Simlasa

My Magic World games of late have been set in an ersatz Thirty Years War setting... mostly because I like the Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures... and because it also shares the feeling of Warhammer Fantasy and Confrontation to some degree. I think it's a great fit for the sort of stuff that goes on in most fantasy RPGs... which claim to be 'medieval' but usually feature a lot of stuff that came long much later.

I've ran a bit of Superworld waybackwhen but I was really aiming for something brutal and 'street-level'... closer to Gangs of New York (the book) meets Underworld (the RPG). Sin City, Judge Dredd and the Eddie Current comics were in the Appendix N as well. It played fine... but yes, PCs died and PCs killed people. Superhero RPGs seem like one of the more contentious genres in general. There's a vast spectrum of power levels on show in the source materials and I'm not sure any system can really cover them all and do them well. Plus, the source material is notoriously inconsistent and driven by plot. I'm not sure any mash-up with RPGs, except for the most railroad variety, is going to 'feel' much like the comics or movies.

I like to add my own flavor and context... you know, creativity. Balance is generally overrated. If the monster looks to be more dangerous than you can handle, run away and get help or come back with better equipment... in that way adventures balance themselves.

I voted for 'setting/adventure books' because those can often have elements of all the others... some new monsters, maybe a new cult or two... setting information... and adventure ideas. If I can refine that vote I'd prefer somewhat open-ended adventures (like D&D's B2) that are a bit creepy/weird (less straight traditional quasi-historic Eurofantasy). Even though I seldom run such things as-is I tend to collect them to mine for ideas and parts for later use... or customize to fit my own settings.

I think there might have been some mechanism for improving skills... but it was very limited. That was something I always liked about Traveller... doing away with the whole scheme of mechanical advancement and instead favoring the gathering of in-game resources and reputations and contacts. The zero-to-hero approach is kind of overplayed for my tastes.

I really only listen to them while I do other stuff... paint miniatures, play videogames, draw.

I prefer it dark and sinister myself... high dark fantasy (if there is such a thing). Dunsany and Smith seem to often have things go badly... or at least strangely for their protagonists so I'd want to retain that sense of danger, rather than the power fantasy of modern D&D. Thief of Baghdad as directed by David Lynch.

It was announced as a RQ6 supplement/setting... the original, introductory, setting book having been for BRP/Chaosium. I too hope they decide to stay with TDM's system.

That was my initial thought... to run Honor somewhat like Sanity in Call of Cthulhu... or maybe the Madness Meter in Unknown Armies. But I agree with Sunwolfe that it requires a clear statement of what honor is... and isn't. My understanding of Bushido is that it had a lot more to do with keeping up appearances (orthopraxy), than it did any particular beliefs/motivations (orthodoxy). Samurai could be quite greedy and obsessed with riches... but would go out of their way to make it appear they were not concerned with such things.

I'd rather see it for RQ6 (whatever it gets renamed to) and as a mix of Lovecraft/Dunsany/Smith... a weird fantasy setting that stands on its own. (Magic World would have been my first choice but... sigh...) And yeah... Brian Lumley doesn't fit... the Lovecraftian stories of his I've read felt like they owed more to Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The idea of Cthulhu... ancient undead alien high priest of even stranger 'gods'... whose dreams echo through the subconscious of sensitives and dreamers... is still a powerful notion, IMO. But the pop-culture version is more of a cuddly kaiju. Similar to what's happened with most any 'monster' that's been around long enough and the mystery surrounding them dissipates. Even when going for the scares, Cthulhu doesn't always get used in the most imaginative ways... too often it's just a big monster that lives in the ocean. But vampires and werewolves and zombies continue to find new, effective portrayals... and I figure the same goes for Cthulhu and other Mythos entities. It's down to the manner or presentation. In all my games of CoC I've never had it as anything more than a background element... hardly ever even named, really. The same goes for most of the powerful Mythos entities. They get referenced by cultists and madmen from time to time... but they all have multiple names and no two groups really agree on what they are. Silent Legions is a great resource for getting out of that hackneyed Mythos rut.

