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Thank you very much indeed, problem solved.

I seem to have a problem to determine the number of passengers and / or livestock a sailing ship can transport. Arms & Equipment for RQ II mentions the cargo capacity in tons for various types of ships, but I was unable to find any rule for the conversion of cargo tons into space required by passengers or animals, and over on the Mongoose forum the question remains unanswered. BRP gives a galleon of 35 meters length the ability to carry 8+ passengers and 80 SIZ of cargo, which is simply ridiculous when a potted plant is classified as 2 - 5 SIZ . Just imagine the num- bers of big galleons that would be required to carry the tiny Mayflower's ca. 100 passengers + equipment, or a ship of the Spanish treasure fleet overloaded with 45 potted plants. In the absence of any rule or better idea I think I will use the Harnmaster rule that a passenger requires at least 1 ton and a horse or similar animal requires 3 tons, but any suggestions would be most welcome. Thank you.

You could take a look at how psionics and religion are treated in the Babylon 5 universe, in my view this approach is far more interesting and plausible as the ones used in Star Trek and Star Wars: Different people of different societies hold different views, there is no monolithic picture, only as much diversity as we have here in our world.

Most has already been said. What I would like to add is that a "bottom up" approach to the design of your setting may work better than a "top down" approach. Start small, with only those elements you want to include that do fit together well and keep the setting consistent and free of contradictions. Then expand the setting from there, adding other elements over time, when and where they can be introduced without creating implausibilities or other problems. This way the setting will be growing in a more organic way, and you can avoid many of the difficulties that are part of an attempt to create the "big picture" in one go, especially if the various elements of that big picture are as diverse as you intend them to be.

You are aware that to change the combat system this way also requires a new system for first aid, medicine, healing spells, healing potions and all that ?

Welcome to the forum, Alex.

Well, at least it does not seem completely impossible, I hope. There is the "witchhunt problem", but from what I have found this would not necessarily be the case (Wikipedia): So, in 1240 people did not have to believe in witches and the necessity to destroy them, although many doubtless did. They could at least pretend to consider witchcraft as superstitious nonsen- se that does no harm, except to the poor silly pagans who did not know better - and to anger them by persecuting their "witches" would not be worth the trouble and not help to turn them into Christians ...

Thank you for the tip, I have it.

After reading BRP Witchcraft, I have now added "Ragana" ("baltic witch") to the setting's list of professions. It seems this profession fits my idea of "subtle magic" quite well, and the "Old Religion" back- ground from the supplement does also. Moreover, this type of "wise woman" could serve as the colony's accepted healer and midwife, tolerated even by the Christian knights and priests because there is no one else with comparable knowledge and skills on Thule. The Christians would just pretend to look the other way when the Ragana performs pagan rituals at one of the few small stands of trees near the settlement, both because she is most useful for the en- tire colony and to avoid a serious conflict with the still at least partially pagan Baltic settlers.

Thank you very much for the links, Agentorange and Trifletraxor.

Thank you very much for the information. It seems I will have to re-arrange some adventures and to put the encounter with the natives of Thule first, because the knights and peasants of the colony probably have no idea of harpoons, and will need to learn the concept from the natives.

I just downloaded BRP Witchcraft, looking for some ideas for my Thule setting, and got more than I had hoped for - your supplement will help me to add a lot more colour and detail to the setting, and the Old Religion approach fits perfectly well. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, it is definitely worth a closer look.

It seems to me that the monks - perhaps also the less often mentioned nuns - of the Celtic tra- dition had a lot more freedom to move around and to make their own decisions than the monks and nuns of the Roman tradition, so I could well imagine a monk or nun as a player character - after all, someone has to deal in a professional way with demons, devils and all that other na- sty stuff.

The same with me, which is why in my list above Taliesin is in bold letters, and Arthur is not.

Happy Birthday, and thank you for a lot of very good material.

Indeed, some farming should be possible, although a Norwegian source from the 13th century reports that only the richest settlers could afford to grow crops, while most of the Greenlanders did not even know what bread was (an obvious exaggeration, because archaeologists found a number of handmills). As for hunting, the archaeologists claim that about 60 % of the meat used by the Greenlanders came from hunting (45 % seal, 10 % caribou, 5 % other animals) and 40 % from herding. So, while hunting surely was not the only source of food, it seems to have been a very important one. But my real interest in hunting is of course that it is suitable for a number of small adventures, both for the hunting itself and for the events that can be connected with it (e.g. encounters with natives, discoveries of resources, etc.), while farming, fishing and herding are much less play- able.

