Atgxtg

RQ was written by SCA members-some in high standing. So it's no wonder it good a thumbs up. RQ also suffers a bit becuase of it's SCA roots, too. In some ways it is combat by and for "weekend warriors" rather than by skilled combatants. You could do that, but IMO it is the wrong way to go. I think that a RPG rules should work in an appropriate fashion to mimic the genre or setting that it is being used for. THe setting should not be shoehorned to fit the system. One good thing about Chaosium games like Strombringer, ElfQuest and CoC, was that Chaosium would always tweak the rules to fit the setting. Rather than forcing the Multiverse or Lovecraftian Horror into the RQ mold, with battlemagic, rune magic, cult writeups etc, each setting has it own rules designed to reflect its own reality. THat is the right way to go. By contrast, most D&D settings shoehorn the setting so that it works with the standard D&D rules. Each world has the same classes, Tolkien (token) elves, dwarves and orc, the same magic systems, and the same magic items. That's one reason why setting books for D&D don't wow people. With D&D one 5th level fighter has a lot in common with any other 5th level fighter. It all becomes interchangeable, and bland. I think the way to handle things, is to mirror the comics. The GM should make sure that there are challenges for each hero, and that some things require multiple heroes to resolve.

Yes, the Churn. But the churn is not a good thing. Selling lots and lots of supplments and making money is good for a company, but isn't necessarily good for the market or the consumers. Most people only spend a limited amouint of money of RPGs. More products mean that most people will have to make a choice between product A or product B. In the market that does give an edge to comapnies that product a lot of stuff, like WotC, White Wolf, and Mongoose. Printing twice as many products doesn't mean twice as many sales. With consuers making a choice, it usually means that most people will follow fewer product lines than in the past. THat makes it harder for the smaller companies to survive. One reason why I rather see fewer products, of higher quality, is that it is actually better for us all. The only ones who benefit from tons and tons of stuff that is mostly crap are the big companies. I think anyone who wants to see BRP stand a chance of regaining some of RQ's prominence would be better off rooting for quality rather than quantity.

There is something that prevents you from reverse engineering a prgoram, the Digital Millennium Copywrite Act. The DMCA does other things too, not all of them beneficial. Yes, it is frustrating. But D20 has practically locked up the RPG market, and is the strongest contributor to the rules for computer RPGs too. BRP is essentially Betamax. Better technology, but with no chance of taking over the market. WotC could hedge their bets, as they could outproduce pretty much all their competitors combined, and ensure that everyone bought a set of core rule books. Chaosium can't do either. OGL BRP would probably take Chaosium out of the BRP market. Just look at how much MRQ stuff Mongoose Publishing has managed to release in a year and a half. If they haven't surpassed Chaosium's total RQ output, they will. I think they only way Chaosium would desire to go OGL with BRP would be if they were going to abandon it, or if they could work out an arrangement with another company to get hybrid supplements. A deal with Mongoose would probably be the best such scenario for Chaosium, but what would the appeal be to Mongoose? Right now Chasoium has no proprieties to offer or a hot product line. Mongoose has managed to secure Glorantha, and the Eternal Champion series without Chaosium. Maybe in a few years if BRP takes off, Chaosium might have something to offer, but not right now. Right now their best best ids to get BRP out, try to get back their old customer base, and build upon it.

Sounds sorta FUDGE based. Much like FATE and SOtC. But with those games, while the character creation rules would put them on the same footing, a write up of the characters wouldn't. Supermans Physqiue would probably, in FATE/SotC terms be beyond the normal +5 cap. Of course, he is the definitive extreme example. The smaller the degree of difference, the easier is is to make it work. But FATE/SotC is more narrative/storydriven than number cruching anyway, so such a spread isn't as big a factor. In BRP a +8d6 damage bonus is hard for someone without super hero type armor to handle.

