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It was explicitly mentioned long before Gumshoe too. The old Bond RPG actually mentioned moving clues around in the Gamemaster's section. It also had some stuff to help put the players back on track wen they went off to the wrong location. I suspect that it didn't get mentioned in most of the older RPGs because few of them were geared specifically towards investigation. IN most games, the players ussually knew who the bad guys were and where to find them.

I think it really isn't a skill system/mechanics problem but an approach problem. Some blame can fall on the authors of an adventure, some of the GM, with a bit left over for the players. Yes, there is always the possibility of a character failing a "vital" skill roll, but there should be alternate ways to acquire the same information. For example if the investigators were supposed to discover some clue in the head cultists manor house, but instead caugh the Pan Am Clipper to follow the head cultist to Singapore, then the GM should probably relocate the clue to the head cultists hotel room in Singapore or find some other way for the players to acquire the clue. That said, I don't believe that it's a good idea to create adventures that rely on one key piece of information to solve. That's kinda designing the adventure so the players fail. In most cases, if not all cases there probably shouldn't be anything one thing that is absolutely necessary to solve a mystery, but instead multiple clues that point in the right direction. If the investigators fail to find the murder weapon, then maybe they can find a spent shell casing instead? And the GUMSHOE approach doesn't completely avoid the problem either. Just because the players get the vital clue automatically doesn't mean they know what to do with the clue. I've seen players stumble even when they had the vital info and either failed to recognize it for what it was, or continued looking for more information in the hopes of finding something that spelled it all out for them, or filled in some final trivial bit of information. Giving the players too much information can also take away from the enjoyment of solving whatever mystery the players are working on - it like telling people the plot to a movie. The thing is in fiction, the detectives discover whatever clues the writer wishes them to, and figures out whatever needs to be figured out for the story to work. With a RPG we don't have that, but instead have players who may or may not pick up on whatever clues the GM provides for them. There is no guarantee that the players will work it all out, and no chance of the players noticing anything that the GM, their eyes and ears, doesn't let them notice. So investigation style adventures have to be written with "looser tolerances" to allow for the fact the players aren't going to pick up on things and act the way a fictional character is written to.

I spilled White-Out on my screen trying to edit my post.

If your characters come from someplace with one Tech Level, such as all from a fruture Earth or some such, you don't really need to grade the skill. They can be assumed to be familiar with thier own Tech. My idea was that if they find an alien spaceship that was more advance than thier own tech, or just so alien and different from what they knew, then that Tech could be a skill. Once that skill hit a certain threshold penalties would be reduced and eventually eliminated. Fine a scale that works for you. You probably don't need more than a handful of TLs, unless you want a lot a variation for some reason. Basically you got the player character TL, and two or three TLs above that. Maybe a TL or two below that for less advanced colonies or aliens. You shouldn't need to make any more TLs that you plan on using. In fact you might not even need at actual number and can just use TL+1, TL+2 etc for more advance tech. Maybe even streamline things to -10% per TL difference. I mean't a Luck roll is required along with the Science roll. If the PC make the Science roll then what he did looked like it should have worked, but the Luck roll determines if it actually did work. You could have some fun with that too, like a character who fails his science roll, but crticals the luck roll, and so fixes something without really knowing what he did right. Depends on how much you paired down your skill list. Normally I would see science being used to invent and design new things, build a prototype and work out the bugs. I don't think it would apply to just building something that you already know how to make. I'd probably let Repair or some other skill cover that. For instance, let's say a character wanted to design anew gun. I'd see that taking a lot of engineering science and knowledge of firearms, pressure tolerances of metal and such to get a working design. But then I would expect any competent gunsmith to be able to manufacture more guns like that from the blueprints. But then I might be a bit biased. When I worked in electronics there was a bit of a divide between the engineers who designed things and knew a lot of theory, and the bench techs who did the troubleshooting and repair work. The techs were usually much better with a soldering iron and doing stuff hands on. Even the assemblers, who didn't know any electronics and just followed a fabrication sheet were better at hands on work than most of the Engineers. And when I worked for an Electrician he'd always have me do the soldering- especially when it was M/S connectors.

