Atgxtg

It might be interesting to make a poll of this with people noting just when they got into BRP (maybe by decade or in 5 year increments)? It might be worth another poll to see which particular incarnation of the game people started with and/or preferred. I suspect that there are probably patterns here.

That sort of depends on just what we consider "minor". Personally I consider options like the Hero Point system from Bond (or allowing BRP's Fate Points to work that way) as a minor rule change (a option) that would allow for a more cinematic style of play. I think more radical changes might be needed to handle something like a 4-color superhero campaign, and have in fact been applied to the system in the past (Superworld boxed set). But rule tweaks are,IMO, of secondary importance. I bwlieve the most important things required to improve BRP's popularity are improved presence/exposure and more supplements. People can't like it if they are not aware of it, and no game flourishes without support. As far as what sort of supplements are most desperately needed (settings, adventures, or sourcebooks) I think all of them. Ultimately, I think the bulk of the responsibility for this lies with Chaosium. They are the ones who are going to have to be the game out where the people can see it, and they are the ones who determine what supplements get published. As fans, we can help somewhat, but are effect is limited. Making the Quick Star more accessible is good, as would be making a more streamlined into book (the oginal BRP booklet is not too bad). We can also talk to other gamers about the game, but that is only useful if the other people can find the game in the stores. In my opinion showing new people how to play BRP probably has negligible effect. Any GM can only handle so many gamers, so a best we can only reach a handful of people this way. Don't get me wrong, it worth doing, but it is probably going to help the individual GMs more than it will help BRP. One thing that might help BRP, or any RPG is if there were more supplements geared towards players rather than towards GMs. Most groups tend to have one or two GMs with the rest of the group being players. This usually translates into the GMs buying most of the products, and the bulk of the group buying very little. That is one reason why CCGs have done so well-they can get everybody in the group to buy cards. A few player oriented supplements, for example a character creation book for players, or maybe a player's guide to a setting could help to give each player something to spend money on.

On the contrary. It implies that BRP could be more popular if it were more cinematic, and or more like "mainstream" RPGs. That is certainly on topic. As for "picking at the scraps", I think the most successful companies did better than that. Back when RQ3 was first released, it was thought that Avalon Hill would be able to get RQ into a lot more stores, making RQ a serious contender for D&D's title. It's not entirely a coincidence that the few fantasy RPGs in the 70s and 80s that had the capability to rival D&D eventually ended up being owned (and buried) by TSR/WotC.

I bet you say that to all the trollkin.

Did you catch: "Rome wasn't built in a day, just ask Pete Nash" ?

That would go go with a image of D&D style adventures in a line walking into the lair of some D&D nasty (and getting killed). "90% of all role-playing fatalities happen in D&D. Can you afford to take that risk? Play Smart; Play Safe; Play Basic Role-Playing." The preceding announcement was an unpaid advertisement for the Basic Role-Playing game system. All people, places, and role-playing systems are fictitious and similarity to any real people, places or game system is purely coincidence, or at least comical. Your mileage may vary. Neither the publishers, Game Masters, fellow gamers, family members, friends or total strangers guarantee the survival rate for any character, not even a Rune Lord of Yelmalio confronting a pathetic bikini-clad trollkin armed with a stick. Even the players are on their own. Warning: prolonged exposure the gamers and gaming might make you a kook, although stories of gamers taking it all for real and living in the sewers are entirely false. Really. They don't live there, the alligators eat them. Void where prohibited by law, a sense of decency, or a couple of working brain cells. The offer doesn't extend to lemmings, either. If you think I'm crazy, why did you bother to read this? Yea! Go team! Rome wasn't built in a day, just ask Pete Nash. Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do. I really need to get more sleep. Why do the have test patterns during the daytime when we're awake, alert, and possible have the TV on? Don't roll high, just rock slowly. Maybe I'm sneak a typo in here for frogspammer. © 2009 (wow! I have copyright to a whole year!)

Being promoted by bikini models and/or strippers would help. Hey, it sells cars and heavy machinery that sell for thousands, it can certainly help sell copies of the much lower priced BRP. We could have a "Babes of BRP" supplement (maybe a calendar?). :innocent: Maybe Triff can put that trollkin on the cover of d100 into a bikini?

Lemming Curry?!?:confused:

It doesn't matter how well you can use it, if no one will give you a chance to use your thingy because it not a big thingy. :ohwell: There is a lot of pseudo peer pressure to use what everyone else does, based on the idea that if the majority uses it, it must be the best. Otherwise know as the "But all my friends are on AOL!" philosophy.

