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Thanks!

How about making up a crib sheet with your discoveries. I got a few sheets that could benefit from that!

Okay, thanks. BTW, how attached are you to the 5:1 scale factor between spacecraft and vehicles? Would a 10:1 factor be too much?

Which we could have gotten without MRQ. Cakebread and Walton jumping from closed MRQ2 to open OpenQuest,

Wish I still had my copy. In some ways I wish Steve would do a trimmed down version of GURPS to fix TFT's deficiencies. FTF is mostly good, with a few bugs that get annoying over time (like everyone ending up with 25 IQs to cover skills).

More like the FLGS actually has to exist. In the past few years all the FLGSes have dried up in my area. What's left only has a small section of RPG stuff, and that is mostly D&D/Pathfinder. The FLGS has in store gaming for CCGs but not for RPGs, and Wargames are taking up more shelf space than RPGs. Of course part of the problem here is that RPGs do not require people to keep buying more product the way CCGs and wargames (via miniatures) do.Nor does everyone who plays need a copy of the game. I never expected D&D to stay OGL, nor do I see OGL as a big factor outside of D20. Basically, it's pretty useless. Actual RPG rules are fair game-so the only reason to support an OGL game, from a marketing viewpoint, is to tap into that game's fanbase. Most RPGs don't have that big a fanbase. FATE is OGL, but Spirit of the Century, isn't. FATE is just the underlying framework. much like the old BRP. Nope. MRQ being OGL did not lead to OpenQuest, Legend, or RQ6. The fact that rules cannot be copyrighted allowed for OpenQuest. The fact that MRQ1 wasn't such a great system led to MRQ2 which eventually got rebranded as Legend when Mongoose no longer had the RQ brandname RQ6 cam about becuas ethe guys who wrote MRQ2 did decide to pursue the RQ brand name. OGL didn't make a bit of difference. The litmus test is this: How many non-Mongoose MRQ and Legend supplements are there out there? Not many. Merrie England, Stupor Mundi. What else? It can. As mentioned companies don;t actually own RPG rules. Just the text they use to present them. So anybody can resurrect a dead game system. What they can't do is reprint it verbatim. You could do a rewrite of TFT or RQ or whatever tomorrow, if you wanted to. You just have to word it differently, avoid using the specific setting (no Cidri or Glorantha), and avoid anything unique to that setting. The reason why you don't see it happen more often is simply because few people want to throw money away to reproduce an RPG that's already failed. Things like OpenQuest come about, not because of OGL (you don't need OGL to do it), but because some fan wants to recreate and modify a favorite RPG. What OGL does, in theroy, is provide a reason for third parties not to create their own RPGs, but instead tap into the market of an existing RPG.

I DL'd and am looking over version 1.5. It looks pretty good. Would you mind if I expanded and tweaked the weapons list a little? I'd like to: 1) Make the scaling a little easier by trying to better match the dice to the scale factor. 2) Make it mesh better with the existing lasers and such in BRP 3) Add a few more options and variations.

As I've said virtually gone. Sure we will still have our old stuff; And sure places like DriveThru RPG will still be out there selling PDFs, becuase it's easy to distribute RPGs that way; and yeah places like Amazon and eBay will still be aroiund, making it possible to hunt down out of print RPGs, at a price. But RPGs will mostly disappear from store shelves. In other words. Is going to be the new norm. Most RPGs "companies" have always been small, "garage companies". So that won't change. And with desktop publishing, the internet, personal printers, and and print of demand a lot of smaller companies will survive simply because you don't need as much to get a game out there as you once did. 30 years ago, yoy had to write the game up; get it formatted and professionally printed; get word out about the RPG; and find a way to get it into a store or some other way to sell it. Now all ya goota do is make a document on a computer; convert it to a PDF; and make it available on-line. But you won't see many RPGs on the shelves of local bookstores, partyl due to the decline of RPGs, and partly to the decline of local bookstores. I disagree with you about OGL. THe intention of OGL was to recapture D&D's dominance in the RPG community at a time when it was toppling. The lure of being able to print D&D stuff (and get a slice of the bigger pie) got a lot of companies to print D&D stuff. This restored D&D to prominence, which then led to the demise of OGL. That Mongoose and Pathfinder probably did better out of the arrangment than WotC, was the surprising bit. Most RPG companies are going back to closed systems again- to protect whatever niche they have and maintain control over content.

