simonh

Actually Chaosium already have a Fantasy Earth game out there in the form of Mythic Iceland. Further games in that vein could work, although The Design Mechanism has land-grabbed Mythic Britain and Mythic Rome. I say use the RuneQuest name and logo. It’s as BRP as anything mechanically and has made a massive splash in the market. Ride the wave.

Oh absolutely, it would be fun to work some of them out. It’s already been suggested that most people call Disruption ‘Kill Rat’ or some such, but that’s just working with what we already have. Tunnels & Trolls had a heal spell called “Poor Baby”, maybe that’s a spirit spell that just eases pain from minor injuries, headaches and such.

Dune would be great, but the license has had a difficult history. I'm not sure a 10' barge pole is long enough, although I am the proud owner of a copy of the limited print run that did eventually get out. I played in an excellent Dune game run by a friend using Heroquest. It was set before the first book. We were Fremen, outcasts and smugglers working for Pardot Kynes during the Harkonen occupation. Ever wonder why the Emperor ordered the Harkonens to hand over Arrakis to the Atreides? Apparently they had *ahem* 'problems' with spice production. You're welcome! RQ/BRP could work really well. The combat system is gritty and visceral enough. Shields could work just like protection spells, you might even have different qualities and variants of shields. Loads of fun. Edit: Just read this on the Dune Wiki about Pardot Kynes. That's us, and they're not wrong!

I think the main advantage of a shield is it's so easy to use. I know fighting effectively with a shield is a distinct skill and there are many ways to use it in specific defensive and offensive moves, but when it comes right down to it, a big shield is about as good a portable protective barrier as you can possibly get. How does this sound: Any warrior can declare that they have also trained to fight with a shield, and get their full weapon skill chance to parry with a shield for free. This is due to the ease of use of a Shield in defence compared to other options. It just doesn't take all that long to train effectively with a shield. Any warrior wanting to use another weapon such as an axe, sword or mace off-hand does so at a base of half normal chance, which can be increased from there. When doing so, if they score a special success parry against a failed attack, instead of the normal result they may instead choose to make a 'riposte' attack immediately. That makes two weapon use a little more effective but at the cost of increased training/skill points requirements for the same skill chance. And of course shields also get the usual advantages of fighting in formation and defence against missiles and such.

New playbooks added and all of them revamped at least to some extent. RuneHack Playbooks Also, Reference Sheets for the standard moves also significantly updated relative to the Google Docs version.

Jeff has easy access to a first class source of inside information on this topic, and from someone with untouchable gaming credentials too. He once described Ernalda as the "Cult of Awesome Claudias".

I think what David means is that if you make the correspondence between physical places in an area and places on the spirit world too close to 1-1, when a Shaman is traveling far from that area they won't have access to those spirit locations without travelling a long way physically or in the spirit world. There could be many places in the physical world that all can be used as entry points to the same place in the spirit world, or near to it.

It’s also possible Backford isn’t intended to survive a full-on chaos assault, and the defensive plan when faced with a superior force was simply to evacuate as fast as possible, under cover of a rear guard action by defensive forces. After all, would you live happily in a small city that close to the forest without a backup plan? The fall of Backford may not be the disaster it seems by itself, but combined with a lack of an effective response force to take it back, the ongoing chaos encroachment might be a real problem.

Corwin and Random are pretty tough dudes, in fact Corwin is probably the most resilient of all the Amberites, but I don't think every Amberite is at that level. Anyway, I think this is easy to work around. As you say, you can start them off on a shadow where Amber level stats are the norm, so what that means is that these stat levels (STR in particular) are relative to the shadow. So we could say that each shadow gives a STR modifier relative to Amber level. On our Earth it might be +15, on another shadow it might be +0, on a high gravity shadow it might be -10. You wouldn't do this for every stats, in fact you can probably do it just for STR. Also things like regeneration can simply be a power rather than super-high CON, or on top of less spectacularly high CON.

That's one thing we don't need to worry about, Moon Design bought out the IP completely IIRC with funds from the Guide kickstarter. Greg doesn't own it anymore. This interview lays a lot of it out: https://janeroutley.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/interview-with-michael-obrien-vice-president-of-chaosium-games/ Basically Moon Design owns the RQ and Glorantha IP. Greg and Sandy are shareholders of Chaosium. The owners of Moon Design are also part owners of Chaosium (via Moon Design) and are also the Chaosium management team. I'm sure there are details I'm missing or getting slightly off but I think that's pretty much it.

I don't think it's really necessary to scale Amberite stats to ~30 or so. What is the thought process that's leading you to set it at 30? In practice Amberites are significantly superior to regular humans, but they're not quite superman. Batman and a bit perhaps. I think you can get away with it being maybe 2D6+12 without too much trouble. Even in the ADRPG Amberites can sell down their Strength to Chaos or Human level. Only the strongest characters would have +2D6 DB and they'd need to have decent SIZ. I'd seriously suggest going with a general hit point and major wound model, not hit locations. I think it will suit the heroic feel a lot better, but major wounds still keep it 'real'.

Licensed by Moon Design to Chaosium, but since the set of Moon Design execs is a large (and possibly a majority) subset of the execs of Chaosium, I'm not too worried. I suppose one way of dealing with loss of a license is to file off the serial numbers and go generic, or with a home-grown functionally compatible IP, hoping the fan base stays with you. That's what's kind of happened to the Design Mechanism, although with the game trademark rather than a setting.