To try an illustrate what I believe to be Nightshade's point: Back in 2001, with 3rd edition D&D came out, Chaosium produced a book called Dragonlords of Melnibone, essential Stormbringer/Elric! for d20. When they are asked why they made such a book, the replied that the profits from one D&D supplement pays the costs for producing several supplemts for games like Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu. The demand of D&D being that much greater than that for Stormbringer. Now since Chasoium is an RPG company, and the goal of a company is to sell product and make a profit, it is certainly understandable that they would try to make products that would be in high demand. At the same time several companies switched over to D&D, either dropping their own "in-house" game systems or producing hybrid products. So since the demand for D&D is so much greater it gets much more support and consequently other RPGs get that much less. So, like Nightshade pointed out, the more specialized (or the more it diverges from D&D) a RPG gets, the smaller it's potential fan and customer base, and, generally speaking, the less popular it will be.

Corrections: 1) It was not a bio warfare agent, but a life prolongation experiment gone wrong. 2) The "madness" is also due to the effects of going through puberty and rapidly aging without understanding anything about either. Having all thier friend turn on them probably wasn't any help either. 3) The children aren't very frightened or starving. For the most part they are playful, but have been without any adult guidance or supervision for 300 years. The episode does mention that the food store will run out soon, but the kids were not starving yet. Your alterations (unintentional or deliberate) would certainly make for a darker story. Imagine if the food had run out and the children became cannibalistic. The children probably have an enhanced healing rate, too. The other children episode, " And the Children Shall Lead", with the "Gorgon" (Space Lawyer) is very Mtythos-esque, except that it has a happy ending.

Well, I raised the idea specifically because one of the Star Trek episodes ("What Are Little Girls Made Of?") was written by Robert Bloch (a Mythos author) and the episode does make references to the "Old Ones". I think Block was suggesting that the site found in the episode belonged to the Old Ones/Elder Things, but it's vague enough that it could be interpreted however you want. The two setting mix relatively okay, except perhaps that the Federation might be too well adjusted to have traveled around in Lovecraft's Universe. Perhaps even better than the Salt Vampire is the energy creature from Obsession. The one that sucks out hemoglobin and is immune to most weapons. Fairly similar to Bloch's Star Vampire. Even that Jack the Ripper thing could work in CoC.

Mine was Stoombringer (1st Edition), back around 1981-ish. I had been playing AD&D for a few months and was dissatisfied with a lot of things. I picked up Stormbringer because I was an Elric fan. I was aware that the people who printed Strombringer had also printed RuneQuest, and that RQ was the parent system with more features. Within a short time, I had picked that up as well. Those early campaigns. I remember going over to a friends house and gaming practically every day, and sometimes two or three sessions a day. One guy made it to Rune Lord in under a month. I was so surprised at the time with "how quickly" he advanced, but I should have expected it after cramming a year"s worth of gaming into one month.

At least is beats the way they did things since Janeway-- waiting around until the shields drop below 20% before returning fire.

In that I stated it, or that the Trek episode was Mythos related? Because the Klingons wouldn't ally with someone who didn't put weapon on their ships. I wonder if Starfleet pruposely mislabled everything in order to confuse enemies and shipjackers. For instance, "Spinal Mount Energy Weapon" is labled "Main Defelctor Array", "Airlcok" is labeled "Main Computer Core", "Psychological Warfare Room" is labeled "Holodeck" and no door is ever marked "Restroom". On TV no one ever manages to keep a hijacked Starfleet ship for very long, and you never seen a toilet.

I think the thing to consider is Lovecraft himself. Lovecraft was something of a recluse, and much of the Mythos is a metaphor for aspects of the real world that Lovecraft had difficulty with. In a nutshell Lovecraft wouldn't be able to withstand seeing a Mythos creature. Howard, on the other hand, wrote more heroic fiction, but I think the reason for his characters' triumphs isn't so much due to their hero's resolve, but to the author deciding that the characters would triumph. Howard wrote more upbeat stories than Lovecraft. Had Lovecraft wrote Conan, he'd probably bed driven mad or eaten by something. I doubt Conan would be able to lop Cthulhu's head off, nor would it make a big difference if he did. The overall world view from Lovecraft's stories is not very optimistic. Other writers can and did give different interpretations on things, and added more to the Mythos, but in Lovecraft man survives mostly because the really nasty things haven't noticed him yet. Perhaps the most optimistic version of the Mythos could have been in the Star Trek episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?". I get the idea that the Federation probably could handle Cthulhu and even figure out a way of dealing with the Outer Gods.

I'm not sure if the Mythos really works as pulp-at least in the heroic sense. It wouldn't be hard to do something similar with heroic, larger than life PCs, and horrors that aren't quite so mind bending and invulnerable. In fact, a few RPGs lend themselves towards that approach (Justice, Inc., Spirit of the Century). But it's probably too "bright and cheery" for a Lovecraft tale. Maybe an August Derleth tale, but not Lovecraft. In Lovecraft mankind survives through a combination of luck, blissful ignorance, and the fact that the stars aren't right, yet. Nothing that man actually does makes much of a difference, specially in the long run. That's pretty much the exact opposite of most pulp stores,where one brave and true hero can make all the difference.

