Rurik

While I understand entirely where you are coming from, this thread is about Mongoose Runequest. I don't think there is anyone, including those of us that used the system (warts and all), that felt the system didn't need a rewrite with some parts getting a major overhaul. If you have a perfectly good system why change it, true, but MRQ1 really did need an update.

Personally I can't wait to take my Mechas crusading through the Baltic - that'll convert some heathens for sure!

Fair enough (not that I was planning to play Deus Vult anyway). But in todays world it is hard to view the Inquisition as 'good' and Galileo as 'bad'. Back in their lifetimes it was very different for sure, but a few hundred years later the view that science was the good guy is almost universally held. Though I would not qualify Deus Vult as a Historical Setting any more than I would Cthulhu Dark Ages. In a game where the evil is real the Inquisitor types come out looking a little better. If you were to write a game where Galileo and DaVinci were represented as agents of the devil bent on weakining the will of the devout to help Satan destroy the world I would think the Inquistors come across in a better light.I would call that more of a Historical Fantasy setting however. But who knows, maybe my views have been corrupted by the devil.

I was looking for something a bit more subtle than most Steampunk, where the magic is more mystical and spiritual and the science less fantastic. Galileo and Leonardo vs. the Inquisition would be very interesting as well - though in that setting science would be unequivocally the 'good' side.

I voted Aztec/Maya, though I'd also like to see Ancient Middle East and Egypt. Most of the other settings seem to be covered to some extent already. Though I voted Aztec/Maya there are actually a number of interesting periods for Central/South America. There is Pre-Columbian, then the Conquistadors, then the Spanish Colonial era, and the wars of independance and revolutions that followed the Colonial era. All of these have gaming potential. I'd actually always wanted to base a game on Magical Realism (based on the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the like) focusing on the decline of magic and the rise of science. Probably not a setting with broad appeal though.

I think a big part of the move towards fluff is that fluff is easy to produce. Rules take careful consideration, play testing, and balancing. Editing of rules is much harder as well, you have to make sure there are no contradictions and that the rules are presented clearly and logically. Fluff you just have to write and then edit for grammar and basic lucidity. Statting up npc's and foes is a lot of work in many systems (BRP definitely being one of those systems) - it takes time and is also harder to edit. Game companies make money by selling books. The more pages the more money. The more books the more money. Fluff is easy to write and publish. Rules is hard and time consuming. Back in the 70's and 80's games were developed by game developers and they developed rules - that is what makes a game after all. Just about every publisher today says that adventures don't sell as much as source books, but they are a lot of work to produce; yet in the early days of D&D the Adventure Module was the primary support for the game because TSR didn't know adventures weren't good business - no one had figured that out yet. It was a hobby first and a business as an afterthought. Chaosium may be one of the last companies surviving on that model ('cause good business sense is certainly not their strong point). Now most game companies are businesses that produce games, not gamers that produce businesses. Now no one gets into the Pen and Paper RPG business just for the money - on some level just about everyone in the industry is a gamer. But as in any market those with a shrewd business sense tend to eventually dominate the market. Though the production quality was lower, most games back then were labors of love, and it showed. That is why many Monographs are as good if not better than many commercial products - they are something the author produces because the material is very dear to them and certainly not something they produce just for the money. Many modern RPG's are written by writers who are told to write x words about subject y and have it handed in by date z - and sometimes that fact is obvious. In the end fluff is good business.

The F-22 (and F-35) have a thrust vectoring ability where they can re-direct their trhust to assist in turning, making them able to turn much better than an aircraft without thrust vectoring. I'm pretty sure the designers put that in there just to mess up your formulas. A cub may still out turn an F-22, but the F-22 can easily outurn a similiar aircraft at similiar speed without that technology.

Wikipedia lists a takeoff speed for the F-104 but not a couple of other jets I looked up. Here is what they said: There blurb on Takeoff Speeds talks about air density, weight and the like, so there will be some variance. Loadout is important. On only a mildly related subject I recently read an interesting tidbit about the F-14:though it could be equipped with 6 AIM-54 Pheonix missles it in practice never was because it was too heavy to land with all Six missles - it would have to fire or drop missles if so outfitted so usually only carried 2. Funny that Harpoon II never took this into account - I'd always put six AIM-54's on my F-14's.

Just a babe.

