Jason D

I'm not sure how much overlap there is, but the Metabarons RPG was partly inspired by Moebius' work. Here's an old press release. I've got the core book, GM screen, and universe guide (this last one in .pdf). It's a pretty interesting little game.

I am fairly certain it's just the box set, and hasn't been modified. Ditto. I'd bet Chaosium would be quite interested in supporting a new Superworld, but I can say sadly that past efforts by freelancers to revise Nephilim have met with little interest. Times may have changed, though. Anyone interested in either project should contact Dustin at Chaosium.

Not exactly. The text has been proofread. The missing footnotes for the equipment tables are finally present. The rules for psychic combat are present. There are some clarifications and reorganizations.

As a warning, the review was written in 2004. I just looked at Hogshead's website and it hasn't been updated for almost as long.

I'm not the biggest fan of the font, either... it reminds me too much of beer-garden menus from the 80s.

In Reader, go to File > Properties. It will open a multi-tabbed window. "Fonts" is one of those tabs. Goudy, Legacy, Palatino, Hobo, Minion, and some various dingbat fonts. I suspect that Palatino is the core text font, and Hobo is the header.

I suspect the timing is specifically to have an adventures book ready and for sale at Gen Con to sell alongside the core rulebook.

I've had lunch with him a few times when my old company was going to license one of his products for a computer game, and he was surprisingly decent and quite aware of his unfortunate reputation in the industry. This even went so far as him hiring a guy specifically to run interference to keep him from messing things up with business partners. Of course, naturally, he admittedly couldn't handle not being involved, so that guy was out, and in the months to come, a minor contract issue killed the deal. It's a pity, as the project would have been tremendously fun to work on, and filled an interesting gap in the marketplace.

No line in my copy.

Greg begs to differ.

I always loved her artwork. Whatever happened to her?

Charlie just sent me my copy... I'm very pleased with how it turned out!

Which is why I wrote this: I'd never let players take the Martial Arts skill without a very specific reason for it relating to their origin or backstory. I anticipate seeking out training in this skill as a big carrot for player-character warriors.

Take care of yourself!

Thanks! And thanks, again, for your help!

Oh, I'm not pushing for us to play BRP... after almost four years of BRP almost defining my gameplay, I'm perfectly happy running other games. I'm the GM of about two-thirds of those different games, which I picked to run, I should note. In fact, I enjoy running other games because I'm always in the process of learning new systems, exploring other game styles, mechanics, etc. BRP is the old standby that we all know and like, though. The two 4E guys are among the least reliable players we have*, so it's no big deal. They said they wanted to play 4E. No one else was willing to replace the weekly game with 4E. End of problem. * The least reliable member of the group is my former co-writer on BRP, whose involvement with the writing stopped sometime in early 2006. We've seen him exactly once in the last seven months of near-weekly games. He's famous for talking up a new campaign he'd like to run (he's a great GM, so we get excited) and then finding some new crisis or schedule conflict and canceling at the last minute.

I certainly wish the book were out earlier, but then, I suspect the people who want to play 4E will play 4E, regardless of what the alternatives are. The game group I usually play with has two irregular members who told us a few weeks ago that all they want to play now is 4E. In the past year or so, we've played BRP, Star Wars Saga Edition, Dark Heresy, Legend of the Five Rings, Boot Hill, Deadlands, Warhammer FRP, Battlestar Galactica, Savage World of Solomon Kane, and a few one-shots, but they're now just set on 4E. So we haven't seen much of them lately, as none of the rest of us care that much about playing it as our weekly game. One other player will likely play 4E on a different night, with a different group, but it won't make much of a difference on what we play week-to-week.

My advice would be just to write an adventure using the rules you know, then save the stat blocks and actual rules calls for when you've got the book.

From Chaosium: Original article posted here.

You raise good points, but the points I mentioned are just as valid for a sandbox approach. Fantasy settings are bit more of a gimme when it comes to the three questions, mostly because most people have the tropes of the fantasy genre ingrained into them. For some examples from the text: - It's not until page 31 that a list of the races available to PCs appears, and the descriptions are less than dozen words each. What races are significant and which are less prominent? What are the cultures of each of these races like? Why would you want to play a kuo-toa vs. playing a lizard man? Your example games (Tekumel, Atlantis, and Talislanta) are all rich with information about the different races, and most of them have around a dozen or so races to pick from, as opposed to 62. - There are 546 professions listed, by name only. No real advice about how they fit into society, or which races favor which. With so many options, why list them at all? Again, the sandbox games you recommend usually have either freeform character creation or introduce thematic classes/professions/careers that make sense and work within the setting. If I were an editor looking at this, my first piece of advice would be to look at the GM advice on pages 114-118 and say "Pick one of these themes and rewrite the manuscript to make the game about that", then leave the rest in the back as alternate modes of play. The game I found this closest to in spirit was Shadowrun, and that game allows a vast amount of character variety but still gives some nice themes about what the players are supposed to be (fringe-dwelling mercenaries and for-hire entrepreneurs), what they're supposed to be doing (sticking it to The Man, if the pay is good), and what forces oppose them (corporate security). I'm generalizing, but not by much.

If curious, here's the comic strip that John Carter and Barsoom appeared in: ERBzine 2121: Tarzan - John Carter 01

Why am I reminded of that old song from The First Edition? I just dropped in, to see what order my preorder was in...

My estimate was based on the notion that copies will be delivered first to Chaosium, then distributed to other retailers (amazon, warehouse23, etc.). It's true that a lot of it depends on how quickly Chaosium gets individual orders out the door.

I don't know, but I would suspect that it'll ship faster from Chaosium.

It's not in BRP, but I suspect it'll show up in some product before too long. However, if you have a pressing need for it ASAP, I'd say go for Unknown East. It can be had fairly cheaply from various sources. I notice it's $5 at Chaosium.com.