Jason D

11 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Is that bug a giant version of something? Or is it a very small trollkin? 😛

Trollkin. 

20 hours ago, g33k said:

Excellent, and TYVM for sharing!!!

A question, though:

I'mlanning to start sharing some BRP & RQ stuff with some of my not-yet-RQ gaming friends (pitching the system to them) so I want to be accurate in my shares:  are these pregens planned to be a freebie add-on to the "Starter Set"?

Or will they be a separately-purchased item?

The goal was to have them free and based on the Starter Set. So they won't have any spells that aren't in the core book, for example. 

Bug submissions and updates are in fact part of all software releases, all the way from the Windows operating system to your car's onboard computer.  

5 hours ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Love this. Fun and characterful, plenty of animation…very Trollkiny. New artist? 

Lionel Marty, who has been playing RQ since the 90s and has done art for many of the new books. 

We're looking into replacing the font. It's not a small task, but will be done. 

To echo what Nick said above, our printer and EU warehouse is in Poland. If you are in Hungary, you can order directly from us and it will automatically be shipped from Poland. 

It was on my plate as my primary project last fall, then the Cults of Glorantha three-volume slipcase became the 9+ volume Cults of RuneQuest book series. Then we started rapid development on BRP. 

It is still coming together, and our art director is actually in the last sprint to get art done for it. Editing is underway, some sections are being expanded a bit, and fortunately the side-trip through BRP-land gave me some renewed clarity on some rules and focus. 

I am in a bit of a rush, taking a much-needed day off to go to a Ritterfest across town, but here are the highlights: 

1. General rewriting for clarity and consistency, and more direct language. 

2. Editing for brevity where possible. 

3. Many powers have had minor tweaks, often getting rid of the occasional "If the % roll for the power succeeds now roll another % to see if X happens then make another X roll to see...". 

4. Streamlining some rules and getting rid of (what I now consider) tedious and finicky detail.

5. Removing strike ranks and splitting attacks and parries - the former was only half-assedly implemented and the latter is not particularly useful. I also pared Sanity rules way back because as written, they were very specific to the modern horror setting and that's more the domain of Call of Cthulhu. 

6. Occasionally just rewriting a section from scratch (I defy anyone to make sense of the first edition's Encumbrance rules description).

7. Getting rid of "he or she" and just using "they". 

8. Some content adjusted, not out of editorial pressure but just me going "Hmm, that wasn't that great."  

9. Reputations, Passions. 

10. Augments explained more clearly. 

11. Clarified situational modifiers chart. 

12. Paring back some unnecessary and too-basic content - "How to find a roleplaying group?" "How do you sit at a table?" and acknowledging new resources (online play, VTTs, etc.). 

Furthermore, I considered all of the major changes that CoC7e made, and decided against implementing each for various reasons. In some cases, like characteristics as %, they would break many other rules and don't scale with characteristics above 20/100, and things like advantage dice don't really sync with situational modifiers and the Difficult/Normal/Easy skill modifiers. All were looked at, and the cascading effects would have caused a dramatic - and to my mind - unnecessary rewriting, rebalancing, and re-playtesting of the entire manuscript. 

1 hour ago, Greg said:

@Jason D - I did like the the "Effects" section in the BGB's skills descriptions. Any thoughts to offer as to why that was taken out? 

To me, they always seemed unduly crunchy.

One of the things I love about BRP as a system is that it's easy to intuit answers or results, so having to look up specific modifiers and exact numbers of people or square footage affected per skill quality result worked against that.

Those numbers also felt relatively arbitrary and didn't add a lot to gameplay, so they were an easy thing to trim. I'm a big fan of high-level guidelines rather than very specific exceptions.  

2 hours ago, Jason Farrell said:

What layout?  I recall the pregens being a full page illustration and a template that coud be filled in with whatever text and values.

The more I hear about this queue, the more it sounds like Chaosium puts things in a strict first in, first out order, regardless of the relative size of the projects. 

The new layout format for the pregens is more complicated than that, and our primary layout person is shared between RuneQuest, Pendragon, and Rivers of London. 

They have also been working on four Cults of RuneQuest books for almost half a year. 

We brought in someone else to work on BRP specifically to not upset the production queue. 

1 hour ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

One minor complaint; I do wish that the Healing ability from Elfquest had been added to Psychic Abilities given Player Characters penchant for getting themselves harmed.

