Intelligence INT, ( ) Power POW, ( ) Dexterity DEX and

( ) Appearance APP. You can transmit (reschedule) points among attributes 3 - including.

It can not be no of attributes greatest than 21.

While it seems possible to make sense of it and "translate the translation" into a

functioning system, it would be a lot more work than I would be willing to do.

I thought this was a fully-fledged product, not a monograph.

You are right, the PDF somehow slipped into the wrong place on my backup CD.

I usually wait a little while and watch the reactions here on this forum before I

decide to buy a monograph, and until now this has served me well, I did not buy

a single one which I would consider useless or bad.

My favourite ones ... this list would include (in alphabetical order):

The Green (BRP), Kingdom of the Blind (CoC), Modern Equipment Catalog (BRP),

Mysteries of Tibet (CoC), Outpost 19 (BRP), Secrets of Morocco (CoC) and

Witchcraft (BRP).

I very much liked the Cthulhu Rising material by John Ossoway, which was at the

core of one of my previous campaigns.

And I also very much like all of the historical supplements from Alephtar Games,

although supplements like BRP Rome are in my view no monographs.

The one monograph I bought, but never found a good use for, is First Book of

Things (CoC). It is certainly not bad, it just does not fit into my games.

I think I would just create two new skills, Seduction and Tumbling, and add them

to the skill list.

In my view both activities are different enough from the ones covered by the al-

ready existing skills that it would make sense to handle them as skills instead of

subsets of existing skills.

This would also ensure that the character remains special. For example, if Seduc-

tion would be treated as a special kind of use of the Persuade skill, every other

character with a high Persuade skill should be able to seduce just as well as the

"special" character.

Besides, if the player wants her character to have unusual abilities, the character

should pay for these abilities in full, and not use another skill's points to reduce

the cost of the special abilities. So, no use of "Persuade points" to make the un-

related skill Seduction easier to get.

Stage 2: The patient speaks with a voice nasillarde The plague violet is not dangerous, but its tenacity fact that it generally causes a wave of panic in the populations attacks.

Ah, yes - the population panics because the patient speaks in a nasal voice, a

completely understandable reaction ...

BRP does indeed have quite a few less clear parts, where decisions are left to

the referee because the rules are ambiguous. It sometimes shows that BRP is

more of a toolbox for the design of games than a single well defined game.

In the case of the major diseases it would not be difficult to introduce a little

variation by changing the times between the recovery rolls for the different dis-

eases, or by otherwise playing with the rolls. Just do what you think fits your

game best.

As I read it, you first determine with the resistance table whether the POT of

the disease overcomes the CON of the character, and if it does he is infected

and loses the first characteristic point, with the type of point lost depending

on the disease. The character then makes his usual recovery rolls, but each

time he fails his CON roll the severity of the disease increases by one step.

So, as I read it, there are no separate rolls to determine the severity of the

disease, it is determined through the failures of the normal recovery rolls.

My problem with a static defence is that it takes a lot of tension and uncertainty

out of the combat by making it far more predictable. Since I am definitely on the

simulationist side of gaming, I very much prefer a more realistic approach, where

even the best swordsman can misread his much weaker opponent's tactics (e.g.

fumble his parry) and can be killed by a mere beginner, because this is what oc-

casionally happened in the real world, too - and it gives even seasoned veterans

a reason to think twice before they start a fight.

But, well, this is just a matter of taste.

Yes, it is indeed quite similar to games like Civilization or Europa Universalis, only

more "zoomed in" to the personal level, with slightly more detail and much more

freedom. The main characters are BRP characters with full game stats, skill rolls

and character development, the setting has more details and options, and I can

add new elements whenever I consider it useful for the game.

Oh, and I can play with maps - this is the current map of the main settlement of

the colony, with lots of space for future improvements:

You know, those players and their strange ideas often get into the way of a re-

feree's innocent fun, and so I decided to create my own private little sandbox

for an undisturbed solo game now and then.

It started with a look at the map of the old AD&D Birthright game. There was this

island, Torova Temylatin, which we always wanted to explore and colonize, but

the campaign ran onto a real life rock and sank before we ever came close to it.

Well, better very late than never.

After a suitable location I needed the rules for such a solo game. Fortunately the

"Building Kingdoms" chapter of Runequest II Empires has such rules, and it was

easy to expand them with material from other sources, like the Harnmaster and

Pendragon games, to get what I wanted.

Since I did not like the Birthright background very much, I moved my island - now

renamed Torava - into another game universe, one where it is situated north of

Angilia, a low fantasy version of medieval Britain which was heavily influenced by

the "Merrie England" supplement for Runequest.

Finally I needed a "hero" to conquer and rule Torava, and for some unknown rea-

son my mind decided to come up with a knight named Sir Richard Herriot. With

him at the bow of a sailing ship, looking out for the land he is determined to ma-

ke his own, the game could start.

Meanwhile Sir Richard has become Lord Richard, Baron of Torava, and the two

settlements he founded, Herriot and Westport, are doing fine, although with only

a little more than 300 inhabitants they are still quite small and vulnerable (curse

those many raids thrown at them by the tables ... ).

The monks of the Monastery of Saint Botolph on the Tora provide the settlers

with a bit of education and culture and introduce new ways of growing crops and

breeding livestock, and a source of iron has been discovered in the Barrier Moun-

tains, where Lord Richard will found a third settlement aptly named Ironmine - as

soon as he has managed to pay off the huge loan he had to take to finance the

monastery.

Ah, there is so much to do. Roads have to be built, a fortified manor house made

of stone is a necessity, the children have to be sent somewhere for their noble

education, the raiding pirate scum has to be dealt with ... at about one year of

game time per real world week this can go on for quite a while.