RosenMcStern

Very nice. It has bookmarks and layers (ye can eliminate the artwork and background before printing) and despite the font being not the best suit for mobile devices, I can still read a full page per screen on my mini-tablet with a 7" screen. Alas, it is 20mb despite the few pictures (better than MRQ2 ones) and digest format, so it takes a long time to load pages on the Androind Adobe Reader: better use PDF Viewer or other programs. Overall, it is not perfect but you can definitely carry it with you on a mobile device instead of using the book.

But.... er, where is the OGL designation in the PDF? I cannot find it anywhere.

Yep, it is high time. I did not want to announce it openly for fear that "something bad" could still happen, but it went to the printer some weeks ago, so the US distribution should already have it. A pity it did not make it for Dragonmeet.

As soon as we can arrange a delivery, Chaosium will have it for sale, too. Within Christmas, I suppose.

Be prepared. It will be the Ultimate rpg. I mean, Simon has put so many demons in it that this time the "RPG are satanism" crusade will put an end to the industry.

All the above makes sense, but also:

If your average character is going to be a wandering mercenary who carries his wealth in a belt pouch, then provide values for prices in whatever currency is used in your world.

If your average character is well integrated in his environment, with his wealth measured by how much he earns per year, and also by how easily he can persuade the local merchants to sell him stuff on credit, then abstract values are way, way better.

The ideal solution would be to provide both values, but handling both factors in the same game is quite... messy.

Another typo fixed. Nice to know Mongoose can choose to obey the Americans, either... not.

Frogspawner, in order to be granted the exquisite pleasure of obeying Frau Merkel, you Brits should first abandon that old-fashioned currency and join the eurozone.

[just kidding - actually, Frau Merkel and her subjects are guaranteeing for everyone's bonds here ]

Uhm, I do not think so. A "Conan of Legend" book would indicate Open Game Content. REH Estate could disagree about the latter.

"Legend of Conan", OTOH, could be a great title, and stay away from confusion.

In _every_ OGC Legend book, there is a page dedicated to the OGL and, preceding it, an explanation that, among other things, defines the entire text of said book as Open Content.

Ah, ok. This is awfully boring for the casual gamer to read, but also painfully necessary for the OGL to be legally enforceable. Barring mis-spellings that invalidate the whole things in some of the books, I think this puts an end to all questions. The game is OGL and the core books are OGC.

I think Mongoose Matt explained this above: it is in the physical (or PDF) book, the complete one, not the preview. I know that some people already have their copy of Legend, so they could confirm whether it is compliant with the "historical" definition of OGC, or it introduces new details. Including a copy of the OGL in the zip file could have been more convenient for third parties, however.

Oh, and on second thought:

The entire text of the Legend RPG is designated Open Game Content, as is the entire text of all books in this line with plain colour covers and the words ‘… of Legend’ in their title.

IANAL, but if I were to use this license I would really, really like to have something more appealing (no pun intended) for a court as the delimitation of what is "Open Game Content". Legalese is not attractive to gamers, but is a sore necessity if you have to publish something that is for sale. In other words, the preamble "This book is designated as Open Game Content" is probably still necessary for all the ".. of Legend" books. You know, better safe than sorry.

Where can the definition of "Open Game Content" be found? I can see no reference to the OGL, either the original one by Wizards or the one produced for RuneQuest in 2006.

As of its current formulation, the document included in the zip file has no legal value. At least not in an Italian court, but I doubt a US or British one would find it more effective. I hope the text found in the actual Legend books will be more legally binding.

Great! Chaosium showed that they can compete with Mongoose on their own terrain.

Hello Andrea,

I can understand why you are so disappointed. But do you think that this kind of comment can really help to improve the quality of future products?

The list of "Stuff that had better been checked before printing" is on its way to the writers. Let us hope that everything can be fixed with a small errata sheet.

Yes boys, it is coming. Soon.

