RosenMcStern

Still, when you decide something that might hurt one of your partners, it is considered good manners to inform him, at least. Actually, one of the partners was informed by me, after the press release. And they blocked the printing of a batch of books "just in time" after my email. Had they waited for Mongoose...

I wonder if Pete Cakebread & Ken Walton know this.

I would go further with "best wishes" to Wayfarer, but this would damage Pete's future work on the line. Loz and Pete's work deserve to survive this mess.

And BTW, I wonder if Pete knew of this decision before today.

Yeah! The great RQ sale because they are making a new core book. One year after the last great sale because they were making a new core book.

Marketing masterpiece! O FLGS, please carry our books! It is an assured investment!

No words....

Wow. Imagine that.... Mongoose acted unprofessionally... I never would have seen that coming...

Greg looks like a real magnete for untrustworthy advisors and partners, at times. I hope Rick Meints is the exception to this rule.

And... the Revenge of the Beetle is now complete MRQ is no more!

Okay, I think I can speak freely here.

Mongoose did not bother to inform the sublicensors that they were going to rename/repackage everything. There are sublicensors with warehouses full of books with a logo that will soon be unusable.

I wonder what will happen to C&C.

I had the opportunity to license the MRQII system last year, like Cakebread & Walton did, but preferred to redo everything with BRP (which meant two books already written, Crusaders and Merrie England, to redo) rather than doing so. I was right.

No words...

I don't agree, honestly. I ran an RQIII campaign a few summers ago, for a group that was evenly mixed between people who'd been fans of RQ 'in the day' as well as players who were new to RQ as well as Glorantha. They had no idea what to expect, and they loved the magic rules. Ironically, they specifically thought the Sorcery rules were awesome.

And, this was completely without any house ruling at all.

I think the BRP magic rules are fine, and work great as-is.

They are a good ruleset, possibly ahead of their time. In disagreement with people who consider the RQIII sorcery (sorry, wizardry) unplayable, I have played plenty of campaign based on that ruleset that were extremely satisfactory, with spectacular uses of magic that outshadow any D&Dish spell-slinging.

However, there are a few known issues. Specifically, there are rules that reward bad, out-of-character interpretation of your adenturer. Like the sorcerer that ransacks the Spirit world for INT and POW spiritts being way, way more effective than the guy who actually studies his spells and skills. Or the character who acts in defense of his Faith never becoming a priest because he uses up his 1-use magic and he needs 10 points to qualify, while the guy who hoards his magic does.

Not addressing these points - which are very well known issues that have been changed by every iteration of RuneQuest, published or unpublished, written after 1990 - is somehow a lost opportunity. Especially because it was rather easy to include an optional rule addressing the specific issues. But maybe there was some good reason not to do so.

I agree! And even if I don't end up using it I will pick it up just to support the BRP line.

I am not very pleased by how this is turning out. As an old skooler myself, I know exactly how much houseruling that ruleset needs to produce a game that suits modern tastes. If it was still 2006, I would be very happy to see this book. I understand it might have been impossible to do something else than this, but with RuneQuest II - that does the same three things, but better - in the shops, I am afraid it could do more damage than good to BRP.

Any chance of small tweaks that incorporate the more advanced mechanics used by M-RuneQuest? I mean, RQIII magic was essentially an endless sequence of reasons why you should lose POW, often in ways that did not give you anything in return (see TotRM #12) and were totally disconnected from character development for the most part (a sorcerer with an INT spirit is stronger than a more skillful sorcerer). While the Big Gold Book has good reasons to exist as a complete compendium of ALL BRP versions and settings, having the old RQIII magic system in the shops together with RuneQuest II will possibly produce a sensation of "old" stuff that are way less usable than their Mongoose equivalent.

I used an alternate system that used fewer points for a reroll and had a bunch of other uses for points. Players usually horded them to make sure they had enough points in case they got hit badly. Fumbles that matter only occurred once every few sessions, so they would often just burn the points to make them go away.

IIRC the current system allows rerolls and not bumps (like Savage Worlds), and I have witnessed a re-roll of a fumble resulting in another fumble with my own eyes. But many people prefer "bumps" like you have in MarvelSuperheroes or HeroQuest and personalize the rules. It is a matter of taste, but also of how it works in practice.

I do not see the negation of fumbles as being evil. As SDavies states here, players wil tend to hoard Fate Points once they get how they work, and will manage to always have some ready when they are about to meet Mr Big Hitter. This means that they are likely to accept the consequences of "colour" fumbles (think of Jack Barton in "Big Trouble in Little China") in order to save fate for the climax of the story. Actually, I have come to think that "Big Trouble" is the perfect example of how a Metagame Point mechanics should work. If your system can re-create that story, it works.