Here you go! 

1 hour ago, Nakana said:

First, fantastic job on a phenomenal product! I was afraid certain things might be stripped out, but it all looks to be there! 👏👏👏

Second, as to your quote and regarding adding stuff... might BRP Platinum (that's what I'm now calling this) get a secondary volume that BRP Gold teased about?

Thanks! 

The follow-up stuff was a relic of another time. When I first wrote BRP, the powers-that-were at Chaosium were very enthusiastic about doing a lot of support on the line. 

Life happened, and none of that stuff came about, and only a few items were published in support of BRP. 

I'm not even sure what the original plan for support was.

They asked me what I wanted to write and I said Interplanetary, a sword-and-planet adventure book. I got to work on that but life happened and it was never completed. 

1 hour ago, Travern said:

Quick question, @Jason D: The ORC License draft is marked "FEEDBACK REQUESTED", but there doesn't seem to be a method of submitting this (e-mail, webform, etc.).

How do people send in their comments/critiques/questions? Many thanks,

That's an ORC thing. I am not sure where that feedback goes. 

On 3/30/2023 at 1:24 AM, g33k said:

"Great Minds," &c ... I too have been wondering about those non-human adventurers!

I think we tag @Jason D on this one.  IIRC he was the one doing it.
 

They are complete. The art is done. Layout has been the bottleneck. 

Here's a sample character: 

On 3/21/2023 at 10:24 AM, albesias said:

I really love the toolbox perspective from the BGB. You can configure a really streamlined game or a really heavyweight one up to your taste or your table needs. Cover art shows a Vitruvian swiss tool man.

I'd like an update that includes lastest options like, CoC's 7th push your luck, characterists x5, RQG's passions, reputations, personality traits like runes and more power magic options.

Jason has my trust.

 

 

Thanks for your trust. 

You get some of those things! 

Some didn't make it, for obvious reasons: 

• Push your luck is already in the old edition in the form of Fate Points (p176). There is not much sense to introducing another system that does the same thing (technically less). 
• Characteristics x5 don't scale satisfactorily for characters with characteristics greater than 20/100, and conflict with use of the resistance table - which is mathematically the better way to handle opposing forces (opposed rolls don't give equal forces a 50/50 chance of success). 
• Passions, Reputations are now in there
• Personality traits were already in there.

I didn't add more magic or powers, as we had a mandate to make what was there better and clearer/cleaner, not add a bunch of new stuff just to add new stuff. 

On 1/20/2023 at 7:15 PM, CussaMitre said:

I was searching for a system that had an OGL to create some settings.

BRP looks quite a look with another system that I played for years and I am really thinking about going with it.

But There are some points about the OGL that is not so clear to me, so, asking here before have to throw away some work.

• The SRD does not have anything like magic, but the "full" BRP version from DriveThru has. Can I use the magic system from the BRP?
  • In case I can't, how much different it has to be to not be considered a "copy" of that?
• How much of the rules I can change?
  • For example: instead of getting the experience check the player passes on the test, I want to change to get it when they failed.

I believe that these are the biggest questions that I have for now.

Can anyone help about it?

Many Thanks

Cussa Mitre

The entirety of the Big Gold Book is not currently covered by our OGL. If you want to license the full BRP rules (or Magic World, etc.) please contact us. We are very generous with our prospective partners. 

https://www.chaosium.com/fan-use-and-licensing/

Obviously, the recent shakeup in the industry relating to OGLs and the surge of interest in the BRP core rules has spurred some interesting internal discussions about what our next steps will be.  

1 minute ago, RSDean said:

Is the errata available somewhere?  I’m back to considering BRP fantasy options, and this one is still on the list.  Errata would increase its chances …

To the best of my knowledge, no one at Chaosium ever prepared an errata for Magic World.

It came out at a time when the company could not support it, and years later, when the new owners had to prioritize what lines to focus on, Magic World was a low priority due to never having really found its audience.

I can't share sales figures with you, but IIRC it was the lowest-selling core rulebook Chaosium ever published, by a long shot.

It has its charms, and I have used it many, many times for games, but as a company, it's hard to justify putting effort and money into the line based on that track record. 

Your Praxian begins with Loyalty (tribe) at 60% as specified by adventurer creation, unless modified further.  

