tgcb

I apologize if this has been asked (and answered already):

Can you tell us when an updated version of the PDF with the errata included will be available (I have a copy of the original version).

Also...same question for a printed copy. If I purchase a printed copy now, would it be the original printing or the corrected printing?

Thanks!

With the Ingiegogo version coming out, I suspect I have my answer.

You got my $$$...now where is my book?

And how about a GM Screen for those of us that already have the PDF?

In a related note, I stopped in a Barnes and Noble in Cleveland, Ohio this morning.

Looking at the RPG section I found:

1) about 15 AD&D version 4 books

2) about 20 Pathfinder books

3) Pathfinder Basic box

4) 1 Star Wars boxed set

5) 1 Gurps book

6) 1 Warhammer Fantasy box set (the one for $99.99)

Sadly, no BRP to be seen.

Yeah, a few years back I would have invested a lot of time into something like this, but these days I'm pretty happy to accept most core rules as 'near enough is good enough'. I'm still happy to tweak rules for specific settings of course, but in general I've found altering the core rules often creates new problems, and usually its just not worth the effort to fiddle with the core mechanics.

I'm not discouraging others though!

I was trying to get clever...since the left side of the table looks like percentages (my 32 would be 32%). But then I had to figure out "32% of what"? I went around this thinking for awhile then as you said decided it's not worth it. I believe I would end up using the more gradual chart from Runequest 6 and call it good.

So long as we're admiring the production values of free-to-dowload core rulebooks for Other Systems, gotta give a shout-out to Eclipse Phase ...

wtfo??!? how dey do dat?

Clearly, one of those gamers who's becoming a successful gaming millionaire by starting as a multi-millionaire...

Thanks for the "tip" on Eclipse Phase (I had never heard of it).

Like Radiance, it looks great (not sure how it plays of course).

Still wondering why we can't get an BRP game to look this good......

Thanks to all for your suggestions!

I apologize if this has been asked (and answered already):

Can you tell us when an updated version of the PDF with the errata included will be available (I have a copy of the original version).

Also...same question for a printed copy. If I purchase a printed copy now, would it be the original printing or the corrected printing?

Thanks!

Can't say as I know anything about Magic World at all, to make comparisons, but I did wonder more than anything else what the benefit was to eliminating hit locations - is it intending to speed up the combat process? To allow you greater flexibility as a GM to determine what a hit actually means? I'm not trying to denigrate, just to understand the motivation.

And if you do, wouldn't it be easier to just average CON and SIZ a la BRP, and have whole body HP?

Yes...just trying to speed up combat.

Reading through Magic World...one thing that "bugs" me is the Damage Bonus Table.

Specifically, the wide range of values per modifier.

For example, I could have a STR+SIZ of 32 and get a +1d4, and you could have a STR+SIZ of 25 and also get a +1d4. I would feel I'm getting cheated however as my STR+SIZ is 28% greater than yours. Shouldn't my Damage Bonus be about 28% better than yours as well?

Anyway, probably not a "real issue", but something about it strikes me as odd.

Just for my own edification - can I ask why you'd do this?

Well, say I like Runequest 6 except for the "hit locations"....I might want to play Runequest 6 without the "hit locations", unless it breaks a bunch of other things in the game to not make it worth it.

In any case, I own both Runequest 6 and Magic World ...so I wouldn't be "saving money" by picking one over the other. And I like what I'm reading in Magic World a lot so perhaps this discussion is not needed anyway.

Anyone have any experience using the "total hit points" method as opposed to the default "hit locations" method with Runequest 6?

Can you give your opinion of how it played vs the default?

thanks!

Looks great - thanks for the preview!

Hey guys,

Email nick@chaosium.com and your email will be answered. I promise. Because thats me. And I would love to help you with whatever questions or problems you have.

Nick

Yes everyone can calm down.

Nick has replied to my emails (thanks Nick!).

All is well! (or at least "good enough")

Or, as a friend of mine once remarked, it is very easy to become a roleplaying games author with a Lamborghini and a nice villa in Malibu, you only have to start your career with two Lamborghinis and two nice villas in Malibu.

Yea the best way to end up with a million dollars in the RPG industry is to start out with 2 million

I'm telling you both up front: I'm stealing those lines for future use.

Well, I really didn't intend this to become a "bash Chaosium" thread....though it sounds like they may deserve it.

I really am just curious if anyone knows if their doors are still open and if I'm wasting my time trying to get a hold of them or not.

I'll try emailing Nick there to see if I get a response. I'm too cheap to call their # since it's not a 1-800#.

(Also since I'm not hopeful that Magic World will ever get an updated PDF with the errata in it, I downloaded a PDF editor and made the changes myself).

Err, these are instructions from the author:

If you have any questions in the future, or find any other errors, post them here, or email to magic-world@chaosium.com

(Note the dictionary terms of "instructions from the author" and "the author explicitly told me to do this, so I tried to do this, but it didn't work, and another email to Chaosium didn't work, so I got curious whether anyone here knew the status of Chaosium")

First, I tried emailing "magic-world@chaosium.com" to send some Magic World errata I found. That came back as undeliverable.

Then I had to email a question on my Chaosium account and their site said to email "fergie@chaosium.com". This also came back undeliverable.

Of course they were still functional enough to take my $$$ for Magic World...so at least that part of the company works.

I'm leaning very heavily towards doing an Actual Play thread at RPGnet which would involve Magic World Characters running through the In Search of The Unknown module using the Mythic Emulator to determine what the PCs do. If I do this, it will involve posting all of the stats used as well as the rolls. Serves as both being fun and getting Magic World in front of more people. Debating on whether I have the time to do it though.

