rust

I remember an attempt by a German roleplaying game publisher to create a

"demonstration video" of a roleplaying game, showing an actual game as a

way to introduce new players to the game.

The team that made the video really tried hard, but their results were about

as interesting as watching grass grow or paint dry, despite miniatures, battle-

maps and all the "props" they could get.

Something similar in written form, without pictures and sound, would have an

excellent chance to turn out even less interesting ...

Hmmmm, not exact. The Livonian Knights were not from Livonia, but from Germany, like the Teutons.

As always when Germans were involved, it is even more complicated.

The Livonian Knights had both German and Danish members. When their order

suffered a devastating defeat in 1236 against the Lithuanians, the remnants

of the order became a part of the Teutonic Order by Papal order in 1237, but

both branches of the Teutonic Order continued their different traditions after

the unification.

It has to do with recognizing the possibility that some people might like BRP, if they only knew about it.

This is doubtless true, but at least over here this kind of potential is rather

small: Call of Cthulhu is among the most successful roleplaying games in Ger-

many, and there are not many roleplaying gamers who never played it, and

therefore have no idea of what BRP is like.

Edit.:

I have just tried to find some numbers, but it is difficult to find something re-

liable.

All that seems certain is that Call of Cthulhu is among the top three roleplay-

ing games in Germany, together with D&D and DSA (a German fantasy game).

I must say everything you release seems to step it up one more notch. :thumb:

Indeed. Congratulations, and I really hope that it will have the success that

it doubtless deserves. :thumb:

For the fictional Arabic Call of Cthulhu setting Merasan, which I am currently

working on (again ...), I think I will use something traditional, for example

these here, from "soft" to "powerful":

YouTube - música árabe (Tribal)

YouTube - azam ali innal malak

YouTube - DARBUKA PERCUSSION ARABIC ARABE INSTRUMENTAL IMPRESIONANTE!

.

Its far too easy to not remember that not everyone doesn't play one's favorite systems because they don't know it, but because what it brings to the table isn't what they want.

Indeed. No amount of "marketing" or "additional options", no matter how good,

could convince, for example, the Savage Worlds fans I know to turn to BRP,

what they expect and like is simply not what BRP can deliver while remaining

BRP.

I will upload the BRP Quick-Start Edition to the Archive of Fundus Ludi, Ger-

many's biggest roleplaying material collection, as soon as possible.

Or Chaosium could try a strategic marketing partnership with BRP (Bombar-

dier Recreational Products):

Bombardier Recreational Products - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I seem to remember a rather successful use of a chainmail bikini as cover art ...

"Don't be a stupid lemming - play BRP instead !" >:->

Yup indeedy. it was a good way of going on crusade without all that tedious travelling to the Holy Land.

True, but the climate and the lack of tourist attractions ...

Just in case someone wants to know a bit more:

Prussian Crusade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

By the way, the first real Runequest adventure I played was Griffin Mountain,

and it was also the first "sandbox type" roleplaying adventure I did ever see.

It made me fall in love with "sandboxes", and I rarely played a structured or

"railroading" adventure afterwards. To me, Runequest and "sandbox" almost

became synonymous.

Not long after 1978, the year when I had my first encounter with roleplaying

games (Traveller, in my case). I used Runequest to design a "medieval" set-

ting, something with nomadic tribal barbarians and a city ...

IMO it is probably the best method I've seen for cinematic games, and it is easily ported over to BRP.

The system I like most, the Hooks and Action Points of the Thousand Suns

RPG, is somewhat similar.

"Hooks" are specific, usually negative "quirks" of the character, for example

"hates race X", that support the roleplaying of the character. Both the re-

feree and the player can activate such hooks during the game, and the cha-

racter can get an action point when a hook is roleplayed - for example when

the character gets into an otherwise unnecessary conflict with a member of

the race he hates.

The Action Points can then be used to "edit" the game somewhat, the mag-

nitude of the change depending on the number of action points spent - for

example, for one action point the enemy's bullets could hit a leg instead of

the chest, for three actions points his gun could jam.

I like this system because of its connection between the roleplaying of the

character and the action points, with the action points as a kind of reward

for roleplaying the weak points of a character.

Apparently, he's also regarded as very "of his time" (the euphemism for grotesquely racist and sexist).

This would surprise me, in my opinion Haggard's treatment both of non-Euro-

peans and of women was surprisingly progressive for his time.

Haggard's most interesting (and influential) character most probably was

the adventurer Allan Quatermain, in my view a direct ancestor of now more

famous characters like Indiana Jones:

Allan Quatermain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I may also use it with Call of Cthulhu ...

