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Cthulhu Rising comes to my mind. It exists both as a series of monographs published by Chaosium and as an ongoing project on its own website, with each of its forms creating support for the other one. So, if this is possible with Cthulhu Rising, I think it should not be too diffi- cult to convince Chaosium to handle The Green in the same or a very simi- lar way.

It is an excellent toolbox for the design of (semi-) realistic settings and campaigns of (almost) all genres, and as a percentile system it is easy to comprehend and use for most referees and players ... but apart from this, which is not exactly attractive for new players, I do not see much that would make BRP "better" than other systems.

I have seen people "migrate" from Runequest to BRP, so I would not count it out, especially since we are looking for ways to make BRP more popular, not necessarily Chaosium.

In my view, Fantasy is covered by Runequest, Horror by Call of Cthulhu, and History by the Alephtar Games material, the one published as well as the one planned. This leaves mostly Science Fiction, including its little sister cyberpunk / trans- humanism, Supers and Modern, I think - with science fiction a very wide and open field, from space fantasy to hard science fiction. Looking at the various monographs, I have the impression that in fact all the genres are already covered, or will soon be covered, although not in the most attractive way - the content is there, its quality is very good, but it is not published in a form that could reach a wide audience. Something more like the GURPS genre supplements (e.g. GURPS Space) could help to bring BRP onto more FLGS shelves.

This discussion begins to look like a debate about which pair of legs of a horse is the more important one, those on the right side or those on the left side ... :ohwell:

I think it will become much easier to identify Frogspawner's players, they are the ones who have catheters ... :eek:

Thank you for the info.

I rarely use Runequest, except to mine it for ideas for my own BRP-based system and settings. The Runequest material I use most often is RQ Empires and RQ Guilds, Fac- tions & Cults, because their systems can easily be adapted to all kinds of fantasy and historical settings, and they cover subjects that are treated not at all or not as good by other games. After my experience with those two books I was thinking about buying mo- re of the Mongoose Runequest material, but now I am a bit confused: Will Runequest II be fully compatible with Empires and Guilds, Factions & Cults (in which case I will probably buy the core book), or will there be new and less or not compatible versions of Empires and Guilds, Factions & Cults (in which case I would hesitate to buy a new version of the same books plus the new core book) ?

Not for me - as I use magic with Call of Cthulhu only, faster and cheaper ma- gic would not fit my view of the setting's "feel", where magic should instead be complicated and dangerous.

Thank you for the information, I will try to find someone who has it.

Just to make sure - you mean this one here ? Mythic Russia Homepage (Firebird)

Yes, I agree. In my view ritual magic would be a good subject for an article or a series of articles, perhaps in Uncounted Worlds, but less so for an entire monograph. What comes to my mind as an example is a series of articles about demonolo- gy in Runequest that was published in White Dwarf, ages ago. In my view it contained all that really was necessary and useful to introduce this kind of magic into any Runequest campaign.

Nor did I, I was not really into Runequest at the time, and Eldarad and Vikings were the only supplements I bought.

Indeed, and I have to confess that I also like Eldarad ...

Signs & Portents 75 with the Runequest II preview by Lawrence Whitaker can now be downloaded from the Mongoose website: Mongoose Publishing : For All Your Gaming Needs ...

Pardon me, but this would be a rather lame approach to the subject. Imagine instead a scenario where the characters know what someone wants to achieve with a ritual, but have no idea what this ritual is like, when and where it will be cast, and how many of the required ingredients have already been collected and prepared for the ritual. To prevent the success of the ritual, they first have to research the ritual themselves, with all of the potential information sources in "enemy hands". Once they have determined what exactly is needed for this ritual, they can attempt to find some of the required ingredients and protect them from their "enemy", or they can try to follow his route in collecting the ingredients to learn more about the intended location and date of the ritual, and so on. They could even try to research and "organize" a "counter-ritual", perhaps disguised as some kind of avantgardistic "art event" ... Their final aim would be to prevent the ritual from happening without having to be present (e.g. as human sacrifices ...). With such a scenario the ritual and its details could become the focus of an entire short campaign.

I think it would depend on the "magic level" of the setting. If there are other ways to cast magic, even with less powerful results, the players are likely to ignore the more powerful, but more complicated ritual magic much of the time. However, if ritual magic is the only way to cast magic, it can become a lot more interesting for the players.

My only settings where magic does exist are the Call of Cthulhu settings, so I am not that much interested in magic systems. On the other hand, the magic as it is currently used in the official material for Call of Cthulhu does not fit my ideas of what cthulhoid magic should be like: A kind of rather complicated ritual magic that requires a lot of research to aquire the necessary knowledge, a lot of usually strange substances and "props", a lot of people to take part at least in all powerful rituals, and a lot of time - at least hours, if not days or weeks. What I would therefore be interested in would be a system to develop such rituals of different power levels within a common system, plus some ideas to handle such rituals in the design of a plot and at the table. So, not descriptions of specific rituals (except as examples), but a toolbox to design the rituals needed for my setting, campaign and adventures. Unfortunately such a system would probably make a good subject for an ar- ticle or a series of articles, but it would hardly be enough to fill an entire mo- nograph.

This is how I see it, too. I bought GURPS because of a specific setting, GURPS Traveller, but my decision was heavily influenced by the fact that the GURPS core rules would also give me access to a number of other GURPS settings - like Alpha Centauri, Blue Planet, Terradyne or Transhuman Space - as well as to a number of rules supplements - like Robot, Space, Vehicles. So, to buy the generic core rules was a bit like an option for a "buy ten for the cost of one" offer.

I think the best approach would be to convince Chaosium to offer BRP Light for free on Drive Thru RPG. Since they already sell PDFs of many of their Call of Cthulhu publications there, I do not quite see why they are not doing it already.

Besides, I doubt that it really would make much sense to modify OpenQuest in such a way. In my view it is fine as it is, and any attempt to change or "improve" it by making it more similar to other systems would have a high risk of damaging it by introducing contradictions or unnecessary complexities.

Tiny fearful wolves ... when I was young, we had to deal with those really big dinosaurs ... :cool:

We solve this problem with a little "time warp": First the teacher makes his Teach skill roll to determine the amount of the skill increase, then the stu- dent has to study one hour per skill point gained.

Yep, "alive and kicking" ... :cool:

On the other hand, most of the fantasy settings published over the last years seem to be very similar, while there are still many, many unexplored historical settings that could offer something completely different and fresh. So, while historical settings will doubtless remain a niche market, the genre at least offers a realistic chance for a surprising success (think "Qin - The War- ring States") now and then, while I find it hard to imagine that there will be any new fantasy setting that will truly stand out.