Sounds a lot like the method used in Spirit of the Century. In SotC character have aspects (trades) that can be "tagged" by the GM or others to force the character to react to something, earning a fate point. Just how the character reacts is up to the player. Resisting the tag, if it is a valid one, costs a Fate Point. Fate points can be used for a +1 to a roll, but if a character can invoke one of his aspects he can get a +2 instead. Fate points can also be used in other ways. One neat thing was that a character could attempt to make a declaration, spending a fate point and making a skill roll. If the roll was successful (beat the difficulty set by the GM. Just what the difficulty was depending on how neat the declaration was). the said declaration was true. For instance, rather than rolling for an info dump from the GM, and then having to work out some puzzle to get out of a trapped tomb, a character could make some sort of declaration about a "master switch" or some such, spend a fate point, and roll against his Academics/Archeology skill. Success means that yes indeed, there is a master switch. It probably on the other side of the room, past the pit filled with poisonous snakes (you get a lower difficulty that way), but that's what heroic characters are for.

Yeah, the various other elements in the game desing all helped to contribute to the style of gameplay. The Ease Factor system, the Quality Ratings, and all the other aspects of the game. The designers notes in the Q Manual shows to just what extent everything in the game was warped slightly to give the PCs an edge. For example weapon damage was skewed to make pistols a bit better vs. rifles than they should have been. And the draw system helped PCs with pistols get off the first shot before guards armed with SMGs or assault rifles. The way the damage was done (by quality rating and weapon damage class) had a big impact and also was quitew realistic. Someone like Bond could be quite lethal with a PPK or even Beretta .25 ACP, yet some thug totting around an AK-47 wasn't quite as lethal, since he wasn't likely to get in a decent hit. I once thought of altering BRP damage so that the number of dice rolled were based on the success level. For example a normal success is 1 die, a special 2 dice, and a critical 3 or 4 dice. The die size could be varied by weapon. A small pistol might do 1D4, with a rifle doing 1D10 or so. I've adapted the Bond RPG to other cinematic settings. It would appear to be a good base for a swashbuckling campaign or even Star Wars. The game had the best Seduction rules I've seen in an RPG, too. It took a little work, but in a Bond Mission there are few things an agent can do that can help with the mission more than sleeping with the Major Villain's girlfriend.

One system that was cinematic yet gritty and realistic was the old James Bond RPG. What it did was allow players to spend Hero Points to shift the quality rating (think critical/special/ normal/failure) of die rolls. This gave players some influence of the course of events, and the ability to get lucky when the needed it (like when on the receiving end of an AK-47). Since the points didn't renew automatically (but new points could be earned) the players usually had enough to do what they needed, but rarely enough to do all that they wanted. Since damage (and everthing else) has results that were tied to the Quality Rating, even 1 Hero Point could turn a serious injury into a minor one or even a miss. It worked out really cool in play. A thug behind a M-2 machine gun was very dangerous, and the weapon extremely lethal (something like a 50% Kill/50% unconscious chance on a hit-assuming the shooter is spraying a group and not going for just one target), but a PC with a couple of Hero Points would be able to avoid the first burst or two-just long enough to take the guy out. The PC wouldn't feel invulnerable through, since once the points ran out, he had no more protection and was just like everyone else. IMO it is probably the best method I've seen for cinematic games, and it is easily ported over to BRP.

What I've seen is that different people set the trade-off bar at different levels. Also, just what people consider complicated can vary tremendously based on other factors. Back when I was running RQ3, most of the gamers in my area were playing AD&D. Now I consider AD&D to be at least as complicated as RQ3- probably more complicated. Yet most of the players thought the opposite. The real reason why they believed that was because they had years of familiarity with AD&D, and each player had his own copy of the rulebooks. As a result most thing went much faster in AD&D. Later, when I had two or three players who had copies of RQ and were familar with the game, it went as fast if not faster than AD&D.

MoonPest-the RPG about exterminators in the 23rd century. Just don't roll "Space Slug" on the encounter table.

Yes. Thing got cruchier and cruncheir until they got too crunchy and then went off in other directions. I think the industry has gone through several phases since then. The current trend is for rule-light simply RPGs with some player input into the story. I get a chuckle when I see people here common on how simple BRP is. The original system, RuneQuest, wasn't really simple. It was logical and easy to grasp, but not simple. Said system was gutted and revamped multiple times, hence the reason why BRP isn't really simple. I don't see why simple is considered good. Most of the really simple RPGs that have been introduced over the years have died a quick death. Simple might be easy, but is is almost always limited.

Just as long as the support is regular.

Panzer's & Dragons? You should see my (wait I a sec. I've got to put up Protection and Countermagic) Napoleonic RPG, Donjons & Dragoons.