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It's like Vinga and Emal. So yeah, it "new".

Not thrilled with that approach. Well, at least you didn't give Orlanth the Chaos rune.

Am I the only one who dislikes the fact that the Grey Sages of Lhankor Mhy are now Sorcerers? It's a big change from how Dragon Pass was in the past. Before, sorcery was considered foreign and dangerous. Now, Lightbringers are doing it. To me that's just wrong.

I'm another who votes for Borderlands. IMO it's one of the best campaign startups ever written. It gives some nice descriptions and introductions of the various cultures that the PCs have to intereact with in the game, plus a book of pregenerated NPC and creatures stats that saves the GM a lot of set up work. Griffin Mountain?island is a nice expansion to an existing campaign, but doesn't really help the GM introduce the PCs to the setting the way Borderlands does. Plus Borderlands has a 7 adventure year long campaign that the GM can fall back on while he works up his own adventures, with help from all the story hooks that comes with Borderlands.

Instead of a +dx% cast bonus, maybe those bonuses could be changed to POW doubling. Like say 1 point POW doubling, but if the sorcerer has two or three such goodies it doubles the first two or three POW points spent. That would keep the bonuses useful, easy to play, but not all that powerful.

I think the fight defensively option needs work. The problem that I see with it is that the skill ratings in BRP are more diverse than in GURPS. Someone who has a significant advantage in skill can turn it into an almost unbeatable maneuver. For example somebody with a 120% Attack facing off against an opponent who has a 80% Parry. While 120 vs 80 is a very strong edge, 60 vs 20 is even better.

Probably. or nearly so. While I'll admit to having reservations about the new RQ, I can't blame the RQ4 design team for the fact that all the previous RPGs than handled Glorantha took such diverse approaches. I think what you RQ4 design team can be blamed (or praised) for is where the RQ4 rules divert from previous editions. Basically, you have to justify why you did something in a new and different way from they way it had been done before. However, in your defense, the history and evolution of RQ and RQ derived game systems is now so convoluted that in many cases it's hard, if not impossible, to determine what the "default" rule is supposed to be. I think Jason ran into that problem when he wrote BRP. Mechanically, it's a mostly based on the rules for Call of Cthuhlu/Elric! with bits from Worlds of Wonder, RQ3, Strombringer, Hawkmoon, etc. thrown in. BTW, I hope somebody finally corrects all the errors in the SIZ table that's been floating around for several editions of CoC. It really looks like somebody either made a cut & paste error, or wasn't familiar with the differences between short tons (2000 pounds) and metric tons (1000 kilograms).

I'd say that was par for the course. RQ/RQ2 didn't really match up with the world and magic presented in White Bear & Red Moon (no legions of spellcasters joining together to cast powerful spells); HeroQuest didn't really match up with the world and magic presented in RQ (no spells such as bladesharp or fireblade); and I won't even go into MRQ Glorantha.

Well, there were a few spin offs that did expand things beyond the default campaign. Plus the Arthurian setting is a very rich setting, and not the only storyline going on in a good Pendragon campaign. And it was also a farily tightly focused one, since virtually all the PCs were knights. But you do have a point. I'd love to see something like that for RQ. Perhaps they could do a Dragon Pass campaign for Orlanthi? Even better still would be if it was a a "dual approach" campaign that could be played from either an Orlanthi or Lunar perspective.

Great! I don't mind stand alone adventures, but Campaign packs were one of the things that really made RQ2 great. So when will the new RQ be available?

That is what's needed, and why, ultimately RQ, BRP etc dropped to the wayside while games like D&D, Pendragon and CoC survived. The vast majority of GMs want pre-written adventures to run. It's also why the RQ3 debacle is relevant here. Even the good RQ3 stuff (the revised ruleset, RQ Vikings, etc.) received little support. Personally, I'm hoping for the return of campaign packs as opposed to just stand alone adventures. I loved how Chaosium used to write up a setting in detail, with a half dozen adventures, and the toss in tons and tons of ideas that could be fleshed out to make an actual campaign.

Uh, if it helps, Power (that's the product of the Voltage and the Current), rated in Joules or Watts (Joules per second) is a much better indication of damage potential than just voltage. You can have things that pump up the voltage to high levels but do so by dropping the amperage (current flow), such as old picture tube TVs. Most electric fences have a high voltage rating, but are drawing power off a a standard houseline running at 10-20 Amps and 100-125 volts (somewhere between 1000-2500 Watts) or less. I'd be more worried about the shock from 30 Amp 220 Volt (6600 Watt) dryer than most electric fences. It's also why getting a 12V car battery is more powerful (and dangerous) than, say, eight 1.5 V household batteries that are wired in series, like in a flashlight. High Power lines are dangerous not just because of the high voltage (that's done to help the electricity to travel further down the line) but because the lines have enough current (and thus power) to handle the needs for all the building along the powerline.

They can be, depending on the particular arts being compared, and situation. But, much like with firearms and bullet caliber, skill is much, much more important in determining effectiveness. I could see allowing a martial artists to get a damage die based on his skill %, and then shifting the die size up or down based on the actual martial art and/or specific maneuver. For instance, Muay Thai probably has stronger kicks than, say Akijutsu, but a novice at Muay Thai won't kick as hard as a master of Akijutsu.

