soltakss

And it makes them cry.

Ok, they will be in, perhaps in sketch form rather than a detailed campaign, but I'll even include your raping, looting, baby-eating, castrated-blinded, pirate Bishop of the Isles (although he's a bit early he's too good to leave out) I'll send you my notes once I've written them.

A resistance scout sitting in a tree, K-I-L-L-I-N-G!

Thanks for the new link - everything seems to show up now. I found an Occitan-Catalan and Catalan-English online translator http://traductor.gencat.cat/ which produces slightly garbled translations, as they all do. De qué vira? Lo mieu jòc de ròtle, sonat Lo Temps dels Trobadors, vos permetrà de jogar un personatge dins l'Occitània del sègle XIIIen, a l'epòca de la Crosada francimanda. Trobadors, soldats o pageses, los personatges se baton per la lor vida e per l'independéncia del lor país. Translates into Catalan and then into English as: Of what goes round? My role play, famous The Time|Weather of the Troubadours, it will allow you to play a character in the Occitània of the century XIII, to the period of the francimanda Crusade. Troubadours, soldiers or farmers, the characters beat themselves for the its|his|her|their life and for|because of|from|out of the independence of the its|his|her|their country. Which is spot on, or thereabouts. It's a shame you don't have the scenarios/campaigns on line as I'd have liked to see them (plunder them for ideas ).

Thanks for the link, I didn't know about this site. There are some links to a missing geocities site, so perhaps you haven't pulled everything across. What language is the site in? It doesn't look like Spanish or Italian, is it in Occitan? Some of the external links are to Occitan sites. I can read French and Spanish sites, just about, but Occitan is beyond me, unfortunately. Do you know of any Occitan-English translation sites? Babelfish's Babylon doesn't seem to be of any help. I'll send you an email about the Albigensian Crusade.

There are two things you should know about them: 1. They were included in Merrie England: Age of Eleanor 2. They a a bit late for the time period 3. They will be included in the Albigensian Crusade

I'm thinking of working on a supplement to Merrie England. Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions about what they would like to see in the supplement? Currently, I am planning to add descriptions of Heaven/Hell/Purgatory (it is a Medieval setting, after all), scenarios, descriptions of the major heresies of the time, campaign ideas, potted descriptions of some areas outside England, sketch descriptions of the Crusades and, hopefully, an in-depth description of the Albigensian Crusade and, perhaps, the Third Crusade. Is there anything in the current Merrie England: Age of Eleanor that people think needs amending or expanding on? Anything they don't like about Merrie England: Age of Eleanor?

It normally takes longer than expected.

If the descriptions are not that large then I'd put them in a sidebar. Spells are probably ideal for sidebars. I'd want creatures to be described when they are encountered in the text, perhaps as a sidebar or as a half-page text box with a brief description, characteristics and perhaps a picture. That way, it wouldn't be too intrusive and saves hunting through chapters and appendices to find the creature's powers. For example, if you wrote a number of interconnected pirate scenarios then you could include mermaids and sea dragons as creatures and would need to describe them in the text. You could also use some voodoo magic, when they travel to the Caribbean and describe them in sidebars alongside the NPCs who have the spells.

We have planes now, you know, just a quick trip across the pond and you can play to your heart's content.

It's a multiple choice poll so you can vote for more than one option. I voted for Yes and also a supplement. As a fan of Alternate Earthy stuff, I'd like such scenarios, in fact I'd prefer scenarios to a full-blown background supplement. The reason is that anyone can research background, even if few do so, but writing detailed and interesting scenarios is difficult. As a GM, I can take a scenario set anywhere in the Middle Ages and use it anywhere else in the Middle Ages, I can even take a scenario for a completely different period and use most of it in virtually any period. That is a lot easier than writing a new scenario from scratch. The reason I also voted for an entire supplement is that I would like to see a number of connected scenarios published in a single supplement, as a campaign. Make it background light but resource heavy and it can be used in different campaigns. Put 6 or 7 scenarios in and you have something that is useful. As for magic and beasties, I'm a fan of magical things in real world games, as long as they are not over-used. A dragon here and there fits in to most fairy tale/folk tale/folksong genres, but not if everywhere has a dragon. If you want to include some fantasy creatures that are appropriate to the setting then go ahead, it makes the scenarios more interesting. Similarly for spells, if they suit the setting then include them.

Because those darned rocks float and won't drop! But, yes, they didn't seem to have the best tactics against the aircraft. That's why it would make a great game - we'd optimise the fun out of it.

Elves the size of Great Trolls shooting arrows the size of javelins and flying on giant beasties - what's not to like?

There are many ways for a wealthy PC to become poor before the start of a campaign. I wouldn't compensate him for it - in fact it opens up a lot of roleplayibng opportunities. What happened to make him poor? Were his lands seized by a rival? Was he a wealthy merchant cheated out of his goods? Is he a gambler? Is he planning on regaining his fortune? How about making a new fortune? Wealth can go down as well as up. However, BRP doesn't have much in the way of hard and fast rules for increasing/decreasing wealth. I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Thanks, I might buy it to have a look at how it does things. Of course, if it contains Shoggoths hiding in the cellar then I won't be a happy bunny at all ...

Future supplements for Merrie England will still have Nationalities as part of Character Generation, with different skills, religions and professions available to different nationalities. I'm not sure how many I'm going to include since not all impact on Merrie England specifically, but more on Merrie Europe.

