cjbowser

Keep us posted. I would love to hear how this turns out. I've never read the Eden series but it sound interesting just the same.

I will keep you posted.

The Eden series is about a world where dinosaurs evolved to become the dominant race and humans are often little more than slaves, or live in fear. In the book, the humans are stone-age tribesmen. I've changed that a bit to make them more in line with the culture found in Three Kingdoms China. At first, I thought it would be too incongruous, but so far it seems to be working.

The magic system, at least used by the humans, is inspired by your runic system. Instead of runes, however, I went with a more totemic system. I also decided that each human can learn spells, regardless of occupation, but are limited in the number that they can have.

Right now, I have one adventure and the magic system on paper. I'll begin working on writing up the human settlements soon. I have two CoC books to turn in to Chaosium first, though.

I do have a nasty DarkHeresy Addiction,

There's clinics for that, you know...:happy:

I'm looking forward to getting a campaign off the ground. It's a combination of Harry Harrison's Eden series mixed with some imperial China. I've also added in a modified version of Puck's Runic Magic.

I haven't read the full thread here yet, so I am not sure if this has already been mentioned, but the Ashes to Ashes monograph is also available now at Chaosium as a PDF download :thumb:

Heck, it has its own thread. http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/basic-roleplaying/659-ashes-ashes-out.html] thread

Congratulations! Are there plans to release it as printed book too?

The Fate system is a Fudge based system, if you're familiar with that.

I'm putting the finishing touches on my adventure tonight. Then, it's off to playtest it.

I think that a few really good settings is a *must* if BRP shall succeed. Just having a great "generic" game system is not enough. Me thinks.

Excellent point. Give the players the rules, and then show them what to do with them.

Hopefully we'll also see some settings pop up on Chaosium's website on Friday. That would be a nice surprise.

OK, it's been almost 24 hours since I bought the pdf, and it ain't here yet. How long a time lag are you all having?

I'm not sure exactly how Chaosium's e-delivery service works, but have you gone back to their site, logged in, and checked to see if the 'requires purchase' entry on the downloads page has changed to a download link?

Someone previously had mentioned that's what they needed to do.

What is TFT?

The Fantasy Trip. A game Steve Jackson wrote for Metagaming Concepts before founding SJG and creating GURPS

Best of luck to you. Stay safe.

Not that well. Its designed to reflect a race (Melniboneans) that has superb cultural and educational maturity. You could, with some work, adapt it to fit a non-literate, primitive culture, but its not really designed to work in that way.

Thanks for that info. Back to the drawing board.

I'll have to check this out.

How would it work for a primitive society where magic is intrinsic to most people, but scholarly learning is almost non-existant?

For $5 though, I could probably just find out for myself.

Thanks for answering the questions.It's helping to clear things up. I have a few followup questions/comments.

Yep, this makes sense. I will seriously take it into consideration. The reasons I went with Int are:

1.That seems to be the formula in BRP(not a particularly great reason).

2. It helps with balance making the Int characteristic somewhat more important.

3. Int could represent the concentration and memory and learning it takes to affect runic spells.

I seriously contemplated using Int+Pow and may still do this. Once a character is attuned, casting spells should not be too difficult. This would make newer characters more able. Combining two characteristic is very MRQ and I always feel a little like a copycat when things get too close( I probably shouldn't let that bother me though).

I wouldn't let the fact that BRP traditionally uses INT or that combining INT+POW is very MRQ dissuade you. It's your game and you'll end up with something different in the long run.

Since the magic strikes me as a more 'primitive' magic, POW just makes more sense than INT. I've always viewed INT as the stat for scholarly magic and sorcery. I'm not sure on combining the two for the base starting score, but that may work.

Whew! This is a wonderful idea! The problem is that is makes it even more messy. I like the idea of set spells for simplicity sake but I also like the idea of malleability. Creative players and Gm's could come up with new spells based on accents prefixes and suffixes. Furthermore characters could come by old runes inscribed on weapons, items and ruins that contain the knowledge for lost spells.

That said I had not planned on detailing all the prefixes and suffixes except for the powerful ones that are runes in their own right. I added this section not as statistics or hard rules, but rather for flavor and an explanation of what was going on when characters cast spells.

Will you just be outlining the available spells and what Runic Realm is required to cast them?

Do you mind if I take this and work on it for a primitive magic system in my setting? Magic or sorcery are much to 'learned' for my setting.

I, and my gaming group plan on purchasing and enjoying BRP. We, however, have no plans to get 4e.

I stopped by my FLGS today when they were having a big 4e party. Heck, they had signs in the window proclaiming the arrival of 4e and there were a couple cars in the parking lot. Apparently, however, those cars were for the Korean Barbeque next door. The store was vacant, despite the 4e sign up sheet that said there should be a game going on at that very moment.

Oh, well... this area's never been that big into d20 for some reason. It's always been an RQ and Hero Games kinda town. At least, based off of what's played at the local cons and what moves off the FLGS store shelves.

I think it's an interesting idea, but could use some clarification. As you note, at times it does get convoluted... That being said, I'm not familiar with Mongoose's product, so I can't say how close it is to that.

The process of binding a rune costs the recipient a point of permanent Pow. Once a character is talented they gain the runic skill of the particular rune they sacrificed for at a level equal to their intelligence.