I might. I'd have to think about it. The trick would be seeing just how much of the system could be put up without running into problems with Chaosium. We;d have to reword everything to avoid copyright infringement, and, I doubt they'd be happy to see thier entire system up on line somehwere. Now if we focused on just the stuff that is out of print or outdated, we might not ruffle as many feathers. I doubt they'd get ticked off if we posted the skill list and skill base formulas from ElfQuest. I think that part of the reason that this is being discussed is because a consolidation of everything that is "out there" would be nice and convenient. I know the feeling, but there is little I think we can really do about it. Chaosium either will not or cannot support the system more, and from what I've read from those who've tried, dealing with them is difficult enough to chase off third party publishers. Pretty much everyone who's done a BRP supplement has moved on to other, related systems. What BRP needs is a killer setting using the system. The kind of thing The Chaosium used to be doing every six months. No. Think about it. If they were doing a "lot better", they wouldn't be slow as molasses. To be fair though, I don't think the money would stat rolling in if they hired more people and upped production. This isn't 1980. RuneQuest is no longer the sa huge fanbase to support it.

THat's the state of the hobby. Right now anything other than D&D/Pathfinder is on the decline. I don't think it cyclic, but the fading of an era. CCGs did a good job killing off the old RPG companies, and CRPGs are taking over what's left of the role-playing market. So we are fighting for a larger market share in a dwindling fanbase. Not good. I suspect that within a few years tabletop RPGs will be virtually gone.

Something like that. Generally speaking the BRB overwhelms those who are new to the system. Us old time BRP gamers already know what's in the BGB. So much so that we ususally don't bother to read what the current rule for something is and instead rely on our memory of whatever version we prefer from a BRP ancestor. But to someone who hasn't seen the system beofre the BGB is a big confusion laberythe of rules, options, variants and subsystems that are, as admitted by the author, not entirely compatible with each other. You have to know what to do with it to get good results. Despite the name there is nothing "Basic" about it. I think something like the WoW approach, but with better fleshed out books would be the way to go. A core rule book with the basic game mechanics and a handful of weapons, armor and equipment, plus generic fantasy, sci-fi, and maybe supers books. Probably a GM's book as well. Chaosium had the right idea with a solid core system that they would adapt to a specific setting (Stormbringer, CoC, Ringworld, ElfQuest), they just never extended to it a truely genric system. WoW was a halfhearted attempt. It took HERO and GURPS to apply the concept properly.

I thought there was a BRP wiki out there somewhere. Maybe my memory's faulty. Time to upgrade to solid state. Okay, but why? I mean the old stuff is pretty much out of print and only available by paying through the nose, or by downloading fan-produced PDFs (with something like the Ringworld Companion going for $90 on Amazon, I can't say as I blame people for scanning thier out of print stuff). The newer is gets plenty of exposure, assuming one is aware of the half dozen or so companies producing BRP related products. I don't see where a picture of the box cover and summary of, say, Ringworld or ElfQuest, is going to do anyone any good. I don't blame you. And frankly I don't think it is worth doing. I could see it if there was some purpose to it. But why do a ton of work and spend you own money so some reseller at Amazon can jack up his prices thanks to the increased awareness? Personally, I'd rather see some of the rules, variants and other stuff that has appeared in BRP related supplemnts but didn't make it into the BRG get collected somewhere. Stuff such as the SIZ table from the boxed Superworld; the starting skills as the sum of several attributes from the original Magic World, and ElfQuest,;perpetual Strike Ranks from Ringworld, Ki skills from RQ3's Land of the Ninja - that sort of thing. That's the stuff that we are going to lose if someone doesn't collect it.

I disagree. Everything involving publishing RPGs risks "giving out more green bits of paper than they are given." A RPG company has to weight those risks with the possible rewards. THe BGB is a great sourcebook for experieced BRPers who want to have all (well most) of it in one book. But's it's a lousy book for fledging GMs and players. Basically, if the BGB is helpful to you, then you don't NEED it, and if you NEED the BGB then its' probably no help to you. A trimmed down version, with a setting and playable adventures would do wonders to make the game more accessible and draw in new blood. And it would probably help the sales of the BGB, since most GMs end up buying the advanced rulebooks down the line. And if the made the small book a "Player's book" they could sell it to those players who might want a copy of the rules for thier own reference, but who don't want to shell out the money for the BGB and the stuff within that isn't applicable to their campaigns. As far as the Quickstart goes, can anybody tell me of someone who actually started playing an RPG and bought the full rules because of a Quickstart? I sure can't. In my experience the opposite happens.