You can download the MRQ SRD from this very site here. It should contain all the rules necessary to play Merrie England (outside of Merrie England itself of course). It is very easy to use products from one with the other. MRQ has Locations and no Total HP and has some other differences, but the Characteristics are the same and they both use %based skill systems. It is very easy to convert between systems on the fly.

If I had a dollar for every game book I never actually used I could, well, buy more game books I _may_ get some use out of.

I don't know. I am a longtime BRP fan and have recently come to quite like Savage worlds. I imagine that there would be some SW players that would like BRP in the converse. I know there are some people who are single system fanboys and will never be convinced that system Y is better than the One True System. But I also know there are people who are more open minded. Somewhere there is Savage Worlds player thinking "I sure love Savage Worlds but some times I'd like a game that is a little grittier, a bit more detailed on skills, with a slightly more realistic feel. I wonder what is out there? Savage Worlds does not try to do everything. It tries to do what it was designed to do - and it does that very well. And it is supported by quality settings that fit well with what Savage Worlds does.

Well scraps can be profitable. Look at WoW (no - not Worlds of Wonder). It is a legitimate business plan to decide to make a MMORPG, knowing full well you will need to probably give away some content free, charge less than WoW, and the best you can hope for is to get a small fraction of WoW's user base. Like I said, this is a legitimate business plan, and companies can succeed at it. D&D is the tabletop equivelant to WoW. You can be sucessful going after the 'scraps'. As to all the arguing over whether system or setting is more important I would say both. I think the runaway successes are when system and setting meet in an attractive product. What are BRP's strengths? What setings have synergy with these strengths? Can we make an attractive and accessible product that will reach the target audience? These to me are the most important questions. No system I can think of has lasted 30 years as a force in the RPG market as BRP more or less unchanged. D&D today bears little resemblance to the D&D of the 70's and 80's. BRP has to be doing something right. I have no doubt there are people who have never played BRP but would like it if they tried it. Getting these people exposed to the game is how to make the system more popular.

Ha Ha. Very Funny. Especially the Yelmalio Rune Lord Trollkin bit. Just don't come crying to me when somebody Sunspears you.

Ooops, I mean 90,000 lemmings. No wait, 80,000... Never mind.

Are BRP versions of Stupor Mundi or Merrie England forthcoming?

So you are saying it is your fault that there is no MRQ SRD?

Stormbringer 1ed back around 1982. I'd started on D&D and tried around that time some of the other TSR titles, Traveller, Aftermath!, and the like. I had also just discovered Moorcock and was reading everything of his I could get my hands on so as soon as I laid eyes on the Stormbringer Box Set I knew I had to have it. Shortly after I started gaming with someone whose older brothers played RQ2, and since that time I have been pretty much a BRP bitch. I've used a lot of systems over the years but BRP has been the only system I have used continually for my entire gaming lifespan.

Too late - you and your product have had your names sullied by mere inclusion in this thread. You are now guilty of ripping off Chaosium, Micheal Moorcock AND Gary Gygax, and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Himself just a rip-off of Cthulhu) have mercy on your doomed soul when the Thetans destroy the earth in 2012. Have a nice day.

But Jason is allowed to lift rules straight from Elric! I think the rule could use some improvement but there is no question about whether it was moral for him to do so.

Don't get me wrong - I am not a GORE hater. I have recommended it numerous times in the past and only stopped doing so because it is unsupported. I remember when GORE came out and it was long before BRP Edition 0 was released - in fact at the time I think a lot of people had were less than convinced we would ever actually see BRP. It was based on the MRQ SRD, and clearly seemed a reaction to the fact that MRQ was much more different that previous BRP versions than many people liked, so GORE used the SRD and made it much more like BRP. Did they lift rules straight from Elric! - I'd have to say yes based on the rule in the above quotes (what struck me was 'what a stupid rule to copy'). Is that evil? It never struck me as such at the time. If the author tried to copyright the entire contents of GORE, as apparently he did, that is deplorable, but he also apparently backed off. I am a big supporter of Open Gaming, and while MRQ wasn't a perfect system by any means it scored a lot of points with me for being open. Is GORE bad for using it? Is OpenQuest bad for using it? It is a matter of degrees I suppose. I never thought of either as bad, being expressions of open gaming. I know MGP is not a favorite around here, and that some feel they are ripping off the IP of Chaosium - but if you want to see some vitriolic accusations of ripping off IP's and being a deplorable thief and probably even a baby eater just check what was being said about Charlie and Chaosium over at Moorcock's official site before Chaosium licensed (or sold the license?) to Mongoose. Moorcock being the creator of Elric and all. Stafford is one of the original authors of RQ and he grabbed the TM when Hasbro/WotC graciously let it expire. Stafford licensed it to MGP. I don't see where the evil is. If WotC had re-released RQ3 before the TM expired would they have been evil? So Mongoose has paid Greg Stafford/Issaries for use of the RQ Trademark, has paid Chaosium for the Moorcock License, pays Moorcock for the EC license and furthermore resolved the whole Moorcock/Chaosium thing to all parties satisfaction. Those Bastards. Honestly, the Moorcock thing did bug me quite a bit. Moorcock was a very influential author on me since I picked up the Eternal Champion in a used bookstore when I was 12, and the game that 'saved me from D&D" was Stormbringer 1st edition, which I bought because it was Moorcock - from that day forward BRP has been my primary rule system. So while the Moorcock/Chaosium row did pain me, I think this whole GORE thing is kind of overblown, largely because GORE right now is almost completely insignificant. There. Misunderstand the point of one of my quotes again and I may subject you to an even longer dissertations on subject of varying relevance to the original topic.

