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It might, if dwarves were based on Tolkien Dwarves instead of Glorathan Dwarves. Keep in mind that most of the feantasy races in BRP were ported over from RuneQuest, as opposed to being inspired by the works of Tolkien as in D&D and most other FRPGs. Yes, but most other RPGs make Dwarves and hobbit much stronger compared to humans that they should be according to their source, i.e. the works of Tolkien. In fact in MERP Dwarves have the same STR modifier as men, and Hobbits are much weaker compared to men than they are in D&D. And most RPGs don't even include the 'high men", who would be much larger than the common men. Yes, but that doesn't mean those other games got it right. D&D intepreted and reinterpreted the various races from Tolkien and most other FRPGs pattenered thier races off of D&D. In the context of BRPs higher AP ratings! In old RQ shield AP vailes were about 60% of what they are in BRP. So a Slugh 16 point shield would protect 8 points, good but not nearly as good as the 13 points of protection in BRP. In reality I suspect some sort of shield wall, with thrusting weapons (1H or 2H) was probably the most defensive option. That's why it held sway in the ancient world for so long I can't argue with you there. The way it was done was for the shield to be hung around the neck and the shield strap on the weapon arm so it would move with the weapon, but that was for long spears, not for axes and greatswords., not without impeding their use. MAybe the fix would be for the rules as written to apply only to thrusting/implaing weapons, and limiting shields to the back of anyone weilding a slashing or crushing weapon?

Not all. The font of wisdom that is the RQ2 Appendix (p.110-110 RQ Classic Edition), noted that SIZ could be broken down into Height and Weight, and that Strike Rank, Defense, Parry and Stealth modifiers were dependent on height, while Damage Bonus and Stealth (again) were tied to weight.

Actually it (mostly) does. Most living creatures have a mass about the same as water, or about 1 ton per cubic meter. SO you can get a good idea of the volume based on the mass. Yes, but for a living creature it's hard to vary all that much from the norm. That's why stuff like BMI (Body Mass Index) works. Now for creatures made out of material other than flesh and blood, such as gargoyles, animated statures and such, mass could end up much higher than volume, but we'd probably need to track the Mass as a SIZE figure too in case the characters have to move said creature or object. For instance, a full size stature of a an average man (77kg, SIZ 13) made out of gold (sg 19.3) would still be SIZ 13 by volume but would have a mass of 1486 kg and be about SIZ 47 for purposes of lifting or moving it. INMO the best approach for that is to just list it as SIZ 13 (47) But probably not much more than 25% or so more than the norm, or about 3 more points of STR than SIZ. Yes, in BRP we generate STR independent of SIZ, and have a modifier to weight for body frame allowing for some extreme variance between the two, but we really wouldn't see a lot of variance in the density of bone, and tissue between humans, or between most memebers of any given species for that matter. Yeah, fansty creatures might be an exception to that, but magic can do that. It's why giant insects and even giant humans are possible in a fantasy world. Yeah, RQ2 actually noted that it used both and that people might was to split it between height and weight, with height affecting SR and weight affecting damage bonus and hit points. But most BRP creatures and objects from SIZ 8 to SIZ 88 tend to use mass for SIZ going back to the old Superworld boxed set. Altering the relationship would require restating all of that to fit with whatever the new approach would be.

Those proportions are height, but SIZ is more analogous to weight/mass. By that reasoning the cube square law would apply, meaning that x2 height is x8 mass, and that is just what the original authors did when the worked out the SIZ stats back in the 80s. The problem with doing things proportional by height is that SIZ would rapidly expand for larger creatures, and we'd wind up with animals that would have hundreds of hit points, and do lots more damage than they do now. Yes fantasy beings can bend these rules a bit but even then a linear approach would cause more problems than it would fix. For instance STR and SIZ are tied to each other and put on the same scale, so altering one would neccitate alterting the other to match. In The Lord of the Rings it's noted that men have several times the strength of hobbits (real world cube square law again) and a linear scale would require making hobbits much smaller and weaker than they are currently, and likewise inflate the stats of larger creatures. That so called "exploit" is basically reality. In the past slug shield with two handed pole-arm was a real thing. Various pikemen, hoplites, phalaxes, etc. did just that. Furthermore the protection isn't for free- the wielder only gets half value and only on a limited number of hit locations rather that the full benefits that go with normal shield use and the parry.

