1000buffalo

This rocks on many levels - thanks! Perfect, and well integrated. And, of course, the inside joke for others is that the PC in question is investigating the disappearance of said Fishsinger ...

So, one of my players is running an elven sorcerer. As a player, he loves fire magic. It's his thing. He's rolling with the Magic World sorcery, but Flames of the Sun is not going to cut it for him in the long run. Especially with the one round of casting requirement. Our prior campaign had been GURPS Harn, and his mage had several fire spells - his absolute favorite shtick was breathing fire. I was giving it some thought to the other day (and luckily got some consultation from Mr. Monroe) on how to solve this and give the PC some more awesome. I want to work within the Magic World framework - there's some spells I could use from the BGB, but I'd like to avoid that. Pulling from the upcoming Advanced Sorcery (or the old Bronze Grimoire), I'm thinking summoning and binding a demon with the burn ability is a way to solve this. A personal binding (1 POW) of a minor demon, with some glitz. Mainly, he's bound into a tongue on the sorcerer's tongue. The demon will have a requirement of being fed paper every day (which the PC must eat, but the demon consumes before it's swallowed). The sorcerer can access the burn ability for 8 MP, the action taking place on DEX rank. The sorcerer cannot cast a spell at the same time as breathing fire. Thoughts, or other ideas?

Doesn't Moorcock sing / lead a rock band? He's perfectly capable of defending himself from Chaosium, White Gold style.

Thanks for that - I hadn't even caught it or considered it. Much appreciated.

I hadn't even considered ... Sigh.

I have a tough time figuring out if it's the rules configuration or the Young Kindoms / Elric-y stuff that is the key to your annoyance. If the second, then I doubt you'd be annoyed with MW. If more the first, then I'm not sure it makes sense for you to acquire it.

Just to add some meat to the discussion, the scenario had the party meet up at a small inn along the White River, three or so days up river from Lashingport on their way to Shillingshead. Yes, I had them meet at an inn. The elves had come in with a caravan from the Lascalan, been paid out at Lashingport, and was making their way up river. The human scribe had just left her village two days prior, walking to the river (and inn). I'm lucky in that I have generous, good players - they rolled with having their PCs click, and band together for the rest of the boat ride in the morning (and sharing the expense). The Scribe related some local River lore, very effectively i might add - I had given only her the two lore item handout. The adventure rolled from there. Their first major encounter hit fast, and they wisely decided to use talk and guile to handle the situation, again very effectively. From their, they continued in a generally cautious fashion, and paid the price when they got rash. They'd been playing GURPS Harn prior to Magic World, so had gotten somewhat into the spirit of flat HPs and "realistic" adventure. Nobody whip me over that realistic comment please - it's without judgment, but prior to GURPS, we were playing Pathfinder. Much different power curve. Also, I'm being a bit cryptic on the adventure - it was written by a fellow board member, and I'm not sure where it might be published (soon).

I noticed at least one - something about Angels - being correct in the printed book.

Ha! Indeed! I've been thinking about it, but will start posting some of my ideas. One of the game conceits is to have some additional conflict within a Barony in addition to between. Some of the orders would offer different training (weapons or otherwise), plus some rolelplay fodder of course.

Howdy All, Picked up the book Friday afternoon, and ran my first session this morning. My three friends, regular players in my games, really enjoyed the game. They found the character generation pretty easy, and grokked the rules the quickest of any of the games we've played in the past couple years. They were definitely interested in continuing the adventure (and relatively soon). The three PCs were a human scribe, an elf hunter, and an elf sorcerer. None of the players were familiar with MW / BRP / CoC rules and play prior to the game. There were a good number of major wounds given out - most of them on the NPCs, and the sorcerer got to cast his magic. The setting was the Southern Reaches as well. We started at 11 am, and wrapped up at 3:45 pm. They rolled up characters from scratch, learned the rules (basics, anyway) and got through almost the entire adventure (major bad guys taken out) by close. It got pretty close in the end as well - I thought for sure the Sorcerer was going to bite it. Good times. Spoiler Alert As it turns out, I'm playtesting various Magic World material (especially Southern Reaches stuff). Folks likely to be playing through should proceed with caution. I'll try to keep things vague for future updates, but no promises.

Howdy All, The Southern Reaches are noted as a region with knights - left open, of course for GM and player development. Even with the local lens that the Southern Reaches proposes, there's plenty of room for a few differing local knightly orders. This thread's my open brainstorming on the topic - commentary, ideas, etc. welcome. As a general opener, I'm going to keep my game's definition of chivalry light (or start light anyway). A general list of tenets of Imperial Knighthood: Honor Duty Piety Courage Charity Grace I'm going to leave those as general principles. I think most players have a good enough sense of chivalry to fill in the gaps, plus the various orders will provide more opportunity. Knighthood was developed, I think, approximately 800 years ago, as the various human tribes and factions began to secure their own more visibly after Fey oppression. Anyway, some initial thoughts. Enjoy! Brian

Howdy All, I whipped up a quick listing of the sorcery spells from Magic World via Google Spreadsheets. It's the sort of reference I find handy as a GM, especially with a new game. Here's the ---> LINK to the sheet. It's shared out on public viewing, with link. Hope it's useful. I can pull down, etc. if Chaosium has something official, of course. Thanks! Brian

I haven't heard anything official, but I see as recent as Mythic Iceland in RPGnow/DriveThru, so I suspect it's just a matter of time. Likewise for Amazon.