I haven;t been atagonisitic, I've been trying to explain why what you wanted wasn't Stormbringer, or BRP anymore when you change the rules; and how you can't just take whatever IP you want and put in into a published game book. Can you point out from where? And also can you show that when Lovecraft uses the terms like multidemisnonal that he means the same thing as Moorcock does -i.e. alternate realsities, and not something that just ins't a three dimensional object? Insults won't get you anywhere. MArvel COmics got Moorcock permission to use Elric. As for the Cthlhu Mythos stuff, much of it is in the public domain as Lovecraft has been dead for over 80 years. I Where on screen did they ever call the Great Intelligence Yog-Sottoth. Similar yes, but not the same. It's perfectly okay to use similar concepts, but it isn't okay to just swipe them. If DC started to name thier Lords of Law and Chaso with the same names as that used by Moorcock, they would be vulnerable to legal action. What has Yoogy accomplished. Oh, not much. He needs someone else to make a pathway for him. Realy, as far as all powerful entities goes, he's pretty much a non starter. All enties are limited becuase unlimited entities don't work. It's the old paradox about an all powerful deity being powerful enough to create so big rock he cannot lift it. If he can't make it, then he isn't allpowerful, and if he can make it he is. Thing thing with Star Trek's point of view is that is writes from the view of a rational, explainable universe, while Lovecraft wrote the the point of view that the universe contained things that mankind not only shouldn't know, but could't comprehend or accept even if it did. If you mix them into the same universe (which, btw, Robert Block did in What Are Little Girls Made Of?) you need to somehow reconcile those view. In Bloch case, he just named dropped the Old Ones and left everything else according to the Trek Paradigm. Sorry but you're dead wrong there. Every successful RPG survives because of support. All the games you mentioned publish lots of supplements. THat is how the compnaies make money and how their games thrive. D&D thrived and dominated because of the sheer number of supplements, especially adventures it produces compared to other RPGs. In factD&D remained pretty much the same for nearly 20 years in it's AD&D incarnation. But during that time most the supplements you'd see on the shelf at a gaming store or book store were from TSR. It wasn't until other companies started to publish lots of supplements that TSR's market share slipped. D&D 3E was OLG specifically to try and lure other companies into producing D&D supplements and secure D&D's dominance. Lots of companies did including most of the ones on your list, to get a bit of that D&D money. It why AEG's did a D20 version of L5R and began producing multi system supplements. It was why Chaosium printed Dragonlords of Melnibone. TO sell to a bigger fanbase. . Companies make money when people buy product, not when they use the product. SO a RPG without any support only generates income when the core rulebook sells. Hence every successful RPG company [generates adventures and other supplements to keep the money coming in. It's also a major reason for the "new edition every few years" model that many companies adopt. It allows them to sell people the rulebooks all over again. It's not the only reason for new editions, but it is a reason. Oh, and not every new change or version is an improvement. Each RPG has to compete with the memory of it's predecessor and if the fans don't like the new version they won't buy or play it. Pathfinder was successful because D&D 4E didn't do better with the fanbase that 3E. I know plenty of gamers who haven't switched from 3E, and just as many who prefer to play so called "dead" RPGs that haven't changed at all. If the GM can write good adventures for the players with what already exists, then the game doesn't need to change.