Yeah, anything so I can keep playing my character Peace Dog. He's finally got his Free Love skill up to 85%, and it has such nice synergy with his 'Tobacco' Rolling 90%. I just hope you you don't do anything earth shattering when the campaign moves into the 70's, like introduce bad shallow glitzy flashy pop music or a new drug or anything like that. Oh well - if you do I suppose you can always fix things in the 80's.

Well that is a stupid rule to steal. A magician with an 8 INT only needs a 40% skill in the language to not need a roll but a magician with an 18 INT needs a 90% in the skill to not need a roll? The fact that Gore contains such a stupid rule is pretty much proof that the mechanic was lifted from straight from Elric! without any thought. If any thought had been put into it I'd think a different mechanic should have been used. I'd say it is coincidence that the BRP and Gore text are so similiar - they resemble eachother more than either resembles Elric!, which simply states "An adventurer must be able to read the writing to learn from the Grimoire.If possessing less than INTX5% skill in the tongue, use a language roll to judge comprehension."

I've been lurking but not had the time to post this weekend. I still see there being two approaches (that are not at all incompatible mind you) - a shared world where the participants work together on pieces of one setting, and a common universe where contributors can link their worlds together. The latest posts seem to have a strong preference for the later approach. In fact the original project allowed for both with the gates being an integral part of the world design. I must admit I like the mists idea, with my preference being that they are mystical mists where one can actually crosses to different worlds (this allows for round worlds and flat worlds and worlds with stationary suns and worlds with two suns and so on to be linked, as well as different genres). I personally still want to work on Sky Mountain with other contributors, and like the icicles hanging off the edge of the world and the sky mountain itself. Part of the reason is that I am focusing on a very small part of the world, a city state and it's immediate surroundings. I am totally open to others defining other parts of the world - gaming is a hobby I do in my sometimes sparse free time - a whole world is a lot of work. I also like the idea of collaborating with others, the exchange of ideas is exciting, and already the ideas others have put forth have given me ideas I would never have come up with on my own. However if no one else wants to also work on Sky Mountain too I suppose I am shit out of luck. I can see the mists working with Sky Mountain's flat world with icicles at the edges by there being an sea (or seas) of mists in the world where sometimes ships disappear, occasionally returning with tales of strange worlds beyond - but usually just never being heard from again. At other times strange peoples or creatures come out of the mists from alien places. There could even be swamps with the same mystical mists. Rather than opening a gate that led to the demon invasion that almost destroyed them the Asherayne could have attempted to create their own mystical marsh mist through a massive effort of engineering and magic - and succeeded - if you count opening the doors to hell a 'success'. The eastern side of the city is still a cursed ruin on the edge of their failed experiment while the mystical mists remain. I hope others still want to work on Sky Mountain. I have started working on a town that is smaller than Portal called Southbridge Fort (a small town and fortress controlled by Portal) because I think I can have a smaller town finished sooner (I am also learning the City Designer 3 software and smaller is good at first - trust me). I have elements of the Sky Mountain as described in the Wiki built into the towns and have a couple of neighborhoods that depend on the stationary sun (Darktown and Shadeside are parts of Portal and Southbridge Fort that are always in shadow - literally the shady parts of town).

Great news. Sign me up for a copy come January.