As for Mythic Iceland, it is no longer a myth. The proofread copies were there, at Chimeriades, in all their glory. Charlie wanted to present me one, but I had to decline because my baggage was too full

After the initial training period in which we rolled characters at a rate of one per session, I have run BRP campaigns that lasted for years with very few casualties. Magic makes healing and resurrection available, so the lack of extra HP is more than compensated by other factors. Just do not expect to be hit by a trebuchet and survive, like it happens in D&D. But I do not consider THIS a flaw

That is an Action Point system. Action Points (introduced by the computer game Laser Squad, IIRC, and made famous by the XCom series, which in turn influenced the sci-fi equipment description in BRP, Jason said) are a measure of how many actions you can perform in a turn, not just how fast you perform them.

Again, the RuneQuest combat system is more akin to the Action Point method. Please consider that APs work smoothly in computer games, a bit less smoothly on tabletop. RuneQuest works fine with 2-4 actions per round, using chits to keep track of them. More than that, and you risk bookkeeping problems.

SR-as-seconds comes into its own in modern and science fiction combat, where things speed up considerably compared to hand-to-hand or even pre-modern ranged combat and weapon length and reach are rarely significant.

The problem is that the SR system was designed to handle melee combat. In a modern game, I would recommend not to use it.

The SR system in the BGB is a subset of RQ3, and it has some differences. The dangerous one is the one that I marked up. The rest is almost identical to RQ3.

SR does work as a whole, but not for everyone and not for every game. It has its "sweet spot" in a melee oriented game with moderate magic, and with a group that fully understands that decisions must be made at Statement of Intent phase, and carried over at your calculated SR. If you consider each individual SR as a "turn", you will break the game.

I think that the whole debate that Daddystabz initiated in June is emblematic of the strength and witnesses of the system. If you do not like the fact that you plan at statement of intent and execute at your SR (or DEX rank), plus or minus delay for movement, and wish to make a decision at the exact moment it is about to be carried over, then strike rank will not work for you, and any adjustment will wreak havok in your game. RuneQuest and Combat Actions are a good alternative in this case.

combat tends to work well and I guess if it aint broke then I shouldn't try to fix.

This is definitely a good principle.

Unfortunately, the BRP Strike Rank system is not exactly the same as the RQ2/RQ3 one. The "fast swinging polearm" effect is there, too, as it states that you can restart the SR sequence within that same round if your SR is 5 or less. While this is ok for spells and missiles, this is not the case with long weapons. This particular rule should be ditched if you wish to play the BGB like RQ3 used to play. Apparently, this is one of the few flaws that slipped into an otherwise-flawless books.

I have written an optional rule for adding mooks to combat at the beginning of the Crusaders of the Amber Coast campaign. It takes into account the Command skill of PC leaders, making friendly mooks tougher and less incline to fleeing from combat if you make your roll. The mook does not become more skilled, he just takes more hit points of damage before giving up.

Strike Rank is something that has its own logic and philosophy. It works well, but only if you use it properly.

Strike rank is only a measure of how fast you act in combat, not of how many seconds it takes for you to hit your opponent. It does not take you longer to swing a dagger than to swing a great axe - in fact, the opposite is true. This means that applying this logic to melee attacks will produce AWFULLY UNREALISTIC results, with polearm wielders striking more frequently than people with short knives. This makes absolutely no sense, and it WILL break the game.

When you play BRP, you should always keep in mind principle #1: an attack is just the abstraction of one full round worth of blows, not just one blow. And the Strike Rank at which it occurs is a measure of your "initiative" in the round, not of the time it took to hit.

If you do not like this approach, RuneQuest provides a valid alternative.

Hmm, just a thought, but a mecha scale crossbow could be a nasty weapon.

Darutaniasu used to wield one...

How about belt-fed weapons?

If you can find a way to producw a pliable, resistant "belt" of the adequate (10-20 metres) length. Perhaps bronto leather?

For the rest, I think 100-rounds clips or drums are ok.

I tend to prefer the RQII method of using two characteristics though that it has its own problem of fiddly skill value changes when it comes to altering characteristics.

Not sure there is a system without drawbacks. If there was, I suspect someone would have found it.

Exactly.