Game system has a huge effect on the feel of the game. That's why there are various RPGs that potray the same or similar settings. RuneQuest, HeroQuest and 13th Age all have supplements to run in Glorantha, yet each one plays and feels different. Likewise Chaosium published a Dragonlords of Melnibone supplement to run the Young Kingdoms using the D&D rules, and is isn't the same as running Stormbringer. Each set of game mechanics affects the way the game plays out/That's why we aren't all just playing D&D. Iron Crown's Middle Earth RPG, Decipher's Lord of the Rings RPG, and Cubic 7's The One Ring are all set in Middle Earth, yet they all play differently and have a different feel to them. THey are not all the same game. Why is is dumb. Look, the attributes used in a game are picked by the game designers and not necessarily required. Most games use stats similar to D&D because that was either how D&D did it, or the stats have become something of a legacy aspect of RPGs. But games can and have benn designed without them. YOu don't need a stat for STR, CON or DEX either. If you read the stories the physical characters of the EC or his companisons rarely factor in the way they do in a RPG. That is just your opinion. I'll counter with "If you are doing a multiverse game, if it takes in account different types of settings it is worthless garbage!: Not every character or setting mixes well with another. For instance take a standard D&D world with standard D&D magic and mix with with most other settings and you ruin them. Pretty much all the Eternal Champion and Cthlhu stories become sort of meaninless if clerics can go around rasing the dead and wizards can blast stuff with high damage spells. When you mix settings and characters the various differences and incosistiences between them will crop up and force a GM to alter one or the other to make them both work. No, they haven't. Each created their own multiverse they didn't just grab everyone else. They couldn't. Yes, sometimes a comapny can arrange to do a crossover and mix characters from different universe for a bit, but that doesn't mean they can do so at their whim. Don't you understand that? For instance, unless you get permission from Michael Moorcock to use his Eternal Champion and multiverse stuff, you can't do so without violating his copyrights and being subject to legal action. It's a major reason why Chaosium doesn't reprint Stormbringer or make it available as a PDF, like many of their older games. Some things are in the public domain, mostly because their creators died long ago, and thus are fair game, but most of the stuff you are thinking of belongs to people. People who can opt to sue you for stealing their intellectual property. It is if you make it part of your multiverse. You want to just pick and choose stuff, but if you accept something from a setting you have to accept all that comes with it. No. Champions created a multiverse, not taken someone elses specific multiverse. For a game desing standpoint you can do it, as long as you remove the stuff specfic to the orginal IP. Magic World is aprime example. It's basically the Stormbringer/Elric rules without any Michael Moorcock stuff. Oh. I haven't seen it. Fan Fiction. You quote fan fiction as fact? More like anyone who fails to use theirs. Let me push your claims a little. In Star Trek there are ultra powerful beings such as the Q who can wipe stuff out of existience with a mere snap of thier fingers. Is Yog Sooth immune to that? And if he is so powerful, how come he hans't managed to open the doorway to Earth? You see that's why there is no way to measures these things on an absolute scale. Lets say you create a all powerful being, and note it in a story. Now I create a character who in also all powerful. Is your all powerful being more powerful than mine? What if a write a sotry where my all powerful being kicks yours around? Unless there is some sort of absolute authority to go to it's just comes down to opinion. No. There are quite a number of good games out there that haven't evolved much at all. An RPG thrives or not becuase it has an interesting setting, and good support in the form of adventures. Palladium is great example as it disproves your argument. Palladium actually did pull all of it's settings together into one multiverse, RIFTS, which got it some attention for a bit, and then it died off because the novelty of the multiverse wore off. RIFTS mostly covered ground that Palladium had covered before, and relied on the ability to do crossovers to work. After a bit the novelty fades and people want good adventures. A game system is not better simply because it covers more settings and characters , but is better because of how it covers them. Look at how many FRPGs there are out there. Most cover the same ground with elves, dwarves, orcs, wizards, magical sword, and so on, but they are all different and have their own merits and drawbacks.

