skarl

Sometimes pictures shared over the internet are altered, printed in some format, and show up in flea markets lacquered onto really tacky little boxes and "treasure chests". This happened to an illustrator who happened to be at a big flea market in Florida a year or two back, other people were making money from his work. He started a huge flap, and the people were forced to destroy what wasn't already sold and pay restitution. A couple thought it was a harmless way to make money; downloading high resolution fantasy art and making a little money at flea markets. That is the sort of thing that monkeys like to do; make a little profit off of someone else's work. I am not implying that the original poster was meaning to do this. But once a picture gets out there and makes the rounds who can say that this won't happen? I would rather not be a part of it or contribute in any way. It is tough enough not to tell Quinton about his dragons in the Middle-Earth bestiary. He isn't the sort of chap that you want to see angry.

Regardless of their current situation, shutting off communications with people trying to work with them is a really bad move for Chaosium and their BRP line. How many people will have the confidence to continue to contribute or want to contribute after reading this thread? How many good supplements will we not see now? How does this attitude by Chaosium help themselves out of any detrimental situation that they may be in? In tough times shutting down like this will only lead them down the path of companies like Morrigan Press, who, after not paying their artists (not sure about writers, I know artists for a fact) abandoned everything. I don't see why Morrigan Press even bothers to maintain a website anymore.

Thank you for the link, I will certainly look into this. I might even run a CoC game or three with this. I sort of like Call of Cthulhu as an rpg, but the games usually wind down to the logical conclusion which makes it sound like a regular sort of game: Nyarlathotep wins. He has too many resources and is too powerful and insane not to get the upper hand/tentacle/paw/etc.

It is situations like the above that make you wonder how serious Chaosium is about BRP. If they really are having issues you would think that they would be scrambling to put out product and talking to people about supporting the line. CoC might be a big seller, but it will obviously always outsell a game with little or no support, especially when the company isn't working with people willing to support the game.

I thought Morrigan's take on the old Bard Games material was fair, I prefer the original and second edition Arcanum and The Bestiary, but Scott Agnew and crew did a decent job, I was thinking of converting some of the Callings to BRP as there were quite a few in the core book. All in all it is sad to see this line collapse as well as another rpg company.

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. Robert E. Howard

Which is one of my peeves with the Middle Earth downloads for BRP, especially since I know one of the illustrators. It is always nice to be asked. Realistically, if you want to see the covers, there are literally dozens of them legitmately being shown on the internet in a variety of stores, who can, of course, legally display the images.

You have me salivating here...

That would fall under electronic/digital distribution of an image and the purpose of the distribution. In this particular case if people want the image for personal use the image isn't being used for a review, sale, etc. The RuneQuest Deluxe box is filled with images, somewhat like a CD. So scanning and distributing an image is likened to downloading a song and distributing just that one song. No big deal, right?

Rather than big names andfancy licenses I would rather see genre support. Chaosium could roll out a post apocalyptic game like Omega World or a generic pulp era Hollow Earth + Hellboy-esque world, a gritty and a high fantasy world, etc. Big names don't really impress me as much as quality genre work.

I believe Dalmuti elaborated better than I (and my severe cold) could have. I understand that CoC sells well, but if Chaosium isn't supporting BRP, why bother releasing it? If it won't sell that well or is a losing line, just stick with your moneymaker. As time goes by and the CoC line expands and does yet another variation on the same theme, I sometimes wonder why that particular line holds so well. I have played a lot of CoC and it is fun, but I would rather see a system expand into other genres that I can adapt and run based on a universal engine.

One thing I don't quite understand is why CoC takes precedence all the time. Ok, it is a great game and all, but give BRP some attention. It seems that with a bazillion CoC books and supplements that maybe a book or two for BRP would be in order.

I would like to see the finished Examining the Beasts of Fantasy myself. I agree with Harshax on the Feats, etc, BRP can already simulate many of them. I believe that the idea behind games like BRP are to keep them simple. I am here instead of there for a reason: I like an easy to run and understand game that isn't complicated but is diverse.

I heartily agree with you, but what I am saying is that Val-du-Loup has set a high bar that needs to be repeated to showcase quality website design with a plethora of game ideas and components (races, animals, gear, etc). If everything in Val-du-Loup was also available as a printer friendly download it would be absolutely perfect. The website is easy on the eyes, but I do concur that having a pdf would bring everything together.

Wow, that is excellent, thank you for posting this.

This is an excellent point. If there were a handful of excellent websites like Val-du-Loup I believe that not only would a lot more people take notice (including Chaosium) but this would encourage more people to look into the game. I believe that Val-du-Loup really sets the bar for campaign websites and is snazzier than most rpg sites out there (including some official company websites). What is keeping people from doing this? We need to find out and correct this, which is a start.

You see what I did there? Stirring the pot to root out a bit of information. I found hell hounds in Val-du-Loup.

I would like to see a BRP-izing of D&D creatures instead, like: Aboleths, beholders, bulettes, blink dogs, hellhounds, displacer beasts, githyanki, etc over characters. While you cannot use these names for your creations on many of these, a beholder can be an eye beast, a displacer beast a phase panther, githyanki as astral raiders, etc.

Well you know, seneschal, while I run Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future, I never knew that GORE was like BRP, I thought, from the two supplements on the page, the title and the look of the cover that GORE was a horror game and having a book laying about that says GORE on the cover with the look of blood dripping would make it one of those books I need to make sure aren't out in the open when guests pop by to avoid explaination.

I hope that somehow this turns around from the current state. Maybe a few story hours from regular groups would stimulate the system a bit-more sales would hopefully bring more support.

I am in the US and I have only purchased softbound books from LuLu (all of the retro-clone books), however I believe that they charge a lot for shipping to other countries, which can be pesky. Yet, LuLu delivers very promptly from my experience.

Clip art! Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Or congeal into a batch of little cubes, possibly they reproduce through this process? That way the adventurers are unknowingly propagating the species.

A Damage Level (DL) would depend on the scope of your game (Normal will differ from Epic, etc) but I use a standard d6 per Damage Level, the same applies to healing magic. POW is adjusted the same way to reflect the Magic Point system. I just let the Atomik system take over the system I am using, for example, I use the Atomik Magick over the Labyrinth Lord magical system and will do the same for BRP fantasy. Doing this to BRP is easier than Labyrinth Lord with the POW ability built in.

I downloaded this a couple of days ago and I am glad that you brought this up here, it is a very interesting publication. I was just able to skim through and read over the basic idea, but I can say that the format is outstanding.