That's only a facor if power levels are equal. While that is typical of RPGs, it isn't typical of four color comics. Some characters can do things like that. So if you are running in a preexisting setting, then you have to accept that some characterscan do stuff like that. Changing the difficulty doesn't help, since all that happens is that the hero's stats get upped to account for what he can do. If Superman can see through a building, then he needs a stat score high enough to allow for it. In the comics, Superman can act stupid around the JSA and JLA, and let other characters shine. With an RPG, there is little to keep Superman from flying off at superspeed, taking out all the bad guys, and solving the adventure by the RPG equivalent to page 2. Some hero RPGs address this sort of thing, and it is where RPG theory concepts help. But for the "simulationist" approach it is a big problem. A "nuts & bolts" approach doesn't hold up well for the genre.

Actually there are some differences. You can't copywrite/own a rule set. But you can copywrite own software. Legally (and without a moral dimension the law is all that's left), anyone could use any RPG, take out the setting specific stuff and print it. You can't do that with a game engine for a computer or console game. As to the future. It's still too soon to tell. It could be good, it could be very bad. So far, MRQ hasn't impressed me, and I doubt Chaosium can compete with Mongoose.

True. AH killed it (from what I've read AH got into some sort of dispute with Danjaq and EON that cost them the liscense). But, that AH was bought out by WotC, who have buried every RPG system in favor of d20 means the system won't see the light of day again.

No. Legally, the RQ name belongs to Greg (who paid for it) and is being used by Mongoose. The rules actually belong to no one, since rule cannot be copywrited. Certain spefic terms and creatures can and are copywrited, but not the rules. My point was that morally, since Steve (and others) wrote the rules, the rules SHOULD be theirs.

Yeah, that's sort of what I think soltakss was hinting at with HeroQeust. A few other RPGs doe the same (I'll risk mention SotC again). But, the thing with Superman is that his Physique is a lot higher than Batman's Gadgeteer, so it's still a non-contest. THe comics can pull this stuff off by putting in challenges that are geared towards Batman's strengths. For instance, Batman can hack into a network to find a vital clue, Superman can't. THat is something that RPGs can mimic easily, with a good adventure and GM. What RPGs have problems doing, on the other hand, is dumbing down, or restricting Superman from doing something else that would make Batman superfluous to the adventure. For instance, using X-Ray vision or telescopic vision to look through the building and read the info right off the villain's screen. One reason why the Flash got iced in the DC universe was that he is hard to work in a team environment. Basically, he could zip off to the problem, and fix everything at superspeed, before the others arrive.

Perhaps the biggest challenge has less to do with game mechanics but with game style. For instance many RPGs need to work some sort of balance of power between characters, or at least between the PCs and their opponents. Supers games don't. Batman just isn't in the same league as Superman (okay, they are both in the Justice League), and can't really compete with him. In the comics they get around this by having Batman use his brains. Even that is bending things a bit. Supes is supposed to be very intelligent, but acts like a musclebound idiot most of the time. For instance he has superspeed, but tends to rely on his invulnerabilty-thus he get shot with the kryptonite bullet. Or he pauses when someone threatens a civilan despite the fact that he has 100 differernt ways to disarm/defdeat a foe before they could carry out the threat. Now most RPG rules aren't really set to to give the right advance for handling such situations, and a "similationist" RPG i probably going to backfire on such applications.

Yeah, Chasoium made three big bo-boos in the 80s. 1) Selling RQ to Avalon Hill. It was supposed to allow RQ to compete with D&D, but instead priced the game off out of the market, and stopped was was a productive run. 2) Failure to Support WoW. WoW was a great concept, but was half haertedly executed. Much like Land of the Ninja, it has the look of something that Chaosium published, but didn't actually use themselves. If WoW been supported as a universal ERPG, made a bit more compatible with itself (each book uses a different damage bonus), and given setting and other supplements, it could have acheived what GURPS and HERO did. This would have definately been worth supporting after the AH deal, to give Chasoium a viable in house product line. What they are doing now with BRP is what they should have done 15-20 years ago. 3) Call of Cthulhu. CoC is a niche of a niche (Lovecraftian horror RPG). Fine and dandy, except it was supported to the virtual exclusion of everything else.

