Agentorange

Since I started the thread it's only right I should contribute. GAMES Started off on D&D ( like a lot of people I guess ) bought Snakepipe Hollow out of ignorance, I was that young I didn't realise there could be more than one RPG..... decided the contents looked more interesting than D&D and put the RQ2 boxed set on my christmas wish list have stuck with BRP/RQ ever since. I've tried other games but keep coming back to the BRP system. Mind you I always rather liked Bushido ( FGU ? ) BOOKS Moorcock Robert E Howard Clark Ashton Smith Karl Edward Wagner Tolkien Stanley Weinbaum ( died young, wrote SF for the pulp magazines of the 1930's ) MYTHOLOGY Stuff from all over, initially classical ( Greek ) but more latterly Teutonic, Arthurian cycle and ancient mesopotamian eg Babylon, Assyria etc

That must of been tough, my heart goes out to you

Looks good, art is interesting without being intrusive, it's got a proper index ( hooray ! ), content seems well laid out. The font doesn't bother me one way or the other, as long as I can read it without my eyes hurting it's fine . Pages nicely filled up without loads of padding or margins. Definately gets a thumbs up from me.

Following on from a brief off topic diversion about Karl Edward Wagner in the Q&A thread I thought I'd post this. What sources and influences have contributed towards your gaming style and history ? Could be authors or stories, games, films or legends and myths

I got the Nightshade collected short stories for a decent price, but by the time I got around to the novels the prices had gone mad, it looks as though it'll be cheaper to get the novels seperately than to buy the collected version. As you say a shame KEW died in the manner he did. I know very little other than the introduction to the collected shorts mentioned he had a serious drink problem which coupled with other things led to liver failure, what those other things might be I don't know. KEW coined the term 'acid gothic' to describe the Kane stories which I think is a spot on description. There was always a doom laden poetic edge to most of the Kane stories, I'd say 'The Dark Muse' is my favourite.

Sounds like fun, I always reckoned Karl Edward Wagner's Kane stories were great stuff, shame he died so young, have you seen the silly prices the collected novels omnibus is going for these days :eek: ? As you say they definately had a gritty blood soaked feel that BRP would be good at.

They all sound good to me . I'm curious about the swords and sorcery one, do you mean something like Robert E Howard style swords and sorcery or something altogether different ? Care to elaborate a bit ?

I was hoping an English translation existed, it does sound a very interesting game. As you might have gathered from reading some of my posts here I do do like the idea of 'fantasy earth' settings so the idea of a game drawing on Spanish, Arab and Jewish folklore and mythology for it's creatures and using medieval manuscripts etc for ideas for spells and magic really appeals to me...what a shame it was never officially released in an English format

First RQ supplement I ever bought bought it before I even had the rules, on the basis that I was young and ignorant and didn't realise that there were any other games besides D&D. Had the old William Church cover with Bigclub wrestling the giant snake, got it home and thought " this isn't D&D, I've wasted my money......actually this looks more interesting, I wonder what game it is? " the rest as they say is history

Jason, as writer of the BRP book, what supplements would you like to see in the pipeline for BRP, if you had your own wishlist what would it be ?

Jason, as writer of the BRP book, what supplements would you like to see in the pipeline for BRP, if you had your own wishlist what would it be ?

Sounds like the sort of thing that would really appeal to me... .....do we have any Spanish speakers on board ?

There was a great PDF ( and I think POD ) D20 book by Betabunny Publishing called Predators that covered a lot of this ground ( no dinosaurs though ) it looked at: canines, felines, primates, reptiles, birds all sorts of stuff, gave stats blocks, hunting tips, pictures of the beasts and their tracks, values of pelts, ecological niches etc etc, covered everything from badgers upto whales even had a few cryptids in there for a little spice. I really liked it. Not to mention I actually learned a lot as well.

My own views fall pretty much in line with Jason and Nick on this...but they've expressed them far more eloquently than I would have been able to.

