Thalaba

The mailing list is pretty active and has a pretty wide distribution. The topics of discussion vary and are not limited to Glorantha - in fact, I've not seen much Gloranthan discussion in a while. Lev, the fellow who administers the list, also publishes a fanzine you might find interesting. You can get to both here: RPG Review or follow Jarulf's link

There's an RQ3 Yahoo group - it's more focused on the rules rq3 : RuneQuest 3rd Edition.

There's also an alternate earth RQ group (so definitely not Glorantha, but still interesting) and associated web page. alternateearthrq : Alternate Earth

Regards,

Thalaba

Of course. However, consider the alternative. Once the sales of a game drop

beneath the "profit point", the publisher cannot continue to produce material

for it without committing financial suicide. So he can either offer a new, "im-

proved" version to keep the game alive, or he can discontinue it completely

and produce something else.

I'm no RPG industry guru - is this something that commonly happens? Did D&D3.5 and WFRP2 threaten to fall below the profit point? Was D&D3.5 a 'financial suicide machine'? I'm skeptical - Pathfinder wouldn't exist if that was the case. Personally, I don't object to 'new and improved' so much as I object to 'this is a completely different game that were calling XYZ4 even though it bears no resemblance to XYZ3'.

Anyway - I'm not saying new editions don't benefit the company - I'm just trying to explain why the fans of the old edition might resent the new one.

I've not heard anyone complain that a new CoC edition fails to capture the essence of the game. What's more, people that own earlier editions of CoC can still buy new supplements and find them perfectly usable. But people who own WFRP2 no longer can.

So, to cut it as short as possible: When a new edition is published, not a

single word of the previous edition is changed or disappears, you can con-

tinue to play it and ignore all later editions completely - they do not des-

troy your favourite game, they add another dimension you can use or not.

To hate them is quite a waste of emotion, your favourite game is no wor-

se off than it were if it had been discontinued without another, different

edition - nothing lost at all, even if nothing were gained with the new edi-

tion.

Just my opinion, of course.

This is an often used argument, but it's not quite true. It is true that the text in the books you bought doesn't change, and that you can keep playing. But what does change is official support for an edition. The parent company stops producing books for the old editions and they eventually disappear off the shelves. They also tell other publishers to stop supporting the system, as mongoose has just done. They actively (and usually successfully) try to get people to switch to the new edition. What this means for the fan of the old is that they can no longer look forward to new products and that, over time, it will be harder and harder to find new players for the game they like. And that is a big loss.

In publishing, new editions of books were brought out under new covers, often by new publishers, without changing the author's original text (except in some cases, like history texts, where things are updated to reflect new discoveries). They might add a new introduction, new art, a glossary, or something else, but they don't substantively change the work. This idea that a new edition is an oportunity to make substantive changes to a game seems like a new one, to me, and pretty much restricted to the gaming community - it seems to come from computer games, where new technologies seem to encourage dramatic changes. But I'm not sure it's really called for in RPGs. I think it's really just a publisher's tool for re-selling the same old thing to the same old people a second time around. It's a great business oportunity, but hardly benefits the fans of the game.

IMO and all that

Thalaba

This new RPG.net thread seems pertinent to the Sci-Fi discussion: "Sense of Wonder" SciFi settings - RPGnet Forums

I would not dare to try to answer that one. Doing it with a single supplement

seems like an attempt to "square the circle" to me, but I may well be wrong.

I think we will have to wait for the success or failure a couple of different mo-

nographs to "test the water" before we can come to any reasonable conclu-

sion.

My feeling is that BRP is the kind of game that attracts the DIY people, so if you only measure the success of BRP supplements, they'll be skewed that way. In order to attract the others, I suspect you might have to print a stand-alone book along the lines of Cthulhu Dark Ages with focused rules and a reasonably tight setting. I think that Classic Fantasy has found a 'sweet spot' in-between. It's a DIY type book, but appeals to a broader range of people because it's got nostalgic and highly familiar elements which give it the appearance of containing a setting. One reason for the appeal of dungeon crawls is that they don't really require a lot of thought to create (in terms of motives, NPC personalities, setting politics, or explanation of themes).

Coming back to the question of what is a generic sci-fi supplement - I'm not sure I thought through this well, so feel free to poke holes...