Howdy All, The Southern Reaches ("TSR" - heh ... ) is a pretty broad-brush campaign setting. The intent, as I understand it, is for GMs to develop it to taste. To assist folks, I thought I'd put together a brief timeline of the Reaches, measured against an implied, but not required "Current Year", or CY: -1,100 CY: Last Fey vanish beyond the Veil. -900 CY: Competing bands of Orcs and Stagli Riders begin to range through the Reaches -500 CY: Empire of Irwan formally annexes the Reaches. -490 CY: Domestication of the lowlands of the Reaches begins in earnest. -200 CY: Lashingport declared Imperial Territory by royal edict. -75 CY: Purdagi Horde lands at Wholestone and proceeds to rampage. -15 CY: The Count of the Mists convenes the Fey Court on the Reaches side of the Veil. -12 CY: Lady Tagia betrothed to Lord Firthal Drum. -12 CY: Lady Tagia marries Lord Beleghir. CY: Current Year The item at -15 CY is my own addition, and the -900 CY entry my speculation based on the text; the rest is "canon". All years approximate according to the text. Enjoy, Brian

I am perusing my just-received hard copy for my lunch break. The included full color map of the Southern Reaches is a nice treat (I hadn't realized it came with one).

Good stuff - I've been eagerly looking forward to seeing more articles or commentary on The Company.

I've enjoyed reading The Company. I'm not, per se, a huge fan of the hardcore military genre (I do loves me technothriller), but I appreciate it. Good read, and well worth the price of pdf for me. Clean layout; bookmarked. Worked fine on the iPad as well Two items: 1) The example of play references characters dodging firearms fire. The Ranged Combat rules have both the OQ carryover and a specific reference that only seen, thrown ranged weapons can be dodged. I realize this is to GM taste, but is there an official The Company position? It seems like maybe it was one of those items that changed with play test and not every reference was trapped? Minor. 2) The two scenarios included seem, to my eye, really good and very old school (and nice genre pieces). There's some very interesting tactical considerations in both, and neither of them is a cake walk (even for fans of the genre). The author knows his ops and is a hard, "deal with it" GM.

Digital target acquired. Looking forward to reading this (and still very much looking forward to "River" ... )

Howdy All, I wanted to announce my upcoming OQ setting. It's a regional sandbox, called the Bleak Coast; Witchport is one of the major cities (townships) in the region. The main book - "Whispers from Witchport" - will provide a light gazetteer, OQ articles and optional rules, cults, bestiary, npcs and more. The setting flavor I'm shooting for is West Coast Lovecraftian swords & sorcery. I've been using the rough setting for a few years now to run old school games of Labyrinth and Swords & Wizardry with Realms of Crawling Chaos, to great reception. I feel d100 games have been left out from the OSR in terms of settings and such, and OQ / d100 had the right mix of gritty and simplicity to match the setting. Plus, I love cults via RQ (and CoC). I expect the book will be somewhere in the 100 pages or less; softcover. I don't expect it to be lavishly illustrated or laid out; just straightforward, accessible, affordable, not poorly laid out. Ideally tool-kitable as well. The setting website is www.witchport.com; I'm releasing it as New Elders Publishing. Things are a bit under construction still, but frankly, I just couldn't hold off sharing here further. More to come as I get my act together. Many thanks! Brian Isikoff

Advantage-wise, the items that gave OQ the nod for me were the simplified modifiers (major, rather than a bunch of minor ones), the open point buy for skills, no hit locations, simplified combat skills. I also just really liked the book and approach - it just felt more like old RQ.

Good question. I think those, plus easy stuff like publisher, print details (size, SRP), OGL or Closed, etc.

I was just thinking it's a shame there's not a sell sheet style version, with a grid, to show the various versions side by side. The software industry and web hosting does this a lot. It would give an at a glance of what's in or how it's handled (like the damage base, or inclusion of "hero points", or use of background / profession vs. open point spend, OGL release, etc.). Lot of good information in this thread, by the way. Thanks!

Howdy All, Just a quick note to say I got in my first game (as a player - a huge rarity for me) of OpenQuest last night. My good friend Ben (zomben) ran a kickoff for six players in Pavis. Classic start to a classic campaign. It was nice to actually play in the setting I've been reading for, uh, a few decades. The group was a good mix of newbs to Glorantha and old-hands (a few old Chaosium RQ rulebooks were sighted at the table, along with a bunch OQ books). Folks really seemed to enjoy OpenQuest specifically - the speed and smoothness of play was noted in our after play wrap-up.

I picked up my copy at EndGame, in Oakland CA, yesterday (special ordered). Black Diamond Games, in Concord, also had a copy on their new releases shelf. I'm enjoying reading it - I like that it's not a huge setting book. Kinda of short, sweet, and flavorful.

I picked up my copy at DunDraCon last month (Feb 16th or so) from the Chaosium booth (#246).