Oh, I do agree with that. Mongoose did pay for the RQ name, and could have used any RPG system they desired and called it RQ. Legally okay, morally less so. TO me it would depend on how honest they were about it. If sold as "the all new RQ with new game mechanics" that I'd say morally okay, but might or might not like the new system. On the other hand, if they claimed "the classic system returns-new edition designed with Greg Stafford & Steve Perrin" and that turned out not to be the case, I'd say misrepresentation. BTW, the latter is exactly what Mongoose did, and a major reason for the hostility that many RQ fans have with MRQ. Actually it is that AH doesn't own the lisence. I wish games like DragonQuest and James Bond could get back into print, along with all the other games that TSR/WotC ate up and buried. The BRP "system" is a myth.Desipre what people try to claim, RQ is not an expression of BRP. RQ came first, and BRP is/was merely a 16 page intro to RQ, Strombringer, and CoC. Sort of like GURPS lite, only less so. BRP as a system is as much a Greg Stafford retcon as Elmal. The BRP monograph IS RQ3, so it isn't a system per say, either. Now, once the new BRP core book is released, BRP might actually become a game system, but lets face reality. Chasoium's RPGs never were BRP based, but RQ based. Instead of adding onto a core set of rules, they took is RQ, watered down, and adapted to a specific setting. What Chaosium owns, is the name. You can't own a set of rules. So what Chaosium has to sell is the BRP trademark, AND the quality of whatever products they release. Morally, I think the system (RQ) SHOULD belong to Steve Perrin, Ray Tourney and the others who wrote the rules. Legally, the RQ name belongs to Greg, BRP belongs to Chaosium, and the rules belong to no one. If you accept the concept of OGL, then morally you have to accept GORE. It an OGL MRQ product. If you don't accdept it, then the same argument can and should be used for any other OGL product.

Really, how so? It is a OGL MRQ line, even if it has more in common with CoC. It probably isn't any less ethical than the BRP monograph's. They used a system that was sold to Avalon Hill. But, since you can't copywrite rules (and that is fact, look it up) pretty much anything from any RPG is open provided it isn't a trademark, special term, or setting specific.

fmitchell, The official, open, etc. tags don't mean much to consumers. If people know that a book is written to work with a certain game system, that's enough. The cheap PDF market thing doesn't matter much, since to play the game people would have to but the core rules anyway (okay, old time Chaosium junkies, something like 90% of the membership of this board, can probably get by without the core books. We'll miss out on a few things, but we can figure out most of it) before they could go cheap. The cheap PDF market isn't much of a market. Most cheap PDFs I buy, make me wish I had held onto my money, and make me leary of buying more cheap PDFs. It isn't quantity, but quality that is required if we want the market to grow. At least if we want it to be a game worth playing. Maybe there are project that Chaosium doesn't want to tackle, but a poor quality supplment is worse than no supplement at all. I'd rather not have, say, a BRP Greece setting, than have a lousy one. D&D was great for that route. There are quite a few setting books that shoehorn the setting to conform to the D&D system, rather than adapting the D&D system to the setting. MRQ is a mixed blessing. Yeah, there will be some competition. There will also be some people who buy stuff for both systems and mix n' match. That's already happening with RQ and Stormbringer. But, there is a schism among the RQ crowd, so some will be buying for one game or the other. Since MRQ is OGL then most third party MRQ stuff is fairly easily adapted to BRP, anyway. Why add more competitors. A smaller piece of a leger pie is fine, if the pie is big enough. I doubt BRP is going to be as popular as RQ2 was, and the "pie" will barely be able to sustain Chasoium, especially after MRQ. OGL games take on two models. The big company approach, like with WotC, and to a lesser extent Mongoose, and the small company approach, as with many indie games. The former rely on the their tier business model and a large quantity of product to make a profit. The latter aren't really concerned with profit, and are really just trying to promote the game for fun. Neither model would fit Chaosium right now. They can't produce enough product to ensure a large slice of the pie (for instance, if BRP is open source, Mongoose could in fact, take over the line by simply outproducing Chaosium, or by making some of their MQR products multisystem. Think of how easy it would be for Mongoose to rework MRQ Pirates into a MRQ/BRP book. In six months 90% of all BRP products could have the Mongoose label!). Nor can Chaosium go indie, since they are trying to keep afloat. I think the only way for BRP to work is for Chaosium to avoid OGL like the plague that it is. Allow limited third party products, as in the 80s, but otherwise keep it an in house system.