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you have two broad classes of people who buy into the market. You've got people who are do-it-yourselfers, and people who want things handed to them. Perhaps because the RPG community seems to be aging (and having families and so on), there has been a swing to the latter because people don't have the time to fiddle with rules and create anymore. This is evidenced by the fairly recent trend towards rules-lightness, and also the ubiquitous comment about not wanting to houserule anything. These people want their games to be quick to learn, easy to teach, and and generally complete.

The BRP ruleset is highly adaptable and could appeal to both camps. But the rulebook, as written, is a toolbox and definitely appeals to the DIY crowd more than the others. This is why some have suggested a rules-lite version might be needed.

It seems to me that, in thinking about new setting material, one should think about which crowd one wants to appeal to. It might not be possible to appeal to both. Do you create a generic Space Opera gamebook (in the way that Classic Fantasy is a generic Dungeon Crawl gamebook)? If so, you will probably want to create a tech tree and maybe a broad overall context for the univers, but also put in tools for making your own planets and so on. On the other hand, if you are trying to appeal to games-lite crowd, you probably need to hand them a lot more - specific planets, government structure, villains, plot hooks, sample starting adventure, tightly focused rules, and so on. The focus of the book must be a lot tighter, I think.

Which begs the question - should a tightly focused RPG that includes a setting try to be something that people have bought before (like Firefly, say, or the Culture novels) or should it be something much more original in it's vision (like, perhaps, Mechanical Dream, or Brian Aldiss 'Hothouse') to grab people's attention? The people who want things handed to them seem to be divided into two camps - people who want something familiar (with a shallow learning curve, so that it's easy to jump right in with players who haven't read the book) and those who want truly original settings, which might require more work to learn

Is it possible to appeal to all categories? Or do you create one kind of book for the people who want to make their own campaigns, another kind of book for the people who want a campaign handed to them (but a familiar one), and a third kind of book for those who want something really original handed to them?

To my mind, a rip-roaring pulp Space Opera in the mould of Star Wars, Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. Blasters, improbable warp drives, low on the scientific accuracy, heavy on the MGF. More 'Star Frontiers' than Traveller. Lots of Bug-Eyed-Monsters, planets that ignore astrophysics/geophysics and exist just because its fun and cool. A big, evil, galactic empire, with lots of princesses to be rescued, evil worlds to be destroyed, and improbable substances that permit FTL without having to worry about calculating fuel requirements, thrust ratios and all that stuff.

How about "StRAW RATS: Mouse Guard meets Space Opera"? (slinks away)

I doubt that one supplement could cover the entire science fiction, the dif-

ferences between the sub-genres are much bigger than in the case of fan-

tasy. For example, "Golden Age" SF and transhumanism probably would re-

quire different choices of options.

One supplement can't cover all fantasy, either. Classic Fantasy appeals to the crowd that likes old school D&D type fantasy. If you want to do S&S, Fantasy realism, space fantasy, or any number of fantasies based on world mythology, I'm betting that Classic Fantasy won't be much help. There's definitely a place for it, but it's not a panacea.

Absolutely. The problem is that "for free" means also "not in the stores". Which means that most gamers that would need them will not get them. The "Classic Fantasy" way would be better, as it attracted enough attention to be upgraded to a full supplement status.

I don't see that it needs to be an 'either/or' situation. Both could exist. One can be produced quickly (assuming someone volunteers to do so), the other will take years at the current rate.

Just as a note for whoever handles the basicroleplaying.com website.....

That would be Trifletraxor. <start Tongue In Cheek mode> According to a recent poll, he's the young guy we keep around to operate the technical equipment for us seniors</TIC>

However, I do not see how to "heal" that problem of BRP, except perhaps with

a second, revised edition ("BRP Slim") that contains a more structured rules

system, leaving the "toolbox" with its many and often confusing options as an

expansion of the basic system for the "tinkerers" among us.

I still think some BRP genre primers (discussed earlier) could address some of these issues. They should be available for free. Also, we should keep track of these confusing issues as people present them, if only to have all these FAQ's addressed somewhere in the same place rather than looking through threads. I suppose this is what the wiki is for. More of these are bound to crop up.

I have a couple of Wilfred Thesiger's books @ home - I could look at these. Depending how serious you are, you might pick some up for yourself. This isn't one of the ones I have, but it looks like it might be helpful:

Wilfred Thesiger: Amazon.ca: Alexander Maitland: Books

Actually - a google images search of his name brings up a lot of images. He was a pretty fascinating guy.

Thalaba

Aztecs/mayans etc seems an interesting setting, but one in which there are a number of very distinct cultures at different times. The religions look interesting as well, but how much mileage would you get from such a setting?