Here are a few ideas you can toy around with: First off I suggest that repair and reverse engineering tasks, should require a certain number of successes to complete, rather than just a single roll. The more difficult, or time consuming a task would be, the more successes. You could have specials count as two successes, and criticals as three or even four successes. This will help in making things take time without it being "dead time" to the characters. It can also make it easier to break up repair task among multi[ple characters. If the engines have taken ten points of damage and require ten success to fix, then two characters can both work on them at the same time and accumulate successes. And both can suffer a setback when one fumbles, ruining all the work they have done so far. As far as working on unknown/alien tech goes you could just increase the number of successes required to say double or triple to reflect the fact that the character is in over their head. This would give you a sliding scale. For instance if you introduce some sort of tech level to rate tech, then it could factor into the success required and/or the difficulty. To simulate the fact that the character might not understand the scientific principles the tech is based on of, you might also require the player to make a Luck roll along with the repair/science roll to get a success. You could also have a botched Luck roll lead to bad things and a critical one lead to a better understanding of the tech. Otherwise their actions might have been right according to thier understanding of the technology, but they failed to fix something that worked on principles that they didn't understand. A example of that would be someone from the 1930s trying to wire a modern cell phone into the phone line to "fix it". It makes total sense if you don't know that cell phones done work with a land line, and confusing if they later pick up a cordless phone that is connected to a land line. Tech Level: as Mentioned previously, this might be a good way to handle technology beyond the characters understanding. You could apply a penalty of -10% or -20% to the characters skill per TL it is above them, and increase the number of success required by one, two, five, ten, whatever, per TL. You could also treat each TL and/or alien tech as a sort of knowledge skill. When a character's skill with a given TL reaches a certain point (say 40% per TL is is ahead of what they already know), their penalties are reduced or eliminated as they now have a greater understanding of that tech. This would give you a game mechanic that allows the players to advance thier tehcical capabilties without having to increase thier normal skills to ultrahigh levels.

Okay, let me try to explain this another way. One of the game that I run is Pendragon. It is a game set in Britian during the time of King Arthur. It follows Arthurian literature, and has certain themes and sotrylines. There is a certain tone and fell that fits the game. Now could a GM incorporate that into a multiverse campaign? Sure, it would be easy. But it wouldn't be Pendragon anymore. The changes in tone and style that go with a multiverse campaign. If the GM makes Arthur and Lancelot an incarnation of the Eternal Champion and his companion (or vice versa) it would certainly work as a Eternal Champion story, but it wouldn't work any more as the King Arthur of Literature, and the game wouldn't be Pendragon anymore. It would still be Arthurian, but it would be in the style of Moorcock EC series, not in the medieval tradition. Now you might not care about that, but the majority of Pendragon players probably would, and if you were to publish that game as Pendragon, you'd lose most of the fans and kill off the game, because you weren't being true to your sources. P.S> AN EC version of the King Arthur story would be neat, too. I'd be all for it. I just wouldn't want it to be connected to Pendragon.

