Jason D

They're there. Difficulty modifiers are applied after the the skill rating is modified (x2 for Easy, x.5 if Difficult). So, for example, if a doctor is in the hospital with all of his medical paraphernalia, handling a routine task will be Easy (x2 skill), and at +20% for the gear. Treating a rare condition might be a normal roll with some (but not ideal) gear might be a normal roll, with no modifier. If he's treating a rare condition on a muddy, rainy battlefield with no gear, it would be Difficult (x.5 skill) and -20% for no gear.

No, as those are more setting-specific. I'm hoping that any setting books include these. As an optional rule, yes. Yes. A GM can easily come up with modifiers to make these systems idiosyncratic to a setting. How much "choking" would occur is mostly a matter of opinion and how severe the changes are. Magic is percentile based. Spend the power points and roll to see if the spell works. Sorcery always works (unless it calls for a resistance roll) once points are spent. You could call either one of them divine if you'd like. You could add an Allegiance requirement to spellcasting. Similarly, the psychic powers could be handled in the same fashion. If I recall correctly, an example of play for psychic powers spotlights a priest. Skill-based, with DEX as a modifier. You can also use the strike rank optional system, which allows more multiple attacks. If you test a characteristic successfully in a resistance roll in a challenging situation where your chance of success is less than 50%, you can check to see if it improves. Or you could train it up. Full rules for study and training.

There are some guidelines for this, including alternate means of character creations (for more competent characters), some combat rules that defy realism, a drama/fate point system, an alternate means of determining hit points for heroic characters (heroes and major villains get CON+SIZ, everyone else uses (CON+SIZ)/2), etc. No guidelines on race creation, but RQ/SB/CoC-style stat blocks (with dice rolled) for all three of those, plus centaurs, halflings, minotaurs, and orcs, as far as fantasy critters go. Lots of other monsters, and a couple of dozen sample NPCs from a variety of settings. There are five power systems. Magic (a simple %-based classic magic system), Mutations, Psychic Powers, Sorcery, and Super Powers. Each works its own way, none are setting-specific, and they are pretty malleable. Total HP is the default system. Hit locations are optional. The standard experience model is presented, though the GM may adjust the die used for a standard experience gain. Happy to be of help!

I am not saying anything. I am not working on a referee's screen. There's not much writing involved there, and that would come from Chaosium. I am not working on a magic book. No core rules or rules expansions for me for a long while. There are only so many hours in a day, and I'm balancing a full-time job, some other freelance, a novel, and being a husband and father. And my wife is after me to write a teleplay or screenplay for the Austin Film Festival next month... I'm swamped.

I think that BRP has a dual-fold strength - some name-brand recognition among the existing gamer population, and an ease and flexibility of use that serve it well as an introductory game. I am stupefied when I see people trying to characterize D&D as an "entry-level" game.

I think Chaosium's policy is to only allow preorders once a book has gone to press. Soon I think there will be an announcement.

What a marvelous idea...

Yep. Automatic tasks always succeed, no roll required, no experience check. Easy tasks are at double chance, no experience check. Normal tasks are at normal chance. Difficult tasks are 1/2 chance.

I'm hoping that I can make it to Gen Con with Chaosium's delegation. Whether they'll have me as a booth monkey, or if I'll (hopefully) be running non-stop demos of BRP has yet to be determined.

Check your email.

The edits were submitted to Chaosium some time ago, and I collated many of them into one document. I still need to clean up that document (some of the edits required edits of their own, as sometimes happen). It's also one of those "everything in one document" edits - and ideally I'd like to break it up into one for system/mechanics and one for the minor stuff like typos, grammar, aesthetic issues, etc. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the edits from any work done by Chaosium. I wasn't privy to their editing/proofing process, so my work may have duplicated theirs. Some of the edits such as "Where have the footnotes in the weapons tables gone?" aren't going to be of much help to anyone, either. Furthermore, any changes Charlie made to the manuscript may not be included in edits I suggested. I'll have to check for approvals to post what I've got, but it will take a little while to assemble. Thanks for your patience.

BRP isn't an open system, so you'd need a license if you wanted to publish something officially compatible with BRP. I don't know what Chaosium's terms for licensing are, but it doesn't hurt to contact Dustin and ask. If you want to publish something unofficially compatible with BRP, then you would probably want to use MRQ or an MRQ-derivation.

Great! Dustin's awesome. I should just put that whole message in my signature.

Since Chaosium is after all a freelancer-driven publisher, I encourage you to contact Dustin Wright with proposals for generic sourcebooks, if you're interested in seeing them.

