Thalaba

A lot of interesting points have been brought up in this thread which have brought several things to my mind. 1. The OP brought up the point that several products have been submitted to Chaosium and seem to be in Limbo. For instance the Rome setting, which was apparently submitted in May of last year but has yet to re-surface as a product in any form. This might lead one to conclude there is a production problem at Chaosium. 2. Many game companies and other businesses in similar industries (computer game companies, film companies, etc.) put out promos, trailers, or teasers for upcoming products to keep people excitied about their products. I haven't seen anything official in this regard from Chaosium, which can add to the impression that there is a production problem. 3. A visit to the Chaosium website lists very little in the way of BRP publications to date. Four have been produced to date (not counting material that was produced prior to the BRP book like Superworld) and of those one is the core book itself. Of the remaining 3, only 1 is available in print. A quick look at the upcoming products section reveals that only 3 products are expected to be produced in the next four months and none of them are BRP (two are COC and one is a novel). So it does not look like we can expect any BRP products soon from Chaosium. 4. A look at the submissions section for BRP has this nugget: "Our Basic Roleplaying rulebook will be releasing later this year. Once it does, we’ll post more detailed Submissions for the line. Meanwhile, we’re happy to take submissions for BRP material as Monographs. See our Monograph Submissions for more information. We are very interested in receiving BRP Monograph submissions." The emphasis is mine. Despite what they say about monographs, this does not look promising. It's six months out of date, for one. 5. Granted, Chaosium is a small company and can only do so much. Surely we cannot fault them for producing things at a measured pace, but... 6. Where's the communication? This, I think, is where the issue actually lies. Here were have a great forum maintained by dedicated fans. It has 607 members (and growing) who would be willing to purchase multiple products for a system they like, probably without waiting for reviews, and yet Chaosium has no presence here. They really should have someone putting in the occasional official reply here, at least to assure us they're still interested in our business. Hopefully also to update us on the progress of submissions and publication. Maybe to once in a while throw us a bone in the way of a preview. And they should certainly update their own website. 7. Given all of the above, is it any wonder someone comes along and asks if Chaosium is going to support the product? I think it was inevitable. 8. As an aside many people (of which I'm one) really like printed books. I spend a large chunk of our day in front of a computer screen. When I read for pleasure (which is how I classify my RPG reading) I want to lie on the couch or in bed with my book held aloft. While PDFs and fan web sites have their place they are not things I'm about to purchase or even use as a staple for my gaming. I certainly have no objection to those things, but I feel a tinge of alarm when people suggest that we should be happy with having these things by themselves. This consumer, for one, won't be. I just had to get those things off my chest. Hope I didn't inadvertently offend anyone in the process. Thalaba

That's a really interesting study, and not at all what I was expecting. Thanks for putting it up! Thalaba

Ironically, that's why I got fed up with D&D many years ago - because every campaign had the same things in it. The PCs would come across monsters that the PCs could know nothing about, but the players did, so metagaming became rampant and all the wonder was taken out of the game. Eventually, our D&D fantasy campaigns all became kind of the same. I'll take a richly detailed, well thought out, unique setting over a generic one any day. I'll hold up The Known World of Artesia and much of Glorantha as examples of wonderful, immersive settings. I'm not disputing that the BRP needs generic books that GMs can mine for ideas - it certainly does. But I would also argue that it needs one or more good immersive settings. Runequest did not survive as long as it did on the strength of it's system alone. There are a great many people who loved it primarily for Glorantha. Many of them are now playing Heroquest. Thalaba

Did anything ever come of this? I'd be interested in seeing a magic supplement. My current campaign is making use of several homemade magic systems in addition to the 3 RQ systems, and yet I crave more! Thalaba

I'm at work and don't have my books with me, so I can't check to see what the BRP movement rates are listed at right now, but in RQIII the MOV for a human is 3M/SR, for an elf or broo it's 4M/SR, and 2M/SR for a dwarf or halfling. A mount is anywhere from 10M/SR (camel, pony) to 12M/SR (horse) as I recall. When converting between SRs and rounds, I typically use a factor of 10, because there are 10 SR in a round. So a human would move 30M/RND etc. Now, according to the strict rules, a person or thing cannot begin running until their DEX SR in a round and this would technically reduce their total movement per round to something like 21M/RND. I only apply this rule to the first round, though. Hope that helps. If not I can check later today when I get home and actually look at the books. T.

BRP does have Ads/Disads - they're called Chaos Features. My personal favourite is 'explodes on death' - nothing rallies your fellow party memebers around you like that! T.

This got me thinking to thinking - if you sacrificed POW to get permanent effects - who are you sacrificing it to? Are there other things you could sacrifice, or other ways to sacrifice POW? So, not knowing if you have a higher power in your games (Gods, Demons, whatever), what if a POW was sacrificed for each permanent effect, but the player didn't have to relinquish that POW until some later time (e.g. death). But with each sacrificed POW, the player loses a little bit of control over themselves to the higher being. I'm thinking you could mine the Allegience or Sanity rules here to mimic this effect. Perhaps these sacrificed POW give the God the oportunity to call upon the player from time to time, or force the player to act a certain way - this would give you plot hooks, too. Or Perhaps each sacrificed POW gives you an increased chance of a psychotic episode in times of stress. I think you could do interesting things with this. I think this is less evocative, but it would be much faster (and less work) to implement. You could put it this way: You must sacrifice POW to gain a permanent effect, and that POW resides within the Skin Rune. You Skin Runes contribute to your magical defense (as long as they are attached to you), but don't contribute to your casting ability. Maybe runes on weapons also contribute to magical defence? I'd sure hate for someone to separate me from my magic sword if I was sneaking around a Wizard's tower. Thalaba