RosenMcStern

Yes, along with Rome.

By the way, if you live in the London area you can already get BRP Rome and Stupor Mundi at Leisure Games. They just received a new batch of books. Unfortunately it is not so easy to contact at supply many shops if you do not have access to regular distribution.

Nope.

The ETA of Dragon Lines has (unfortunately) shifted to March 2010. But the plan now is to make it available also through regular shops.

Please note that I have slightly changed the schedule again. Two books shifted a bit, but we should still be able to publish Merrie England in two months.

The reasons why will be clarified soon.

I have kept Dragon Lines as scheduled for release in 2009, but it could be delayed due to reasons I will not uncover yet. In any case, if it is moved to 2010 it will be in order to make it available to more people through distribution.

We usually put things on our web site. However, barring the amount of disk space required for a decently illustrated PDF, few people visit our web site regularly. On the other hand, a free, quarterly magazine published on OneBookShelf and YourGamesNOW would be downloaded by casual visitors, too, and help attract new people to BRP or RuneQuest.

I have a couple things that I wanted to submit to UW or Signs & Portents. Maybe they could find their way into an independent zine. Although I am not so eager to provide competition to Nick.

Bought!

You know what I'd love to see eventually? An Alephtar (PDF) magazine covering your major lines as well as general D100 bits and pieces.

I would rather sponsor Nick Middleton's fanzine. But now that you make me think about it, Uncounted Worlds is BRP only, and we make also RuneQuest stuff, and possibly HeroQuest in the future. Could be a good idea.

What about a FaceBook group in the meanwhile?

Available from YourGamesNOW, DriveThruRPG or Chaosium.

Thanks to everybody for their support. And this is just the beginning. :cool:

BRP works well with steampunk, so why not try a magic/steampunk pastiche like Arcanum? Below is a thread about it on rpg.net

[Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura] Help: the Requesting - RPGnet Forums

Ah, thank you - so it is a kind of online fantasy chess with unusually ugly

pieces ... >:->

You can easily replace the pieces if you wish. Just place nicer PNG images in the appropriate folders. This program is easier to use than maptool, but less powerful.

It allows you to create a small map and put counters on it. The networking ability allows you to have players connect to the map over the internet and use it as a game map, moving their counters as though they were miniatures.

However, this program is largely inferior to maptool or screen monkey.

Summoning should go with Demonology (we are still in time to add it in Merrie England), and the rules for Enchanting in RuneQuest are already good.

I think we should post the Divine Magic rules that are in Merrie England and Crusaders of the Amber Coast as a SRD for "Divine Magic in Alternate Middle Ages". But this only after Merrie England is out, which means not sooner than November.

Note that I consider pagan magic as being more akin to spirit magic than to Monotheist magic. Viking magic contained elements of shamanism, for instance. And Celtic Druids were certainly priests, but I think their magic works differently than the miracles made by Christian clergymen. I am rewriting the rules for baltic magic now, hopefully for the last time, basing them on these assumptions.

Acolytes had access to reusable magic and didn't need the 10 points of Divine Magic, at least in our games.

Sadly, only in your games. Gods of Glorantha stated that the only difference was that cults admit many more acolytes than priests or Rune Lords. The real difference between the two is political power (and getting all the tithing from the initiates).

Which is, possibly, OK. It gives Initiates acces to magic without relying on Rune Magic which means that the Theist/Animist distinction can be made clearer, I suppose. I prefer using both Rune and Divine magic, but in certain settings (Stupor Mundi/Merrie England for example) this won't happen.

And who told you this? There is plenty of sources for Rune Magic in Europe during the 12th and 13th century, it is just not connected to anything "official" in these two settings. The local witch of many villages surely knows, and teaches, Rune Spells (see "The Hounds of Adranos"). It is just a matter of wanting to learn them. You know, Torquemada could disagree if you are discovered.

Moerover, I see it as being more of a matter of Monotheist / Polytheist than theist/animist for Alternate Earth.

In Stupor Mundi 2, on the other hand, you will find plenty of deities granting rune magic. Guess what magic does Perkunas grant...

In Classic Fantasy there are no one use cleric spells, once the POW has been sacrificed the cleric may cast the spell as often as the magic points hold out.

...

To me and my group, just because a system has not been used in any recent publications doesn't change the fact that it is a good rule, it just hasn't been used in any recent publication.

This is not the system that I criticised, Rod. The old system prescribed: Sacrifice one POW, get ONE USE of a spell. This was houseruled away in countless fanzines, and abandoned in the unpublished RQ4.

Your system is more similar to the current MRQ model for divine magic: you sacrifice POW, you gain reusable spells. The only difference, if I understand correctly, is that your cleric spells cost PP to cast, whereas MRQ spells (Cults version) require a Pact roll to be able to cast them again during the same adventure.

If the Knights are a derivation of the Hospitallers, a good name for the city could be Castelspedaleri (which would become Castelpedaleri in a short time). But if the Order kept the tradition of the Hospitallers, then the city would also have hosted a healer's house at least, and it could have been called "Healer's Castle". This could give a name like "Castello del Cerusico" o "Castello dei Cerusichi", which would contract into Castelcerusco or Castelceruschi (or even Castelrusco).

All these are plausible Italian names that would fit.

Both names are correct, but have no correspondence in the real world. Very few Italian cities are named "Città". No one is name "Mastio", although the word is commonly used to denote the inner element of a late medieval castle.

The correct name composition for a late medieval/earlhy renaissance is not with the word "City" but with the word "Castle", like in the English "-chester" or "-caster", the Latvian "-pils", the French "Chateau-", etc. Or, in Italian, "Castelfranco", "Castelbuono", "Castelfidardo", etc. In your example, the end result would be "Castellordine" or "Castelcavalieri". However, the result is awfully dull, something like "wheel-of-a-vehicle", because it is obvious that a castle is supposed to hold knights.