LOL! (literally, someone else in the house asked me what I was laughing about). Sorry, my bad. It is a bit confusing but once you figure it out, it is okay, as it is the same process for all careers. Oh, and since I've got you spending money, might I suggest you take a peek at Spica Publishing's career books? They add more careers, and some alternate tables and rules for chargen. Well, since the OP was wondering the merits of M-Space over Traveller it probably is on topic to note what can be done with Traveller for comparison. IMO, M-SPACE's advantages are that a it has BRP type skills, and combat, and a GM can draw from various BRP-related products for their campaign. Traveller doesn't have a half dozen or so different magic systems that can be used, if desired; or both a fixed and variable armor system to choose from; or BRP mecha to draw from to add mecha stats. M_SPACE's biggest advantage, IMO, is that every BRP related product is at least mostly compatible with it. Now admitted, Traveller has grown somewhat over the past decade or so, and has a lot of options now too, but M-SPACE still as more options and flexibility. I mean just consider chargen for a character who doesn't fit one of the available careers. In M_SPACE you just got to convice the GM what skills would be available to a given Profession, but in Traveller you have to come up with a new chargen career sheet with multiple tables and mustering out benefits.

Well Traveller 2300 was, by name Traveller, it just wasn't Traveller in the traditional sense; which is precisely why they renamed it. Now Mongose 2300AD is Traveller (Mongoose Traveller) mechanically, but with a differnt setting and technology, and probably more what people expectred back when we saw Traveller 2300.

Wasn't that the same as T5? Or did Marc do multiple games? I thought they changed the nameto prevent people from confusing it with Traveller, or thinking that it was a supplement for Traveller, or comtible with Traveller the way Mongosse's Traveller 2300 AD is today.. The Humans in 2300AD were not Traveller's Solomani, there was no Imperium, and the basic game mechanics were not compatible although similar. Stutterwarp (yup, that was the term) was basically a Jump-2 drive (well, Jump 2.362 to be precise). 2300 was sort of the black sheep of the Traveller line. Mechanically it think it was one of the better games, and it was a real hard Sci-Fi setting, which is a rarity, but it was distict from GDW's other stuff. It also appeared to suffer a bit of condusion over what it was supposed to be. Orginally it was a sort of a exploration/proto-Traveller game, then it turned into a war against the Kafer, ala Starship Troppers, then it got a bit like Aliens with the Marine and their gear, and towards the end it was going Cyberpunk. Anyway back to the main topic, it really comes down to what people want to play and why. Assuming the players want and expect the same things from a game then that is the one to go with. So how the players feel about each game, and what they expect from it is the key thing.

Eeek! I missed one! 😁 Well, more than one, as I also forgot Traveller :The New Era, GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars, and and Hero Traveller. I glossed over the whole original 3 book Traveller vs. Traveller with expanded Chargen which was a thing back in the day. Not to mention with and without Snapshot., which was also a big thing way back. The game system has a lot of variations.

Well then that's the thing and the rest doesn't really matter. All RPGs have various features that can appeal to someone or discourage someone from playing, and those features vary from person to person. The important thing is to find one that you want to play, and this is especially true if you are the one who is going to have to GM. The GM needs to be enthusiastic about the game or it will fail. So if you got your heart set on running M-SPACE go with it. Now as to why I think someone would prefer to run M-SPACE over Traveller: M-SPACE is BRP realted and migh be preferable to someone who likes BRP M-SPACE gives characters more skills in chargen as well as more control over chargern (which might be critical for a small group-imagine a Traveller game where no one can pilot a ship). M-SPACE is more open ended as far as setting goes, which might appeal to a GM who wants to do thier own thing (although a GM isn't forced to use the Traveller setting and Cephus is more open ended, but then the setting is part of Traveller's appeal.