Oh, you have the time.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions....but still feel kind of "dense" on this. And I do understand that with practice it would both make more sense and get easer.

Having said that , does anyone want to take a stab at writing up a "real world' example of play where the GM makes up some NPC's "on the fly"? Say your a new GM and don't have a lot of pre-made NPC's and your characters do something you hadn't planned...you need an NPC and want to keep the game moving. You don't want to take a 30 minute break while you figure out NPC/creature stats. Obviously the NPC or NPC's don't have to be "perfect"...but what are you looking at on the characters sheets to base your NPC stats and or abilities on? I guess I need a specific example before my brain will grasp onto it.

Thanks!

Does this start to shed a little light on why they're priced where they are? Any more, and the market wouldn't bear it.?"

You can see why RPG publishing will not make you enough money to spend it on marketing and word of mouth is the best that can be expected.

Wow.

Thanks for the detail.

Wow.

I knew the industry was fragmented...and I knew BRP was even more fragmented within itself...but I had a glimmer of hope that someway, somehow, someone could figure out a business model to make it grow. Now....I got nothin.

Sounds like better Google results, better reviews on the companies own website, better reviews on Amazon...all would be a "waste of time". So you go from selling 500 copies to selling 504 copies after doing all that "extra work".

Now why do I feel like I'm in quicksand after someone kicked me in the nether-regions?

Ah ....because I wasn't fighting a "battle that can't be won", I've been "fighting a war that has already been lost".

PS -I'm even more flabbergasted at that Radiance RPG I'm reading...their Players Handbook is free. And their GM book isn't much more. Maybe their resigned to the inevitable...that no matter how good their book looks it's not going to sell so why not give it away?

Well try not to fumble your Sanity Roll!

Too late!

PS - and just to show I can "put my money where my mouth is", I just bought the "Magic World" PDF from Chaosium.

PS#2 - And here's a related mystery. I'm also reading the Radiance RPG (free Players Handbook found here http://www.radiancerpg.com/). This is a very small game company, yet their books are gorgeous - lots of detail , great interior art, tons of aids for players and GM's. So if they can do it...why can't a BRP person do it??

But doesn't the world need another hundred clones of Basic D&D?

No.

Everyone should know the world only needs 78 more clones of Basic D&D.

Ah-ha a pissing contest. Having built a UK101 in the 70's and written satellite and space shuttle code for NASA in the 90's and set up firewalls and developed web pages by hand in the early day's, I was running part of Lucent's world-wide corporate network in this century, I'm just as well qualified as you are. :-)

If I were looking for a specific type of game I'd use the sites relevant to the subject of games to pinpoint options and not rely on a random search that is only good for turning up porn and advertisements :-)

Ah..the glory days of NASA in the 1990's. Isn't that when you boys crashed the Mars Climate Orbiter? (You may want to Google "metric to English conversion"...I can help if you want).

In any case...was not trying to start any arguments. But isn't it frustrating that there are only 218 active members on this site? And that only 374 bought Magic World? Why hasn't anyone in the BRP world figured out how to market the system? Or is there just no one to market to?

And before someone says "it's too hard to market an indie game"....I know many who play Munchkin and many more who play Settlers of Catan. Those companies figured it out somehow. I can find both of those games at the crappy toy store in the mall.

As Android is doing with Linux, we need our "Android" to take BRP to the masses without them knowing it's BRP...

(so can someone tell me how many copies an "average" non-WOTC RPG sells? If I sell 1000 could I consider myself a "hit"?)

And once more back to the original point:

I'm smart enough not to use Google to do my RPG searches. I want to learn about Chaosium's "Magic World". I go to Chaosium's site. I find "Magic World". I click on "Reviews"....and I find exactly zero reviews. So Google gives me 5 reviews and a very specific, pinpoint search gets me no reviews. In any case, I'm not buying your product because it appears no one else is either and I can't find enough information on it to take a leap of faith that it may be good.

And I'm not saying I know how to "fix this"...just baffled that it occurs. But then again, I'm basically talking to myself here so what's the point?

tgcb, I'm not sure that you understand exactly how search engines work. Putting all those terms into the search requires all of them to be present in the highest ranking results. Chances are that someone typing up a review isn't going to put those words in to their review and hence a lack of results.

Using the search terms "magic world" review chaosium I get much more targeted information. As with all search engines putting the right terms in gets the bets information out.

Well, I've been in IT since 1981...so I'm pretty clear how a search engine works. (Some of us have been on the Net before it was the Internet. ) In any case, ""magic world" review chaosium" gets pretty much the same list as "chaosium brp magic world" in Google (in fact, on the 1st Google page - which is the only page most people care about - I count what I would say as "reviews" as 5 the way I did it an only 4 the way you did it...but who's counting?)....not to mention I was just using that as an example.

Again, I think the point is that it's hard to find anything about these games...harder than it should be in my opinion.

Back to the original point (if I may):

Just tried to get more info on the new Magic World.

If you Google "chaosium brp magic world review" you get nothing, and less than nothing. In fact most of the hits talk about it coming out, not that it is out.

On Amazon the book only has 2 reviews.

Basically trying to figure out why so little info for these games...why are dedicated RPG sites the only place they get mentioned if at all?. I know about BRP, I'm looking for BRP books, and even I can't find much about them...so a "civilian" is going to have zero chance to find out about them.