I think we can find a good name for you cities when you can describe the peculiarities of your order, rust. What is in their coat of arms? Who is their Patron Saint? What is their nickname? If you can answer these questions, we can find a much better-sounding name!

In the basic game, Parry and Shield Parry are the same skill, and Sword and Sword Parry are the same skill. The optional rule "Separate attack and parry skills" allows to have "Weapon Attack" and "Weapon Parry" as skills, increasing separately. Note that this approach is not incredibly realistic, despite it being the "classic" approach we all learned when we learned BRP.

The Parry skill mentioned in the skill list is either of the above, according to which option you use.

Update: Merrie England must be delayed till October, but we are still hoping to have the scenario pack ready for end of September.

I can now uncover more details about the scenario pack:

"Veni, vidi, vici", a collection of scenarios set at the end of the Republic

1. The Ransom - by Ken Spencer

2. The Promise - by Ken Spencer

3. The Sacrilege - by Pete Nash

4. The Landing - by Conall Kavanagh

Yes, they sell the royalty copies (both physical books and PDF) via their web site. Some precautions have been taken to avoid licensors competing with Chaosium.

The problem is that I want to stay as close as possible to just the BRP rule book.

I think that Jason stated in the rules that there are various ways to "do it" for powers and no One True Way. As there is no chance of a reality check when magic is concerned, everything goes. And unfortunately no one of the power systems presented in the core book is really fit for divine magic.

Sneak peek, maybe?

Hmmm, now that you say it, the layout process should be advanced enough to build some previews. But better wait till mid September.

Just to clarify, the part that is not appealing to anyone is using the magic system as is written in the magic monograph, i.e. initiate spells are one use. This approach is no longer used by anyone AFAIK, and RMS stated that almost everyone houserules some parts of it. When a system is almost always houseruled, then it is no longer appealing to anyone in the form in which it is currently written. This does not mean that it cannot be made workable with some changes, which do not necessarily include rewriting it from scratch. I never stated that this system is bad and should be discarded in favour of a totally different one.

In any case, my preference for divine magic goes to some adaptation of the MRQ version that is in Guilds, rather than tweaking sorcery. You will see what I mean in approximately 40--50 days. Which does not mean that one cannot tweak BRP sorcery, of course: it is just that the philosophy behind it does not "fit" divine magic particularly well.

Also, there are many kinds of religions. Christianity, Orlanthism, Buddhism and the Cult of Chaos in the Young Kingdoms are all religions, but I would not represent them with the exact same ruleset.

I'm puzzled by this. Divine Magic in RQII/III is one of the best magic systems in any game system ever published: you actually sacrifice part of your soul (ie. POW) in exchange for magical powers, and it's represented and supported by the mechanics of the system. What's not to love about that?

Maybe a hint would be the fact that every iteration of RuneQuest published after RQ3, including the unpublished RQ4, changed this system, at least by adding limited reusability for initiates. If everyone tries to change a system, then it is likely that the system is flawed.

The "sacrifice your soul" part was definitely not a bad idea. It is how poorly the supposedly all-powerful divine spells rate if compared to common magic that suggests to decrease the cost. If Detect Enemy costs one PP, it makes no sense having Find Enemy cost one permanent POW.

I will assume that the old approach to Divine Spells presented in the Basic Magic monograph (you sacrifice POW and maybe you get your spell back after you cast it) is no longer appealing to anyone.

Sorcery is the closest thing to divine magic presented in BRP. However, it has several limitations that make it unsuitable for divine magic.

- you need POW 16

- many spells are definitely EVIL

- weapon spells are very poor, you cannot make a decent paladin/templar with those spells

So you can use sorcery, but have to rework it.

Merrie England will present revised rules for real world Divine Magic (Christian, Muslim and Jewish magic) that are based on the MRQ Cults, Factions & Guilds book, but try to go a step beyond it. The rules have been intensively discussed by three BRP old timers (Soltakss, Pete Nash and Yours Faithful) so we hope they ended up being both realistic (which means coherent with fiction, in the case of magic) and MGF.

Some people will have to overcome their distaste for MRQ to use that ruleset, of course. But I am a strong believer in the sharing of magic systems between the two incarnations of D100, so I do not think we will make a BRP version of that ruleset, at least not anytime soon.

I do not know how well this system could work with, say, Buddhism, but since it is strongly biased towards monks I suspect it could work fairly well.

Yeah, it was exactly what I meant. It is also similar to what is written in the Interplanetary playtest draft. But having Martial Arts (Fencing) is a high requirement, as it is a separate skill which is usually learned when you have already mastered your weapon skill, so you are supposed to have two skills at 91+ in order to use this advanced technique. What about allowing a riposte, with the same weapon and on the same DEX rank or SR, on a Parry that is also a Martial Arts (Fencing), or Martial Arts (Kendo), or Martial Arts (any suitable) success?

Note that the Kendo rules described in Dragon Lines are slightly different (they use a Power to achieve the same result), but it makes sense there, and I suppose I will ask Charles to review some of the techniques after this useful debate.

Yeah, ripostes and counterattacks with natural weapons are. I think Charles is planning to insert extensive options ripostes into Dragon Lines.

As for not alowing to use the parrying weapon, I wish to add that what Jason depicts is a typical fencing technique that requires skill and a quick reaction weapon. I think that ripostes should be limited to kendo and fencing and follow Jason's rules, while counterattacks could be used with less elegant fighting styles and lower skills, giving some (but limited) importance to using two weapons in melee.

The tone of the campaign should dictate what optional rule is used.