Not to mention which version of Traveller: Original Traveller, MegaTraveller, Traveller: 2300, Mongoose Traveller, T5, Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition, Mongoose Traveller 2300 AD, Cepheus, etc.

Something from the Futura font family, such as Futura Light might be a good choice. It's clean, quite legible, has a bunch of variants that could be used for headers, titles and such, and appears to be affordable.

Accidental double post

So I've heard from other playtesters. I've been told that pretty much all of the failing of MRQ1 were spooted and pointed out by the playtesters, but people at Mongoose didn't want to hear it, or I should say one specific person at Mongoose. I also heard that Matt Sprange told Steven PErrin that he didn't know how to write an RPG, which was incredible stupid on multiple counts. I disagree the published game was garbage. How many other RPGs get errated before BEFORE release and which the authors admit was ran inccorectly when revealed at conventions? I think I spent months dealing with angry fans over at the Mongoose forums who didn't understand why people didn't like the game, and that all the dumb rules they were defending had already been errated out of existence by Mongoose. Mongoose isn't known for quality rulesets (quite a few players have said whatever the release just wait for the second edtion), but MRQ was probably the worst, most confusing release of an RPG ever. Ken Hite writes good stuff. I wish Steve Perrin would have wrote the game, as he wrote every classic Chasoium RPG except Pendragon. But then again, if he had Mongoose would have edited it. And the first thing errated back out. I think the big problem was that the Mongoose staff were D&D players, not familiar with RQ, and they didn't understand the differences between the game systems, how the RQ rules interacted with each other, and the domino effect caused by changing one rule. For instance, the doubling damage option designed to address the complaints that MRQ combat was a lot "softer" that RQ, would have worked in D&D, where damage only intereacts with hit points, but in RQ, damage also intereacts with armor and parry weapons. Likewise, magical weapons vs. resistant creatures works differently, and we all know how giving Orthath the Chaos worked. In D&D it makes sense as aw and Chaos are distinct from Good and Evil and have been since AD&D. Storms being unpredicable would be considered Chaotic Neutral in D&D terms. But in Gloranthan terms Chaos has a entirely different meaning. So all thie changes that made sense from a D&D point of view created problems and Mongoose's lack of understanding of RQ mean't that whenever Mongoose tried to fix some problem that they had introduced, the broke other aspects of the game. A somewhat similar thing seemed to have happened with the editing of 5th edition Pendragon. There were several edits that looked like they were designed to prevent D&D power gaming but that contradicted all previous editions of the game and really nerfed the game. Fortunately when we pointed them out to Greg he overruled them and said that the book was wrong and the old rules were correct. White Wolf even made a 5.1 edition to fix it too. So it looks like it was just a honest mistake by someone who meant well but didn't understand the game. Yeah, Mongoose staff stayed away from it, and Loz and Pete do good work. While I prefer the BRP/RQ rules over the MRQ2/Legend rules and Mythas rules, I don't loath either of those rulesets. MRQ1 still angers me all these year later. I think it is the only RPG book I sold off for store credit.

It could well be. A lot of Mythos stuff is more that what we (can) perceive it to be or (can) understand. Since much of the Mythos is so alien to our understanding there all all sorts of possibilities. Hmm, what about a creature that can be seen by all creatures, even those that normally cannot see?

It is differernt but you could port it over, if you wanted to. Mongoose RQ is, at best, a mixed bag. IMO, most of the authors appeared to lack an understanding of RQ game mechanics and how the system interconnected (like when they gave the option of doubling weapon damage to restore the leathaity to the game that was removed by other changes made by Mongoose without realizing that doing so would seriously impact the effect of armor and parrying), but Elric of Melnibone was written by Lawrence Whitaker and Pete Nash, who wrote BRP Rome, and who understood the game mechanics. The magic system in Elric of Melnibone isn't BRP sorcery though. I wouldn't say it was bad, just different. It is mostly BRP compatible, too, as much of the underlying stats and mechanics are the same, and what isn't can usually be adapted easily enough.