Perhaps. It would be nice to see Privateers & Gentlemen and Midnight At the Well of Souls get mentioned as BRP related. Nope. At least I wouldn't. I mean really, what for? I could see someone compiling a list and putting up up someplace like, say, here. Say in the downloads section, and maybe updating it ever so often to note new releases. Or maybe adding it to that wiki that people talk about. Folks like Rob, Rosen and Simon will no doubt keep up with their own products- those guys give great support-as soltakss's post and webpage shows. I'm sure Pete & Loz wouldn't mind keeping us updated with RQ6 supplements (again great support), or at least that somebody on the forum wouldn't mind doing so on their behalf. Ditto Mongoose (okay, I don't like 'em but they do give some decent support) and Chaosium (best reached through HeroQuesting). But really, why set up a webpage and pay for a server just to do a list of what is and what was?

I think it is more that the typical Japanese teenager feels neglected (parents working long hours; kids left to themselves) and the TV series do the same sort of thing, but to a greater degree.

Now I'm curious. I'll have to watch an EP or two. But then, a lot of anime has stuff that is disturbing. Often the same stuff, and it gives an insight into the Japanese culture, and target audience. For example: -If it's for males, there will be fanservice. [in fact, if there isn't any fanservice at all, it's probably aimed at 6 year olds and not worth watching.] -Ditto the obligatory Hentai character. [i know a lot of these shows are for teenagers, but even something like the venerable Space Battlecruiser Yamato can't escape it- even if they have to bring in a horny robot] -Most parents neglect their children, to the point where stage agencies would be called in most Western countries. The ones that don't neglect their children are usually much worse than the ones who do! [A sad commentary of the Japanese family. It isn't the outsider viewpoint that they are being neglected- it's the way it's being presented to it's target audience of Japanese schoolkids. Either as a show of sympathy, or an example of how much worse it could be. But it's sadly ironic that Japanese teenagers seem to miss their parents when most other teenagers are so sick of their parents that they are rebelling]] -The best way to get the girl is to spend time with another girl. [in anime the girls get competitive over the guy, rather than dump him] -The best way to see a girl naked is to see another girl naked. [same as above. Still, I wound't mind testing this out just to make sure I'm not mistaken:P] -Victims of bullies, no matter how badly they are provoked, are somehow considered wrong for standing up for themselves, especially against upperclassmen. [Non-conformity is bad in Japan.]

That was one of the neat things about Macross. The fighters turned into giant robots specifically because we knew that the aliens were giants. It's probabl the best justification for giant robots I've seen in an anime series. And said pilot probably would have done better if he had duked it out with anybody on that ship other than Breetai.

Well, until Stormbringer, to be technical. In some ways Stormbringer was a preview of things to come in RQ3.

Yeah it is pretty. Just how time consuming is it? I got a couple of small supplements/handouts for BRP Mecha in the works.

MRQ1. I didn't buy MRQ2-basically I swore off Mongoose after the MRQ1 debacle. Especially after one of the playtesters told me how the whole process actually went down. Much of the problems with the rules were spotted by the playtesters, but implemented anyway. And someone from Mongoose told Steve Perrin that he didn't know how to write an RPG! Which is when Perrin dropped out of the playtest. MRQ2 is supposedly a different animal. It was written by some actual RQ players with the intention of being played, not just stored on a shelf. I've peeked at RQ6, which was done by the same guys who did MRQ2, and it's certainly better than MRQ1. You're familiar enough. I might want to quote this for a new email signature! Okay. In Elric! a major wound take the character out of the fight, and the table is the long term effects.I take then that in Renaissance targeting locations results in different long term impairments?

Well if you didn't have the changes written down for easy reference, any effects might not have been noticed! As a general rule players are very good at finding really blatantly obvious, game derailing stuff, that the GM missed completely. It's unnerving. On the contrary, d100/BRP has proven to be pretty resilient to whatever goofy changes I've made to it. Could you provide an example of how MRQ caused a domino effect of complications?

I think what you need to do is print off the house rule stuff. That way you can tell the players ' We are using the Elric! rules, except where these bits here supersede them." Just printing off the alternate rules you are using should cut down on the amount of work you need to do to make it accessible, yet still give the players a way to keep up with what you're doing. But...you really should be careful mixing and matching stuff, especially without the players be up on it and able to playtest stuff. There tend to be unforeseen complications that arise from swapping out rule sections. One thing that MRQ proved was that the rules in RQ/BRP are interconnected and changing any one thing can have a domino effect.

Pendragon did something similar in the Tournament of Dreams adventure. THe knights faced off against opponents in their dreams (hence the title). The character's equipment was tied to their chivarlric traits. A high trait meant a fine sword, armor or horse (depending on which trait).

Huh?! What's in the WoW version of Superworld that didn't make it into BGB? The boxed Superworld had tons of stuff that isn't in BRP, but I can't think of anything in the booklet version that didn't get covered.