RosenMcStern

Hmm, but you can still play if the GM has the ruleset and the players do not. Or not? I think tedopon wanted to know this.

Really? I remember Egypt and West, but not Aliens. Did Stratelibri have these rights? I also remember their zine publishing stats for X-Files and Gen13 characters, without any formal license.

You mean those Knightmares from Rebellion of leblauch (ore something like that?) - or a special thing in the book?

Yes, "Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion". And the one you portrayed is the RPI-029 Gloucester of Princess Cornelia vi Britannia, one of the few models that use mainly melee weapons. The other knightmare frames usually wield machineguns and autocannons, not lances.

I have a short list of a few interesting sci-fi licenses that haven't been made into RPGs, but I'm curious if anyone can name others I might be overlooking.

Aliens, Predator. The Cthorr series (but it has a GURPS book).

A setting I would really like to make one day is John Varley's "Titan", or the Nine Worlds. They were the "coolest thing" of sci-fi in the 80s, and both are perfect for BRP, as they let you play really weird creatures or surgically enhanced humans.

I don't think it has anything to do with BRP's "lethality" because Traveller is also pretty lethal. SF games tend to be a bit less combat heavy than fantasy, anyway, because people are expected to be a bit more civilised.

Absolutely true. Space opera has a lot of combat, but less than fantasy. And hard sci-fi has less opportunities for PCs to get into a fight than, say, pulp.

The program does not check for rulesets installed on client machines. If the GM has the ruleset installed, all players can download the contents they do not have from the GM machine. Installing the rulesets on client machines is only required if you want to speed up downloading of the campaign. We checked this multiple times during playtest.

Knightmares are walking tanks.

What is a "realistic" mech in your opinion?

The "coalition" cannot publish 20 books per year, and we already have another China book, new versions of our RQ Fantasy Europe titles and campaigns for Rome and Dragon Lines in the pipeline. We could do something techno-fantasy in double stat format in the near future, but it would certainly be based on OpenQuest and not on "pure" BRP.

There will be some rules for sci-fi vehicle combat in BRP Mecha (I ran a very fun combat of four knightmares vs. two Apache helos last tuesday), but not detailed rules for vehicle construction like in GURPS. But expect stats for capital ships, and at least one scenario of a mecha squad assaulting a space cruiser or even a space station.

Perversely, the chronically resource poor Chaosium seems to be a good haven for the game. Their high standards and genuine cred make up for a lot, and even if they were given a million bucks to market BRP I don't think it would change the profile of today's RPG market.

Yes, but I doubt Charlie would complain if someone managed to present him with $1M for marketing

Joke mode off. The RPG market is changing, but BRP has shown its ability to remain a main player in it, despite its age. We are speaking about one dozen or more supplements this year, not counting monographs, split between BRP, RQ and OQ. This is the kind of support that the system really needed in the 90s.

Do these indie gamers consider D&D an old fashioned game too?

Strangely, not all of them. Since it has been reviewed, some consider 4e "up to date". 4e solves some of the balance problems D&D had in its design, but I doubt it is so forgite in its design, but I do not think there is anything rational behind the definition of what is "trendy".

If you want a definition of what is "rules lite", have a look at the very good 3:16 space carnage game: everyone has three hit points, and a score of 2 to 10 in two skills (there are no rules to add a third skill), a rank, some weapons and selected strengths/weaknesses from his past. That's all. This is what is considered rules lite nowadays.

We are trying to get rid of clipart for the next books, but in fact it adds a lot to flavour for historical books. Unfortunately, the resolution of these cliparts is not always optimal.

We will now correct the page numbering problem and upgrade the PDF on all sites. All sites sell the same PDF.

I think we will also make a higher quality version of the character sheet, and in the future, given the success that the new Apple tablet is having as a PDF reader, we might be tempted to put all the fancy backgrounds on a removable layer in the PDFs for those who prefer a simpler layout.

Perhaps this can be leveraged somewhat? One book, two systems? This would leverage manpower and creativity, and get more supplements out. This type of supplement did well once, I'm not sure what the current take on these are though.

I would say "good". But my current license does not cover this explicitly, and I doubt it would be a good idea to submit this option to Chaosium, at the moment.

I have already toyed with the idea of a double-system book that has both Savage Worlds and OpenQuest stats, instead. The two rulesets are closer than BRP and SW are, and in this case I would have to get permission from Pinnacle only, as OpenQuest is OGL (and Newt himself is producing such hybrids). Of course, once you have it in OQ format, you can use RuneQuest or BRP for it if you want more detail.

If anyone wants to discuss this matter, however, please open another thread.

Sartar contains mostly "systemless" information, and all the personalities described do not have stats, in accordance with the new trend introduced by HQ2. This has been done intentionally, in order to allow usage of this book with any system. The only effort required is in the conversion of cults, but even that is not so difficult.

Please note that the approach taken is very different from the previous HeroQuest supplements, which contain a lot of reference to HQ rules. If you have had bad experiences converting, this will no longer be true with Sartar.

I hope the Cubicle-7 backing of Alephtar helps them get their product on more shelves.

Actually, I am starting to think they are on too many shelves already

Seriously, I think the situation is positive. BRP is now receiving the treatment it should have had in the '80s. GURPS is now dwindling, as its producer is not giving it the support it deserves. BRP is the only real candidate for filling that niche. With an average of 6-7 supplements coming per year, not counting Cthulhu, I think the trend that saw GURPS widespread and BRP marginalized will be inverted soon. And as a side note, we _are_ producing 6-7 full supplements per year, among chaosium and licensees. Check.