As already stated, I favour the RuneQuest system (I will now stop referring to it as MRQ, as Mongoose is no longer the propelling force behind it) of calculating base chances. The BRP way of handling this is probably the most realistic, but it has a lot of drawbacks, like many RQ3/BRP rules such as Fatigue.

The reason why skills and modifiers are calculated as they are in the Alephtar sourcebooks is just the sake of compatibility with the Big Gold Book. We encourage players to use the RuneQuest method for skill base calculation even when they are playing BRP: it will make things easier for them. It works better even when characteristics are change by spells on a temporary bases, as there is no halving involved.

Whilst fully intending to stay out the rest of the conversation I would point out that OTO Melara are actually pretty successful at what they do which is gun based weapons systems. There's an awful lot of ships round the world mounting their guns.

One of my ex-bosses told me that he was once involved in the design of the software that was supposed to handle the mechanism that counters the recoil of one of those turrets. Not an easy task.

They also make the OTOMAT anti ship missile. It is not as powerful as the Tomahawk, but a good match for the Harpoon.

Plus we could mention that one third of the design of the Tornado and Typhoon aircraft is Italian. The other 2/3 are British and German.

You have probably no news about major Italian military exports abroad. The main reason is that the main customer in the 80s was... well, Iraq. There was an entire fleet of ships ready for delivery (think I have actually seen them in 1991 in La Spezia) when Saddam had the unfortunate idea of invading Kuwait. They were never delivered, of course. They are currently part of the fleet that patrols the Lybian coast.

Plus Italy produces the only wheeled tank destroyer in the world with a 120mm gun. Not an APC, a Tank Destroyer.

Going back to mechas: ammunition will be handled as normal in BRP - you know how many rounds you have, and you mark them off when you fire. Many mechas can carry extra clips, and some energy weapons are linked to the core reactor, so they use up PP, not ammunition. But most mass-produced mechas will use autocannons with normal ammo (40mm to 120mm caliber) or beam weapons with an internal power cell.

Long range sniping, while certainly sensible, doesn't appear much in mecha.

Lockon Stratos begs to differ.

I meant a matter of time in terms of the technology being equal to the challenge, certainly whether there's a need for it remains to be seen. I'd certainly agree that ammo supply would be a major problem. That's one of the things that has struck me about the ( admittedly very small ) amount of anime/manga Mecha I've seen - an endless supply of bullets ( shells ! ) and rockets or missiles, where are they carrying all those munitions ?

Er, what series did you watch?

mazinger has an unlimited supply of rockets. And that's all. The "realistic" robots have ammunition problems in all series I can think of. Admittedly, some Valkyries in Robotech can fire too many shells from their main rifle, but they DO run out of ammunition in many episodes. See Macross Frontier episode 1, for instance. The valkyrie runs out of ammunition at the most inconvenient time. Gundam runs out of ammunition (two different kinds of ammunition, 60mm shells and energy for the beam rifle) in both episode 1 and 2 of the original series.

Lots of aircraft have cannon that can toss off thousands of rounds per minute, but only carry a few seconds worth of ammo.

Keep in mind that in the real world, it ususally inst a case of more damage = better. In many cases a 120mm cannon would be overkill. Of coruse, most mecha settings are the exception.

A mecha (real robot) is more heavily armoured than a tank (MUCH more) and can actually carry a lot of ammunition. Thus, it needs a Big Gun (120mm is normal for anti-tank weaponry nowadays, whereas the norm was between 75 and 88mm during WWII, the tiger employing an 88) and can afford to have an automatic one.

Standard equipment for a Zaku (the archetypal mass-produced mecha) is a 100mm SMG. It is shaped like a Thompson, and is the equivalent of the 127 described above in firepower. Smaller mechas from Code Geass may employ assault rifles that are the equivalent of an A-10 AT gun.

Sounds a bit too complicate to me. The attack matrix exists to put an end to the endless attack/parry sequence of earlier versions of BRP. I do not see such complication as needed for social conflicts. Furthermore, why should debating against several opponents be more difficult? You can have several attorneys show up in court, but only one of them can speak at any given time.

I doubt anyone here wished to bash at BRP. We are just not eager to try it with supers, but it _can_ work, indeed!