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There are a bunch of minor differnces between the two games Generally speaking that's true for all Chasoium RPGs. The BGB was assembled from the various RPGs Chaosium produced over the years. That why it has several different magic systems, and both fixed a variable armor. Magic World, on the other hand, is geared towards a specific genre and style of play. It doesn't has as many optional rules or variants to it, and is more focused towards being a particular type of FRPG. So, with the BGB you get a lot more options, and a lot greater ability to customize things to suit your tastes, as nearly every rule has a couple of variants you can pick from. Magic World, doesn't have that. The authors have picked which variants to use that they feel would best fit the MW setting. Now as to if you should invest in MW or not depends on two things. First off, is there anything you need or want for your campaign that isn't covered in the BGB that you believe would be in MW? That's the primary question. The second one is how interested are you in MW to begin with? IMO if you have the BGB you don't need MW to run, but if you want to run something in the MW style then MW is better, if for no other reason that you don't have to port around a big rulebook where at least half of the contents wont apply to your game.

Is a Battle considered a single event for Glory purposes, or several connected events? The reason why it makes a difference is that my PKs racked up a lot of glory at a huge battle and the total was over 1000 Glory, which is the limit for a single event.

IMO there are a few reasons to cinsder the Stormbringer/Elric! books: First off they have lots of detail on the Young Kingdoms, and other places in the Multiverse. Secondly they have setting specific rules, such as stats for Melniboneans, Creature of Matik, information on the Elemental and Beast Lords. Thirdly, there are some differences in the rules between the games, and editions. Sorcery, for example, is somewhat different between editions. But since you bought Elric! you can see all this for yourself fairly quickly.

Is that a Koan?

This looks interesting. I like the matrix. Yeah the -20 seems like too much. One eschille of ten knights gets into the enemy camp and any army of thousands can go from an even fight (Intensity 20) to a rout. It's twice as effective as Triumph when attacking the enemy from the rear. Could you elaborate on that? I can see the random roll for intensity dwarfing other factors, since it represents what the rest of the army is doing. But what kind of stuff are you referring to? I do wish that Greg has put in Intensity modifiers for scripted events like he did for battles in the old system. But it's not hard to just port them over as Intensity modifiers.

Oh it still could be a good tactic. If the one who better at something always won, they wouldn't ever have to fight battles. Quite a lot depends on terrain, numbers, morale, preparation, etc. Somebody is always going to come up second or third best at something (or worse) but it still might be their best option. Lance charging Impala people wouldn't be any better for the Ostrich riders, either.

Apparently there were orders in medieval Spain (the Order of the Hatchet founded in 1149), Italy (the Order of the Glorious Saint Mary, founded in 1233, approved by the Pope in 1261, and suppressed by a later Pope in 1558), the Low Countries (similar to to France), and in Britain (the Order of the Garter, "Hello Gawaine", was originally open to women too). It looks like all those orders shut down (or excluded women) by the end of the middle ages.

Works for me. Just as long as we have some sort of guidelines. I agree. But as Pendragon is a Dynastic Epic, we will need a way of continuing the family line for female Knights.

Yeah, you don't really see the iconic lance charges until about 20 years later or so. And by the Hundred Years war it became more risky. Missile troops screen by polarms could withstand a charge.make charges less effective than they had been.

I agree. And one of the nice things about the "Book of" approach to things is that GMs who don't want it don't have to buy or use it. As far as female knights go, I think the book would need to spell out just how that would work. As a GM I'm less concerned about letting women fight like the men (the Cymri, Saxons etc. all had warrior women as part of their cultures) than I am about the social repercussions of female knights on the feudal structure. Stuff like: Who inherits land from a female knight? The eldest son, the eldest daughter, or just the eldest child? What happens, land wise when a female knight marries a male knight? Does the husband get control of both estates? The one with the most glory? Are they kept separate? If the wife dies does the husband keep her land or get 1/3rd of it value to maintain himself? And, again, just how does that all impact inheritance? So if the Book of Ladies allowed female knights, it would open up a big can of worms that would need to be sorted out- and it a way that didn't ruin the feel of the game. My suggestion would be to treat female knights either as one offs (so everything defualts to the norm, except for the handful of female knights), or along family and county lines (so that in the family of Boudicea in the lands of the Iceni, the women always were the warriors and so they are Knights and can hold land in that area).

A big egg? Oh, and the fact that just about all mounted troops work better as skirmishers. Just about any tribe, except maybe the Rhinos and Bisons, would do better peppering their opponents with arrows and outmaneuvering their foes than by charging. The Mongol steppe nomad analogy, right down to Waha "Khan" titles, really fits better than knights or cataphacti.