Why would you get any less mileage from this setting than any other? People loved, hated, and fought for their ideals just as in any other setting.

Ancient Middle East only really appeals from an Arabian Nights viewpoint. That would be a really good setting.

The Arabian nights are often held up as an ideal setting for middle eastern adventures, but they seem to be poorly understood in the historical context (including my me, until recently). The origin of the initial set of stories was in Persian and Indian folktales (ie. Indo-european, not semitic), and many of the same tales can be found in vedic texts. The first tales were set down in the 800'sAD, so the format that they have come down to us in is not 'ancient'. But some can be traced to much older material (Sindbad, for instance, draws some inspiration from the legends of Odysseus - but not from Homer's version). Most of the original tales in the cycle are very bawdy and have stories about sexual infidelity, merchants who get cheated out of their wealth, and presumptuous people who get their come-uppance. Some of them are about ordinary people to whom misfortune falls and never gets rectified by the end of the story. I think that a read through these would give most people some ideas for interesting NPCs, but would not really be considered great fodder for campaigns.

Many tales were added later, and these later ones include many medieval arabic stories. The tale of Aladdin, perhaps the most famous, is a medieval arab folktale about a Chinese man (or at least, the Medieval Arabic image of a chinese man). This tale wasn't added to the corpus until around 1700 - by a frenchman. The Arabs did not consider the 1001 Night to be a part of their literature - it's survival is largely due to romantic ideas in the west, and it is through these eyes that we see them. There is almost no 'ancient middle east' in the Arabian nights, which is not to say, of course, that they wouldn't make for a great historic-fantasy setting.

I've also run very few straight. When we first started, we all had various AD&D modules, but really we were just hacks running dungeon hacks back then. The only ones I've ever run straight were the Enemy Within campaign (first three sections) and the Melisande's Hand section from Sun County. But despite not running many adventures, I've certainly bought a lot and enjoyed reading them. Some of them have inspired my own adventures, but mostly I just like to see what other people have done with the setting material. Rosen once said (in talking about Veni Vidi Vici), that adventures were for running and so therefore were best published in PDF form. But I disagree - in my case, at least, adventures are for reading in bed and inspiring dreams of my own campaign.

My favourites would be Ancient Middle East, with Vedic India a close second, followed by post-roman britain c.500-600 AD featuring the kingdoms of Rheged, Strathclyde, Gododdin, etc., and lastly Ancient Meso-America. But that's not to say that I wouldn't enjoy the others. I already have Vikings, so I feel like I'm covered there, and medieval Europe and the Roman era are already well looked after, too, so those would be well down my list.

Thank you very much, sometimes I have the learning curve of a zombie and

need an entire thread before the lights go on in my head ...

Hey, we're all learning things today. Besides, having your head filled with publishing legalities is bound to have side effects.

But could you possibly claim your product is compatible with "MRQ"? I doubt anyone has trademarked that, despite the fact that most of the internet fanbase is calling it that.

If your setting covers only a few years (1920-1930), would it not be easier to simply write down what dates the important festivals occur on in each year, rather than try to explain how those dates are arrived at?

As a GM I like detail in my settings. It helps bring them alive, and the players respond to these things in my experience. If you put all of those things into a setting published setting, though, I would probably only use a portion of the information. The dates and names of festivals seem important, because those are great backdrops for adventure and also (especially in a Cthulhu setting) they always seem to be the deadline for the PCs to prevent something. Personally, I'd like to know a little about how the festival is celebrated, too. Names are really important, too. I always prepare a list of names ahead of time and keep them handy during play. These lists also help players pick names. But that said, some settings don't need lists, because their names are pretty common (most european settings and Arabic would be two examples of this). Calenders and Alphabets I would probably not use.

I think that for some of these things - like a list of names or a calender - a URL to a decent (and hopefully stable) website would be good enough.

I usually want a published setting to provide me with the information to:

1. create player characters in the setting that the players can bring alive,

2. to create meaningful NPCs with meaningful motives,

3. to describe in as vivid a detail as I feel like using at any give moment the scenes in which were are playing (climate, ecology, architecture, social customs, etc).

4. provide intersting foes for the characters, and

5. any other interesting little things that might grab people's attention.

One things I don't want from a setting is metaplot - and judging from other internet forums, I'm not the only one.

Hope that helps.

