Baulderstone

Personally, I am not looking for anything too radical from this project. If the goal is to make this the ultimate edition of Gloranthan RuneQuest, it seems best to just focus on refining earlier editions than shaking things up. The more radical it is, the more likely that it will take one more edition to refine those radical parts, and I am getting edition fatigue with RuneQuest at the moment. I just want to see a solid, reliable build tailored to Glorantha.

I don't know if you could ever really systemize conversion between AD&D and RQ. There are just enormous differences in how they represent reality. Say wanted to convert a 15th-level Fighter. He is going to have an obscene amount of HPs. It's because HPs are an abstraction in D&D. They represent physical capacity to take a hit like RQ, but they also reflect a characters luck (The equivalent of spending Hero Point to soak a wound in RQ6) as well as ability to use a parry to minimize damage. And HPs are going to represent a differing degree of each from character to character, so you can't make any kind of conversion chart. Then there are skills. You aren't going to find any easy way to generate those from an AD&D stat block, Exact numerical conversion doesn't really give you anything helpful either. An AD&D adventure may be pitched at 4th-level character, but when you convert it over, that isn't going to mean much in RQ terms. I think its quicker just to break down the character/monster concept and just build them in the RQ system. It's not really going to take more time than consulting a conversion guide and its going to give more sensible results. Maybe the 15th-level Fighter is knight who serves as the King's Champion. Build a cool RQ NPC that seems suitable to be the King's Champion. Done. I'm guessing Classic Fantasy brings over classes, magic and items from D&D, but it's still not going to feel quite like D&D. That's not a bad thing, as if you want D&D that feels like D&D, there is already this game called D&D that does that.

It is a supplement to RQ6, not a stand-alone book.

I agree. My point is that it is still enormously popular. In fact, it has only increased in popularity as it bled into video games and novels. I've known a number of people younger than me that have never touch a table top RPG and have a deep and geeky knowledge of the Forgotten Realms.

Well, Forgotten Realms, which seems to have become the baseline of generic RPG fantasy has dinosaurs. I do agree that the generally are used to signify some level of pulp weirdness. Speaking of pulp, I'll also add that both Exalted and Eberron, two of the biggest settings of the 21st Century have dinosaurs as well. Exalted has dinosaurs that piss heroin, while Eberron's halflings are nomadic dinosaur riders.

The one on cities is region locked. I have found another video of it that works in the US here. I've watched some of the one on armies. Good stuff. I like that you get differing opinions from the experts. I prefer that to a need to polish a documentary down to supporting a single viewpoint.

Coming from the opposite direction in history, I am sure that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burroughs might disagree that it was a 60s and 70s thing. And we can't forget King Kong which was the Jurassic Park of 1933.

Sounds good. Borderlands is formatted as a strict linear series of adventures, but they mesh very well with treating Prax as a big open sandbox, especially with the Pavis and Big Rubble books on top. On top of going into Pavis on Raus' business, going into town for a little R&R after a big job can get them there as well. Adding it in as Sartarite trading outpost could be interesting.

True enough. And you know your audience and what length they will tolerate. If we consider the Beast Rider, Pavis, and Lunar Exiles campaigns to be three separate pitches, it does justify some length.

I'm only three episodes in so far, but it seems to have enough depth as a setting for an RPG, and it is getting a good reaction in geek circles. I'm a little wary of licensed settings in general though.

I have heard from someone that read the books that the change each generation was a kind of cheat by the TV when adapting the book. They have that one seen where they show a guy who an extreme case and it is mentioned that everyone will look like him in a generation or two. In the books, that guy is what everyone born in space looks like. However, in a TV show it is a pain to portray, so they made it a generation by generation change, allowing them to show a quick flash of someone that looks like the book while still keeping most of the cast in the normal human. The generation by generation change makes no real sense, space-born people still have the same DNA. They are just developing under unusual circumstances. Their children will have the same DNA, and grow up under the exact same conditions, meaning they won't be any more extreme.

Yeah, I am not expecting Rick to spend all his time on the forums here.It just seems odd that a new book would appear in their store without any mention.

While ORE and BRP have very different core systems, I feel they tend to both work well for similar power levels and tone. BRP with Godlike powers seems like something that should work. Having Alan Goodall, of Arc Dream, write it is also a good sign. The only reason I'm going to wait to hear more before ordering is because I'm overwhelmed with things I want at the moment, and I don't have an immediate need for a supers rule set.

