Jeff

It really depends on what a third party wants to do. Unless you are doing bog standard generic stuff, you should do this anyways. If you want to create a book of equipment, or a book of monsters or animals (like the Gateway Bestiary) that's fine. Or you could create your own magic system and publish it.

Well many years later. And a lot happens between 1625 and 1638 (which is the canonical date of Leika's death, although if you want to kill her off sooner, there are plenty of opportunities).

Leika doesn't die - Kallyr does.

Argrath has has a personal army of bodyguards sworn directly to him (outside of clan and tribal structure) that is larger and more deadly than what any of the tribal leaders can muster. And has the backing of the Praxian khans. And can prove descent from Sartar (making him eligible to be the Orlanth Rex above the tribes).

By providing a bare-bones system, we are having third party publishers tailor the system for their setting. And that's a key difference here.

Sartar himself never raised a weapon to harm others. But Sartar certainly had people who'd happily kill for him.

The cult of Sartar is the Cult of Orlanth Rex in Sartar. It is how the Sartarites approach Orlanth Rex at the level above the tribal.

That is what happened with us as well. Mythras crashed and burned with Combat Effects, and also "skills" like Brawn or Endurance. For some people, that's the attraction of Mythras, but for every group I ran it or a variant with, those features were the kiss of death. The learning and unlearning curve was a step too far. They also are in my opinion a step too far from RQ (a BRP variant, sure, but not really a RQ variant). Different groups no doubt have different experiences.

Succubi are associated with Seseine in the same way that dryads are associated with Aldrya. I left them out of the Bestiary because it would have been a lot of incomplete text about an entity rarely encountered in the core areas. I'd rather wait for an opportunity to present Seseine and succubi together.

Its to encourage third parties to use the BRP system without harming our IPs. That's hardly disingenuous.

Yeah this is not Substantially Similar.

It is hardly being disingenuous. You want to make a game off the BRP engine and call it that, you can. We wall off certain rules, certain settings, but if you have something you want to publish that we aren't already doing, you can.Without paying royalties, without us having residual rights. And you get to call it BRP. That may not mean much to you, but it does to many others. Seems a fair deal to me. Just because the same handful of people are grousing about it and cross-posting about it on multiple forums really doesn't say very much to me.

Magic should be setting specific.

I find many of the questions on this thread to be disingenuous. Nitpicking without a goal. If you actually want to publish a game using BRP and have questions about how the Prohibited Content might apply to your game, I'm very happy to answer your questions. If you are just wanting to raise hypotheticals for the sake of raising hypotheticals, or you want to raise questions because you are annoyed that this is a different license than some other Open license, I am disinclined to play along. Jeff

Of course we can do that. If you want to build your game off BRP, you need to comply with the license. It is a contract between Chaosium and the user after all. Chaosium is letting the user create derivative works from its IP (BRP) without having to pay royalties. In exchange, the user agrees to follow the terms of the license.

Greg. Recently I rediscovered Greg's the very first Gloranthan writings. Before Jonat even.

There are SO MANY different "Greg Stafford originals."

OK, the reason for that is we strongly associate Passion and Augment rules with RQG and Pendragon. They aren't core to the BRP system but they are core to RQG. I mean I am flattered that Augments and Passions have become such popular rules, but they've not really been part of any BRP games until RQG came along.

I have a detailed timeline of the Hero Wars in the forthcoming RQ Campaign Book. Maybe I will post snippets of it,

The original name was Argat. Which became Arkat AND Argrath.

So why is this different from the WotC OGL? Well largely because we have a different business model than WotC. Our settings are what are valuable to us - the cosmology, entities, storylines, etc. of RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, etc. Some rules tie directly into the setting - like the Runes of RuneQuest, or the Sanity mechanic of Call of Cthulhu. We’ve removed those mechanics that we think are uniquely tied to a given setting (or with a specific edition of a game) but let you do whatever you want with the rest. Without paying us royalties. If somehow it offends you that we aren’t letting you make your own retroclone of Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest, well that was never our intention. And if it offends you that this is a different OGL than WotC or is somehow not worth being called an Open License because it is different from how that term is used elsewhere, you can go pound sand. I really don’t care.

A game involving Rome occupying Gaul or Britain is not a problem AT ALL. First off, the Lunar Empire is not the Roman Empire. Beyond both being iempires n an "ancient world" they don't really have that many resemblances - not in history, not in institutions, not in religion, not in costume, and the list goes on. Nor are the Orlanthi Gauls or Britains. See previous point. And the Roman Empire really existed. If we wanted to block off specific historical settings, we could have. But we didn't. Jeff

Are you using "trademarks, proper names (characters, deities, place names, etc.), plots, story elements, locations, characters, artwork, or trade dress" from Stormbringer? Then it is a problem. Don't name your character Elric or Yrkoon, don't set it in Melnibone, don't have it be around the Eternal Champion, etc. Same deal with the Cthulhu Mythos. Don't have Cthulhu or Deep Ones in your game. Or Storm Bull and Orlanth. This stuff isn't rocket scientist and if you have ever worked under a regular license, this shouldn't be that hard. If you haven't but want to publish something, ASK US. Are you wanting to use a rank based magic system based on a combination of INT+POW? No problem. That's not Prohibited Content.

I don't know how many times I need to say this - if you want to build a game using the BRP engine and advertise it as using BRP, now you can without paying royalties to us. Given that we get regular requests from actual publishers for just that there is clearly an actual demand for what we have just released. And given that the actual publishers have responded positively towards this, I don't see any need to change the license to satisfy armchair commentators or random dudes on Twitter. We are happy to continue to provide clarification on our FAQ though.

Of course it could. Just don't make it substantially the same as RQ's battle magic or spirit magic. Give it different durations, ranges, etc., come up with a different spell list (instead of RQ's) with different effects, and tailor it to your Bronze Age fantasy. And to be honest, that is the same thing we would do if we were doing a historical Bronze Age game. And if your Bronze Age setting is based on say Gilgamesh or Troy, it is safe. If on the other hand, it is based on a world with a moon worshiping empire that is at war with a storm worshiping mountain kingdom allied with animal riding nomads, well we might have something to say.