I've listened to a few podcasts of games...or more accurately, the first few minutes of a few podcasts. Even for games that I'm sure I'd like, after a few minutes of inane chatter, I'm pretty sure I WON'T like the system.

So please tell me you're thinking of something more appealing! Please. :eek:

No no no! I dislike those things too, for the same reason.

Actual Plays are more of less written transcripts of what happened during a game - the simples ones are mere summaries of what the characters did and how the game unfolded. Some of these include dialogue between characters and NPCs (which make them more interesting). The best ones also include GM commentary which discuss the planning and rules choices and so on.

There are a bunch at RPG.net (but not many BRP): Roleplaying Actual Play - RPGnet Forums

So now we have:

1. More quality books on the shelves (not just monographs).

2. At least one of these should try to capture the cinematic market, but we shouldn't abandon the gritty core, either.

3. Produce a much lighter version of the quickstart to hand out.

4. Make the quickstart rules available in more places (Drivethru, etc.)

5. Produce a few little primers on how to use the BRP book and its options to emulate the game you want to run.

Did I miss any? Are there any more?

Thalaba

I've thought of another thing: Actual Plays - Maybe we could have a section here for actual plays, and we could link to them from other places we frequent. Sure, it's a small thing, but an easy one. Then, when we talk about what BRP can do elsewhere, we can refer people back here to somebody's actual play that we've read. :)/:ohwell:/:mad:?

Thalaba

(I've never quoted myself before - it's kind of liberating)

Locally, I've tried recruiting players for my game using the on-line playerfinders. The busiest of these around here is penandpapergames.com, which people are signing up regularly. I get notices of new signups in the area, and I can tell you that most people signing up there don't have a clue what BRP is (or most non D&D games for that matter). Most new people write something like: "Hi, I just signed up. I've played a little 3E and now want to try 4thE." And that's it. They don't even bother to specify what game they're talking about. Other than CoC, BRP has almost no presence here, and never has. Most people who do know about CoC around here still don't know what BRP is.

Somebody sent me a PM on RPGnet recently in response to something I had written describing RQ/BRP combat. They said "What you described sounds like exactly what I want. Just one question: What's BRP?"

So, you see, there are definitely people who don't know about it. I suspect there are a lot. I think that the 'omniverous' gamers are in the minority (though in the majority on game forums for sure). If BRP is going to attract the omniverous gamers, the settings will be the way to do that. The trick to growth, though, is to attract the D&D player that has reached the point that they want to try something new. BRP (or a setting that uses it) needs to be there in the right place (probably a game store) at the right time with an attractive product to catch their eye. Which probably leads us back to needing a good fantasy setting with eye-catching art, followed by a sci-fi setting.

Thalaba

My favorite sound track for gaming has to be the "original" Planet of the Apes. The track for the Forbidden Zone is just awesome.

Rod

Oooh! Thanks to this I've been listening on Youtube. I just found the track that fits our battle with the Monkey King - it's called No escape - sounds perfect!

Just watch Alexandre Nevsky

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I have - with the score played live by an orchestra - phenominal way to see a film. I guess I just didn't connect the word 'crusade' with those events. The image of the knights crashing through the ice is very memorable - and a great use for the SIZ stat!

Being promoted by bikini models and/or strippers would help.

Hey, it sells cars and heavy machinery that sell for thousands, it can certainly help sell copies of the much lower priced BRP. We could have a "Babes of BRP" supplement (maybe a calendar?). :innocent:

Maybe Triff can put that trollkin on the cover of d100 into a bikini?

The BRP writers nudie calender? I like it. Well, it seems to work for firemen and senior citizens anyway. Jason could be Mr. January.

Maybe Alephtar Games could officially release BRP Mecha at a monster truck rally?

It doesn't matter how well you can use it, if no one will give you a chance to use your thingy because it not a big thingy. :ohwell:

But if you translate your thingy into French, everyone will think it's sexy. N'est pas? :cool:

Aw - I'm just being silly - I agree that capturing some of the cinematic market share would be a good thing. I think BRP can do that. I don't think the rest of us need to sacrifice what we like because of it.

So now we have:

1. More quality books on the shelves (not just monographs).

2. At least one of these should try to capture the cinematic market, but we shouldn't abandon the gritty core, either.

3. Produce a much lighter version of the quickstart to hand out.

4. Make the quickstart rules available in more places (Drivethru, etc.)

5. Produce a few little primers on how to use the BRP book and its options to emulate the game you want to run.

Did I miss any? Are there any more?

Thalaba