Maybe I was reading into the part where she wrote, "Right now with the changes at Chaosium we're taking a view on what system we're going to release the game for and will be working that out shortly." Of course, she also says they're waiting on seeing how the trilogy of fiction performs... and AFAIK that isn't out yet.

Well, crap! Now the future of this project seems to be... vague. Going by words of Ms. Newton on the Mindjammer forum it might not end up as an 'RQ6' project at all. Seemingly lost in the fog brought on by Chaosium's internal contortions (confusions?).

I'd prefer to not have the Mythos 'infecting' inanimate objects that way. That roams a bit closer to a fantasy approach to horror... more traditional sorts of tales with haunting spirits and such. Not that I don't like that stuff to... it's just a different flavor to me and I like to try to keep CoC stuff a bit closer to weird science fiction. Now, if someone read an ancient tome and was then inspired/enabled to build a sentient computer that housed some malevolent intellect from 'outside'... that I'd go for.

I've had lots of dreams over the years that take place in a dreamworld version of the city I lived in. They feature lots of odd places that don't exist... including toy stores and game stores. I could kindasorta map out where things were onto the real town and knew that a couple of the places were stand-ins for places I frequented... but there was one dream toy shop in an area I seldom went to and assumed was purely imaginary. Then one day, I passing that area and had a flat tire. So I got towed to a garage (no spare) and while I was waiting for it to be fixed I walked around the neighborhood and ran into a place that was nearly the exact image from my dream. A huge toy/game shop called Imagination Unlimited. The only thing was, it had just recently closed and the stock been sold off. The shelves inside were bare but there was still signage that let me know it would have been a treasure trove... if only I'd found it earlier.

It still can be... just not through Chaosium. The books that TDM have put out... particularly the Luther Arkwright setting, already open it up to a huge variety of play.

Hopefully CoC 7e will remain a fluke and not backwash into other stuff... or any other 'storygame' elements for that matter. Just not my taste despite being trendy.

That goes along with what has generally been my preference for games that are relatively slow on mechanical advancement... like Classic Traveller... but spotlight reputations and gaining access to resources and contacts. Even the Pathfinder game I play in nowadays... we're leveling pretty slow but we've built up a really great network of NPCs we can go to for various types of assistance. It's something I always make sure to address in games I run as well.

It hasn't been an issue for my games either. I also let people tick boxes for critical failures... and if they wanted to improve something specific they could generally go find some training. There's no reason for the 'golf bag syndrome' some folks complain about.

God knows what '30 years of improvements' might harken... who's subjective version of 'improvement' are we going by? Meanwhile we HAD the BGB and that worked... chock full of options... but nope, it had to go... in favor of what? 'Answer murky, try again later'

Selfishly, that sounds like good news to me as well... at least in regards to TDM and keeping RQ6 (whatever it will be called) as a setting-free hub. Not that I'm ecstatic over Chaosium's choices... which seem to be even more disavowing of the BGB/BRP.

Yeah, it's always been one of the defining elements of BRP for me... so I'll just keep on using it.

Alternatively, rather than expending permanent POW points you could go the Game of Thrones route and use blood magic to yank the POW out of some willing (or not) donor... but that's me having just read Legend's Blood Magic book again.

Patrick Mallet's RPG write-up of Zothique can be found on the Eldritch Dark site here: http://www.eldritchdark.com/articles/criticism/ under 2005 'Zothique: The Last Continent'. Lots of good CAS info on that site. I agree that his stuff is probably better served by Stormbringer/Magic World than the default assumptions of Call of Cthulhu.

Interesting. I've never heard of Fager. Like a lot of Mythos nomenclature it seems a bit arbitrary (we must have names and hierarchies!). I do prefer it to be a bit more mysterious than it is sometimes presented in CoC materials.