Simlasa

The movie looks like a big tub of crap to me so maybe the missed window is not so large after all. If it's a huge flop then it's best not to be associated with it at all.

The character generation took a bit of time but I thought it was a fun introduction to the setting and worth the time for the resulting detail, most of which was immediately pertinent in the game. Given EP's setting it's more like you're creating several PCs at once... the base character, its physical forms, internal muses, reputations/identities with various factions... I'm not sure I'd want a quicker generation system if it meant losing that stuff, a lot of which came into play in our very first session. Also, most of the time it took was in our figuring out the setting for the first time... that huge number of possibilities and crazy things we could make. I'm sure that after a bit of play we would have done generation a LOT faster because we'd have a better idea what we wanted to do. I guess I'm just the type who doesn't mind a bit of front-loaded work to get an evocative PC (not merely an 'optimized' one). GURPS never bugged me either in that regard. On the other hand sometimes it is fun to just say 'magic user', roll a handful of dice and be done... especially when the PCs are likely to face a lot of perma-death.

I'm still looking forward to this. One of the players in our group runs a 'necromancer'... though he's yet to really attempt anything vaguely resembling necromancy. I think mostly he wanted to be a wizard with a scary costume and a staff with a skull on the top.

The handful of times I've played Eclipse Phase it felt like it was already a lot like BRP... just with lots of chrome sprinkled on top to depict the peculiarities of the setting... which is mighty peculiar IMO. Some of the folks we were playing with complained that it was too 'crunchy' but they were big-time FATE fans... so... whatever.

I was running our game last night with the hardcopy (with a PDF on iPad for backup) and didn't have any issues at all with finding what I wanted. Maybe because I always start by looking in the index? (hate it when there isn't an index). I wasn't up on the artillery rules but we had an impromptu fight with some salvaged cannons and it went swimmingly (especially for the side that lost).

'Balance' can come from the setting as well as mechanical bits. In my early games of Gamma World pure-strain humans (or those who could pass) got a lot less hassle from various factions that were concerned with 'preserving the gene pool'... sometimes that just meant extra rations or access to survivor colonies... other times it meant being ignored by lynch squads or slavers. Of course, there were people and places that were unfriendly to the non-muties as well... but they tended to not be as organized or well-equipped.

'Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale' is another, similar, approach to retelling of older tales (though I'm not really sure if the way it depicts old-school Santa has real roots in anything).

This is excellent news! I'll admit that every time I hear someone mention that upcoming Disney thing I have a little pain behind my eyes over the fact that Interplanetary isn't here yet. I, for one, am glad though that it's not just an ersatz-Barsoom setting but an actual sourcebook for the genre. Official licenses (other than CoC) kind of give me the willies... our group recently started up a Star Wars campaign and I'm already getting my hackles up in preparation for the GM inserting setting elements/characters that are 'untouchable'... as opposed to making it our own and stomping canon into the mud if we see fit.

That Amazon review bummed me out when I saw it... I'd had high hopes for Chronicles. I don't agree with the review but I think it's kind of representative of a large crowd of RPGers who want a sourcebook that spells out every little detail for them and does it all with full color art in a hardback book. The vast majority of RPG materials I purchase are to mine ideas from... not run straight out of the package without alteration... but I think that approach is becoming less common. Ideally I'd like to meld Chronicles together with ideas from Geoffrey McKinney's 'Carcosa' and CoC's 'Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan' (which I love)... along with a big dollop of my own homebrew ideas.

Oh! This sounds interesting... I'd assumed The Green was more along the lines of some proto-Exalted setting... Young Olympians or somesuch... now I'm not sure why I was under that impression.

BRP Mecha and The Zone are certainly going on my list.

I'd jump at some good adventures for Dragon Lines... a campaign book maybe. I've run very few pre-fab adventures, even for CoC... but I've always bought plenty of them... to mine for ideas and resources like maps, characters and equipment.

Yup, Happy Xmas! Hey! Where's my egg nog?!!!

We played a short campaign of Berlin '61 a while back when we first got it... I think the GM intended to work the Mythos into but somehow that never happened and it ended up being a pretty straight 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold' type of Cold War spy vs. spy thing. Good fun... So yeah, more BRP espionage please!

As a slightly off topic note... there are some nice not-Barsoomian miniatures on the Tinman miniatures site. If the critter on their home page is a Calot it looks to be of similar mass to a warhorse... just thinner all over... fragile if it wasn't for the lighter gravity.

I'd buy it! Heck, I'd probably buy several so I can give them to friends and keep them on the table during games. I love the BGB but if I want to get folks interested it's going to be easier without that big book putting them off. Pathfinder doesn't have that issue because scads of folks are playing it down at the shop and it gets talked about incessantly online... people want the book because their friends have it. BRP doesn't have that leg in the door. I think it would also be important that it look really good... color art and such... since it's meant to be 'bait'.

BRP is 'rule-heavy'? I'd never noticed... maybe I'm playing it wrong?

I'm not getting the reasoning for converting them to Gore... is Gore that different from BRP? Is it just wanting to put the Nephilim rules up for free? I'm confused... If I were going to make up new material for Nephilim and put it on a blog or somesuch I'd just keep it as BRP.

This sounds fun. I hope you can get it out as BRP/CoC as well... I enjoyed the first B'61 book.

I'd much rather have no art than bad art or 'wrong' art. The original Traveller books had what... one illustration in them? I love those things. I recently picked up the Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan monograph and there's very little art in that... doesn't bug me one bit. At this point I'm sure the images in my head are far stranger than they would be if the book was profusely illustrated with full-color panels. I'm tempted to say CoC shouldn't have images of the monsters at all... maybe just screen captures from (public domain?) silent era films (loads of creepy images to be had there).

At least it's still coming... eventually... so that's good news. Maybe it will arrive sometime around Disney's 'John Carter' movie and the flutter that will probably surround that.

I've been running a BRP game for some kids and it's been great fun. For Xmas I've been wanting to give the older boy (a precocious 11yr old) some rules of his own, to play with his brother and friends... but the BGB is just too huge and bland looking for a kid IMO. Something like the quickstart would be more appropriate... if it just had more visual flair. I'd happily pay for a full color version of it with some eye-grabbing artwork. I've even thought about making such a thing myself... getting it printed for him. It's kind of frustrating... I love the BGB and I certainly don't need or want all the glitz an FFG game might have... but I think for a kid to buy into it (as more than just a player) it needs to have sell itself as 'new' and 'exciting'. When I look at the other media he's consuming the BGB just seems so... beige. Anyway... that would be my Xmas wish... a brighter and shinier quickstart for BRP.

I don't know... which 'gamer population' are you thinking of asking? When I've seen lists of ways people would like to 'fix' BRP they usually make me cringe. The problem with superhero gaming isn't with BRP or it's age or whatever... it's the superhero genre and trying to cram the whole of it into one rule system and expecting it to play out like the comics... which are chock full of plot contrivances and hand-wavium and other authorial manipulation that doesn't work nearly as well in RPGs. ICONS is about the only thing I've played that felt close. Superhero comics are particularly reliant on visuals too... decent art helps to distract from the huge amounts of silliness going on. As has been mentioned, BRP will do certain styles of focused supers just fine... but to go further into trying to be just-like-comics I think you're in for a headaches.

Yep, happy birthday to a hero of the BRP. I'm also hoping Interplanetary is another home-run.

A system of group/ritual magic that would be cast by troupes of Bollywood-style dancers/musicians/singers. (such an obvious idea, someone somewhere must have written rules for that... right?)