Yes, I am planning to include the Cathars in the next Merrie England supplement, as well as the incredibly bloody and nasty Albigensian Crusade. I don't know a lot about the Waldensians, so a supplement covering them would be interesting. Val-de-Loupe is a Monograph and looks good to me, so that could be one way to go. I've gone with Alephtar games for several reasons: The book is printed and is available in shops The quality of the books seems higher than the Monographs I'm not keen on the Monograph terms (although they could end up paying more than writing a supplement) Drop me a line regarding the Anarchy/Second Crusade etc and perhaps we could collaborate on something for Merrie England.

He'll be starting to shave soon. Happy birthday, beetle-boy.

OMG - let's not get into another IP/copyright/OGL/IANAL discussion! Anything that is already in a BRP publication is probably OK, including things from Basic Monsters, or whatever the RQ3 reprint with BRP stuck on the cover is called. Also, anything that is based on a real world creature or a creature from real world mythology is also fine. Creatures based on literature, TV series or films are debatable as they may well be covered by some copyright or trademark restrictions.

Has anyone bought The Abbey from Chaosium? On the one hand, it seems as though this would be generally compatible to Val de Loupe/Merrie England, but on the other hand it looks suspiciously as though the Cthulhu Mythos is going to figure heavily. If I bought it, with my anti-Call of Cthulhu bias, would I be disappointed?

RQ2 was good, but RQ3 was better, in my opinion. I don't think it is, in fact I would like BRP more if it that were the case. To me, BRP is a mix of Stormbringer/Elric/CoC with a bit of RQ thrown in now and again. That's not a bad thing, at all. It is more of a toolkit than a coherent system, mainly because there are so many optional rules. It's definitely worth buying as it is different from RQ2 and even RQ3. For a pure fantasy game, RQ2/3 is probably enough. For anything else then BRP is better than RQ2/3/RQM simply because it does cover different genres, albeit sketchily. That's exactly it, BRP is pretty good for most settings, in a basic form. To use it properly for many settings, however, you would have to add a lot of detail, not necessarily general rules but certainly equipment and spot-rules. You probably won't regret buying BRP. It is different to all the other RQs and BRPs around. There's not much chance of that - why would they try to buy back RQ when they have BRP? We should be able to use pretty much all the RQ supplements and pretty much all the BRP supplements together,, genre permitting. Certainly Deus Vult/Stupor Mundi/Merrie England/Val de Loupe should be compatible to a good degree. RQ's Eternal Champion should be fairly compatible with Chaosium's. RQ doesn't have a SciFi game, as Mongoose has the Big Beast that is Traveller, but I would guess that OpenQuest's SciFi game would be compatible with BRP's Outpost 19 and Fractured Hopes.

Another update? Backup, backup, backup, test, test, test, cry, cry, cry ...

The idea of gold, silver and copper pieces is fine for a generic setting, but medieval settings, as pointed out, often used the silver penny, or its equivalent. I wouldn't use the D&D currencies and economics but would use setting specific values. Silver pennies are the main coin of Merrie England, but the shilling, mark and pound are accounting terms relating to 12d, 160d and 240d respectively. Silver Groats, worth 4d, are introduced in England in the 13th century. The gold bezant is used in the Byzantine Empire and is worth 20 groats or 80d. The gold florin is briefly introduced in the 14th century and is worth 72d (six shillings) but was quickly replaced by the Gold Noble, worth 80d. Many merchants used credit notes and the exchange of such notes was pioneered by the Lombard and the Templar banking systems, often at trade fairs. It is safer to carry a credit note for 240 shillings than a big bag of silver coinage. Many fantasy medieval games don't use credit notes and have sacks of coins to pay for expensive equipment. Merrie England has various tables showing wages for different professions and a lot of them earn a penny a day. In contrast, a Duke could earn 30 pounds, or 7,200d a day. Equipment is expensive, a warhorse costs 80 pounds, or 2 1/2 year's income for a knight. Merrie England doesn't have armour or weapon costs, perhaps it should as these are staples of medieval equipment, it used the RQ armour/weapon costs in pennies as I didn't have access to real costs of weapons/armour in medieval England. In any case, most trade is not in weapons and armour because most people didn't need such things. If someone fought in an army then he was provided with weapons and armour. Knights won theirs in Tourneys or bought them. Bandits stole their or lifted them off their victims. Medieval armies had groups of people whose job was to strip the fallen armies of their weapons and armour so they could be reused. So, killing them and taking their stuff is a common and honourable practice in Medieval settings. Merchants traded in cloth, in spices, in wool, in ornaments and jewellry, in perfumes and soaps and in livestock. Such things are bought by the common people and they have enough money to make trade worthwhile. A good tunic could cost 5s, or 60d, two month's wages for a common tradesman but 2 weeks wages for a Master Mason, so trading in these goods could be quite profitable. As has been stated, you need to work out the overheads that the merchant must bear. These include the costs of transporting trade goods and the costs of services. The easiest way of doing this is to work out the wages and food/drink/lodgings costs of everyone involved in the transporation (Guards, drovers, merchants) and multiply that by the number of days travel, adding in the costs of feeding the beasts carrying the goods. You should also add in any customs charges, bribes, trading licences, guild membership and so on. Some of these would be annual costs, others would be on a per journey or might depend on the goods being traded. You also need to know what the market can bear and how much demand there is for certain goods. A Craft (Merchant) or Knowledge (Trading) roll should suffice, with a normal success allowing the merchant to sell goods at market (book) value, a special at 1.5x market value, a critical at 2x market value, a failure at 0.5 x market value and a fumble meaning that nothing is sold. Obviously, there is much more to this if you delve in deeper. If your players are a mix of accountants and economists then you might want to use more detailed rules.

Perhaps a failed roll means the task takes longer. The more failures the higher the chance that the diver runs out of oxygen/power/whatever or might encounter some nasty critter.

And I fell asleep halfway through that