Baulderstone

I've only had the chance to skim, but I am not feeling any buyer's remorse yet. I really like that rules give advice on converting between other BRP games.

I can't think of anything that Chaosium has done that really does much in the style of Smith, aside from things like giving stats for Tsathoggua. Pagan Publishing has shown a little more interest in his work. The Realm of Shadows is a campaign book that deals with the cult of Mordiggian. It also features a trip to a part of the Dreamlands that is heavily influenced by Smith's work. In the Delta Green books, the ghouls under Manhattan are divided by a religious schism involving the cult of Mordiggian as well. If I wanted to make an all out Clark Ashton Smith game, I would probably lean more on Runequest and Stormbringer as the base rather than Call of Cthulhu. They just fit with the greater emphasis on sorcery in his work.

Keep in mind that Magic World is a fine distillation of Stormbringer, a game that already went through 5 editions. It's time-tested and very complete. You can also find some good deals on used Stormbringer supplements if you really feel the need. Playing a game that is being supported can be as much a hindrance and help at times. Look at D&D 3.x. I tried playing that at the time and it was an ever-growing morass of new feats, classes, and spells contributing power creep and broken combos. My players often felt discontent with their characters because new options would come out that trumped what was available when they made their characters. As a GM, I'd have to keep rethinking how all these new things fit into my setting. Having static ruleset to use means you can actually focus on just playing the game you own. The game becomes about the story and player actions, not what cool stuff is in this month's splat book. If you are new to BRP, you will also find that it's pretty easy to convert between BRP games. If you find a monster you like in Call of Cthulhu or Runequest (any edition), it isn't going to take you more than a few minutes to make it work in Magic World. It's not too hard to transplant rule sub-systems from on BRP game to another either. BRP is also easy to make things up on the fly for. Assigning percentile skills to an NPC on the spot is a lot more intuitive than assigning things like AC and attack bonus, at least for me.

It's difficult to compare RQ 2 and RQ 6 as they had different design intentions. RQ 2 is "Glorantha:the RPG" while RQ 6 is a fantasy RPG toolkit. Of course, now we have an implementation of RQ 6 that is "Glorantha: the RPG" on the way, so that will be an interesting comparison point.

Seems justified. They really are complicated opposition. You did a good job of incorporating the existing systems in RQ 6 with Spirit Combat.

Oh, I never said I wasn't getting it.

I've always found Appearance to be a bit limited compared to Charisma. Charisma can be whatever blend of appearance and personality the player wants it to be. Appearance also runs into problems when run in a fantasy game like Runequest or Magic World where you have a number of different humanoid species running around, all with different appearances. Should my dragonnewt have multiple appearance score for how different species perceive them? It's easier to imagine Charisma cutting across those lines than Appearance. I don't get too worked up about it either way though. I save my real stat hate for EDU.

I finally get my hands on a copy of a Reston Publishing hardback with the dustcover this year and feel like I have the best possible version of RQ 2. Then you guys go and do this just to mock me. As an aside, where can I find a copy of the errata?

Gamers. Gamers never change.

Sure. I'm not seeing how that relates to my point that Greg is willing to portray Christianity in a RPG.

The oldest known occurrence of the word "knight" in wiriting comes from an 862 Old English translation from Latin of Orosius' Seven Books of History Against the Pagans (the original was written between 414 and 416). The first use of "knight" (well "cniht" as it is written in the text) is applied to Marcus Curtius, a devoutly pagan Roman soldier who died in 362 BC. In it's earliest usage, it's a term to describe a boy in service to another. This service may be military in nature, but it doesn't need to be. It isn't until the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles of around 1100 that it takes on the connotation it has today in English. It's continental Germanic equivalent, "knecht" came to mean a servant, farm laborer, or stable boy. And speaking of it's Germanic origins, it is a word that the Saxons brought to Britain before they even converted to Christianity. The word "church" is also Germanic. Western Roman and Celtic Christianity used the term "ecclesia" for a place of worship, while Eastern Rome had "basilica". Unlike knight, there isn't any evidence of pre-Christian use of the word "church", which doesn't settle the case either way given the scarcity of early Germanic writings. It's origins are murky and controversial, so as gamers, we are free to impose our own opinion on the matter in our personal campaigns.

They are giant scorpions that shoot acid instead of being poisonous. I don't know if they were statted up in Legend, but they are in the fully-compatible Monster Coliseum for MRQ II. They aren't so complicated that you couldn't just stat them up yourself too.

You have to be very selective to see Greg Stafford, the author of Pendragon, as someone afraid to represent Christianity in a RPG.

This is why RPG rule books should be printed on real paper instead of that shiny stuff. I can lightly pencil in errata in the margins on paper without permanently defacing the thing.