Technically it uses a variation of the RuneQuest rules. BRP as a game system was something of a retcon. RQ came out, then RQ2, and BRP was a trimmed down version of RQ2. But Strombringer 1st edtion was closer to RQ3. It was the first RQ derative that use the full percentage range instead ofincrements of 5%, and category modfiers in 1% increments instead of five. But the point is, what makes the game Stormbringer is the game system. If you run the same setting with a differernt system, it's not the same game. First off they are not really direct measures, other than STR and SIZ, they are abstract measures. Secondly, why can't they be role-played? No it can't. You either have it or you don't. In real life two people can say and do the same thing and get different results. It is one of the reasons why one person can get away with something and another cannot. I do, as do quite a few others. There have even been threads in the BRP and Pendragon forums over it. The reality is appearance makes a big difference in how people act and treat each other. It probably shouldn't-matter as much as it does, but it does. The chances of taling your way out of a speeding ticket improve markedly if you happen to be drop dead gorgeous. And situations where appearance matters come up far more often than those where how much some can lift does. No. In SB they need INT to learn the spell, POW to cast them and control summoned beings, and CHA serves as both a limit on bound elementals and demons and to impress/convince powerful entities to do them a favor. Other stats are useful to them as well, as in most editions of the game they contributed to the point total of summoned demons. For someone who ran a big campaign based on the game you don't seem to be very familiar with it. Yes role playing. And that means we want the ability to play characters who can do things we cannot. Let me give you an example: Let's say a character needs to get into the palace to speak to the prince about something, but there is a guard out front who won't let the character in. Now the player might not be able to talk thier way past the guard, but the character should be able to. If you "just roleplay it" then it all comes down to the GM arbiraliy decing if the character is convincing or not. But if the same player tries to overcome the guard psychically, then all the characters stats get to make a difference. IF someone wants to role play a suave, charming character, they should be able to do so, the same way they could role play a big strong barbarian. And I tend to dislike changing the core game mechanics arbitrarily. If you ant to houserule stuff,great, but if you want to convince others that your homegrown ideas are imprments then you have to be convincing. IS it. It uses percentile dice, but you changed most of it to work very differently that BRP. By that reasoning Rolemaster and DragonQuest are D100 based. Stuff that you consider to be superfluous. But not everyone subspecies to your view as to what is superfluous. As long as anything and everything works within Moorcook's multiverse. Otherwise it just becomes your Fan Fiction. Again, what we do with our own campaigns is one thing, but how we intrepet some pre-exisitng setting that some other author created is something else. If you want to make Zelazny's Amberites the Lord of Law in your campaign that's fine. If you do so in a rulebook, that's not fine- and on many levels. Neither of the creators would appreciate it, nor would many of the fans of thier works. Lord of Gossamer is a published RPG, but I don't think you understand what it is. It isn't a mix of Elric, Dark Tower and D&D, but instead a way to bring back the diceless game system that Erick Wujcik had created for the Amber RPG, without having the rights to the Amber setting. Just ask Jason Durall, he wrote it and is now working for Chasoium. Since it is basically a "generic" Amber it is also a multiverse because Amber is. Let me put it yet another way. In the 80s and 90s, Chasoium had permission to publish Cthulhu and Elric based RPGs, and they did so. Both game systems used the same core system, and stats were virtually interchangeable. Yet Chaosium never did a crossover adventure between the two. Despite the fact that they would have loved to make Stormbringer as popular as CoC, and a crossover would have been a easy way to draw the CoC players into the Stormbinger game. Yet they never did so. Why not? Simple, because it would have alienated two fan bases at at least one of the creators. No, I'm pointing out that the Eternal Champion series is not like the Amber series or Lords of Gossamer. In the EC series the story is about some incarnation of the Eternal Champion fighting against evil, usually in the frm of Chaos, to restore Balance. While the EC may at times go to other spheres in the multiverse, that isn't a major element to most sorties. Elric, for example, travels to several differnt worlds, but his saga is about the fate of the Yong Kingdoms. Amber, and Lords of Gossamer, tell stories that are focused around travelling to and from different worlds. It's a major element to the stories. You can tell an EC saga with just one world and no mention of other spheres, Moorcock has done so several times. You can't tell an Amber or Gossamer story that way. LOL! For starters it wouldn't be all that easy, as you would be violating copyright. Assuming for the moment that copyright wasn't an issue, you could do it but it wouldn't be easy. The thing is there is more to this that just taking somebodies idea and using it. A lot depends on how you use it. All the great settings are great in large part because of the way the creators made them, but also in they way they portrayed them and the approach they used to present the stories. If someone else had written Amber, Elric, Lord of the Rings, Conan, or whatever, even if they had all the same names and places, the results wouldn't necessarily be any good. To paraphrase from Jurassic PArk, rather than asking if you can do it, you should stop to consider if you should do it. I am being crystal here. I just don't think you follow me. Glorantha is a word where everything is divine and spiritual in some way. It's not based on science in any way. And speaking of Glorantha, it is a good example of why we shouldn't just throw everything into the big mutliverse pot. In Glroantha, Chaos in imitable to life, not the source of creation, as it is in Moorcock's multiverse. Mixing the two would fundamentally alter Glorantha and pretty much tick off all the Glorantha fans. Those are both just your opinion. If you think RQ was shite then your on the wrong forum. Can you prove that in any way? Again that's just your opinion. There really isn't any sort of absolute scale when doing a crossover because each setting doesn't work the same. It all comes down to how someone wishes to interpret things But you are not open to the idea that not all change is necessarily for the better. Just becuase you think mixing A and B is a great ide doesn't mean that other will. Change for the sake of change isn't a good thing. No. My point is that there is a huge difference between a GM coming up with a idea that the like for thier own campaign, and an author trying to write a game for an established IP. If you add stuff to Moorcock's multiverse that isn't his then it is no longer Moorcock's multiverse, but instead something else. Likewise if you claim a game is Stormibnger but it greatly different mechanically from any other iteration of BRP, it isn't BRP anymore. Look you can put Godzilla, Snoopy, the Hulk and Luke Skywalker alonside Elric in an story, and maybe it would be a good or great adventure, but you would have to be a fantasic author and the story would need to have something else going for it other than the corssover. *SIGH*. That might be your head cannon, but that doesn't make it so. Says who? Neither Moorcock nor Lovecraft wrote stories based on that theme. Things were much more personal and local. For the EC stories, the multiverse is just there, and the EC is yanked about like a puppet to set things to right. He not some interdenominational traveler out for a ride. Most of the time, he doesn't even know there is a multiverse. I think you are confusing what the sorcue material is with what you want it to be. I have no problems getting to grips with a multiverse type setting. I am having problems with your interpretations of pre-existing settings. THay are fine for your personal campaign, but not fine as representations of Moorcock's Multiverse. If you want to make your own multiverse, feel free.

