rust

If you wanted a more fantasy edge to your island you could have your bats have become the bizarre night stalkers from the After Man book by Dougal Dixon

Thank you, a very nice idea.

The settlers will be in for quite a shock when they discover what is killing their goats, and since

bats usually prefer caves, there is an opportunity for a very special kind of "dungeon crawl" ...

You forget all the Chinese left there by the sinking of one of Zheng He's ships

I doubt that he would have left them behind, it seems he cared quite well for his crews.

However, Chinese traders should indeed be a part of the setting. I am not sure how far or

how often they travelled the real world's Indian Ocean, apart from the Treasure Fleet, but

in an alternate earth setting Chinese junks en route to Arabia may well be normal - they

had all the necessary technology and skills, just not the Emperor's permission, if I remem-

ber it right.

A few days ago I was looking at a map of the Indian Ocean, and there was this island, Sokotra.

Almost desert, 80 km long, 25 km wide, mostly plains, but with a mountain 1,500 m high, lots

of caves, a very unusual vegetation, bats as the only native mammals - a very strange and ex-

tremely remote place.

Remote, but in a fascinating location. To the south west is the Swahili Coast, to the west is Ara-

bia with the ports of Aden and Muscat, to the north west is Persia, to the north east and east is

India, and to the south east are the Maldives. Lots of different, fascinating cultures, just close

enough to visit, but still far enough to be no immediate threat for the island's inhabitants.

Sokotra could be perfect for an alternate earth setting. Historically the island was inhabited by

Christian Arabs (must have surprised the first European visitors somewhat), but for a possible

alternate earth setting I would not hesitate to remove the natives and turn Sokotra into an un-

inhabited island, with perhaps only some ruins left by the previous inhabitants. Well, there could

also be the occasional pirate crew visiting the island for fresh water ...

The setting's main ingredient could be European settlers, either intentional colonists like the Pu-

ritans of the Mayflower, or unintentional ones like the mutineers of the Bounty who settled Pit-

cairn Island. They would have to explore the island, start their settlement there, and finally to

contact their various neighbours (the pirates would contact them ...) to trade with them for the

goods their new home does not offer to them.

The best time period for a setting of this kind would probably be around 1600, when ships from

Europe could reach the region, but the Europeans did not yet control the entire region - a few

Dutch, English and Portuguese outposts would add some more colour and opportunities for di-

plomacy to the setting. The ships could be European caravels and carracks and native dhows,

the weapons would be musket and rapier - the usual swashbuckling outfits.

The players could start with a ship and crew, a few dozen settlers, some money to buy what

they consider necessary to build their small colony, and a convincing reason to leave Europe be-

hind and search for a new home. Perhaps they did hear rumours of a remote island inhabited

by friendly Christians ...

Well, this is where I am right now. I am not yet sure whether to write this setting, but the basic

idea seems interesting to me.

Comments and ideas are most welcome.

There is ony one licensed science fiction setting I would really jump at without hesitation,

because it would be truly perfect for my kind of roleplaying:

Mars Trilogy - Kim Stanley Robinson

Yet it never really put together a 'classic' sci-fi setting, that sticks in gamer memory. Why is this?

I would call it a string of very bad luck. There have been several attempts, including Ringworld,

Other Suns and - for the post-apocalyptic genre - The Morrow Project, all using the BRP system,

but all not exactly commercial successes, for widely different reasons.

The Harn market is probably largely made up of die-hard fans, and as fans they collect Harn stuff.

I understand this, and the quality of the content is usually excellent, but the price makes it very

hard to find new players for the game.

You might be better off just using Harn Prices for everything rather than mixing the two, or else you will have some minor problems with the differences in swords, armor and other stuff.

Thank you very much.

I have come to the same conclusion, to use the Harn prices whenever possible and the RQ II

prices only as a guide when Harn does not provide a price for something, which is quite rare.

Germany needs an RPG history lesson! "When I worra lad, and this site was just all fields, there were only D&D and RQ and Traveller."

Ah, well, I do not really want to stress the point that I am about 30 years older than most of

the other users of most of the German forums I visit ...

Do these indie gamers consider D&D an old fashioned game too?

Not all of them, as RosenMcStern explained.

In fact, we also have a second, weaker trend towards "old school" games ("the true roots of

roleplaying ..."), where games like the older versions of D&D, Tunnels & Trolls and similar new

games like for example Labyrinth Lord are considered the only good roleplaying games in the

world - pure hack & slay dungeon bashing, mostly.

Ironically most of these roleplayers are not interested in BRP because they see it as "not old

school enough" ...

Absolutely. I've wanted to get in to Harn for the longest time. The buy in is too steep.

Indeed. I was lucky to get the German editions of Harnmaster and Harnworld, which were sold

at normal prices, but everything published in English is truly expensive.

It's quite good, but as lots of stuff for Harn it's a fairly complex simulation.

Thank you for the link.

I have no problems with the complexity, only with the price range of the Harn line - almost

20 Euros for a PDF of 86 pages means this one will have to wait a couple of weeks until my

roleplaying budget has recovered.

You might want to check out HarnManor. It contains rules for running fiefs (and the price list from HarnMaster works like a charm with it...).

Thank you, I will take a look at it.

For one of my settings I would like to use both the material on ruling a noble fief from the up-

coming RQ II Empires and the very detailed price list from Harnworld.