Yup. Yeah, except as years of Pendragon has taught me, speed and skill makes a bit of a difference here too. If the Ostrich riders can act first they could take out or at least dismount their opponents before they get hit. Then it won't really matter if those opponents get +4d6 or even +8d6 in a charge. Hardly. Knights evolved over the years. As did thier mounts, arms, and armor. And their demise was probably more because of economics. For what it cost to field and maintain a knight someone could field dozens of archers, crossbowmen or men with early guns. It's not that they say they sdon't make a differcne. Just that the claims that lance chargges would be ineffective without them is in dispute. Strirrups make riding easier and do make it easier to stay in the saddle. But I think it is more a case of giving a modifier to Riding rolls, and knockback. And people did ride bareback. IMO that would be difficult (half skill?), but the cultures that did so probably had really high skill. Overall, I think we are in agreement here.

That's not what he said. He said, approximately, that Ostrich rider would be better suited as missile troops and skirmishers harassing their opponents flanks, and that lance charges for them would be suicidal. I, for one, agree with his first points, but not so much with the last. I think that a lance charge isn't suicidal, under the right cirsumstances. They just have to be opportunistic about it and try to avoid the feudal Charge vs. Charge against anybody with bigger/stronger mounts.

The Blu Ray, yes. About charging. Somewhat. One of the benefits of superior maneuverability and speed is that they might be able to charge in situations where their opponents cannot. Quicker, more maneuverable mounts should, at times, be able to turn quickly and charge on a flank, whereas bison riders might not be able to turn and build up enough speed for a charge bonus, which requires straight line movement, in time. So the Ostrich riders might be charging at 50 mph against Bison riders who are only moving at 10 mph. Depends on the circumstances. Against foot troops, or when they aren't going to be counter charged, they might be decent. Somewhat. IRL theres been some doubt recently about that. It seems to use a lance properly and stay in the saddle does depend more on the rider's strength than the mounts. But that's fairly recent stuff from an author who suspected that knights & stirrups weren't quite the game changer historians believed and that ancient calvary was effective as shock troops.

Probably none of them are. Just like Gloranthan "bronze" and "iron". The beast are probably different animals that are similar enough to Earth animals that we can refer to them by the same names.

Certianly. A Gm can alter any aspect of a RPG, but the default D&D prices and settings throw around lots of gold. LOL! Although the 50 per pound is about right, for quarter ounce gold coins. THe problem is that in D&D you need a pounds and pounds of the stuff to buy magic.

Good thing Uroxi don't know about this. I could see a bunch of them getting together, buying the weapons and killing each other in fights before someone realizes that: Dead Uroxi can't take Gifts and Geases Live Uroxi cant take Gifts and Geases, either.

BTW, that film looks remarkably good on Blu Ray for a 40+ year old film shot on a shoestring budget. Back on topic, my original point was that pygmies riders wouldn't be impossible (or impossibly bad) as Ostrich riders. That and the fact that it's not like the Ostrich people would have much say in the matter. If the are pygmies there's not much they can do to change it, outside of some serious heroquesting.

That depends on how fast you want to have the skills improve. Keep in mind that a lot of things get done repeatedly in a game session so some skills will almost always get a check. One thing I can see players doing is attempting a more difficult task so they can fail and get a check. Flashing Blades used a skill check improvement method (no rolls), but it also increased the number of checks needed to improve as you went along. So after awhile it would take two or three sessions to get enough checks to improve. Also, if a character didn't get a check in a skill within the year, it would go back down. .

Yeah, I mean't in and of itself. It looks like there are three sets of modifiers at work here: The height advantage, the left handed vs. right handed advantage, and the handedness vs. the direction of the staircase advantage.

I think it should too. In fact ir might have to. Otherwise there might be someone with a large enough plus to a stat who ends up rolling a number higher than the species max?

In most BRP related games skills can go over 100%. The sklill rating isn't really an absolute measure of someone's ability. More a relative measure. Especially if you look at the modfiers. In RQ 90% is mastery (some variants use 100% instead of 90% but it's similar enough), and there are characters will skills over 100%, 200% and even higher. There is no mystique attached to skills over 100%, at least not since RQ2, but such characters are rare and acknowledged masters at what they do.

Probably not a problem. Character with high skills get ticks all the time, and normally, skills that get used a lot, like weapon skills, will eventually get checked just because over the course of an adventure a character is going to succeed and fail on some of his attempts, so the end result will be that skills that get used a lot get checked.

