Simlasa

Well... Chaosium could still have called their new gamebook Worlds Of Wonder if they'd wanted to... right? Though I think that name might turn some people off nowadays... not 'edgy' enough..

Yeah, I agree... I have no interest in seeing MRQ or HQ specific sections here.

I read them when they first came out... I've still got a pile of them somewhere here... I liked them enough to keep buying them... though the design of 'King Zombie' always bugged me a bit, seemed a bit cliche. I can see how it could make for a decent RPG background though... kind of zombie-apocalypse.

Yeah, having expanded/fleshed out supplements for all the Worlds Of Wonder books would have been great... They would have been really good 'Gateways' into the other Chaosium stuff... Funny that even though I was a Chaosium fan back then... and have most all their other stuff from that time... Worlds Of Wonder was completely off my radar until last year... up till then I'd somehow not noticed it.

I wonder if it's also that the various BRP games have kind of skirted the traditional genre tropes... I mean, for me that's a plus... I never went in for the Tolkienesque Eurofantasy all that much... but I never got into Glorantha all that much either... I wonder if the interesting settings Chaosium has chosen to focus on have been just enough outside the mainstream to keep that mass influx of interest at bay... even if the promotion/support had been higher. Ringworld didn't easily fit the expectations of a Traveller or Warhammer 40K player... Elric is kind of pale and wierd and where are the elves/dwarves/hobbits?... Runequest, 'you mean I HAVE to play a cleric?'... 'does COC really expect me to spend more time in the library than killing monsters?... What do you mean I can't kill the monsters?!!!'

It's funny to me that D&D is moving to be more like World Of Warcraft... since to me World Of Warcraft seemed a lot like D&D. A lot of the things that annoy me about D&D (levels, classes, reliance on 'magic' items) seems to really serve video games concerns... levels give the designers an excuse to control the rate at which you move through the limited game content ("You can't go there yet, you're too low level") and classes force players to develop characters along predictable lines by creating 'niches ("We need a meatshield, go find a warrior"). All the concentration on magic items makes appeals to consumptive/collector mindset ("If I can just finish this quest I'll get that great shield") and keeps players clamoring to renew their subscriptions. Those things seem to serve the limitations of video games so well... that I wonder over how they originated with a pen & paper game that shouldn't need any such restrictions.

I've seen a number of time travel fictions that worked for me... but I think that they all carefully skirted a lot of obvious questions that would be a lot harder to avoid in an RPG. Though I never found myself caring much about such things while watching Dr. Who... Still, I'd be happy just as happy with BRP based sourcebooks covering stable one-world settings if done well.

I think COC's strength is a fairly cohesive and colorful mythos... and the definitive flavor of the 20's and the pulp/jazz age (though it seems like modern settings are just as popular). I think it's been a good seller in SPITE of the spectre of near-certain character demise/insanity (though I don't think it has to be as common as a lot of folks seem to assume). Maybe people mostly play it as one-offs... like Paranoia? Maybe they tweak it so the PCs can rape/loot/pillage the Old Ones into being just like orcs in D&D? Dark Conspiracy looked great to me at first... but it never felt like it had that same cohesive feel. All these disparate urban-legends thrown together... seemingly without rhyme or reason (it's been a while so maybe I'm forgetting the reason... but that would suggest even if there was one it was forgettable). I liked the attempts at 40's styling on some things... but that seemed like window dressing that didn't permeate the game and was easily overlooked. A better example of that sort that got lots of good press was Unknown Armies. I'm not sure how popular it is but after reading it I felt like it was an attempt to make COC more cinematic and add some meta-gaming dice gimmicks. In ways UA is darker than COC while still letting the PCs be more 'heroic'... Still, I don't see it arising to the levels of popularity COC has enjoyed... but then that would support your argument.

awww geee... I like plane-hopping... Time travel not so much...

BRP is a lot more intuitive than things like D&D... stuff works roughly how you'd expect it too... and percentiles are a readily understood expression of how good your chances are. I've never had trouble explaining it to someone... or felt stupid doing it (the way I did way back when with D&D armor classes and such).