Bookkeeping Day ... The Thule colony will need about five years to become able to sustain itself, and until then the order will have paid approximately 70,000 d (silver pennies) for livestock, equipment, materials, provisions and so on. This does not include wages, because knights of the order have that vow of poverty and do not get paid, but a nice sum put aside for ... ah ... non-public financial contri- butions to the personal economies of certain influential officials. These 70,000 d are just the basic expected expenses, whatever the characters or NPCs decide to buy beyond that will have to be added. There is some money left for such additional purcha- ses, the order will still have about 35,000 d in precious metals and gems after the basics have been paid for. This may seem a lot of money, but in fact it is approximately 140 d per colonist, while a horse costs 360 d (without sea transport) and a sword 500 d. The nice part is, when the Teutonic Order takes over the order's property in 1246, they will dis- cover that the order's chests are empty and its holdings have lost everything that could be use- ful on Thule and could be transported there - including craftsmen and the most skilled married peasants. While this will enable the Thule colony to sustain itself, the Teutonic Order will have to invest a lot of money to rebuild its new holdings to the point where they will again create any profit. I suspect this will be sufficient to turn the Teutonic Order into the Thule colony's worst enemy on the continent, with good opportunities for sideline adventures whenever the characters visit Eu- rope for diplomacy or trade.

Unfortunately it will take quite a while before I will see what the characters will come up with to deal with the problem. The campaign will not start before late summer, and with a first ad- venture in the game year 1240 AD and about two adventures per game year the loss of the ship in the game year 1249 AD is still distant future ...

You know, there is this small tribe of primitive arctic hunters the last surviving women among the colonists fled to and married into, and ... Well, at least the other background event rolls were a little more kind to the characters. In 1244 the characters will get an opportunity to solve the mystery of the disappeared Norse settlers during a voyage to the Forest Coast, where a little successful diplomacy could convin- ce some of the native Naskapi to lead the characters to the ruins of the last Norse settlement. The Pope will dissolve the Pruthenic Order in 1246 and give all of its remaining property to the Teutonic Order, but Grand Master Wenzel von Taube and his few remaining followers will es- cape with the rest of the order's treasure to Norway and wait for the colony's ship there, while the majority of the order's knights will decide to stay in Prussia and become Teutonic Knights. Otherwise nothing spectacular, only minor events - no plague, no invasion, no natural desaster. And if the characters manage to convice the King of Norway or the Hanseatic League in 1246 to sign a treaty with the colony and to send one trade ship per year from Bergen via Iceland to Thule, the loss of the colony's ship in 1249 will at least become no "total colony kill".

Ah, I am a most cruel taskmaster ...

Just add the people you want to include, and delete the ones you do not want.

I think familiarity could be a reason. Most of the people who will use the supplement will know BRP, only few of them will know Stormbringer. Those who do not know Stormbringer would have to "translate" the skills into their BRP equivalents, which is some effort and can be confusing if one does not know the skill defini- tions of Stormbringer: Is Leadership the same as Command, which Characteristic does it use, what is the Base Chance ... ?

This is my usual approach, too. However, on Thule farming is hardly possible because of the climate, so herding, fishing and hunting remain as the only reliable sources of food (and trade goods) and the most important everyday activities of the colonists. Therefore I would like to make it an important part of the characters' activities, too, and since herding and fishing do not offer that many adventuring opportunities, and the characters will be among the few "professional weapon users" of the colony, it will be hunting for them. I intend to start with some detailed hunting expeditions, allowing the characters to develop the new hunting methods required to hunt the local animals, then to move to the simplified system for a while, and finally to treat hunting as a background event once the characters have deve- loped some routine. Thank you very much for a good idea. Together with notes on terrain, region and season to modify the difficulty and give an idea of what can be hunted, this is just the simplified system I need: The players still have to make de- cisions for their characters, and there is the opportunity for events to make things a bit more interesting ("You have overhunted that part of the coast, the seals have moved ..."), but the ac- tual hunting does not take much time, just a single die roll.

Oops, while rolling for the background events of the colony my dice just sank the colony's only seagoing ship, killing eleven of the sailors, just nine years after the colony was founded. I hope the characters have managed to convince someone to establish a sea route to Thule un- til then, because otherwise the colony will have a serious problem: To get the wood required to build a new ship, they would need a ship for a woodcutting trip to the Forest Coast ... On the other hand, having the colonists waiting and hoping for someone to visit and help them could make for an interesting situation, with the stores of vital imports shrinking, tensions con- cerning the distribution of what is left rising, and all that.