Oh, clarification: I guess that only two of the 47 species of sparrow than inhabit Africa are actaully called African Swallows, the West African Swallow and the South African (Cave) Swallow. Logically, I'd assume you mean the West African Swallow as it would be the closet one to Britian, and another thousand miles or so makes a big difference if it had to carry a coconut. And yes, there are web pages out there where people have worked out the airspeed velocity of a swallow. Maybe they are planning to cross a bridge?

One way is that the player characters have gotten consistently more powerful over the various editions, and it only recently became noticeable. THere are a few others in the game too. For instance in KAP1 you rolled 3d6 for all the traits with no modifiers, except for religion and discretionary points.. So the average chivalry total for a starting PK was lower. Probably closer to 70. KAP3 and 4 added some new modifiers, and bumped up Valorus to 15 (it became a knightly requirement) and that did make a difference, but it also made fixed traits the norm. Likewise KAP5 added British Christianity which added a few more points. Knights & Ladies increases the cultural modifiers a bit for Logres (the default homeland) and adds 6 discretionary points from earlier edtions to the famous trait (16) from latter ones. So now, suddenly 80 is available to standard characters in chargen. What complications? Remember Greg never said that there were complications, only that 80 was wrong and should have been 96. I'm the one who claims there are complications due to K&L. I think I've proven it too, but don't blame Greg for something I've said. Again Greg said error, not complications. If it was an error then it would have been something only he could have spotted (if KAP1 set the Chivlary threshold to 75 or 90 how would we know if it was "wrong"), and might noit have been apparent right away, because the average chivalrous trait scores tended to be lower. What I think happened (and this is just my theory), he probably thought/intended that Chivalry had 5 traits, like Religions do, but wanted to make Chivalry a bit more flexible than requiring all 16s. So he decided on a 16 average. 5x16=80. But Chivalry uses six traits, not five, and 6x16=96. . IMO the problem is that K&L stacks the Famous Trait (change one trait to 16) with the 6 discretionary points. Up until K&L the famous trait went with fixed traits, and the 6 points went with random. And, I think this was an error. There is a post in the Nocturnal forums where Greg seems to indicate that. You're missing the point. It's not that Greg said, "80 is a problem, so here is the solution." He said' 80 was an error, and should have been 96". So it's not a question of ":How do we fix this new problem?", but one of correcting a longstanding error. There are some others too. For instance the typical Pict has remained SIZ 8 since KAP1 when SIZ was rolled on 3d6, despite the fact that SIZ has been changed to 2D6+6 (ave 13) and latter 3D6+1 (average 14.5). Yes, but at the expense of all characters coming from Salisbury with the fixed trait scores. I don't know anybody is obsessing over it. I was just trying to point it out, and that it wasn't really the designers intention for everyone to start with the chviarly bonus, or for lots of PKs with randomly rolled traits to end up netting 300-500 of glory a year. The latter of which does cause complications. A KAP campaign where most of the PKs are earning over 500 glory a year goes off the rails fairly quickly. It almost ruined my last KAP campaign. Not really. Even without it most PKs can end up with it easily. Pagans have an advantage since the shift to fixed traits. Especially if they don't want thier relious bonus and pick Modest for thier famous trait. Except that's not what K&L or Greg claims. The idea wasn't that they PKs should be exemplars. That was an untended byproduct. . That's a fair goal. And frankly, with KAP you don't really have to. I'd say the GPC is kinda required for the latter versions, since they shift the starting era to Uther, and if you have KAP5 you have to have the errata, due to all the editing errors, but you don't have to buy any other books. But also keep in mind that while you don't have to get any other books, there are advantages to the other books, too. For instace the GPC is invaluable, even for a GM who doesn't want to follow it, and all the supplements add something, and most are interchangeable with the core game so you don't really need to fit anything. For instance Book, of Armies just gives you one page tables for lots of different foes to fight and could be used in place of the generic foe tables in KAP5 (or earlier). The Book of Battle just fleshes out battles more, and so on. Most of the complications./problems aren't so much because of the supplements but because of typos, or errors in editing or proofreading. It's offical in that it came from Nocturnal, and not some fan sheet. The "96 rule" doesn't orginate from the sheet, but is incorporated into it. Since the sheet was produced by Nocturnal and Greg mentioned the 96 previously we kow that the 96 is a correction, not an error. There are quirte a few things in KAP that have been officially changed but managed to slip past the proofreaders. Actually Chivalry being to easy to reach isn't just from K&L. A beginning Pagan can start with a 73 or even a 76, and catch the bonus fairly quickly.