Out of everyone on the forum here, I may have the best insight into the situation, so I'll volunteer my opinions. (Though of course, I'm just a freelancer for Chaosium, and am not any sort of official representative.) Deadworld is of course being handled by someone else, at little effort to anyone from Chaosium other than some contract stuff. The other five books you mention are all to be published by Chaosium, true. I'm not sure if Mystic Island (or is it Iceland?) is a monograph or an actual publication. If it's a mono, it's really only Chaosium's job to print and distribute it. There are a few other works also in process, but haven't been announced. Unfortunately, the reality of a freelancer-driven publication schedule is that it's a freelancer-driven publication schedule. (No offense intended to any freelancers, by the way.) That means that these books will only be published when they're turned in. Many times in this industry, books are begun and never finished. Freelancers don't always come through with books because of life issues, etc. Sometimes the effort of completing a huge manuscript is just too much. Sometimes manuscripts are abandoned, and depending on what the project is, they need to be passed over to another writer. Sometimes (like with BRP) they're late. Sometimes they're turned in and need massive revisions. Sometimes manuscripts arrive in an unpublishable format and the projects are just killed. If and when a manuscript does arrive, and is publishable, there's another long process of editing and layout. Then there's interior and cover art, which basically means that you've got all of the above problems, but with a new freelancer. So having four or five, or even 10 projects "in development" at the same time doesn't really mean that all of them will create this huge bottleneck at once and overwhelm a smaller publisher. The reality is that if everything goes according to ideal plans, these listed publications will be coming out over the next year to year and a half, giving plenty of time for production. Having a slate of support products for BRP covering a variety of genres, with fan buzz, is frankly an ideal situation for Chaosium. It allows them to see what sourcebooks sink or swim, what the market is interested in, and allows the BRP line to grow and be seen as a viable force in the RPG market.

Unless I'm mistaken, Chaosium have switched using a service like Lulu for their monographs. The old back stock are still the prior format, but the newer ones have been at the same quality (printing-wise) as the EZ book.

I thought it was much more when you first announced it.

I haven't read the material and likely won't*, so take this with a grain of salt. It's always worthwhile to see if you can get paid (again) for your work if it's a BRP or CoC sourcebook or monograph. If Chaosium doesn't offer to publish it themselves, you might be able to get a BRP license and retain original copyright over the material. In either case, I encourage you to send Dustin an email at dustin@[name of BRP publisher].com. * No offense intended here - I just don't have the spare cash for new games I'm not going to play - and I don't have any interest in MRQ-derived materials.

Actually, I remember seeing the Starcraft and Diablo II games at my local Gamestop in Seattle. They also had some other game stuff, mostly WotC material. I'd disagree with the notion that getting pen-and-paper RPGs into computer game stores would be an effective move, mostly because those stores are struggling to stay afloat now in a world of downloadable games, online retailers, video rental stores that also rent games, and big-box store competitors like Wal-Mart or Best Buy. (I work in the computer games industry and we see a lot of market data about the condition of the retail games space... and most of it is not very promising.) If anything, I think RPGs should be making more effort to get into the retail bookstore space (despite the returns policies). I go to my local B&N or Borders, and the only games they have are from WotC, White Wolf, and Games Workshop. There's plenty of Chaosium fiction, but no games. No Steve Jackson games. No HERO games. No Green Ronin or Mongoose stuff. Another option would be for games companies to provide game clubs free or radically-discounted copies. Additionally, game companies should focus on more "starter" games that are actually easy to play (D&D is not a starter game), and more emphasis on pre-packaged scenarios and campaigns to overcome the massive amount of work a GM has to do before a game can begin. But that's just me.

There was also an AD&D adaption of of Diablo II by TSR (and later WotC for d20) and Alterernity-based Starcraft (also by WotC). Before that, I believe Steve Jackson did GURPS Myth.

These guys?

They're similar, not entirely compatible. The SB4 rules are essentially based on the old Superworld powers (or so the author Ben Monroe claims), while the Elric!/SB5 ones are more low-key. The rules suggest four power levels - normal, heroic, epic, and superhuman. You get X points to be divided amongst characteristics, and skills are handled through skill points. Each power level has a different point value. There is no "turn in a characteristic for X skill points" or vice versa, though if you're using the super powers system, the Super Characteristics and Super Skills powers can be used for those aspects, and those points come out of the same bucket. It's possible for the GM to decide to have PCs begin with heroic-level characteristics and superhuman-level skills, or any combination, based on the setting and desired style of gameplay.

Manic Eightball says "Signs point to no".

I have no idea if that'll mean anything. I'm just saying that (if I recall correctly) someone put them in touch with Dustin, who learned that they had a pristine crate of copies of the game that could be sold through Chaosium's catalog. I have no idea if any discussion turned to a new edition, or if anyone involved in the original is even interested in doing something like that.

I believe the reason Chaosium had copies to sell in the first place was that they'd gotten in touch with someone involved, who had a case of them in storage.