I've only casually studied trademark law, but looking in my BGB, I see that Chaosium owns the trademark "Basic Roleplaying" but not "BRP". Magic World and Advanced Sorcery don't even cite Basic Roleplaying as a TM. Pulling down a random D&D book from my shelf, I see trademarks for both "D&D" and "Dungeons & Dragons". Would Chaosium actually hold a trademark on the initials of its trademark?

I can agree with that. I like the Tenacity Points in RQ6. I still need to read Renaissance. I have a PDF from a Bundle on my hard drive. I keep hearing how great it is, but never get to it. I think I am just afraid that if I read it, I will be compelled to buy all the Cakebread and Walton books, which I suppose is the reason they stuck it in a Bundle in the first place. This is my feeling. Obviously, we are getting deep into subjective territory, as we are talking about how magic "really" works. But what you are describing fits the way I see Lovecraftian magic working. I ran a Savage Worlds game with Lovecraftian elements once. It has a Sanity system where the score can go positive or negative with 0 as a midpoint. In needing to add Lovecraftian spells to the game, I had to decide between the standard SW approach of magic being a special ability certain characters had, and the CoC approach of letting anyone perform a spell. I settled on a house rule that Lovecraftian magic only worked once you hit 0 or lower Sanity. It gave a mechanical purpose to the idea of harrowing magical initiations. They helped an initiate get their Sanity down to a level where they could actually cast spells. It worked very well. I might need to find a way to translate the concept over to CoC and Delta Green.

I've had that issue. I've found that I can at least get rid of the earlier quote by highlighting and deleting.

I can see the sense in having Sanity separate from Power. Linking ability to work magic with mental stability is an odd pairing. It's not quite as bad as how GURPS linked Sanity and IQ, which really cut hard against Lovecraftian horror. On the other hand, I EDU never really sat right with me as a characteristic. I'd think looking at someone's skills is a better reflection of that.

Pffff. Next you will expect me to believe you don't make any money doing all this.

"The Chaosium System" is the only thing I ever heard it called between my first exposure in 1985 until I heard about the BGB.

It's complicated. My issue with percentile characteristics is that it sets the expectation that they are on the same scale as skills, but that sets all kinds of issues in motion. An average characteristic sits at 50%, which is actually better than average for a skill. You have both skills and characteristics measured as percentiles, but with different meanings on the scale. I tend to prefer the RQ 6 approach of using characteristics to set base levels for skills. I get what you are saying about the guy with STR 18 and an unraised Athletics (or Brawn, to use the RQ 6 skill), but I see characteristics as potential and skills as how that potential has been reached. Some people naturally bulk up easier than other. The guy with 18 Strength is one of those. Even without training, he has a 16 skill point lead on an average character, and he can climb as high as 81% in Brawn just during character generation if he actually focuses on making a strong character. I guess the one hole in seeing characteristics as potential comes down to derived attributes, the guy with 18 Strength gets the same damage bonus regardless of whether he has 36% or 81% in Brawn. Maybe the solution is to derive these attributes from skills: Damage Bonus from Brawn, Magic Points from Willpower, Hit Points from Endurance. Hmmm. I'd need to think about that more. It could be tricky to do without changing the starting balance of characters. I'm basically just thinking out loud.

Haven't you ever seen the Chaos Symbol? It's the junction of all the outward facing arrows. I think I brought this up somewhere else, Worlds of Wonder is terrible to Google. It was the toy company that made Teddy Ruxpin and Lazer Tag, it's the name of an amusement park, a company in India and a toy store. I've gone back for multiple pages, and nothing about Chaosium's use of the name comes up. Your setting yourself up for a SEO battle. If I put BRP Central into Google, this place comes right up. If the name is going to be changed, it should be to something equally unique.

You gave your thoughts on the matter. I gave mine. I see nothing to apologize for. I hope I didn't come off as rude to you either. It's just that the women I game with actually like art of the variety on the cover, but this isn't an issue I am going to lose sleep over.

I agree. I was arguing that it wasn't what you you were looking for. And I say that as someone that likes the Passion system in RQ 6.

To some extent, it's risky to put everything in religious terms of worship. There are cults in Lovecraft's story, but there is frequently the sense that some of this stuff is just ignorant cargo cult worship. Reading The Call of Cthulhu I get the sense that Cthulhu is this powerful alien entity, and humans do worship him as a god, but I don't get the sense that he really gives a crap. In The Dunwich Horror, the Whateleys are tapping into some kind of force, but seeing Yog-Sothoth as a god seems just a way to deal with the concept. A lot of the religious nature is just humans projecting a system onto a universe they don't understand. Basically, once you have everything in the Lovecraftian Universe carefully organized and understood, it isn't a Lovecraftian universe anymore. That's just my opinion though. I lean towards the approach take in Trail of Cthulhu where every god is is described with a long list of differing and often contradictory theories on what it is.