As far as I can see, a silver piece from Runequest II and a penny from Harnworld are about

equivalent in value, which should make it possible to use both of them as the same currency,

with the prices adapted somewhat to better fit the setting.

However, I tend to fumble my mathematics rolls, and currencies are something I do not really

understand ...

So, is there perhaps some major problem that I failed to recognize ?

Thank you for your advice.

Over here BRP is still very much a niche game for a small minority of roleplayers, although it

seems this minority is very slowly growing, thanks both to our Call of Cthulhu community that

knows and likes the system and to the good new material now available. I have no doubt that

it would grow faster if all of the material were easily available from other sources than Chao-

sium, too.

As for the future, I think much will depend on the general development of the roleplaying sce-

ne. BRP is really not well supported when it comes to "public relations", so whenever a new

game is published with lots of support and hype it draws the attention away from BRP. For ex-

ample, last year Savage Worlds was the big fashion, and the discussion about it cluttered eve-

ry forum and made it very difficult to raise interest in BRP.

Moreover, at least over here there is still a trend towards very rules light games, preferably

ones with new "indie" features. Sooner or later this trend will end, but until then BRP is out of

the current mainstream, considered by too many roleplayers as "old fashioned".

I am working on some revisions and expansions, and hopefully will finish before the end of the year.

I have a setting "on ice", waiting for the material from your monograph ...

How about an apothecary? A place where the herbs for D'Artagnan's mother balm could be bought among other things.

Thank you, I added it.

For example: 0/14 Points means what?

This is probably a Runequest format, AP (Armour Points) / HP (Hit Points).

a1 books in the USA offers Crusaders of the Amber Coast as new books on the German Amazon website,

and they are even a bit less expensive than Amazon itself.

I think this is their US website:

http://www.a1books.com/CRUSADERS-AMBER-COAST-RPG/1907204636/catalog

I will gladly translate for you.

Thank you very much for your offer.

However, I think I would end up with words I do not really understand and do

not know how to pronounce correctly, and they would be even more "alien" for

the players, who would play characters who have this language as their mother

tongue.

As much as I would like to use the right language for this setting, I am afraid

that using it badly and without even a minimal knowledge of it would damage

the "feel" of the game, and that some French is about as far as I can go with

a foreign language for this setting.

Details on the prison/s would be good.

Thank you, a good idea.

You may want to use Provençal rather than French if you're modelling it on Avignon: Santa Magdalena, Sant Francesc, Palais Bauç.

I would like to do it, but my French is very bad (enough to drive a Spanish cow mad ...) and my

Provencal nonexistent. So, in order to stay at least somewhat consistent, I probably have to use

French, because I do not understand enough French to research all the Provencal words that I

would need for the setting - at least I was unable to find any good English or German sources

for Provencal words.

Very cool map. What program did you use to create it, Rust?

I use Paint.NET, it is free and not as complicated as Gimp and similar programs:

http://www.getpaint.net/

By the way, this is a first sketch of the city's plan.

The city, called Avennio, is (very losely) based on an alternate history of Avignon and the sur-

rounding area, one where the city remained a part of the Holy Roman Empire and was not

sold to the Popes.

Therefore it is now an Imperial Free City as an enclave in southern France, which should pro-

vide a lot of opportunities for adventures aimed at keeping the city independent and preven-

ting its conquest by France - quite challenging, because the war between France and the Habs-

burg dynasty in the Empire and Spain is already on the horizon in 1625 when the campaign will

start ...

Thank you all very much, a lot of excellent ideas.

You might try looking at foreigners' comments about French cities to try to capture what was "notably French" in them.

I will do that, it should not be difficult to find something by, for example, some German noble

visiting Paris. In fact, I think there is even something in Grimmelshausen's novel Simplicissimus

from and about the time of the Thirty Years War.

Having the sewers mapped out might be good.

A good point, the sewers could indeed become important.

The 17th Century was very much a time of transition. ...

Thank you very much for this overview.

...but I'd include taverns/meeting-places (w/ their political bent) ...

This is something I did not think of, but you are of course right. Taverns were meeting places

of political "factions", and therefore had a political bent.

Put in travellers' descriptions for arrival.

A very good idea, thank you for it.

As for the system, I am not yet sure whether I will use Flashing Blades or convert it to either

BRP or Hollow Earth Expedition - the latter would be easier, and the setting is similar enough

to pulp to use that system. On the other hand, Flashing Blades has so many excellent ideas

that might get lost in a conversion ...

I think I will complete a "generic" version of the setting and a few very short adventures and

then test which system covers the intended "feel" of the setting best.

I am currently designing a 17th century French city for a swashbuckling setting based upon the

Flashing Blades RPG by Fantasy Games Unlimited.

Since this city will be the focus of the setting, I would like to describe it in some detail, including

the important buildings (city hall, cathedral, guards barracks, etc.), the important organizations

(church, guilds, etc.) and the influential personalities, as well as the villages of the surrounding

area ruled by the city.

In short, it will be a typical roleplaying game city description. However, it may well be that this

kind of description could be improved, and therefore I would very much like to know whether

there are any elements of such descriptions that normally tend to be neglected.

In other words: Is there anything you usually miss in such descriptions, and which I should in-

clude in my little project ?

Thank you.