I'd rather see them come up with something new... and their own... rather than trying for a license. I agree it should be a setting that capitalizes on the possibilities inherent to the game system... the multiversal role it can play. I've always enjoyed settings like Planescape, Arduin, Nexus, Rifts, Bugtown(from the Post. Bros. comics) that had a lot of disparate forces mixing together... so the base setting of the Worlds Of Wonder sets seems like it has potential if it could be developed into something fairly logical/serious... maybe some vague metaplot laid over it all just for cohesion of the various bits. Something like a multiversal version of Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlett (centralized, somewhat secret organization with lots of cool resources that provides lots of reasons for its members to come into harm's way). Strangely Dark Conspiracy didn't work for me... maybe it was the artwork (really turned me off), or that all the different story elements just felt thrown in together without much thought how they'd work together... it was like a salad that badly needed tossing... so the flavors would blend and some sort of gestalt would arise. Maybe because it was too much based on modern conspiracy theories and I've got no interest in bigfoot or UFOs... (I know, duh, it's right in the title so what did I expect?).

I agree that relentless marketing would probably drive up the number of BRP players... I mean, that's really the strength of companies like TSR and Games Workshop... having flashy product design and lots and lots of in-your-face ad copy everywhere... sometimes to the point that the product is an ad (like with GW's White Dwarf magazine). I don't think the strength of either of those companies has been their rules design nearly as much as it has been the constant barrage of support and good fluff/artwork (primary to selling, secondary to playing). I also think, though, that deep down BRP is a slightly more rarefied taste. It's not, at it's core, based on the same cinematic ideals as D&D and a lot of other 'new' games... it doesn't pull it's punches and is more 'simulationist' than the current trends seem to favor. I think 'simulation' was more of a flavor-of-the-month a decade or more ago (would anyone try to put out Phoenix Command these days?). I mean, especially for people in the U.S., the entertainment we get is fantasy versions of real life... where all problems are solved by the final reel and the hero almost never dies. It's built into our culture to want that kind of mythic superhero who the bullets always seem to miss but who never misses his target. The popularity of video games and MMPORPGs just reinforces that sort of thing... you'll die, but only for a moment. It's been a long time since I played any video games that ended with GAME OVER flashing on the screen. Gritty, deadly games are not so much the darling of gamers these days (if my reading of RPG.net is at all correct), so games like COC and RQ2 seem to increasingly rub players the wrong way. Of course, BRP could be tweaked to play 'cinematic' but like was asked previously, would it still be BRP? Personally, I want BRP to keep being rum-raisin to D&D's vanilla... I want my games to be gritty... I want character death to continue being the big stick that beats some sense into the player's choices... but then I'm not a huge fan of Hollywood blockbusters either. I'll take less support if it's better support... sure the shelves are full of D20 books, but how many of those are worth reading? I guess I'm saying that a lot of the reasons BRP is not the top dog are also closely tied to why I like it so much. It's a work of quality vs. just being 'product'. I hope Chaosium promotes the new book for all they're worth... I hope it's got good art to pull people in... I hope there are supplements and world books to follow... but I want them to be well made/thought out... and not try to compete with something they fundamentally (and thankfully) are not.

I'm fine with options and sidebars... even the basic ads/disads of the Superworld book... but I think they need to keep them as simple and unobtrusive as the core system... and clearly as options. One of the biggest gripes you hear about GURPS is about how many rules there are... how 'complicated' it is... when most all of the bulk is options and the core system is pretty clear and uncomplicated. I'd hate to see the BRP fans get all factionalized over the importance of ads/disads or use of fate points... cause I think those things are flavors/spices rather than being the main course.

This is aimed back towards the original post... Just some opinions... Whenever I read people talking about 'updating' BRP it seems that what they're on about is making it more like some other game... I mean, GURPS is fine, I like GURPS... but I don't want BRP to be more GURPS-like... if I want to play GURPS I'll just play GURPS. I really don't want changes to BRP just for the sake of making it 'modern' or making it 'marketable'... I'd want fixes only if something is broken or there is some obviously better way of doing a certain thing. Any other motivation just leads to the wrong path IMHO. I've read where the new book will have advice on how to make the combat less lethal if that's what you want... but I'd really rather it stay away from hard and fast systems of fate/karma/drama points... and the same with more detailed combat maneuvers. That stuff is readily available in other games that were built on them from the get-go. I see no reason to jury-rig them into BRP just for the sake of being a kitchen sink of RPG ideas. Same thing goes for advantages/disadvantages... I don't think that they make the game completely and obviously better to any degree near what I'd need to think they belong as an inherent part of BRP. Some people love them... but does BRP NEED them? Personally I don't want them, ads/disads are one of the reasons I prefer BRP over GURPS (though I like GURPS plenty). Might not the people who want them so badly not better be served by playing GURPS or somesuch? I guess I just think it's futile to try to make one game be all things to all people and that in trying to do so you're most likely to just end up with a mess. Just my opinion.