"solution" implies that is is a problem. It might not actually be. It's just a potential pitfall and implications thereof. Oh that will tend to happen anyway. Usually the sorceror will outfit friends and allies with demon items, to keep them alive, make them more effective in battle, and to increase "target potential" to the enemy (otherwise the enemy have good incentive to gang up on the sorcerer). Yes, and that's nothing compared to old Stormbringer where a good sorcerer could summon up a weapon that did an extra 10d6 and whose armor was virtualy immune to non-magical weapons. Exactly, and they are worse the earlier the edition you use. It not a bad thing per say, just the way it is and both GMs and players should be aware of it going in. Otherwise there wiull be a nasty surprise when a warrior corners a wizard and his greataxe goes "tink" upon hitting the wizard's silken coat. Stormbringer had lesser elemental that had special abilities that were not the same as demon abilities. Plus elementals were not necessarily malevolent the way demons usually were. So alrelemental might be able to fill the sails of a boat to move it, allow one to breathe underwater, or shoot blasts of fire. They could also eliminate each other, which is useful when a sorcerer sends a salamander after a fellow PC I'd have to take another look at the BGB to see what sort of elementals BRP has, but I bet they have similar abilities. Just a reminder that demons and elementals don't always have to be bound. A sorcerror can summon up a demon and bargain with it to get it to perform a single task for him before it returns to it's own plane. Elementals were easier in that they didn't have to be bargained with and the one service for a summoning this was the expected relationship. Depending on the POW of the demons you use in your campaign, this could be the norm for your world. For instance, if the average demon has a POW of 5d8 few sorcerers and going to want to risk binding them, so bargain for service would be more common.

Possible but: Someone would have to collect those rules into a supplement and reformat them like the ones in the BGB, which would take time and money away from other projects. Who want's it, and is willing to pay for it? For example, let's look at the opposed game mechanics used in Pendragon. Anyone who wants to use it in BRP must already be familiar with the Pendragon system and could just port it over right now, and so would not need to buy another supplement containing those rules to do so. The same holds true for CoC7 rules. Anyone who wants them probably already has or CoC7 or could just buy it and port the rules over. So again there is no need for them to buy another supplement. The BGB itself came out at a time when most o Cahoisum's other RPGs were out of print and not available, especially RuneQuest. The printing of RQG, and also CoC7 which not only put a lot of those rules back into print but also change many of them to the point where they don't line up as well with the earlier products works against the cross compatibility of the BGB. Now where I think your argument has some merit, from a business sense as a gaming sense (that is more that just "it would be nice to have it and we want it", which I do understand) is with the unique rules from games like Ringworld. If the rules could be decoupled from the Known Universe setting (because the Niven estate owns it) and maybe reworked into a different, scifi setting (something that official BRP lines tend to be a bit light on), it probably would sell. If it was a setting that had stuff tat could be adapted to other scifi settings, with spaceship rules and such, I think it would probably sell very well, and become the go to book for those wanting to use BRP for sci fi. Kinda like how the Investigator Weapons supplements for COC are so comprehensive that they are the go to book for firearm stats for just about any BRP game, not just CoC. The stats are there and the stats make sense in most BRP games (and damage could be doubled for the games where they don't), so why not use them? Same with some of the Ringworld stuff- the non-Ringworld specific stuff. I understand that you'd like to see a comprehensive book that covers all the rules. Many of us would. Personally I'd like to see some more RQ3 rules as options, and so on, but I have to consider if that would be viable from Chaosium's point of view. Plus, I have RQ3 so I can port over anything I want from it into a BRP game (or vice versa), so I'm not really losing out. I have sympathy for your position, I just don't think it is all that practical to make the changes or produce the supplement you want.

