RosenMcStern

The problem is: what is the correct value in the original table? The metric tons or the british tons?

There should be 4-5 days left.

Hey, you US guys, don't worry. You can order from Chaosium later this month.

The first batch of Rome: the Life and Death of the Republic will be printed next week! If you are going to the Tentacles Convention in May or have some friends who do, please remember that this might be your last opportunity to secure a guaranteed copy and a discount. There will be some extra (not discounted) copies, but please believe me when I say that these ones will vanish once the fans have the book under their greedy eyes. I will be extremely unhappy if I see people looking at the last available copy in their friends' hands and whining that they must wait longer and pay extra shipping expenses to order from Lulu!

Preview and preorder instructions at BRP Rome

Your wish is one shared by many but not likely to be fullfilled.

But nothing prevents us from hoping. d100 gaming was clinically dead four years ago, except for Call of Cthulhu, and look at the situation now

Welcome, newcomers, to the land of the ever-dreaming!

Rome contains over one hundred scenario hooks and cameos, both scattered in the text and collected in the Campaign chapter, and extensive guidelines on how to design your own campaign. There is no pre-written campaign, but all you need is to pick some scenario hooks and put them together.

I will also exploit this opportunity to announce that the proof copy of Rome reached Chaosium yesterday. General availability at end of May confirmed, do not forget to preorder. Charlie sounded happy...

Instant and Scene are pretty much self explanatory. Instant spells are spells in which cannot have duration. Scene spells are those with duration. They last until combat is over, one or more skill attempts are performed, as long as the player is running in and out of the burning building to save his comrades, etc.

Definitely better than having X rounds of duration. After all, why should a spell duration be predictable in terms of seconds?

Persistent spells are those spells that the sorcerer has on, all the time. The character that insists on have Damage Boost 5 on his dagger, having skin of life while traveling to the bottom of the sea [which should have a duration greater than a scene, even if completely uneventful]. Each such spell in effect temporarily reduce the character's Free INT by 1.

A variation of Sandy's Sorcery. But it has the same limit as basic Sorcery, Free INT. Better use Presence, which starts as high as Free INT (the Vessel vow) but gets up as the Sorcerer becomes more powerful.

All in all, this works rather fine. It could become a good alternate rule for both BRP and MRQ Sorcery.

Absolutely. If it's fun, it does not need to be realistic!

Palsy or Venom in combat can do wonders.

A Multispell of Fly, Animate (Metal) and Damage Boosting 10 on your dagger can do even more wonders, and it costs less PP per potential damage done

Well, at a first glance the evolutionary explanations given in the text make absolutely no sense (it is free moving animals that evolve into sextile species, not the opposite, ever), and no creature with such a rudimentary nerve system could actually walk efficiently like a mammal, even on four legs - it could only go on arthropod legs. But the creatures are fun and the explanations are well done.

But their long term plan is obviously their subscription portal. Is that a better long term plan than the status quo? Time will tell. But the subscription model works - ask Blizzard how WoW has worked out for them. While I don't play any MMORPG's I do have a Netflix and Rhapsody subscription - I choose to even though I know how easy it to get music and movies for free and how to take precautions against getting caught.

Your reasoning is perfect, save for one detail. Music and MMORPGs are products you enjoy while being online. Pen and paper RPGs are not. I do not think the comparison between Hasbro and Blizzard can stand up. Whatever their new platform's characteristics are, it will not work similarly to Battle.net or Steam. Okay, it is a fact that we two are a sort of exception to this rule because we play online a lot these days , but most players go tabletop and read their dead tree copies in bed (or worse), not online.

In the end, I think they have left a wide, albeit niche-shaped, gap for the other systems to thrive on, by pissing off their indie supporters and challenging the supremacy of the big online companies without having the strength or experience to do so. Remember, Hasbro has literally f***ed up the best PC game franchises of history with its insane policy after acquiring Microprose (Falcon 4, X-Com, Master of Magic, etc. etc.). Let me be doubt that it will do better this time with WotC.

Many of the big 3/3.5 d20 Publishers out there decided they would not support 4E. Aside from being cost prohibitive ($5000 licensing fee), there was the additional requirement that you drop sale and support of all previous edition products. One of their biggest channels (Paizo), not only refused to follow 4E, they launched a huge year long playtest to build their own OGL (Pathfinder - and it's pretty neat).

And this is the important point. First they extort $5000 and the commitment to desupport previous products (and old PDF products do produce revenue at no cost and risk, something that small companies really like). Then, with the indie's money already on their back account, they take their products off the e-stores, thus drawing away attention from this kind of distribution.