I imagine it would also depend on the size and depth of the bestiaries in the various supplements themselves. For example if the Mythic Iceland ( which I'm really rather looking forward to ) pulls out the stops and gives a huge bestiary from Icelandic/Nordic myth then there wouldn't be much call for further material in a monsters supplement, likewise the same might well apply to the Mythic Rome supplement, good bestiaries in real world settings might render the idea of a monster manual redundant.

Speaking hypothetically, if a monster manual type supplement was ever to be mooted what would folks like to see in such a supplement ? My personal preference would be for creatures and monsters from earth mythology, Rakshasa, Berberlang etc etc. The old vikings and Ninja supplements gave a nice selection from Norse and Japanese mythology and I guess they could form the start of such a work, the various other mythologies have huge possibilities, what would other people like to see ? Dinosaurs, Woolly Mammoths, Were Hamsters ?

Seems fair enough to me, I've never really bought the "you can't copyright a system, just the words" defense. It might be legally ok but it seems a bit shoddy from a moral point of view ( well it does to me anyway ) It'd be nice if somebody did do a 'magic' supplement, that kind of thing always seems to sell well and would provide a welcome expansion of the rules and some nice variety.

Jason, You've mentioned on a few occasions that it would be a nice idea for there to be a BRP magic book as a supplement, including such things as the spirit magic/divine magic model, fleshed out shamanic rules etc etc. How ( to the best of your knowledge ) would the copyright work on this ? say someone wanted to do such a book and felt that Sandy petersons shamanic rules and sorcery were the best ones out there, would they need to approach Mr Peterson to use them as a basis of such a book, or would the fact that they are posted on the net in numerous places mean they were in the ' public domain' and could be used ? I have no intention of doing so I'm just curious about how the whole thing would work. As an aside I do use Sandy's shamanry and sorcery rules in my own games as I think they are far better than the ones presented in the magic book monograph.

Carnifex, Have you read this ? Amazon.co.uk: Roma Eterna: Books: Robert Silverberg

In terms of stopping magical arms races you could go down several other routes: 1] don't bother with magic points but assume that magic is reliant on the 'life force' of the caster, every time you use it it drains your strength, the more powerful the magic the more it affects you, so small magics drain Fatigue points/levels/whatever !, larger ones might knock off hit points or possibly even CON. Of course baddies will sacrifice other people ( whilst cackling evilly of course ). there's no point casting a mega powerful spell if you keel over dead the next minute..... 2] maybe the only magic that doesn't do this comes from the gods i.e divine magic, which of course has a whole load of restrictions built in, eg don't observe the right moral structure of your religion ?, haven't been down the temple recently ? well maybe your magic isn't going to work after all... 3] maybe magic is simply unreliable yeah it can be powerful, but as often as not it simply doesn't work,or goes wrong. You might spend mucho magic points for the whole spell to go 'whimper' rather than 'BANG' or possibly it goes BANG and you're just a charred mass ( as is every thing in a 20ft radius ), so maybe it's just easier all round to learn how to use a sword.......

I think the RQ alternative earth was always destined to be a bit dry, in the sense that as a back drop for the rules books you really couldn't squeeze that much local detail and colour into it. I've said several times on the forum here that Alternative earth etc has a lot of unexplored possibilities. When you consider the huge range of gods, monsters, magic and generally strange stuff that happens in earth mythology there's a gold mine of material there.

I've been trying to work out what the cover reminded me of....and this morning it came to me. can anybody remember the old Look and Learn magazine with the Trigan empire comic strip ? That's what it reminds me of. I used to think that strip was great

I once ran a RQ game where one of the pc's had a character that had a couple of incredibly lucky rolls when attacking with a dagger, managed to kill baddies which would have normally been quite tough ( honest rolls as well ) The character became firmly convinced that said dagger was enchanted in some manner and on the next combat said something along the lines of " hey lads, watch this" and leapt into action......at which point he fumbled, snapped the dagger and was left surrounded by his foes he actually survived due to the staunch support of his comrades and some handy healing magic.

Did I not send you the link ? Bugger, it took me ages to find it the first time round , I'll have another look when I get time.

In fact there are two BRP/middle earth conversions ,though t'other one may be over on the Greenback clan big RQ link list.