Yeah, but as you pointed out neither of those are a strictly point buy system, and I'll add they only determined characteristics that way, not anything else. It's a matter of choice and goals. My point though was that RogerDee's wishlist is for a game that isn't BRP. There is nothing wrong with that- I think most of us have played non-BRP games at times, but there is really no way that the next edition of the "Stormbringer" RPG could be Stomrbringer and not be BRP based. In might be an Eternal Champion/Elric based game, but not Stormbringer. Otherwise the Mournblade RPG would qualify.

Yes it does, becuase Stormbringer is the name of the engine (game system) and not the setting (Yong Kingdoms/Multiverse) Bad example, VW is Porsche. Both Volkswagon and Prsche were started by the same man and are both Porche Companies. But if you were to somehow put an old 40hp Beetle engine into a 911 it wouldn't perform like a 911 anymore. Now if you want to run the setting in another RPG (engine) that's fine, but if that engine differnt from BRP then it isn't a BRP game anymore. For instance there was a Dragonlords of Melnibone book for D&D. It wasn't Stormbringer, it was D&D. Why isn't Strength a trait then? Or Dexterity or much anything else? What standards determine if something is a trait or not? Before you say "becuase it isn't useful" or whever, a case can be made either way about how important any attribute is. I can't recall any instance what great strength was every that crtical to the Eternal Champion or any of his allies. But not necessarily better. In fact it just makes things much easier for sorcerers as they now only need a good score in ONE stat. No it isn't. Let me give you an example. Let's say that a PC needs to get past a guard. Now if he fights the guard in combat we go into combat rounds and have all sorts of detailed rules to see if he gets past the guard or not. The actual swordsmanship of the player, or lack thereof, is not a factor. But, if the player tries to charm his way past the guard, well, then the player has to roleplay it, and the ability of the player to charm people matters. That is not only unfairly biased towards the swordman, who only has to decide to fight and roll dice, but also means that only glib tongued players can ever play glib heroes. James Bond does much better with the ladies than most of the men I've knwn, myself included, and much of that is attributed to his innate charm. And if you make that a trait, then why can't master swordsman be a trait too? Sorry could you clarify. DO you mean you would just use it for chargen, or that you would use it for everythung. If the latter, then you are really designing a entirely different RPG, not Stormbringer. None of that is in the source material though. For the game to play like a Moocock setting it has to reamin true to the soruce material. If you just port oer everything thing you like from various other games you will just end up with a generic FRPG. I don't need any of that and neither does the setting. You might want that, but that isn't the same as what the setting needs. The orginal Stormbringer RPG limited the magic to summorings with supernatural creatures becuase that was the sort of magic that was in the Elric stories up to that time. *SIGH* THis isn't Pathfinder. I don't think you understand what it means to write a game for a specific setting. The rules, whatever they may be, have to fit the requirments of the setting, not just be things that an game designer thinks is cool. If you port over Pathfinder magic you will end up with a game that plays more like Pathfinder and less like a Elric story. JUst imagine what D&D style healing and raise dead spells would do to any Eternal Champion story. "Oh, Cymoril, I have slain thee! Somebody get the cleric!" Have you read any Eternal Champion books? It rare when the EC gets to travel through the multiverse as he desires and deals with whenever he wants. Usually the champion is stuck on one or a handful of interlinked planes, and only leaves them on particular quests , which he usually has little choice or control over. Yes it could be, but that doesn't mean it should be, at least not in any product. It's fine for a particul GM's campaign, but its's not something anyone could publish. Yes, but it doesn't really seem to be magical. Remeber that the stories present things in ways that are designed to tell a story a particular way, and the RPG follows suit. Because of way the setting (the Reagic Millenium) is presented, we can't really tell if it is magical at all, or just the remnants of some futuristic science. Yes it might seem so, but is it? All the Mythos being could just be aien life forms and all thier abilties could be explained scientifically in some way. Or maybe they are beyond science as we know it and don't obey our physical laws. Yes, but it comes down to how you want to interpret it. Once you start mixing established settings you are going to have to convince other people that your interpretation is the correct one. This isn't so much of an issue with a GM running a handful of players. But is is an issue when an author tires to merge Stormbringer and Elric. There are good reasons why Chasoium never mixed the two settings. Its' very difficult to remain faithful to both settings long term. No. In Glorantha as we know it, doesn't actually exist. All RQ magic was theristic in some form. THe closest you get to physics and scientific method on Glorantha were the God Learners. You can;'t get much more theistic than that. Not without confirmation from the sources involved. Otherwise it's just fan fiction. Sorry, just because some one posted it on a on a wiki site doesn't make it so. Mookcock claims that the Doctor from the Doctor Who TV series is an aspect of the Eternal Champion. But just because Moorcock wrote a story that said so, doesn't mean it's true according to the show. But Cthulhu isn't a multiversal setting. If you make it one you sort of undermine it. Each setting has certain requirements to work properly. When you mix settings it is very easy for one setting to eclipse and lessen another. I can say the same to you. Your forcing us to mesh things into a Eternal Champion RPG that don't have anything to do with the Eternal Champion. If you want to play Rifts go right ahead, but don't try force us all to. Yes but that is your combined setting not the actual setting. If you want to mix, Snoopy and Godzilla in your campaign, that's fine, it's your campaign. If you want to make then both aspects of the Eternal Champion and face them off against Cthulhu that's okay - for your campaign. It's a whole different story if you want to get people outside of your gaming group to accept it. Yes, but it might go too far, or in the wrong direction. Whenever an author uses a preexisting setting, expseically one they did not create, they have to consider what thier ideas might actually do to said setting, and how well thier idea will go down. It's one thing to mix Eternal Champion settings, as there is precent for that, and nothing wrong with Elric bumping into Hawkmoon or Corum, if done right. It happens in the EC stories. But once you mix in a non EC setting you have to stop and consider the needs of that setting, and what the ramifncations of mixing the settings will be. It's easy to mix and match stuff. It's hard to do it well. For instance, Elric Killing Cthlhu has massive ramifications for the whole Mythos setting. It pretty much instantly destroys the underlying feeling that humanity is helpless and hopeless against the greater Mythos beings, doomed to be destroyed when Rhyleh rises. If the Eternal Champion exists and can take out Cthulhu, then we've pretty much got that Mythos thing covered. That completely changes tone and feel of a CoC campaign. You can very easily destroy all the settings and characters you love that way as one setting or character diminishes another. And ultimately the trick on mixing in new settings wears off, and the GM has to be able to write a good adventure and tell a good story with whatever is left. Mixing tow settings doesn't automatically make for a better setting. Most crossovers don't work out very well. It takes a very skilled author to pull them off, and most of those tend to be one shots that end before peoiple stop and really think about what the crossover means. Now you may have mixed this and that in the past, as has many a GM, and maybe you have had great results, but that doesn't mean everyone else will agree with your interpretation or get the same results. Mixing is fine as something for a GM to do in a campaign, but not fine as a core concept for a potential Stormbringer 5.5.