This. It was probably at it worst in SB1 due to the higher starting skills for sorcerors. Later versions (Elric!, SB5, Magic World) toned it down a bit, but generally speaking those with access to sorcery, especially demon weapons and armor held a significant advantage over those who didn't. When a sorcerer is doing 7d6 damage with their weapon and the armor is virtually immune to most opponents' weapons, it becomes something of a foregone conclusion. The fist major implication of this is that PCs had virtually no chance against a powerful sorcerer. IN BRP they fare a bit better as sorcerers aren't quite as powerful, but still, magical weapons and armor that do an extra die damage will make for an uphill battle. A second major implication is that that in Stormbringer, to challenge a PC Sorcerer, the GM would need to use otherworldly/supernatural creatures or other sorcerers. In campaigns most PCs sorcerers ended up with some other sorcerer (similar to Elric's Theleb Karana) to be a reoccurring foe to provide a challenge. Again, this isn't quite as dominant in BRP, but is still a consideration. It is easy for PCs with demon items to become complacent, arrogant, and overconfident. That can lead them to biting off more than they can chew and not having the time to back away before suffering casualties. Senseless slaughter on NPCs and TPKs become a lot more common. Upping the opposition doesn't really help all that much as it also tends to up the leathiality. It's kinda like what would happen if you handed out submachinguns to the PCs. THey would slaughter most foes until they ran into opponents who also had submachinguns, and then there would be lots od dead characters on both sides of the conflict. A secondary implication is that the high POW requirements for sorcery (16+) makes human sorcerers extremely rare (a 4.63% chance or about one in 22 characters) without some sort of point build method of chargen or racial/cultural modifiers to characteristics. This has an additional side effect of there being a big power jump to the campaign a sorcerer joins a pre-existing group of adventurers.

What I think would be a good way to go with this would be to introduce some legendary wizard who was blind. Perhaps with his own form of tactile based communication that predates braille. That would open the door to all sort of Mythos lore and nastiness geared towards the blind. Mythos tomes that have unique knowledge and spells, Mythos nasties that can only be interacted with by the blind (like the Medusans from Star Trek TOS, which could easily fit into the Mythos), and other that only threaten those who cannot see them. Another possibility would be to pruse the idea of blind people having thier other four sense being enhanced and that somehow allows them to perceive something that the rest of us cannot. Maybe thier sixth (or seventh?) sense is enhanced somehow?

I woundn't be all that concerned about SAN loss. Not being able to see some Mythos nasties might avoid some SAN loss, but not seeing the Shoggoth, Byakhee, Deep One, etc. in the room probably leads to consequences at least as severe as SAN loss. Dead is probably as bad as crazy. I wound't say that Library Use would be impossible either, depending on the era being played in. Modern libraries have sections for the blind. No reason why some Mythos related book couldn't be in braille (eek more SAN loss!). I think the key points here are really: Why does the player want a blind character -i.e. is is a good concept. What does the character bring to the table , that is what can the character do to aid in the investigations. Somebody might have a good character concept that doesn't translate well into roleplaying or into a CoC campaign.

I didn;t find it all that surprising, WotC is hemmoraging money these days. They over saturated MTG to the point that cards are going into landfills, and the shift away from OGL did a job on D&D. But then, they were always going to do something like that. The whole OGL thing was becuase D&D's dominance was slipping (World of Darkness was getting better penetration in book stores), and OGL got everybody producing D&D stuff. But the plan was to replace OGL with a closed edition once thier dominance was securred. It just didn't turn out that way though. 4E led to Pathfinder, and WotC recent actions alinated a lot of people. Great. People have to look at BRP in order to give it a chance. Same for the other RPGs. The problem in the past was that a lot of people just played D&D/D20 RPGs and didn't look at other RPGs, or worse blamed those other RPGs when their D&D tactics didn't work in those RPGs. I slaughtered quite a few groups of D&D players in RQ2 and RQ3 who thought that charging the archers was a great tactic because it worked from them in AD&D. Good> I think it is a unique opportunity. It is possible for some else to supplant D&D, or better yet, just open up the gaming market for other games. I think a fast response is key, too. A year from now whatever is going to happen, will have already happened. Once people find their replacement to D&D they will stop looking at other RPGs. Yeah, I think they should pick up some new fans. I just worry that the might commit more resources that the returns would warrant. As for grudges, yup. I think it goes with the hobby being something of a niche. A lot of old timers had some grievances against the old TSR. I think so too, but I suspect most of them will end up playing Pathfinder or some other derivative of D&D. It's the devil they know. After all, most of them were happy with the game system, just not with the move away from OGL. I'm probably a good example of this. I am not a fan of RQG, nor do I like the direction that Pendragon 6 seems to be heading, and I certainly do not get along with a certain member of the Chaosium staff, yet while I won't play RQG or KAP6, I have no plans to switch to D&D/D20 over any of this, and instead will stick with the older editions. In fact, I'm sort of surprised about the uproar, as I thought it was a golden opportunity for other companies to dominate 5E. If the player refuse to move to 6E there was nothing WotC could have done about it.

