As a long-time player of RQ, I was pleased when Mongoose brought out their version, but not so pleased to see the quality of the supplements.
I was also pleased to see that Chaosium were bringing out BRP as well, although not so pleased to see it had a lot from CoC in it.
As I have no life of my own, I visit several, although by no means all, of the RQ/BRP forums and have noticed some things happening time and time again.
People seem to be very supportive of their favourite system and dismissive of the other, similar systems. Quite often, this is not just system based but seems to have a large amount of hostility to certain companies or people.
For example:
1. There are many people who like HeroQuest and snootily dismiss RQ.
2. There are a lot of people who like BRP (or D100 as it will probably be called) and despise RQ, HQ and the companies behind them.
3. There are a lot of people who like RQ and despise HQ.
I seem to be in a minority, for some reason, as I like RuneQuest, HeroQuest and BRP. In fact, I see them as being from the same family of games, yes even HeroQuest, and see them as being very connected.
Other people, however, do not share my views.
Sure, they all have their faults and could be better, but they are all fairly good systems - after all, I've been playing them in various forms since 1982 and don't play ANY other RPG.
What I would like to see is people supporting all these games. I'd like to see websites with conversion rules and examples of how to use Legendary Abilities in D100, HeroQuest Cults converted to RQ, the excellent modularity of RQ applied to BRP etc.
I'd like to see fanzines for BRP also accepting dual-stats for RQ, or even stats for D100, RQ and HQ. I'd like to see fanzines for RQ accepting D100/HQ stats. I'd like to see variants of RQ/D100/HQ rules written in such a way as to be compatible with the other rulesets.
Is that too much to ask?
What I am afraid might happen is that the BRP/RQ gaming fraternity splits up into warring factions. That D100 becomes violently incompatible with RQ and vice versa. That people are forced not to write things in one system because someone leans on them or threatens them with some legal action.
At the moment, I can't submit anything even remotely connected with RQ to a proposed D100 fanzine. So, I couldn't write up a Fantasy Europe setting and say it was compatible with Stupor Mundi, because Stupor Mundi is based on the RQ SRD.
Personally, I think that this is a short-sighted approach.
We all know that RQ only survived as long as it did because of the fanzines and online discussion groups/websites, mainly Tales of the Reaching Moon and the Gloranthan and RQ-Rules Digests. If it hadn't been for them, RQ would have vanished long ago. Similarly, Chaosium probably wouldn't have bothered bringing out D100 if the RQ community hadn't been as strong.
Part of the problem is the Licences the new games come out under. Issaries has the Fan Policy that has driven many websites off the web and has stopped many publishers from publishing. Mongoose has the Open Gaming Licence, which seems reasonable, but makes Glorantha off-limits. I don't know what Chaosium has for D100, but unless they make it fairly open, then they are going to struggle.
In my opinion, Chaosium will need a lot of third-party publishing to bolster D100 as I can't see them matching Mongoose's output on their own. Mongoose is also going to rely on third-party supplements to produce RQ settings outside their own ones. Issaries have had several publishers producing supplements for HeroQuest, but I think they need more and that their Fan Policy is too restrictive.
If people worked together, they would have a lot better chance of keeping the games alive and well supported.
If it came to a battle between Chaosium and Mongoose, I know who I'd put money on.
So, what BRP-style games are out at the moment?
RQ
Stupor Mundi
GORE
D100 (well, out soon)
BRP Monographs (RQ3 in all but name)
How many of those are well supported?
RQ
That says it all, really.
I'm beginning to wander as it's very late, so I'll stop now.
Except to say, please don't start the System Wars as I don't really want to see these games being flushed down the toilet again.
I've put on my tin hat and asbestos flak jacket, waiting for the flames to come ......