RosenMcStern

A concept is not inerently "evil" because it comes from D&D. Removal of Hit Points has been done in Mongoose RuneQuest, and I am really unsure about the fact that it is a good idea, as it forces you to use hit locations instead of letting you choose. Hit Points and Armour Points are a great abstraction, but every person who has played _any_ game, even Starcraft, can understand how they work.

I have been playing online since 1997. You can see a report of the best part of that game on Tradetalk #6.

Despite taking part in several very fun email/forum games over the years, I have realized that forum/email play is not the best solution, particularly for a gritty system like BRP. Pace is too slow, and people become de-focused over time.

IRC and virtual tabletops are the best solution for me. I have been playing with VTTs since 2007, and have tried Vassal, Screen Monkey, MapTools and Fantasy Grounds, with the last two ones being really fit for the job in my opinion. Connection bandwidth is not a problem at all - I have played over a cellphone GPRS connection and it worked - and timezone problems can be circumvented if you play on sunday. People can become de-focused and quit the campaign, but this happens, in my experience, with the same frequence that you find in live pen&paper games.

As for advertising online as a content provider - well, my opinion is well known

Count me in for games, and maybe some of my players, too. We had three games with 3 players in Italy, one in the UK and one in the US, so it is possible to arrange a game involving people in different timezones.

All books ordered directly from us so far have shipped. Thanks everyone for your patience.

All books ordered so far have shipped. Thank you for your patience.

What about "The Parry chance with a shield can never be lower than its chance to intercept a thrown weapon?"

Note that you are stretching the things a bit, though. Continental Europe has little use for such commodities in 1200, and the Hanseatic League is not yet the economic power that it will become in the Renaissance. But this is just an alternate timeline, so it could work as you describe it.

Good points.

First of all, there were no lay governors in the Amber Coast. All newfound colonies were under the rule of Prince-Bishops, each of which appointed by the King of the colonizing nation . Why should Thule be an exception?

Secondly, there actually was an equivalent to a modern Constitution at that time, and it was the City Law, that regulated administration of the urban areas. The most common one was the Law of Lubeck, the foundation of the Hanseatic League. But in Prussia the Law of Kulm was more common. Your colonists, most of which come from the Kulm area or a nearby place, could adopt the latter one - once they found a city.

Actually, this is a very, very interesting "what if" scenario, as neither the Knights of Dobrzyn nor the Prussians survived until modern times. What could have happened if some of them had fled Northwards? Perhaps some modern time archaeologist might discover the remnants of a long lost colony in Greenland.

http://www.mad-irishman.net/pubs/MI_RussMap.pdf

This one is less than 100 years after CotAC. You can see Lithuania conquering Galicia and such. Hmmm, but Moscow is not a big city at the time, the city labeled Moscow is probably Vladimir. Also, I never heard the names Livestonia and Talmark.

Also remember that the Knights historically kept the native Balts subjugated by means of a continuous flow of new troops from Germany and Poland. With only the few knights that escape Prussia as leaders, the chances of a successful rebellion and a return to paganism are high. I think you need an external enemy - one that would simply destroy the colony if both lords and peasants do not cooperate to make it survive - to keep things together in a realistic way.

Spears were commonly used by Balts, there are plenty of spearheads in their burial mounds. I think a long spear would not be unrealistic. Crossbows were something the natives simply did not understand at first: they just knew that they were dangerous. I think you can kill a walrus with a harpoon (treat as javelin) if the thrower is strong enough.

As for allowing peasants to have weapons and training, please remember that Balts are in fact barbarians in the 13th Century, although they have civilized landlords. They are subject to their nobles, or to the Knights when they conquer their lands, but they are not serfs. All free men in the Amber Coast can have a spear, and possibly an axe and shield if they can afford them. Only nobles usually have swords.

But most important of all, remember that the Balts are free spirits. They have resisted assimilation by both German and Russian culture for countless centuries. Do not underestimate this.

Note also that you can add elements from Deus Vult to such a campaign...

The Teutonic Order is behind the Papal Inquisition's "interest" in the Pruthenic Order, because

it wants to assimilate the smaller order. Of course, the Teutonic Order does not want a few

dozen more and potentially unruly knights, what it really wants is the Pruthenic Order's proper-

ty, especially the nine large and profitable holdings on the Amber Coast.

Please note that in the first half of the 13th Century the Teutonic Knights backed the Emperor against the Pope. Grand Master Hermann von Salza was witness in the agreement between Frederick II and the Sultan of Egypt that retook Jerusalem with diplomacy and not with arms - an agreement that the Pope really did not like.

And while the Grand Master cannot sell the order's holdings, because they are fiefs, he still can

bleed them dry, for example by offering freedom and land to all of the suitable serfs for joining

the Thule colony, thus removing the best and most skilled workers from the nine holdings.

Yep. The Knights need peasants for their new colony, so they will probably take them from Prussia.

However, please consider one very important fact: all peasants of Prussia and Livonia are pagan at the time (they just pretend to be Christian). This means that the Knights are taking several witches in disguise with them among the peasants. And, as nature magic practitioners, these witches are really, really likely to be able to contact and appease the resident spirits of Thule. Maybe they can also summon the spirits of the dead from the late Viking colony of Greenland. Who could, in turn, tell them about a much, much richer land far to the West...

Please note that there actually was a historical "Pruthenic Order" assimilated by the Teutonic Knights - the Knights of Dobrzyn, founded by the Bishop of Prussia. Maybe they were not thoroughly assimilated in your world...

For Gianni and anyone who ordered Dragon Lines or Crusaders directly from us: the preordered books should ship next week. Recent events involving our partners (volcanos, sore tonsils, relocations) disrupted the "chain of supply" a bit.

The book is distributed by Cubicle 7, so I think you will be able to grab it at Continuum (or GenCon).

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=517703

Okay, rpg.net is a bit biased, and D&D fans usually do not browse that part of the forums, so the poll is not statistically significant, but seeing BRP come first in a "What is your favourite system" contest is somehow... unexpected

In the other two polls run before it was third after Savage Worlds and Gurps, but those were polls about "generic" systems.

So let me reply to the question: "How could BRP be more popular?" in a new and unusual way: "By being exactly what it is now".

You mean I should have written "us"?

That would attract only players aged 40+, and we already have them.

I think you need to wait until Gianni is back from Bacharach.

If they are produced by a Hollywood Major, the license cost will become too high. If not, then it could be interesting.

Yep, but they never made a remake of Space:1999 (unfortunately).

Hmmmm, here is a franchise that no one ever used....

Like Battlestar Galactica is your daddy's sci-fi show?

Another option, though it requires a spare machine or a virtual machine and a good connection, is to set up a dedicated GM machine with the ruleset and have the GM of the day control that machine remotely.

I doubt the average user of FG is so tech savy as to be able to do this. Most users do not even know what "control a machine remotely" means.

Sadly, this (allowing a client to control the server machine as GM) is one of the features of MapTools that I really miss in Fantasy Grounds.

Oh, I found it. But it is not a supplement, it is just a special number of the "Excalibur" zine. As I said, they did it for X-Files, too. I think they had an agreement with 20th Century Italy, but not the rights to publish a RPG, so they went with a special issue of the zine. Something like the X-Men stats that were posted here some months ago.