Some companies actually paid the $5000 because they relied on WotC being in the market and adding to the 4th Ed. D&D hype on the Internet. They will not like this move: WotC just withdrew what they paid for, and still has the right to withdraw another part of what they purchased. I doubt any more companies will ever pay for a 4th Ed. license with these premises.

Now, what will indie publisher do now? Rely on D&D with this degree of uncertainty, or just change system and struggle to continue publishing?

Potensial D&D-buyers might be tempted to check out other games instead. BRP will not be chief among those. Primarily because Chaosium only sells through their own web-site.

It might be a good moment to put BRP on DriveThru then (even if this is against my personal interests).

It will certainly benefit RuneQuest, though. Mongoose is still there. You can buy all of their D&D products, but not D&D. Or you can buy all of their RQ products - and RuneQuest!

4E is probably not doing as well as WotC would like. I don't yet see a plethora of 3rd party support, at least not the kind of support I saw when the two previous editions came out.

But this is a consequence of their licensing policy which changed from zero to 5000 bucks per license.

being WotC; have just invested many developement hours into an online digital library/GM Tool/Character Manager that costs just a few dollars a month in subscription fees. Maybe you've also been convinced by recent tv commercials, that 3G and pure mobile internet is becoming common,

As the proud owner of three 3G modems I can confirm you that this is the truth.

so why not dump dead-pixel versions of your product and invest whole-hog into online applications that index and correlate all your products and errata.

I hope this is the truth. This would be commercially unwise enough to send WotC belly up. But given the fact they have not announced anything yet, I doubt it.

WotC halts sale of pdf's through RPGNow/DriveThruRPG - RPGnet Forums

I did not even know this had happened, but I just received a message from OneBookShelf that said "We'll survive even without them." Experience tells that these means of protecting oneself from piracy do not work (the best way to go is just to treat your customer as an honest person, that's all). It is entirely possible that WotC has just voluntarily self-bitten off a large chunk of its advantage on the market. A lot of people is really pissed off by this.

Thougths anyone? I confirm that BRP Rome will be available also as a printed book, as is Stupor Mundi, but Alephtar Games clearly relies on PDF sales more than on dead tree versions. Not having D&D around as competition on DriveThru any more is a.... pleasant thought!

Comments anyone? Anyone else seeing this as a big, unexpected boost for BRP?

Ask a friend to pick up a copy in Bacharach, rulandor. It will cost you much less than the POD version.

(Or, better, come to Tentacles yourself )

Both formats available from both us and Chaosium. But for you denizens of the Fifth Continent, the cost of buying from Chaosium or from lulu.com should be the same, so check also our storefront on lulu.com next month.

Do not worry, you will be able to order the book directly from Chaosium next month. No swimming across the Atlantic required.

Okay, it is still seven weeks before Tentacles, but you can now have a look at the preview (it is on the left side of the page) and preorder your copy:

BRP Rome

Do not trust your luck and place a preorder! The extra copies we bring to Tentacles will disappear in a matter of minutes once the attendees can see how rich and beautful this book is. Good job Pete (and the artists, too) :thumb:

Preorder here:

BRP Rome

Those who pre-order will get a discount (and possibly a small gadget if I can arrange the extra printing). Those who do not will pay the full price, and given the quality of the book I bet the supply will not last till the end of the Con.

Preordering starts tomorrow, April 13th, and is reserved to Tentacles attendees (or those who can bribe an attendee).

Book only available on ebay, and it has darn good varied content.

And, Dragonewt............

Charnjibbers do not need any friccking laser on their heads to scare the hell out of yer players! :eek:

Charnjibber is in Gloranthan Bestiary for RQ3. One that no one can reprint, alas.

Judging from the descriptions, they are exactly the Gamemaster Book and Creature Book from RQ3. Both contain useful information for those who do not have RQ3 (a very good essay on how to GM the first, and melee and ranged hit location charts for almost any shape of monsters the second). But they have little or no value for those who already own RQ3. Definitely useful to stop the unhealthy practice of hunting dusty old books on e-bay, but maybe they could have used a little adaptation, like the Magic Book.

Oh, and beware: they are Fantasy/Ancient/Medieval only. If you are into sci-fi or modern, there is nothing of interest to you there save the stats for sharks and crocodiles.

The exact URL for the Chaos Society is DriveThruRPG.com - The Chaos Society - The Largest RPG Download Store!