Since characters can learn to use more than Runic Realm, shouldn't one have primacy? If so, would it make more sense to have the starting score based on POW? For two reasons... 1. This doesn't seem like the scholarly magic a book-schooled wizard will have, it seems more primal and atavistic. 2. It forces them to decide which Rune will be their 'primary' Rune, so to speak. Since they lose a permanent point of POW when they learn one Rune, the second Rune they learn will be at a lower base chance and so and so forth. The first Rune has a primacy in their life that others won't be able to match, at least at first.

For instance the rune Fire incorporating the prefix “inception”, to ignite, and suffix “throw” would denote the matrix to magically hurl flaming missiles at an enemy.

Are you going to predifine the available and prefixes and suffixes? If not, can players create a 'word' on the fly to cast a spontaneous spell? For example, if a character finds himself facing a fire element and happens to be part of the Runic Realm of Water, can he toss together the prefix 'frigid' and suffix 'throw' to create ice bolts to throw, even if he never knew the ice bolt spell (or, if an icebolt spell doesn't even exist)? Personally, I like the idea of spontaneous casting. It adds something of a shamanistic feel to the system.

When characters learn spells it is assumed that they learn the required accents, prefixes and suffixes, as well as the gestures and utterances that when added to the rune will bring about the spell effects.

Who/what do they learn spells from? Other Runic masters, books, themeselves through trial and error?

Many traditions combine multiple runes into a common idea. These are called compound runes and essentially work the same as singular runes but tend to be less powerful magically speaking.

Can I get an example of combining Runes?

There are also several very powerful suffixes that are runes in their own right and must be attuned like any other rune. When combined with other runes to cast spells suffixes can be very powerful.

I imagine they should either be suffixes or Runes. If the suffix is that powerful, maybe it should just ascend to Runic status.

Casters who are attuned to the stasis rune may double the duration of many spells by rolling under both the runic skill of the base spell as well as the runic skill of the Stasis Rune. In order to double the duration of the spell an additional point of power must be spent; In order to triple the length of the spell two point must be spent etc.

What happens if the Statis roll succeeds and the other fails? Is there some lingering effect such as they can't recast the spell for the time the Statis is in effect or some other temporal issue?

Mastery:

The mastery rune allows magicians to cast spells at a greater level than may normally be possible. The rune of mastery may be added to any Spell allows variable spells to be cast at any level as long as the caster knows the spell at its basic level. The spell still requires the allotted Pow expense.

For instance: If a Spell user knows Sorcerers Sharp Flame at a level of “one” they may cast it as if they knew it at a level of five as long as they rolled under both their Fire Rune skill and their Mastery Rune Skill. The spell would require the expense of five points of power to cast.

Is is possible to permanently expend POW to permanently augment the power of a spell? Or maybe with a critical roll of the mastery the spell is permantly increased by a level?

All in all, I think the idea is interesting and would use it. I definitely think it needs some fleshing out and clarificiation. Those were just some of the questions I had.

As I think of more, I'll post them.

Thanks for sharing this.

The idea's intriguing. I'll have to give it shot in my next gaming session.

The one thing I'd end up dropping in my game, though, is the the fact that unused dice can be traded for skill checks at the end of the session. I'd see Wild Dice as forcing the players into more of a 'use it or lose it' situation. This of course, may come from 15 years of running Call of Cthulhu games where it's my job to make the investigators fight for every little bit of survival they can...

I'd also add that I use external play testers as copy editors. Even if the scenario's in a draft state when I send it to them, I encourage them to point out any typos they find. Even if they only find one or two, that's one or two that won't make it into the book (provided I remember to incorporate their change :ohwell:)

Ouch! This does not sound as fun as it once did. I hope my outside help holds up for the little Green project.

This may sound like a stupid question, but what do you mean by copy edit?

Copy editing is the same thing as proof reading. You're going through the work to look for typos and grammatical errors. It's probably the most tedious part of the process because you know in the back of your mind that no matter how many times you go over something, you won't catch everything.

Luckily, I have a wife who does writing and editing for a living, so she helps me catch most of them.

That sounds good. But are there any restrictions?

None that are spelled out in writing.

Do Chaosium reserve the right to further sales after the first 500?

Chaosium reserves the right to pay you another $250 for another 500 when the first 500 sell, or they reserve the right to have you turn it into a proper work. Examples of that are Mysteries of Morocco, which is becoming Secrets of Morocco and Cthulhu Invictus, which is becoming Cthulhu Invictus.

Could you sell it to other people too later through Lulu or something while Chaosium was still selling it, or make it available for download at some site? Or is it just as easy as $250 for the right to sell 500 copies?

SGL.

Those are questions for Dustin. The last time I checked, it was not explicitly spelled out in the submission guidelines what else you could do with the work while it was a monograph. Even though it didn't say one way or another, I figure it's better to ask permission than beg forgivness.

Here is the link to the Monograph Guidelines

I've done one complete monograph and participated in others, and I will tell you that doing one monograph all by yourself is hard work. You not only write it, but you have to edit it, copy edit it, source artwork, and lay it out.

There is no formally drawn up and signed contract. You write the material, lay it out, and send it to Chaosium. They then send you $250, which gives them the right to print and sell 500 copies.

Hi, there...

I just wanted to pop in real quick and introduce myself. My name's Chad and I've been roleplaying since the late 80s. Wow... I've hit the 20 year mark -- I've never realized that until now.

I'm a big BRP fan, having played CoC since the early 90s. Since the early 21st century, I've worked on various CoC projects, and now that BRP is going to be widely available to eager consumers, have a couple things already in the works. At least one will be turned in before the end of the year.

Looking forward to chatting with all of you.