Nope. RQ used random die rolls. Superworld was the only variant that went point buy. I did look at Revolution and I disagree with you that SIZ is a pointless attribute. On the contrary I think SIZ is one of the most important attritrutes. Things like how much muscle mass (STR), resistance to toxins, and overall durability are all heavily influenced by SIZ. I think that if people want to run the Young Kingdoms with Revolution that's fine, but it's not really Stormbringer/BRP anymore, but Revolution. Painfully true in many BRP games, but not in RQ3, where it affected Category modfiers. Realistically it is far from a nothing attribute. Good looking people tend to get away with a bit more. Not in RQ or early Strombringer. In SB it not only helped to determine you category modifier, but also affected you ability to bind and control supernatual entities. So it was very relevant to a sorceror. I disagree. There is more too it that just roleplaying, for much the same reason why we don't "just roleplay" swordfights Whenever you have one character trying to do something that another character might not want to let happen you need a game mechanic for it. Otherwise, every character could charm millions and be an pop idol or politician. Oh, okay. If it isjust a chargen/drading tool, then I'm all for it. I though you meant it as a simplfied replacement to the % skill ratings. As long as it's just a way to simplfy chargen I'm fine with It. Just as long as we don't reduce skills down to a half dozen different ratings. I can see a few reasons. For starters the learning curve, and limited space in the book. Look at the BRPG Big Gold Book. It's a treasure trove of various rules and alternates for a host of different Chaosium produced RPGs over the years. It's great reference for someone who is familiar with BRP already, but a bit intimidating for someone who is new to the game. Rather than having to learn one system they end up having to pick and choose from various options. THe core rule book ends up being longer and filled with stuff that they won't be using. I think that the core rulebook should be short, and simple, with one way of doing things, and any alternate stuff should be put into a supplement. It hasn't changed much in years because the game has been out of print for over a decade. It didn't change much stylistically (it actually did change quite a bit, mechanically, between editions, although those changes were, IMO a mixed bag. Just porting over RQ battle magic wasn't such a great idea.) because it was designed to emulate the magic we see in the Elric stories. Except that just feels like a genrric FRP magic system and doesn't mesh all that well with what we see in the Elric stories. I'm not sure I agree with you on that. Can you spell out why. No. The Eternal Champion ( it is only one being, although the EC has many incarnations) is a person who is pulled through the multiverse by higher powers to determine the fate of various sphere of existence. That is very different from a Lord of Gossamer who is more of a higher power in his own right. Lords of Gossamer was mostly a way to bring back the Amber diceless RPG without actually using Amber, and the player characters are basically Amberites in abilties and function. In many ways they are closer to the Lords of Law and Chaos tan the Eternal Champion. That fine but that's not really somthing that really could be done, offically, with a Strombringer RPG, and probably shouldn't be done offically, anyway, as it isn't true the source material. I agree. The old rules were starting to bring that stuff in before Stormbringer lost support. No. Hawkmoon and Cthulhu Mythos is very differernt. Although, in both cases we can't say if any magic is actually involved or not. No, not really. RQ magic is mostly theistic in nature. That's great except that such a game would be difficult if not impossible for anyone to publish. AFor starters getting the rights to use the various properties would be difficult to secure,, and even if someone did manage it, they'd lose them and most of their potential fanbase over the way they mixed n' matched settings. Both the IP holders and fans would have a fit if the mix didn't match up with how they thought things should work. For example, could Elric wielding Stormbringer kill Cthulhu? Drop that question of the forums and dive behind some asbestos shielding. Instant flame war. Say "no" and all the EC fans will point out that Stormbringer was forged to slay gods and is actually one itself. Say "yes" and all the Cthulhu Mythos fans will bring out Cthulhu other worldly state and that he would just reform, plus other stuff from the Mythos. Truth is, there is no correct answer to the problem because each setting was created by different authors and each obeys it own distinct set of laws that are, mutually exclusive. THat sort of game is really something best left to each GM to work out according to their own wishes.

Several Things: points build, all the way. [So far only Superworld has gone that route for BR, partly because they were trying to see if they could mimic Champions with the BRP rules. I'm not sure a point buy method would really help Strombringer much. The only ones who really need particular stats in old SB were sorcerers, and since category modifiers were dropped from Elric! onward, the differences between stat points is much less significant] Str, End, Dex / Reflexes, Willpower [is a far cry from STR, CON, SIZ, INT, POW, DEX, and APP/CHA, used in every BRP based RPG . I don't really see a reason for the change in naming nor any real advantage in dropping SIZ and INT. Even CHA was a useful stat in Stombringer. Reducing the number of characteristics will just lead to the missing stats being factored into the remaining ones, which will limit our flexibility. Big animals and creatures will; have to have incredibly high CON scores to remain tough to kill] Skills in levels Novice, Journeyman, Professional, Expert, Master) instead of Percentile ratings (unless you meant the levels to correspond to & ratings, and only used as a tool to streamline chargen. IMO one thing we could do along these lines would be to treat each "level" in a skill as a multiple of a stat. For instance Sword cost be based on DEX and/or STR and be at say 2xSTAT for a Novice, 4x for a Journeyman and so forth. Or even a set Percentage plus a stat, such as Novice 20%+STAT, Journeyman 45%+STAT, Professional 60%+STAT, Expert 75%+STAT, and Master 80%+STAT. That would make the stats more useful.) I think I can see what you want to do, with simplification, but I also think we want to keep this true to the general spirit and format of BRP. Unless people really want to divert from the core system. There are advantages to doing something differently than in the past too. But how much are most people willing to divert from the current ruleset. Minor tweak or major overhaul?

Interesting, but not really BRP anymore, is it? I think the core BRP/RQ/Stormbringer game mechanics worked well for for for Stormbringer, except that the armor scores will a bit on the low side. The game could do with a bit of tweaking with the magic system and cultural notes to better fit the Young Kingdoms and EC overall Eternal Champion mythos. Maybe port over some sort of Hero Point mechanic to give the main characters a touch of "script immunity". Theleb K'aarna probably wouldn't be able to make all his escapes in game play without something like that.