Oh, yeah, I definitely with you on this one. It is less true today with all the different systems out there, but was certainly the case in the 90s and 80s. Often I would have an idea for a campaign, and then try to determine what was the best system to adapt for that purpose. Or, when I wanted to run one thing, with a bunch of players who didn't want to try a new system. I did a D&D/Glorantha crossover under just such conditions (and with 3.0, too). For the most part, though, most genres have multiple games to cover them, so we have more options than on the past.

Like I said, RPG shop sells double D10s. Like this: RPG Shop: Double d10 drohem has another link, and since Kaplow is a big dice manufacture, you can probably get them from any store that carries Kaplow dice. Kaplow are something of a "premium" brand (the Cadalliac of dice).

drohem, I agree. In the past that was also a problem with third party liscene products for existing RPGs. Often the third party products didn't mesh in with the official stuff. Typically looking like the core game on steroids, with everything being overpowered. BRP really isn"t susited for the D&D feat & prestige class method of expansion (MRQ, with it Legendary Abilities, and RQ inherited cult system, is). Where BRP could be expanded would be with setting books, new skills, additional spells & powers, or even new magic systems. But with the hit or miss nature of OGL, I"d rather not see 9crappy OGL products just to get 1 decent one. And I rather my local RPG store stocked ONE Chaosium Roman book for BRP than 2-3 OGL ones and miss out on the Chaosium book. Since my local shops will only stock a small amount of BRP stuff anyway (d20 is the big market), they will probably only buy ONE book for a setting, and if they decide to try "Brand X"s book on Vikings for BRP, they probably won't buy the Chasoium Viking book.

Contradictory Statement. Chtulhu IS the lesser evil.

I don't think that would happen. OGL has yet to create a secondary market for any RPG. All it does is provide additional sources of material for the primary market. No one's buying third party d20/MRQ products without being aware of the primary product line. Going OGL just means more product, inconsistent quality, and competition within your own game system. Then there is the inevitable confusion with someone buys the "Brand X" Roman book instead of the official one. To tap a secondary market, make some multi-system products, like AEG has done with L5R. Putting BRP and d20 rules in the same supplement would generate sales among the d20 crowd, but annoys the BRP fans, as about a third of the book will be "wasted" on d20.

Where are ya, bug?:confused: RPGShop carries the same dice, for a slightly higher price, and will ship to a good part of the globe. Just add a few more things to the order, unless you want to pay $5 in shipping for a $1.35 order.

I suspect that with this crowd, one reason why we can do that is because we've had to. Some games get lots of support, but most RPGs don't. So fans of those games often convert stuff and adapt it for their own favorite RPGs. In the past, we sort of had to work that way to get the game that we wanted. Now, with so many differernt RPGs, past and present, the need to convert is less.

Yup. Some times it is better just to find a system that's suited towards your goals. You reach a point where it isn't IF, but WHY?

Yup. Most real world (and most fantasy world) religions have power tricking down from on high. Few faiths work the other way. But that also mirrors most ancient societies, too. Trickle down divinity supports concepts such as the divine right of kings, and props up the entire feudal structure. Once you accept an idea like power coming from the people you risk upsetting the entire social order. Since the religious leaders in most cultures were at the top of the social order, they had good reasons to be conservative to reactionary in their views. There are a few religions with such concepts, but they were usually practiced among the poor lower classes, and usually were wiped out by the ruling elite.

Yup, you cvan pretty much do anything with any system, if you have a mind to, and are willing to do a little work. Some systems are better suited towards certain things than others, and results can vary, but it can be done.

Decisions, decisions. Flip a coin?