I have also heard good things about BRP so tonight I picked up the BRP big golden book at my local FLGS. I have a bit of worry though that if I learn BRP as well as I can it might get difficult for me to distinguish between the 2 systems when I am playing one of the other.

It is the usual matter of how much information the human brain can hold. At some moment, your neurons will overflow (see Johnny Mnemonic).

Are any of you very familiar with both forms of D100

Most of us are.

Can you build supernatural creatures like vampires or werewolves with BRP and use them in an urban fantasy game? Can the BRP golden book handle sci-fi, modern, and historical, like pirates, etc?

Sure. Read the examples in the golden book and you will find exactly that sort of stuff. The usual advice is: pick the setting you like and then choose the ruleset that most fits it. With BRP, this means that you have to select the options you wish to use, too.

Angus has just pointed out that there are good news in the UK Games Expo nominations:

http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/awards.php

Not only does Cubicle 7 automatically win the "Best RPG" category, as all six nominees are published by them, but two out of six of them are BRP derivatives, The Laundry and Clockwork and Chivalry. Clockwork also gets a nomination for best sourcebooks.

Sounds like there is a really renewed interest in BRP, huh? And where have all those "How could BRP be more popular" threads gone? Hiding somewhere or just extinct?

How about this... Characters have a few (say 3) personality traits, and Fate only allows them a re-roll while doing something notably in accordance with one of their traits - and/or Heroic, perhaps (if 'Fate' likes that sort of thing...).

Also, it is [almost] exactly how it works in my new system.

Actually, BRP Rome contains some information about the Kingdom of Rome, too. And yes, there was a "Kingdom of Rome", it lasted some hundred years and preceded the Republic.

Rome was an "Empire", meaning that it conquered foreign lands, from its very beginning, even in the Kingdom period. Some historians speculate that it had already conquered most of Italy under its fourth king, and was later vanquished and enslaved by the Etruscians, only to regain its freedom and its former splendour by overthrowing its Etruscian king.

Please note, however, that the term "Imperium" has a very different meaning when used for the Roman Empire. What makes Augustus or Tiberius an Emperor and not a King is that his title is not hereditary (not necessarily, at least). In that regard, the Holy Roman Emperor and Napoleon are Emperors, too: from the moment they are elected, they are the supreme authority, but their authority does not come from their father but from a council that elected them. Something similar worked for the Roman Empire.

I think I would agree with Fate not being used for Fumble re-rolls (or make them double usual PP cost at least). Fumbles are such a great part of this combat system, I wouldn't want to see them hitched by the Fate option that's for sure.

You see, this is exactly the kind of comment that makes me extremely skeptical about this approach to Fate Points - which I appreciate in general.

Fate Points are not there as another way of gaining tactical advantages: in order to win battles or to make them more exciting, there is planning and caution. Fate Points are there to prevent unheroic, anti-climactic endings for your Truly Heroic Deeds. They are there to avoid the die roll altogether, if the action really counts for the story.

But if you rule that you cannot apply them to a fumble, then your wonderfully planned action can still end in disaster if you roll 00. Definitely not fun.

This is also a good reason why you should not allow PP from external sources to act as Fate Points. Influencing a die roll should be something that can happen only 2-3 times per session. Players should roll a fumble and think "Ok, I might strain an ankle but it's still ok, let us save those Fate Points for the moment this pesky trollkin rolls a critical."

I feel that having a PP investiture in Fate is more BRP'ish than Mongoose's Hero Points, which feel a little too much like a rule 'add-on' to me. It feels like Mongoose saw all these other games that had 'floating' MGPs and hitched their rule from them, whereas the BRP Fate option is much more consistent with the BRP system mechanics.

Hero Points in RuneQuest are inspired by Hero Points in HeroQuest. As a "meta" mechanics, they are more adequate, because they are not connected to in-game mechanics like Power Points used as Fate Points.

For the rest, my opinion on the subject is known: I do not like rerolls. The HeroQuest "bump" is much better. If you are the hero of the story, and you spend a restricted resource, then make it count and make it ensure a success, not another invocation to the gods of dice. Incidentally, it actually happened to one of my players during a playtest to spend Fate Points to reroll a 99, and to roll another 99.

http://rpgmapshare.com/v/Maps/modern/

Not many of them, but they are free. I used them in Cthulhu online.

Also, google image a little bit and you'll find a lot of real estate advertisement that you can use. I usually do this when I need some Portland mansion map for Nameless Streets demos.

