cjbowser

Hi Penn,

In play, it *feels* like a fantasy roleplaying game. You can go adventuring; there are monsters, wars, eternal threats, evil chaos nasties, and badlands aplenty. There's also a richly detailed civilization which is millennia old, living on the ruins of other, even older, even longer-lived civilizations, going back to a mythical golden age "when the stars sang with the songs of men". There are gods, and demons, and sorcery; and there are ancient artifacts which no one really understands any more, except maybe the artificers of the Temple of Khosht, and they don't really know *that* much. There are legions armed with "flamelances"; cities tens of thousands of years old which have strange, highly-carved conduits which can mysteriously "recharge" exhausted artifacts; and the Autarch of Korudav is said to have his own personal "flyer", which can cover hundreds of miles in a single day.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,

Sarah

Well, you've sold me! This sounds like a really great setting for some science-fantasy gaming.

I do have a question, though. The product page lists it as a trade paperback. Is it really going to be that size, or is that a miskey?

"Worms of the Earth" introduced the worms of the earth, another degenerate race. But, that's a Bran Mak Morn story, not a Conan story.

Maybe Triff should look into adding a "buy it" link to each entry to make life easier.

The majority can be purchased from Chaosium.com

Others can be purchased from Alephtar Games.

The front page is just a listing of what's available and what's coming soon.

Quite true. If grizzly scenes would drive people mad that quickly, the average paramedic would

be a raving lunatic, and trauma center teams would have to be kept in asylums ... :shocked:

Call of Cthulhu does have the "getting used to awfulness" rule so that just such a situation doesn't happen. Once you've lost the maximum amount of SAN for something you can't lose additional SAN within a reasonable period of time. For paramedics and trauma teams, I'd rule that the reasonable period was "indefinite."

I would dispense with most of the piddly litte Mythos monsters. After all, why would a Deep One cause SAN loss but not a Sahuagin? One of the things with the Mythos is that it's firmly rooted in the protagonists are human milieu. If you have orcs, demons, and all the other tropes of a fantasy game, you'll need a compelling reason why seeing a deep one hybrid causes a SAN loss, but not a half human/half-orc. They're both signs of misegination. I'm not 100% how to do that.

One option would be to not include the SAN mechanic at all. Instead, you portray the despair and slow descent into madness entirely through tone and setting. The world is a depressed world where nothing seems to go right and everything that can go wrong does. You might want to check out Ashes to Ashes for some pointers on creating a compelling dark fantasy world. While Cthulhu Dark Ages exists, I don't think you need it. It tries to be very historical and avoids the fantasy tropes.

You might have included this with military law, but seize control of as much of the communications and data grid as possible. Followed closely by seizing control of the financial systems, especially any exchanges and assets.

I've outlined the book as I currently imagine it. It's sitting at 9 scenarios covering 20 years of history.

After seeing Mindjammer ( for Starblazer Adventures) I hope one day that Sarah Newton will write something like it for BRP.

Take a look at the setting: http://www.cubicle-7.com/acrobat/mj01_intro.pdf

Sarah did write The Chronicles of Future Earth, which is being released for BRP.

And now it's front page news!

Now I have run Horror based campaigns but used either "Beyond the Supernatural" or Horror Hero System as the games mechanics system, with some of my own House Rules as well too.

Penn

You can run horror very easily with BRP without involving the Mythos or Sanity checks. Check out Gheedon's scenario in the BRP Adventures book for just such a type of game.

Can anyone give a better idea what the focus of this supplement is?

Is this a supplement for Westerns with supernatural/paranormal elements? Or more of a straight-up, down-to-earth Spaghetti Western sort of thing?

Very much the former, but to me it's different enough from Deadlands to actually be interesting. I find Deadlands a little over-the-top, but Aces High is more subtle, which to me is good. There are a lot of historical details to inform your own game (but no free blacks?). It also has rules to throw in numerous types of genre-appropriate magic.

Good news! I'm guessing this will be a full distribution book and not a monograph; those of you with local stores can actually buy this there!

If you proceed with this, I'd definitely like to see at least a brief discussion on "historical necromancy", such as Cellini's encounter with one outside Rome.

To answer your direct question, the current edition of Call of Cthulhu is the 6th edition. However, as others have pointed out, the rules have changed little. Some skills have been folded into others, the spell modifier has been removed, and various other small tweaks. The general tone and theme, however, has changed little.

What are you looking to get out of Cthulhu Invictus and Cthulhu Dark Ages? Are you looking to mine them for ideas, or run an actual game of Call of Cthulhu with them? As one of the authors of Cthulhu Invictus, I will tell you that it is pulpy. It adheres to the ideas put forward by Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Richard Tierney in relation to the level of pulp. It's not as "Lovecraftian" as core CoC. It is also a different time period from BRP Rome. BRP Rome covers the city from AUC to the end of the Republic. Cthulhu Invictus is set during the first century of the Empire.

Here's some quick thoughts.