You can always add a new passion such as Loyalty (clan) at 60%. 

If your adventure's background specifically states that they have a -20% to Loyalty (clan) then yes, you should start with it at 40% (base 60-20=40).

Their Loyalty (tribe) is unmodified.

On 10/2/2022 at 11:29 PM, DreadDomain said:

Thanks for the insight Jason.

Can you share at this point how Mythic Iceland compares rulewise with the previous edition?

Does it lean more towards RQG? CoC7?

Does it use Stike Ranks? Skill categories? The resistance table?

Any system innovation worth mentioning?

How does rune magic work?

Cheers!

It is built on RQG, though some streamlining has been done. I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment, but will try to get back to answering this with more detail. 

41 minutes ago, jo77yroger said:

Hi, I need some specifics about allied spirits. It is written in the core book that allied spirits are initiates of their cult.
My questions are as follows: 
1. Does that mean that they begin with 3 rune points as Adventurers do once bound to them ?

No, those rules are for creating adventurers. 

As GM I'd say they begin with the common knowledge Rune spells, and their adventurer "ally" can decide to sacrifice their own or the spirit's POW for more Rune points and spells. If desired, the GM can decide that the allied spirit comes with a reasonable number of other Rune spells. 

This is somewhat moot as the adventurer can cast spells through the allied spirit, and thus it has access to all of the adventurer's Rune spells. 

To me, it would make more sense for the adventurer to learn the new spell, which gives both the spirit and the adventurer access to the spell. 

41 minutes ago, jo77yroger said:

2. Can they improve their POW in between adventures like adventurers do ?

My initial response to this is that only when they get POW experience rolls. 

I would not give them automatic POW improvement rolls between adventures or at Sacred Time, however. 

41 minutes ago, jo77yroger said:

3. Can they improve CHA by training/learning like adventurers do ?

 

Again, maybe only in certain circumstances, but it would vary wildly from cult to cult. Are spirits literate? Can they read scrolls of training? Who is going to do this training? 

If I had to rule, I'd say either the adventurer gets to do their training/learning and their spirit just remains static or the adventurer is spending their entire time coaxing their allied spirit through the process and cannot do the training/learning themselves. 

The two books that make up Mythic Iceland are through editing and are now waiting for art direction. 

They were edited by Leslee Beldotti, who, like me, has extensive experience in computer game and tabletop editing, and also, like me, lives in Berlin. Her being local helped immensely as we were able to meet for coffee on a regular basis and hash out elements that were in question, and being in the same time zone meant questions/answers were handled quickly, vs an eight-to-twenty-four-hour delay. 

She's currently editing the completed portions of Lord of the Middle Sea. 

We're sorting out an art director for the project right now, and once that deal is signed they'll be firing off art assignments and getting maps done. 

Covers, I am hoping, will be done by a longtime regular artist well-known to RuneQuest fans. 

I don't know Charles Green personally. Though I'm aware of his work and have communicated with him in the past, I have no idea what he's up to and the last communication we had was as part of the team of the ill-fated Magic World, ten years ago.  

I'm not sure why he was referred to here, to be honest. 

On 9/5/2022 at 7:44 PM, kross said:

This looks like a ton of fun. How about a GM Screen pack similar to the RQG one, with detachable air- and sailing ship plans, NPCs, maps, adventures, and other useful utilities?

Planned already. 

On 9/2/2022 at 5:24 PM, smiorgan said:

Lock up @Jason D with food provisions (maybe also alcohol) and have him finish the damn thing! Here people badly need to shoot down an airship or two 😜

Absolutely alcohol. 

I am currently ensconced at a German schloss in the remote western reaches of Brandenburg, literally the least populated region in Germany, and once the work for Cults of Glorantha is done I'll be moving back to the Middle Sea manuscript. 

There is no current plan for a revised BRP in anything like the "core rules + many options" format of the Big Gold Book. 

I would be in charge of that and it's not on my slate of projects, period. No new core book, no generic content, etc. 

If something like that hypothetically were to start, given the current production queue and pipeline, it would likely be at least two years before a new edition came out, and that would still use the existing core game rules as the current edition, perhaps incorporating rules from some of our more recent games. It would not be a 400-page behemoth, either.  

I'm double-checking to see that the webstore has the newest versions of the .pdfs.