This is how I intend to use The Green, most probably as a region of the Love-

craftian Dreamlands that at the same time mirrors the distant past of the set-

ting, so that the characters can both be sent back "in time" and "into fanta-

sy" to solve a problem of the setting's timeline in the 1920s.

Claims that there is no demand for 'grittier' RPGs strike me as obviously false.

Yep, just think of the success of Mongoose Traveller, probably the most

gritty science fiction roleplaying game currently in print. True, many of

the new players try to design less lethal combat systems, but overall the

game is doing well as it is.

I know these points don't change the fact that the vast majority of gamer wants to be able to take more damage than an African bull elephant, while slaying a dragon with one hand and a storm giant with the other, but I wanted to share my views with like minded individuals.

My favourite style is one where the players and their characters fear combat,

because they are well aware that even a seemingly easy fight can turn out

to be a lethal one for a character. In my view, the decision to enter combat

has to be a meaningful one, and not something done casually because there

is no real risk involved. While I do not believe in "No risk, no fun" in my real

life, I think it is quite true in roleplaying game adventures.

A Creative Commons license with a Share-Alike condition should ensure translations or other derivatives of D100Rules (or whatever) should be similarly covered. Wouldn't that guard against the 'bad surprises' you imagine?

Not really, because there is still no internationally accepted version of the

Creative Commons license, different countries with different IP laws still

have different localized Creative Commons licenses and do not necessarily

consider other versions as legally acceptable.

While I do prefer full supplements, I also quite like monographs. It might not be in the shop, but it builds the support for BRP, and of the CoC monographs several is made into full supplements later.

Yep, and without the monographs some very good material would probably

never have been published in a way that makes it available to the wider BRP

community.

BAck in the old days of Tv there was a series about people stranded and going through various warps. Fantastic Journey, might help with this issue,

Yep, if it is this one, it seems to have some interesting ideas:

The Fantastic Journey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have the old Chaosium Dreamlands box, and I hope to get a copy of the

German version of the Dreamlands book - which is currently out of print,

too.

My Malta / Knights Hospitaler setting is "on ice", because I am still waiting

for the BRP Pirates supplement and its rules for ships and naval combat.

While waiting, I returned to an old project of mine, a kind of "world fact

book" about fictional nations of the world in 1920. Right now I have two

of those nations (one Mesoamerican, one in the Himalaya) more or less

finished, and am currently working on my favourite one, the Emirate of

Merasan on the Persian Gulf - which long ago started as my version of

the nation of Merasaf in AD&D's Birthright setting.

Ships ... there once was a very interesting Chaosium supplement for the

Eternal Hero games (Hawkmoon and Stormbringer) about a ship that sai-

led through the Multiverse, visiting its many dimensions and worlds ... I

am not sure, but I think the title was something like "Rogue Queen" or so.

A ship like this one could be unique, or extremely rare, and one of the me-

thods to cross the mist between the "islands" / parts of the shared world.

If it were designed in the spirit of the supplement, it would have a very

special crew and a changing "cast" of equally special passengers.

Another thought would be an inn or tavern, some sort of stopping place that would be easy to navagate to no matter where you are in the misty oceans. Maybe it could be located on a small island at a place where currents cross.

If I were looking for a way to connect this kind of shared world with the Call

of Cthulhu settings I am currently working on, I would treat the different ver-

sions and parts of the shared world as regions of a kind of Dreamlands.

Some magic, drug or gate would enable the characters to travel to the sha-

red world, perhaps with a slightly different spell / drug / gate for each of its

versions or regions.

On entering a version or part of the shared world, the characters would "ma-

terialize" at or near the same location, preferably near the center and as far

as possible from the "border mists" - they would not have a direct way to

travel through the mist from one version or part of the shared world to ano-

ther.

The Inn on the Island could be something like a central hub, a place that can

be reached comparatively easily, and from where it would be easier to visit

any of the other versions or regions - sleep in the right room, and you wake

up there in the morning, for example.

Just some thoughts ...

But as you've pointed out, for 15 years Call of Cthulhu was practically the only Chaosium d100 game in town. No RuneQuest. No science fiction. No cowboys. No superheroes. No hard-boiled detectives or secret agents. No intrepid pulp adventurers or scurvy pirates doing intrepid or scurvy stuff.

Yes and no. Many genres developed their own material within Call of Cthul-

hu, from fantasy (Dreamlands, etc.) to science fiction (Cthulhu End Time,

etc.) to modern (Cthulhu Now, etc.), and it was easy to play them without

using the Cthulhu mythos at all.