As Deleriad said, the key factor is remembering that you do not make any tactical decision before rolling, except the skill you are using. Everything else is decided after the roll.

There are also other BRP rules you have to remove. Firstly, you have to drop the combat result matrix: if A makes a special attack and B a normal parry, then B parried normally but A gained a manoeuver.

Secondly, all effects normally related to criticals and specials become manoeuvers that you can choose if you roll a special or critical success. Several MRQ2 maneouvers already duplicate the effects of a BRP special effect. Remember to use the MRQ version of these manoeuvres, because otherwise you risk getting them too often (all successful missile hits will be impales, and the BRP impale is too nasty to have it happen so often).

Lastly, there is no reason to alter the success levels. Most manoeuvers are achieved by someone missing a roll, and since in MRQ this happens because of the skill reduction rules (absent in BRP) this will compensate the increased chance of getting a manoeuvre because of a special success.

Uhm, the Complementary Skill rule in BRP is already using the Special success percentile. It is a Critical in RuneQuest II.

As for the skills used for Acrobatics and Seduction: please remember that the Perform skill is used to impress onlookers (it is a Communication skill, remember), not to perform (no pun intended) extraordinary feats. As such, I would not use "Perform (Tumbling)" to represent the ability to get out of trouble with your agility, although you might use it as an augment to your "Jump" skill to perform actual Acrobatics. Creating an Acrobatics skill (physical) could be the best solution: at that point, you could instead use it as an augment to the Perform skill when the character is workign in a circus.

Seduction, instead, is about impressing someone else, so it can definitely be interpreted as a Perform specialty, rather than a weird use of Persuade. At least, it is how we have handled it in Merrie England, where there are several episodes regarding courtly (and not-so-courtly) love.

As for the desire to provide the character with a "Special something" instead of a plain skill, see also the Fate Aspects thread and the second iteration of the Alephtar Games home system.

Alas, no. Let us say early Q3 2011.

Well, as I recently came to appreciate D&D 4e, I am not so upset by the news. I only hope they let us convert BRP Rome to 4E Rome, too, without exacting exorbitant fees from us.

Also, I think that converting the Vilkacis monster from CotAC to a character class will be fun. Not to mention all the Martial Arts schools in Dragon Lines and Celestial Empire, which could become fantastic Paragon and Epic paths.

He-heh. WIL is the equivalent of POW in RuneQuest and WIS in D&D. So you can easily use the classic "Magic Point" score adopted by all BRP variants.

But the system I playtested works a bit differently. Spells are fueled by... Strike Ranks. Each time you cast, you lose one ore more SR to fatigue. This may sound weird, but it actually worked so far.

I have playtested one form of psionic powers/mutations in fact, that work like magic will work in the final verions, but these might not be released as OGL as they are tied to a setting that is copyrighted by White Rabbit Studios, so I cannot post them here.

Classic magic spells will be available soon, in any case.

Ouf. Sorry for taking so much to reply but I have been really busy lately.

I have just posted a new iteration of our homebrew variant of D100. You can find it here on BRP central in the playtest section. I think it addresses some of the ideas presented here.

I was also thinking of just making the skills loose. Such as Riding: Horse becomes Riding: Animal (any big animal that can be ridden). The Handgun skill also includes pistol whipping, etc. I was inspired by Dogs of War some time ago. That game only has three or four combat skills that everything you can do in combat falls under. Then you just determine what the character can do by the profession(s) he or she is in.

I think I have somehow addressed this by including only fourteen skills, and using Traits that are derived from your profession or background to complement them. As in OpenQuest, you only have Close Combat or Ranged Combat as skills, but then you need Swordsman or Rifleman to being able to use the weapon competently.

I was going to reduce all of the skills to some basic categories; Agility, Manipulation, Art/Craft, Knowledge, Perception, Combat, Communication and Magic, or something like that. I think I talked about dropping SIZ and maybe INT and CHA. Tack on a very broad and loose magic system and run with it.

Ditto. I think I managed to do this (including ditching SIZ) and have it work someohow.

I also added some suggestions on how to use Traits (Aspects) to build a character from a short narrative, heroquest-style.

After some playtesting and some useful comments, a new iteration of Parpuzio is ready. I have fixed some issues that created trouble during playtesting, updated the character sheet and clarified some points. like what traits really are in Chapter 2. Magic is still missing, as it is heavily setting dependent, but I will add it soon.

The link is:

http://www.alephtargames.com/images/ogl/Pgs-v02.zip

If Nick can find room for it in Uncounted Worlds, this would be the best solution, as UW has a print incarnation, too. Otherwise we will make a PDF available for free. But I suggest you do not hold your breath...

Chaosium has it in stock now.