I'm with you MOB. Prior to RQ3, Glorantha was RuneQuest. When RQ3 came out, it had conversion rules to bring RQ2 characters into RQ3, but it was virtually impossible to do so, since there wasn't any RQ3 Glorantha worth going to. We never got an RQ3 version of Cults of Prax, which was pretty much they key supplement to running a Glorathan-based campaign. Nor did we get any new campaign settings in the mold of Borderlands, Pavis, Big Rubble etc. What little Glorantha stuff that appeared for RQ3 was either a reprint or vastly inferior to what had been available for RQ2 (none of the various/numerous/useless RQ3 cult writeups held a candle to those from Cults of Prax or Cults of Terror).By the time anything new and useful for Glorantha came out for RQ3, there wasn't anyone still using RQ3 for Glorantha. Either they changed settings, switched back to RQ2, or moved on to another RPG. I wasn't even aware of Sun Country until around the time HeroWars (I.e. first edition HeroQuest) came out, say 2000. By then it was "too little, too late." Sure all the other stuff was nice to have. RQ Vikings, IMO, was probably the best RQ3 supplement printed. But I would gladly have gone without it, or any of the other RQ3 supplements, if we could have gotten more new Glorantha stuff in a style similar to that published for RQ2 instead.

I think there was a bit more sorcery stuff in the Glorantha boxed set.

Sure, send them over. I'll pay you after I look up tomorrow's lottery numbers.

I don't think I like the rule then. I never thought that characters should be rolling against their skill every time. If they did that, then something like 5% of the people on the road would get into an accident everyday. And I don't think most people drive at 50% or better.

Say, does that rule scale for other skill ratings? For instance how well would a pilot with a 49% rating do? BTW, this sounds a lot like the skill ratings used in the old FASA Star Trek RPG. What they did was gave tasks a certain required general rating (qualified, competent, expert, etc.) and then modified the roll required). For instance if something required someone to be competent (40%) you would subtract their skill from 40% to see what their failure chance was. Things that required a "qualified" rating were rolled against a D10 instead of D100.

Of course you have a choice! It's a custom build. In fact, I could give you stats and real world data if you'd like. Something like: Planet-class Explorer (SWATH) SIZ: 136 (Displacement: 3500mt) POW: 130 (2080kW) SPD: -13 (7.78m/s, 28kph, 17mph, 15knots) STR: 107 (2.674kN)

LOL! I was actually considering editing the post to put the asterisk in but decided against it as too, er, nitpicky.

Sure. I always felt is's good to hide the "crunch" when possible. Now would you like ship's to be rated in game stats (STR, POW, SIZ), real world data (kiloNewtons/kilograms thrust, watts of Power, mass in kilograms/tons), abstract ratings (weak, moderate, powerful)), some combination thereof, or something else entirely?

Well, since you are switching systems (to BRP Essentials or Mythras Imperative) anyway, the concept of it being a sci-fi ruleset for the "baseline" BRP system is shot. The game rules wouldn't have to be all that different or even all that complex. You really only need to cover the basic rules you need to play. Pretty much like Future World, but with actual spaceships! But' it just a suggestion.

Hey rust, If it would help, I've learned a lot about how real vehicle movement works since the days when we kept plugging numbers into my old spreadsheets to get ship stats for BRP. I could probably help you with ship stats. It turns out the real world math for such things was a LOT simpler than the so-called simple methods that most of us were using. Watercraft speed is mostly a STR-SIZ thing with modifiers for how deep the ship sits in the water and streamlining. I could probably put together a shot 1-2 page design system that would work for any watercraft (or airship for that matter).

Yup, it's US baseball slang. A common chant for kids during a baseball game when an opposing batter steps up to the plate is: "He's a whiffer, he can't hit!" It probably derived from the Wiffle Ball, a common plastic ball ( that was often sold with a plastic bat) toy that is popular way to play baseball in the US. In fact, looking at Wikipedia: the ball most commonly used in the game was invented by David N. Mullany at his home in Fairfield, Connecticut in 1953 when he designed a ball that curved easily for his 12-year-old son. It was named when his son and his friends would refer to a strikeout as a "whiff". The classic trademarked Wiffle Ball is about the same size as a regulation baseball, but is hollow, lightweight, of resilient plastic, no more than 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick. One half is perforated with eight .75-inch (19 mm) oblong holes; the other half is non-perforated. This construction allows pitchers to throw a tremendous variety of curveballs and risers. Wiffle balls are typically packaged with a hollow, hard plastic, yellow bat that measures 32 inches (810 mm) in length and about 1.25 inches (32 mm) in diameter.

Another possibility could be to go with your own ruleset. it's not as daunting at it sounds. A lot of what you need to run a SciFi/Space type campaign is already imn the book. All you would need would be some basic rules for handling task resolution and such. Going with a homebrew system would also free you up from being subject to the whims of a third party who produces the core RPG. That lets you keep developing the game if we should go through a repeat of what is happing with BRP. Actually, let me change that to when we should go through a repeat of what is happing with BRP. One thing that's been apparent in the current era of RPGs is that most companies seem to pruce a core book, then ditch it later to do a whole new edition.