Simlasa

Does anyone here have any recommendations for a set of guidelines to better fantasy/sci-fi geography/cartography? I've been looking at my old fantasy campaign maps (some going back to middle school) and thinking that I really didn't have a clue what I was doing... just plopping down mountains and jungles and deserts wherever they'd come in handy... and I'm not sure I've got that much more of a clue nowadays. It would be great to have some sort of general idea of how to design this stuff and get a reasonably plausible result. Maybe there is some nice set of Scholastic books with big colorful pictures and diagrams regarding air/ocean currents and plate tectonics?

Excellent news! I'm really looking forward to this. Time for me to start reading the Green Star series again...

Yay! This is good news!

I picked up a few of the Arduin Dungeons back in the day and as I recall they were relatively disappointing, despite colorful names and monsters... just big mazes full of random monsters. Then again, most all dungeons were like that back in those days... Seems to me a lot of the Arduin stuff would fit into an expanded (multiversal) Moorcockian campaign... like some of the wilder vistas that Elric travelled to, as in 'Sailor On The Seas Of Fate' (I think that's the one... where he gets sucked into some parallel world on a mission with some other incarnations of the Eternal Champion?).

I haven't played 'Trail' but I've read it... It has lots of interesting stuff... different slants on certain parts of the Mythos. It also tries to emphasize investigation by 'fixing' what its designers seem to think were weaknesses in the COC rules that caused too many players to miss vital clues. I doubt I'll ever play it but it makes a nifty supplement of ideas for COC.

Well this is the worst BRP news so far... I was soooooo much wanting this to come out. Nostalgia is nice and all but it seems like Chaosium needs to pass the torch onto a new generation of folks who can handle the workload. If nothing else maybe some group like quasi-BRP-related group like Pagan could publish this as a sideline... maybe take 'bids' on it like some companies do until it's obvious there are enough customers to make it a sure bet.

A lot of left-handed kids end up learning to be ambidextrous because so many things are set up to presume right-handedness. I'm ambidextrous but I've never found it to be a huge boon... just a convenience at times. Then again I'm not trying to juggle swords.

Sounds like the Gloranthan cults were almost something of a caste system... were they hereditary? Could you hop from one to the other? It does seem like the idea of everyone being able to learn whatever he/she likes... to practice whatever skill suits their mind... is a fairly modern concept. I like the idea of restricting skill sets as a way to delineate a culture... and era. I'm not so big on ad/disads though... and I don't really understand what 'feats' are but they sound kind of annoying... kind of like something from an MMORPG.

I don't know a whole lot about Glorantha... but I'd guess that in a lot of fantasy/historical settings that certain professions are controlled by guilds... and that skills inherent to that profession might only be (legally) available to members of said guild. So... maybe the faith that the Courtesans in Glorantha belonged to worked the same... keeping an eye out for non-faith courtesans and either forcing them to join the club, or forcing them out of business.

Oh! This is pretty darn cool! I can get use out of this... shoring up the logic of my critter ecology. Thanks for posting it!

Yeah, BRP western... wierd or not... would definitely interest me. I'm in a regular Deadlands game these days... but the setting seems somewhat tongue-in-cheek and tends to encourage the group to get pretty silly a lot of the time. I'd appreciate something a little less wild and a bit more... gritty.

Hmmm... my Portuguese is rusty... Any idea what that game is about? My first (and only) guess is that it's kind of like the old Kolchak/Night Stalker show... journalist tracking down monsters/demons...

This sounds very cool... especially if the setting really reflects how that sort of technology could exist in a 'medeival world' and how it would transform it... rather than just having knights and horses shoveled in beside higher tech gizmos. It seems to me that it would be a fairly strange and alien place...

In the Deadlands game I play in our GM will toss us poker chips when we do something he deems to be particularly in character (good roleplaying)... the chip can then be used either as a 'fate point' to boost a roll, etc.... or held to the end of the game and spent on skill increases. I'm not up on 'aspects'... but in every RPG I've ever played I would write down a set of adjectives to encapsulate my character's demeanor... 'cowardly, greedy, lazy, smelly... whatever... sometimes more complicated stuff... motivations and fears. This goes way back to high school days... I'm not sure if my first GM suggested doing that or what. In Deadlands there isn't a specific entry for traits on the character sheet... but I've got a list and try to stick to it... and that has gotten me plenty of chips.

I don't remember a city... I remember the giant disco though.

I always though Necromunda was a great setting for an RPG... It's pretty much subterranean post-apocalypse... kind of like Metamorphosis Alpha... or even Paranoia... A good bit of inspiration seems to have come off of Piranesi's 'Prisons': Piranesi's Carceri, the Prisons -- St. Louis Public Library - Steedman Exhibit Maybe it's my twisted love affair with shopping malls, airports, and caves... but the idea of playing something that is constantly 'inside' is attractive... that claustrophobic petri dish... people living on top of each other and fighting for every scrap. Kind of depressing after a while... unless there is some hope of escape or renewal. I think I'd probably just keep the basic idea and drop all the GW specific stuff...

I'm one of those who is glad it doesn't have the whole advantage/disadvantage thing going on... If I really wanted that I'd go play GURPS (which I like just fine... sometimes).

Thanks for the info... What are the time periods presented in 'Once Men'? Is there stuff about the Tsan Chan and the Dark Conquerors? Short of finding an extended review I suppose I'm left just buying the thing... which normally wouldn't be a problem for a subject that interests me... one great idea out of an otherwise pedestrian attempt is often worth the admission price... but somehow, the subject being tackled in 'Once Men' seems like it will either be right up my alley... or irritate the snot out of me (like some of Derleth's attempted 'revisions' to Lovecraft's essentially atheist Mythos). I guess I'll have a look at the YS end times stuff and see if that irritates me... that might give me a clue.

I keep eyeing this Chaosium Monograph for COC. It's a subject I'm interested in... Lovecraft's ideas of the future... but I'm not sure what's in the Monograph. Anyone here have it or know of a review online somewhere? Anyone have End Times? It's by the same author...

Maybe it's just cause I live in Vegas... but the name 'Dragcave' does not entice me to enter... nor do I have a desire to touch your 'eggs'

I'm really tempted to get 'Once Men' but I'm not really sure what's in it... if it's just a timeline or a set of fleshed out settings or what... Lots of other tempting choices besides that though...

I just want to say that I really really like that moniker 'Yellowcake Mutant'.

I could see that happening... though there is something kind of villainous about it. Seems like James Bond in hand to hand shouldn't have to resort to such shenanigans... Maybe he could stab a watermelon with it, then push the button... and because he's not holding the watermelon (like the man in the video) the watermelon shoots off the blade and knocks the henchmen off the catwalk and down into the vat of cryonic storage coolant.

Seems like if you had it impaled in someone, setting off the gas would do away with those skill tests to retrieve the weapon out of the enemy target. Somehow I think I'd rather have this in the form of a spear... maybe with some system of revolving cartridges to give me multiple charges.

I've always assumed any list of skills/equipment/creatures... in BRP or GURPS or elsewhere... are only a set of variables to flesh out a setting/character/genre... meaning if I don't have any use for distinguishing bargain/persuade I can just go with one of them... but other people are likely to see distinctions between those things and want them broken down into different skills. Just seems a matter of taste to me... I don't think the number of skills is unmanageable or a detriment to the book.