Jason D

There's some sample future gear in the BRP book, but if you'd like a more detailed treatment of things, I'd suggest checking out Cthulhu Rising in either monograph or the online .pdf form (if still available).

This is really off-topic, but since it's about licensing and IPs... I hope that WotC knows their market, and Hasbro theirs, but I was literally stupefied that they thought a My Little Pony RPG was cause for a joke. I have a 16-month old daughter, and when she's a couple of years older, I fully intend on seeing if she's interested in playing some RPG-like games. I've got friends with kids and they thought that a MLP RPG would have been outstandingly cool. How the world's largest RPG company can be owned by one of the world's largest toy manufacturers, and there be absolutely no cross-line development is beyond me. If I were a WotC higher-up, I'd be looking at stuff like My Little Pony, Axis & Allies, HeroScape, Transformers, and GI Joe and wondering what games we could make out of those properties. Or I'd notice all of the IPs that Hasbro has the game rights to, such as The Simpsons or Disney, and see if something could be done with those. But then, I've never figured out why WotC's never come up with a hybrid of D&D and Magic...

Another mistake is thinking that because a license sells well in one medium, it will translate to another and be equally successful.

Yeah... that was what I was responding to. I'm of the belief that there's not much new under the sun, but those were admittedly the first (or among the first) to bring those genres to the game arena. I wonder if Champions really has done better than Marvel (the TSR edition). I know it's still in print, but I'd suspect that the reason it's more of a success is that there were no licensing costs, whereas I'm sure that Marvel took a good chunk of TSR's profits from MSH. Oh well... off topic wanderings.

Vampire/World of Darkness > Anne Rice novels Fading Suns > Dune Champions > Marvel/DC superheroes ShadowRun > Cyberpunk with fantasy races To its credit, though, at least Ebberon is a vaguely original take on D&D-style fantasy.

I hadn't noticed earlier, but Dustin's recent blog entry discusses the poll: Chaosium.com: News - Decisions Decisions

It's vaguely on topic, so I don't see any problem with continuing to discuss it here. (If not, the thread police can come in and shut us down...) Chaosium began by licensing the Cthulhu IP from Arkham House, which presented itself as owning the rights to the Lovecraft estate. Royalties were paid to AH, and early CoC editions had the blessing of Arkham House (and I think even their logo). By any estimation, that's a licensed property. Later, when it became apparent that HPL's works were public domain and that AH didn't actually own them and had no exclusive rights to them, the licensing arrangement ended. Chaosium now publishes CoC based off the public domain of HPL's works, and has developed enough of the property on its own that it has in effect become a new IP. (Other authors' works have been utilized in CoC, but it's not really germane to the point.) Anyone else using Cthulhu stuff is either based off the public domain Lovecraft material, or is licensing it from Chaosium. So I guess it's technically a "once was licensed, now based on public domain, now being licensed as a semi-original IP" game. The point was that after years of trouble with Moorcock (which I think parties are somewhat at fault in), the snafus with the Niven Ringworld/Known Space IP, and the underperformance of other licensed settings like Prince Valiant and ElfQuest, they're likely done with the "spend a bunch of money to utilize an existing IP" process. But I'm just speculating, and for all I know, they may still be open to it.

Green Ronin did a pretty solid d20 version of Black Company. It should be easy to adapt to BRP, but I'm guessing that Chaosium is out of the licensed setting business other than Call of Cthulhu.

As I mentioned during the playtest, I pitched the thing as Complete Basic Roleplaying, but somewhere down the line, Charlie called it Deluxe instead. I'm happy to throw my name onto a system I design, but in this case, I'm sitting on the shoulders of giants.

You might want to re-read that thread if you viewed my response as "negative." I think it's safe for me to say that no one wants to see this book in print more than I do. Unfortunately, on that very day you posted that "Yay" thread, I had just gotten an email concerning yet another delay with the editing process that made me want to smash my head against my desk. I started the thing four years ago and it's everything I can do not to be giddy with anticipation. As for the cover issue, I'll readily admit that it's not the most original of concepts, but is eminently suitable for the material. Your repeated comment about how well-known JAGS is seemed (to me at least) imply that I surely knew about the game and the image, when nothing could be further from the truth.

They did two Blood Brothers anthologies of non-Mythos adventures. I suspect also that they might not want to delve too deeply into horror, as they've licensed BRP for Deadworld, and a new horror setting might impact their Call of Cthulhu sales.

I'm not trying to sound obtuse here, but I've never even heard of the "Indie award" and I'm familiar with the Origins Awards, the Diana Jones Awards, and the Ennies. I don't see a point of discussing this further, since you're apparently trying to argue that I'm more familiar with something than I actually am.

I should also note that my biggest fear was that it would be too close to the logo for Hero Games (a guy with outstretched arms in a hexagon), but am happy that there's no resemblance.

I'm going to plead ignorance on that one... as you're talking about a pretty obscure game. I'd heard briefly of it a while ago, and saw the cover when someone posted it on rpg.net (which, if I recall correctly, has a bunch of multi-genre guys arrayed on something that looked like a circular chessboard), but I've never seen inside the book. Is it even in print?

I think we would all be happier if that remained in the realm of hypothetical, instead of the actual.

I think Chaosium is putting out as much CoC as they're able to, given their resources. Good question. Given that three of the currently-in-development sourcebooks or monographs (I forget which is which) are fantasy, it remains to be seen which ones they'll support more. I know that during the final writing of BRP, Dustin was very interested in seeing a "house" fantasy setting for BRP. I don't know. What, to you, is anime in a gaming sense? Is it superdeformed stuff? The art style? Martial arts? A mix of sci-fi and fantasy? Ridiculously oversized weapons? Personally, I don't think there's much reason to do a BRP Anime generic rulebook, but a sourcebook based on a particular setting is a possibility. "Hallelujah, amen" to that.

It's not the most detailed poll. It's missing topics like Superhero, Action, and Western. I suspect it's just out there as a bellwether.

There's a new poll at Chaosium.com asking the question"Which Genre would you most like to see as a Chaosium BRP setting?" The options presented are: Fantasy Historical Horror Post Apocalypse Pulp Science Fiction Click here to go to the poll!

By "clothes", of course, I mean my bejeweled Martian battle-harness with concealed clasp-knife.

I'm just doing the words on this one, and I usually keep my clothes on when I write.

Indeed! I keep begging someone to propose it to Chaosium and write it! "The Big Book of Magic" would be an essential sourcebook for BRP occult and fantasy games.

No. It's the system from MW, cleaned up and altered slightly, revised for balance. That was actually the reason that system was picked - the broadness and ease of use. Those are easily added on, based on Sorcery spells or created from whole cloth. I hope that players and GMs do plenty of such creation.

You might take a look at Rolemaster Express (or HARP) for another system in which the quality of the dice roll directly affects the damage dealt.

It is the Magic World system. RQ3 was not consulted (or harmed) in the writing of that chapter.

As noted, if you need to note the amount of HP below 0 for the short period of time a character can be below 0 HP and be viable, then it's there for that. I think it also might have ramifications for some powers (like regeneration), but don't have my book handy and can't recall which.