wbcreighton

Not related to Other Suns

Not sure if anyone mentioned this or not but by the time I purchased Traveller in 1979/1980 ish there was a lot of stuff published for fantasy games, and the one of the biggest differences to me is the lack of illustrations in those LBB. D&D had really established a euro centric medieval style game with Tolkien inspired elements. You could page through the books looking at the illustrations and get a good feel for the settings. The lack of illustrations, and more importantly a set of standardized norms for a sci-fi setting was a big detriment to running the game. The problem with the wide range of technology that I could imagine was that every single activity that the players undertook took explanation. Was this Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. Were there transporters, photon torpedoes, fighters, laser swords ? What did the bridge of the starship look like ? What are the procedures to land a ship ? What do the different types of weapons and armour look like ? What do the star ships look like ? The big advantage that Star Wars rpg and Star Trek rpg have is that to understand the look and feel of the setting takes one viewing of a movie or a couple of episodes of a TV show. Those games are also lavishly illustrated. Any time a Traveller book was published with an actual illustration was a big deal to me. I can still remember most of those illustrations. To me it felt like the GM had to literally invent every aspect of everything the players were going to do. A picture is worth a thousand words. Without those illustrations the GM had to come up with those thousands of words of description for the most mundane activity.

The scifi D100 rpg obviously inspired by BRP has been revived by Precis and is on drivethrurpg.com https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/355945/Worlds-Beyond-Classic-Reprint

Game designer doesn't equal business manager. Hopefully they can attract someone to run the business in a business like manner and free the designers to create.

The link to Lulu can't find the product...

Yes they have added: ( for BRP ) Rubble & Ruin Modern Equipment Catalogue

If you are wanting a BRP Monograph in hardcopy, some of them are now available on drivethrurpg.com Here are some of the ones that I have spotted: ( some of them haven't been available for a while ) Classic Fantasy Witchcraft Aces High BRP Adventures Light Without Shadow, Blade without Edge Berlin 61 Agents of the Crown Fractured Hopes Basic GM Basic Creatures lots of the CoC monographs are also in print on the site

Quoting from the Design Mechanism web site: If you've been thinking about buying RuneQuest 6, this is superb way of buying into the system. Please help spread the word. Its a wonderful opportunity for people to sample RuneQuest and its latest supplements at a terrific price and to help support two excellent, deserving causes.

;-D

I think the fact that all of the KS backers already have access to the pdf of the text for this book should be proof enough that this is a very worthwhile project. Setting the creative process to a definitive schedule is a much bigger challenge than most people give credit for.

Or it could be reworded as: Don't give up hope you can still learn the programming it will just take some time.

It is definitely free to do a conference call. Not sure about video because we never use video. I think paid comes in when you are calling phones numbers as opposed to other Skype users.

Well we have run 3 online conventions and we encourage the participants to use the FG Communities Teamspeak servers. There is a central voip chatroom that you can meet up and discuss gaming with like minded rpgers. I have spent a fair amount of time during the past conventions just chatting with friends and people I hadn't met until then. It was a lot of fun. Usually people hanging out chatting will get recruited for a session that is short of players or a GM decides to run a session because of a request. One nice thing about the Full license is that you can upgrade to an Ultimate at a later date. They sometimes put the licenses on sale once or twice a year. I only use the Full License, but three of our group are also GMs who have Full Licenses. We bought a bundle of Full and Lites at the same time ( for the discount ). Our group uses Skype and have had minimal problems with it. I like the ongoing chat record that it keeps.

Of course if you join in FG Con 4 coming up in May, you'll get to play using the most popular rulesets. I am planning to run a BRP game so it better still be working ;-) See my signature for info and check the forums too.

It isn't hard to learn Fantasy Grounds. There is more to learn if you are going to GM. I have been using it to GM a PF campaign for a couple of years now and it works great. The people on the forums for FG are super helpful and there are lots of videos to watch to learn how to use it. If you have a question just ask on the forum and you will get lots of feedback. The issue of the BRP ruleset is a bit trickier to answer. The BRP ruleset was written a few years ago by a freelance community member. FG has undergone a number of upgrades ( all of them free ) but the BRP ruleset author is not active anymore and has not updated it. I own the BRP ruleset but haven't been using it ( due to the PF game). As far as I know it still works fine, but does not include as many of the advanced features that PF, 3.5, Savage Worlds, and 4th include. There is nothing concrete about a ruleset upgrade. Now that FG3 has been released there has been discussion about someone either updating or creating a new d100 ruleset. The new CORE layered ruleset architecture should help with keeping the ruleset up to date. I would consider the CoC ruleset since I believe it is being updated by Smiteworks and it might give you a base for d100. Just depends on what BRP options you want to use. Cruise around the FG forums for more info. The best way to learn FG is to just play around with it. You can do this by downloading the program and electing to use the unregistered version. Watch some videos, then try to do what it shows in the video. Even better, try to join in a game that is seeking players or ask to lurk. The more you use it the better you will understand it. I'm still learning about new features or things I didn't know I could do. I think it is the best VTT for GMs due to its record keeping ability. Some GMs use it to record keep for pbp or live games too.