Elan hasn't been there for quite awhile, having been replaced with a Allegiance score that is much closer to Pendragon Traits. I could see further modifying this to make Law/Chaos as a trait pair with those desiring Balance require a score somewhere in the middle (9-11?)

YOu appear to. And yes, "hounding him" is about right. Yes you do. With such terms as "dog-whistle", "racist trope" and "Sexist trope".

The whole point of his example was that the villain comes back somehow in another body. So any sort of change from the villains previous body is going to bring out charges of his being racist, and/or sexists for making the new villain a member of whatever "group" he picks, and the same claims, plus those of not being inclusive if the villain's new body were the same race and gender as the first. He can't win no matter what he does. No, I don't know that. It's not deflection, it was the first example posted. You're the one who tried to change the topic in his post from "what if the main villain was the same guy". I'm surprised you didn't call him sexist for using "same guy". Yes, and Karloff wore a Fez in several of his roles. You overlook that many of those old films also happened to be classics. Karloff was an actor noted for playing villains. He got his roles and recognition thru merit, not through his ethnicity. But we're not allowed to run any game in the 20s or 30s because they were racist times. Or any time before that. Or after that. Claims can be made for any movie being insensitive to one particular group of people or another.

What's wrong with that? Part of the point of villains is that they are bad and or evil people who do bad and/or evil things. If the Major Villain and their minions are all enlightened fair people, then how are they villains? Pretty much every story would have gone very differently if the bad guys weren't actually bad, but fair and could be reasoned with.

I sometimes run an arch-nemesis. It depends on the game/type of campaign, and how the adventures actually play out. Often, a reoccurring villain happens by accident rather than design. Someone gets away or proves to be more successful than I expected them to be and they crop of later on. As for why he isn't the same guy each time? We'll mostly because I think that would suck. One of the major reasons why people play RPGs is that they can accomplish things and actually make a difference. If the villain keeps coming back, regardless of what the player characters actually do, then they loose some of that sense of making a difference, as Mr. Big Bad is going to come back. It reduces their sense of free will and agency too. Another reason why I think having the Big Bad always be the same guy is that the game will become somewhat monotonous. Each Major Villain worth their salt has their own modus operandi , personality, code of behavior and so on. If the Big Bad is always the same, then all the adventures involving him with tend to fall into a pattern. Series 8 of Doctor Who fell into that trap, with the Master being behind every plot. That's why in fiction arch nemesis either show up infrequency, or sit back as an "end boss" with under bosses who act as the antagonists along the way. A lot of old school anime shows, especially giant robot anime shows followed that pattern, with a Big Bad boss who the heroes personally confront at the end, with several lieutenants who themselves function as short terrn arch villains (until killed, demoted, or switch sides).

Thank you! I'm sure owners of the Beyond the Wall PDF will find that very helpful.

That depends on how big you make the scan. The overall picture quality is based on the size of the image as well as the dpi. So you can get a good map at 72dpi, but it has to be portortally larger to get the same detail as one at 300 dpi or higher. I wouldn't, but I'd consider sending it to them to ammend the existing pdf, unless, of coruse they beat me to it, which it seems they will.

Do you know what the resolution is? I have the hardcopy, not the PDF. Maybe it would be possible to get a higher rez-scan. The one I posted above is only at 72 dpi , which is okay for a computer screen. We really want at least 300 dpi or so for a printable version to keep the details. I could look for my copy in storage and maybe scan it in sections and merge them into a bigger higher rez map.

My hard copy is in storage at the moment, but there should be a big map in the book that looks something like this: (Note that this is at reduced resolution for informational purposes, to show what should be there, without violating any copyright laws by clearly showing what is there)

Perhaps? Inflection and intent are not always easy to pick up on in text. You're welcome.

That's sort of the case with most GURPS setting books. The same holds true for the Rolemaster setting books, or even KAP1. I don't think that's a bad thing either. Frankly, any GM who wants to go off down a rabbit hole for a non-standard version of a story should go and do more research. THe nice thing about Pendragon and the GPC is that a GM doesn't need to do any research to run it. They still should read Malory, or at least Pyle or some other streamlined rendition of the "standard" version of the tale, but they don't have to. Someone who wants to run a Roman Arthur or a strictly Cyric one is going to have to do their homework. BTW, I don't think the current trend of huge gamebooks is any better. Bigger books make it harder to find something when you need to. One thing I like about Pendragon is that the supplementary rules are somewhat modular in nature. No one actually needs to use any of the supplements to play the game. Yes, they can expand upon and enhance the game, but none of them are vital to the game, not even the GPC. Does she? Yes she does in the recent KAP supplments, but that doesn't really mesh with what came before. Much like how several character's religion has changed between editions. No, it not migratory Era Britain, but it not really Medieval Britain either. Its a mythical age that doesn't quite mesh with reality, and that's sort of the point. If people wanted Medeival Brtitian they could find a game that covered that. Pendragon is Arthurian Britain, which is half real and half legend.