Yeah it's been shown that well developed setting sell better, although I think that might have a lot to do with the fact that such settings tend to have greater scenario support. Many GMs want to use pre-written adventures, and developed settings get a lot more of those than generic settings. I'm a little worried about that. While WotC has certainly done, and continues to do, damage to it's brand, I suspect a lot of angry D&Ders will go back to it if WotC doesn't do anything else to aggravate them. Everybody seems to be making a new OGL RPG after the D&D fiasco. I could easily see this ending up like the streaming wars with companies spending too much money and resources fighting for market share. I just don't see many D&D fans migrating to BRP. In my experience most D&D players like character classes, levels of experience, increasing hit points, experience points and the other stuff that goes with D&D like games. Only a small fraction seem to prefer skill based games. Yes, now is a good time to draw attention to BRP, or any RPG that isn't D&D, but I doubt any RPG is going to be able to grab the sort of market share that D&D had, except maybe Pathfinder, but that is more of a lateral move for D&D players.

No, at the very least, they could do nothing and just leave the book as it is. That would be doing the very least. Now they could certainly choose to add in the CoC7 stuff as optional rules, but that would be doing more than the very least. In fact, anything other than tacking the CoC7 stuff on in a few pages at the end of the book, would almost certainly require re-typesetting and reformatting the book. Yes, but all those optional and variant rules came from pre-existing BRP games, and ones that used rules similar to RuneQuest/Stormbringer/old CoC, and ones that were mostly out of print or hard to find at the time of the BGB's release. If they added the CoC7 rules, then a strong case could be made for adding in the variant rules from all the BRP related games, such Pendragon and Ringworld, which are at least as similar to BRP as CoC7 is. Besides, anyone who is fond of CoC7 can just pull it out and mix 'n match it with the BGB if they wish to get what they want. It's not like you can't port stuff you want from the BGB to CoC7. The same is true for anyone who has Stormbringer/Elric!, RuneQuest 3, RuneQuest 2, Worlds of Wonder, Superworld, etc and want's to grab something from the BGB. Everything works both ways. It a GM running Hawkmoon wants to port over laser cannon stats from the BGB, or a Stormbringer GM wants to port over stats for archaic firearms, they can. The main advantage to the BGB was that it collected a lot of rules from older games that are no longer available, at least not in the same form, so somebody who wanted them could have access to RQ's Battle Magic, or Stormringer's Sorcery, as most of that was out of print at the time. In fact, with most of the older Chasoium stuff being available again, and with RQG, Magic World, CoC7, available, the BGB isn't as valuable now as it was when it was released. In most cases you don't need the BGB to fill the gaps. What you can't get now, is stuff that the BGB doesn't cover, most of which is due to licensing, such as RingWorld.

Yes, but that was a key component to pretty much all of the magic systems, which in turn originated from RuneQuest. The basic concept of character improvement via experience rolls is fundamental to all BRP games. As the RuneQuest magic system originally only relied upon spells known and POW for magical skills, POW sort of had to be improvable, and all of the various magic systems become somewhat limited if POW ins't improvable in some way. I mean you pretty much can't play a Rune level character is RQ without it, progress very far as a Sorcerer in Stormbringer/Elric, etc. Call of Cthulhu is probably the exception since player characters are usually so overmatched it doesn't really matter if POW improves or not.

They probably were. RPGs from the 70s and early 80s drew inspiration from everywhere. Tolkien, Moorcock and Lieber were some of the most influential writers as far as RPGs go.