SW could be a competitor (harrrumph... we just secured a license, in fact), but it appeals to different tastes.

Stupor Mundi and Merrie England are not co-published by Cubicle 7, so they are not available through the distribution channels (yet). You can order copies from us directly (we ship every saturday, barring volcanos), or from the Chaos Society. Also, Leisure Games in London should still have some copies.

If you have Crusaders, you should be able to convert the materials in both Merrie England and Stupor Mundi to BRP in a matter of minutes. The only exception is Demonology* and a couple of details on gaining magic from the Scriptures that are in Merrie England but I did not include in Crusaders, as they were not relevant to the Baltic setting. Also, Merrie England has alchemy rules that are not present in our BRP games.

* meaning that the Baltic bad guys have their own methods to summon Very Evil Nasties.

Rather well. We played two episodes of the campaign, and two out of three of the players were rather happy (an outside observer said enthusiastic) about the game. All this despite a rather discomforting RPG environment in Latvia (I saw some unsold copies of D&D 4e abandoned in a basket, and that was all the game shop carried).

How compatible are the two systems?

Very much.

Can I take Magic from MRQ II and use it in BRP without to much trouble, same with Creature stats and such?

Yes. Replace the word "Pact" with "Allegiance" and that is it. For creatures, remember that RQII assumes you use hit locations and calculates HPs a bit differently.

Also, what rules are in your opinion better in BRP then MRQ II and visa versa.

None of the books are hardcover, it is a mistake that Amazon makes despite Cubicle 7 clearly stating the nature of the books. Even Doctor Who (a boxed game set) is listed as hardcover single book!

Chaosium has Dragon Lines in stock, and some leftover of the copies of Rome I sent them for Christmas, but not Crusaders yet. I will ship preorders of all books next week (barring other volcanic eruptions), and it takes about 7 days to reach the US from our warehouse. The quickest way to get the books, if you want only the printed copy, is to order from Cubicle 7. Or to pester your FLGS until they order from Alliance, that does have copies. If you want both formats, instead, please order from us instead.

Rurik, I sent you a free PDF as you are a playtester. Other people who did playtesting please contact me for yours.

Well, nothing is perfect. Even with these problems, MRQ2's magic is an improvement over MRQ1, and is a good magic system.

Your sorcerer should be able to sit in his tower and smite foes a few miles away. Your Rune Lord should be able to heroform his god to take on an advancing army (or tower-bound smiting sorcerers).

....

(all higher magic uses two skills and one of those skills provides a check and balance on the level of power commanded).

But a starting sorcerer in MRQ1 was a more effective caster than a starting sorcerer in RQ3.

My point was exactly that. Higher magic is more powerful, and only requires 2 skills. Meaning there is very high return on investment for becoming a practitioner of higher magic during chargen. And this is an observation from my first game group. The characters who developed higher magic in chargen are at a distinct advantage over those who did not. To the point of frustration for some of the players. Previous editions did not have as noticeable a gap between characters who focused on magic and those who did not.

Alas, this is what is, IMO, the big weak spot of MRQ2 magic. Loz and Pete worked on the assumption that having all traditions work on two skills was a Good Thing, but I doubt this is true. Especially with Sorcery. In old versions your Sorcerer was still able to kick arse with magic (don't listen to the gossip, he was, both in RQ3 and in MRQ1), but at the cost of using all of his skill improvement opportunities to learn magic. Theist magicians , and in addition to this they had more spells like Truesword or Great Parry that were totally useless if not coupled with high skill. Now, since all magicians need to go up with two skills - leaving one IR usable for weapons skills per session, if you go up by 3 IRs per session - it is very common to have your Sorcerer as good as swordfighting as your Rune Lord - and this does provide some imbalance: remember, a Priest has the problem of renewing his spell, even at high level. a sorcerer does not! This becomes a problem if this situation can be exploited even at chargen, as Rurik noticed.

The only limit to this is keeping Grimoires small (and not tweaking spells, like the OP suggested), so that your all-powerful sorcerer is forced to learn another skill in order to expand his spell list. But an unexperienced GM can easily fall into the trap of allowing too wide Grimoires. Not to mention the fact that the Book of Abiding and most GL grimoires are meant to be very comprehensive.

Why overpowered? It is rather hard to gain them, and you can only cast them once per adventure until you become a full priest. It is natural that they are more powerful than simple Common Magic. Basically, all the tweaks we used to apply to Chaosium's RQ made it more similar to Mongoose's second edition.

Some more goodies:

On saturday May 8th at 5 pm (GMT+3) I will run a demo of the game in Riga, Kr. Barona Iela 97, at the Ludo game shop. Just in case someone from the Baltic lands is reading this.

P.S.: "ogre" is the name of a city, not a monster, in Latvian. It means "eel".

The map was devised by me and drawn by Colin Driver. And this time we remembered to mention Colin in the credits

MR stands for Melee Round, the RuneQuest term for Combat Round. It is a leftover of some RQ3 table. All of your other guesses are true, IIRC.

Advice from someone who has used Strike Ranks from 1987 to 2008 (21 years): drop them and use DEX ranks and the spot rules for closing against a longer weapon. They are easier, and work better.