It's rather long for a pitch. A pitch should have just enough information to get people interested. You also want to focus on what the players can do. Your first level talks about varying levels tool technology and dwarves, which aren't a race that is likely to play a big part in a Pavis/Prax campaign. Then you for eight more paragraphs before starting the ninth paragraph admitting that most of what they have read is irrelevant to their PCs. That's not a great approach to winning them over. I would cut everything except for the content in the "Our Game" section. Maybe add a sentence to the Pavis pitch about it being occupied by the distant Lunar Empire. Your beast rider pitch has enough to get their attention as well. Maybe add a sentence or two explaining the game has a sword and sandals, Bronze Age feel, as that was in the cut section. I'd probably cut the Dragon Pass pitch. You don't have any information or hook there, and its drifting away from the focus on Prax that your other two pitches have. The 2nd Ed. is largely focused on Prax anyway, so it's better place to start. Once people agree to play, you can feed them more setting information during character generation and, even better, by letting them learn about the setting by exploring it in play. During character generation, you can feed them only details their character would know, letting you leave everything else mysterious and exciting. Glorantha can seem offputting to new players due to all its details. Giving them an overly long pitch feeds that idea. Giving them a whole page to read as a pitch feeds into that. Just stick to the cool things they can do in the game, and let the other details come later.

Nice design. Good to see you got Tenacity Points in there too.

I'll definitely pick this up if a pdf/book becomes available. In the interest of constructive criticism, Chaosium could be doing better on their Internet presence. I on their email list, I follow their G+ Community, and I am a regular here at their official forum. You would think I would have gotten some kind of notification about an official release. And the question about a PDF release has been sitting here since Thursday with no response. I don't expect instant 24/7 customer support, but it would be nice if questions like that could be fielded at least within a day or two. I'm not trying to be a jerk about it. I'm not really angry or anything. I just would hate for this book to slip through the cracks unnoticed.

Personally, since BRP seems to be the nickname for the system family as a whole, I think it would be fine to stick Frankensteins in the general BRP forum. That forum also bears the subtitle " The chief Basic Roleplaying forum for the Great Family of D100 RPGs". Seems to me that Frankensteins fit within that definition. I'm not opposed to a new forum, but it might lead to posts in it getting neglected. It think that separate forums are better for offshoots that are big enough to support them Then again, maybe a forum centered on homebrewing D100 might work. I'm undecided.

I know I have the legal right to do so, I'd just rather not, as it was one of the few things specifically left out as the largely complete free version.

Not in the Essentials edition. In the Equipment chapter of the full edition, there are rules for crafting superior equipment and adding enhancements. It takes place over a number of task rounds that can be limited by time, resources and budget. The final result can be a shoddy, defective product or one with enhancements to utility or value. While the system is specific to crafting, it wouldn't take a huge amount of effort to re-skin it for a task like trying to whip a bunch of ragtag peasants into a defensive fighting force in just a few days. Without going into the specifics of the mechanics, at the end of the task rounds, you get a result from the process that is a percentage value (which may be over 100%). Getting 100% is a solid success, while falling below that is a poor result, and increments above 100% give benefits. Crafting is a one-sided affair, but the final percentage value the system provides would make it easy to use as a comparison for situations where multiple sides are competing.

I love to use index cards when I play face-to-face, and I use Scrivener when I run online, so this idea is equally applicable in both situations.

Sort of. My favorite people to game with are scattered across the country, so I do a lot of gaming by Google Hangout these days. I have Scrivener up on my second monitor quite frequently.

I'll take the base system's core book, which at the moment is RQ 6. The GM's Pack for RQ6 contains all the tables and reference for the game. I have printed those out and stapled them into smaller reference packets (Character Generation, Combat, Magic, Special Effects). I might have multiples of some packets to share with players, like the Special Effect one. I really don't like GM screens as a wall between me and players, so these packets work best for me. If I need a subsystem from another game, I can just print up the pages covering it from the PDF, and add it to my reference packets. The RQ6 core combined with the modern and future rules in Luther Arkwright make for a pretty comprehensive generic system.

Pulped-out Masks of Nyarlathotep is one of the most fun things I have ever run.

That's a nice toy, Clarence. I like using randomization in my adventure brainstorming. I might have to look at Scapple too. Scrivener is one of favorite RPG tools that wasn't designed for RPGs.

I wouldn't really worry about what is supported anymore. I am prepping an RQ6 campaign at the moment, and I had no real problems using bits from earlier editions of RQ (and offshoots like OpenQuest), from the BGB, from Stormbringer, from the Revolution D100 beta and from Renaissance. Some Delta Green might even end up in there somewhere. While I like the "modernized" base of RQ6 to build on, there are a lot wonderful bits and pieces in unsupported lines of BRP that I can stick on it. I agree with you on GURPS. I went over to GURPS as my go-to system during the late '80s and early '90s, and it is a good system that works well. It's just a lot more work to get it to do what I want than it is with BRP, at least for the way my brain works.