I had to create a Tactics skill for Cthulhu Invictus. You're welcome to to borrow it if you like (feel free to ignore references to Sanity Loss -- however, if you're working in a morale system, you might want to substitute that for the sanity references).

Tactics (01% or 25%)

This skill indicates the investigator’s knowledge of military tactics and how to implement them. To recall the tactics used by Caesar in the Gallic War, an investigator would use the Empire skill, but to implement those same tactics with a group of legionaries,

he’d use Tactics. If Tactics is part of an occupation’s skill list, the investigator has a 25% base chance. If not, the starting percentile is 01%.

An investigator who makes a Tactics roll before engaging in battle receives a +10% to his combat rolls for the duration of the combat. The bonus is lost if he suffers Temporary Insanity.

Reconnaissance could possibly be a combination of Knowledge (Military) and Stealth. As a combined roll, failing one or another could have different, yet equally disastrous results.

The same could go for propaganda. A combination of Knowledge (Politics) and Persuade. Fail the Knowledge (Politics) part and your insurgents accidentally put together adds drive their potential recruits into the arms of the enemy, especially if they succeed at the Persuade roll.

I believe the CoC contracts are a separate arrangement than BRP. Having one does not allow for the other. Although a company with an arrangement to produce one certainly could negotiate for the other.

It would be nice if the rough details of a BRP license were more public. I suspect a lot of would be authors don't pursue it in part because they feel that they couldn't afford a BRP license. And few people are willing to write something that they can't publish.

The contracts I've seen cover both in the same breath. Anybody interested should definitely contract Chaosium. They might themselves surprised.

Not a derail at all...I'd love to hear about that myself.

SB

Supergenius Games

Goodman Games

Miskatonic River Press

Sixtystone Press

Pagan Publishing

are all producing material under Chaosium's contract. They are all focusing on Call of Cthulhu material, because CoC is currently the big seller, but nothing prohibits them from doing BRP material.

I believe Rome was released by Alephtar under that license as well based on the cover logo, but Paolo can state for certain.

Passions, if you want to use them, can easily be imported. The other part of the equation is the Personality Traits, which are already in BRP (p.294). I would not use those trait pairs, as they were originally envisioned for NPC development; just import the ones from Pendragon wholesale. Oh, and if anyone cares, take note that Greg has decided to change one of the pairs. Pious/Worldly is becoming Otherworldy/Worldly. Pious becomes a passion (Loyalty: God).

As for an Arthurian Britain setting... you'd have to choose from the various historical/literary bents on the subject.

SDLeary

Like SD says, the necessary pieces for Passions and Traits are already in the BRP book. I'd probably change the Passions to seem "more Heroic Age Greek," but other than that, they're ready to go.

I think BRP, at an epic level could handle Heroic Age Greece. I've thought about turning the Odyssey into a scenario in the past, but have never got around to it.

However, Pendragon is a game about King Arthur and the mythology surrounding him which also does its level best to be as historically accurate as possible (including being relatively low-magic). It also allows for generational-playing, you can play the sire of a lineage of knights and then his children and grandchildren. Lineage is, of course, important to Greek myth.

I wouldn't quite classify Pendragon as historically accurate as much as I'd classify it as thematically accurate. When you play Pendragon, you feel like you're playing in the legends surrounding Arthur. You don't necessarily feel like you're in 5th century Logres per se. I think that's the same feel that should be attempted with a Heroic Age Greece game. It's less about staying true to an Ancient Greek timeline and more about staying true to Homer or Hesiod.

Another useful Pendragon tool is the Passions and Loyalty. Characters in Pendragon are as much defined by their Passions and Beliefs as they are by their physical stats. That would carry over very nicely to a Mythic Greek setting. You have Achilles' consuming rage that laid waist to the Achaeans, Icarus' unbound hubris, Hector's loyalty to Troy. All those things could be nicely replicated in Pendragon (or Heroquest.)

Translations, ah-ha! Hmmm (makes note).

There might even be transliterations... The maps were all created contemporary with the period, so they should be really useful.

That's an issue I have with Tiān Xià... I am wondering if I should really add those Chinese surname tables, maps of East Asia, etc. as anybody can find that stuff on the internet today!

Maps, with period appropriate details are always useful. I was lucky enough to stumble upon three period correct maps for the setting I'm working. Importantly, none of them are on the internet. I plan on adding translations and either using them as-is or redoing them.

Oooh - very cryptic

Is your period revealed by reading through some of the excellent material in the BRP Adventures books? IIR one of those babies was yours and was historically inspired...

No. This is something I've always wanted to put together, but never have.

We did one of those recently: http://basicroleplaying.com/showthread.php/1720-Historical-settings-poll

And just as an FYI, the period I'm considering isn't on the list.

OK, since there seems to be some interest in historical supplements, I want to keep the momentum (and my interest ) going.

What types of information do you consider essential for a historical supplement (let's just say sourcebook to keep things simple), regardless of era?

What types of information do you consider essential for an Alternate Earthy historical supplement (myths/folklore/magic/etc. could be real, but in limited doses)?

Thanks in advance.