I honestly don't imagine Chaosium pursuing a licensed setting any time soon. They've always been highly problematic. If it's big enough to be a real draw, it will be too expensive. Your mechanics are constrained by fidelity to the setting, rather than the best interests of game play. Then of course, what happens when the license expires? I have thought for many years that you could build a pretty compelling fantasy setting using an extended and expanded version of the magic and monsters from call of Cthulhu. When you think about it, that's pretty much what Conan and a lot of S&S from the Howard/Lovecraft era is. It could be set in an antediluvian fantasy geography, or an alternate history earth invaded by alien entities and corrupted by malign sorcerers. CoC magic is simple mechanically, suitably grotesque and very gameable, and the grimoire system would work perfectly. Another alternative is basically fantasy earth, although as with all the other generic game and setting names Chaosium has used in the past (all the *World games), 'Fantasy Earth' sounds utterly flat and uninspiring. It doesn't have to be that way though. If a souped up magical alternate history were done with all the same depth and attention that Glorantha gets, it could be brilliant.

The God Learners were definitely Malkioni. They were the antecedents of the Saintly Bookbearers, who witnessed the divine creation of the One Book (original Abiding Book) on Jrustela, which catalysed the founding of the Malkioni True Church. The God Learners kicked off about 100 years later, distorting the faith into the heresy of Malkioneranism. Delecti was a member of the EWF - probably quite senior. It's possible he picked up some God Learner magic from somewhere, but that's speculation and there's no real evidence for it I don't think.

Pretty sure it doesn't, I may have missed a spot rule somewhere. It makes sense for firearms, where for bows and thrown weapons maybe not.

Malkioni have a few problems with shamanism. For a start they don’t have any ancestors that are contactable - their souls go to Solace (hopefully) - which puts them at a distinct disadvantage with regard to most shamanic traditions. Also dealing with spirits in a shamanic way is contrary to the teachings of Malkionism, so in doing so you’re a heretic and certainly ineligible fir Solace yourself. Who cares? Well, the laws of magic sorcerers use come from Malkioni scripture; if they are true then surely that means scripture is true. The more sophisticated your knowledge of Malkioni sorcery, the harder it’s going to be to say oh well, whatever. Suppose you could read and learn passages in the bible and these actually enabled you to walk on water, raise the dead, turn water into wine and bring mana down from heaven. It would be a heck of a lot harder to say the claims of the bible are unproven and treat its strictures (folowing which make magic easier) are not for you. So the rules don’t actually prevent this, there may even be some weird cultures that have beliefs that bridge between the types of magic in some ways. Lankor Mhy is one of these. But I think it’s wirth thinking about what such a character actually believes and cares about in the world. Illumination of various sorts certainly offers several paths.

I’ll talk about Elric! as that’s the version I know and like best. In RQG you have a movement rate per strike rank, preparing a missile takes 5 SR, preparing a spell takes 5 SR. So e.g. you can cast a spell then move, then engage in combat. The Strike Rank is clearly used as a fungible unit of time it takes to perform a variety of actions. This is not the case for DEX ranks, and I think my post was misleading in that regard. There is only one case in Elric! where DEX ranks cost anything with respect to any other activity, and that’s a character moving half their move rate or less into combat, in which case they suffer a DEX rank penalty on their attack. You can’t use DEX ranks to reload, or move (directly), or prepare spells or do anything else. The only thing they do is decide when your attack(s) occur. Spells take a whole round, and go off on your INT rank. That’s pretty much it. SR are clearly more flexible and allow more tactical mixtures of magic, movement and combat but at a high cost in complexity IMHO. EDIT: ok two cases, drawing a new weapon costs 5 DEX ranks. It’s not in the main combat chapter text, but in the spot rules. However reloading a missile weapon isn’t a thing by itself. You fire missile weapons on your dex rank and that’s it regardless of drawn arrows and such. I also prefer the Elric! multiple-weapons rule. If you have two weapons (including weapon and shield) and your score a critical parry, you may immediately make an attack with the other weapon. Note that a Crit in Elric! is equivalent of a special success in RQ, at 1/5 skill chance.

I don’t really remember anyone using it much. 4 points of Bladesharp does about the same damage with most weapons, and you also get +20% to hit. Being an active spell makes it even less appealing.

You could say that if both get special success that’s a stalemate too, but now it’s getting a bit fiddly, fine for a house rule but maybe not really suitable for a base system.

It’s my preferred way too. Pretty much all the other BRP game do this such as Call of Cthulhu, Elric, Magic World, etc. It’s simple, consistent between different weapons and types of action, and still allows for delayed and multiple actions such as reloading or second attacks with a -5 modifier on DEX.

That’s interesting, the whole section on page 168 on controlling a mount in battle, which mentions Fireblade, is repeated on page 221. Is that a known issue?

One way to think about this is what forces are active in the world. Air by itself doesn’t do much, it’s really important obviously and we’d die without it, but it’s not active, whereas Storm is an active thing that engenders change. So while the primal god of air is vital to the existence of the world, people worship the gods of the weather, because those are agents of change. Without Hykim and Mikyh the beasts of the world wouldn’t exist, but the actual beasts we encounter in our daily lives are what matter here and now.

In that situation you have two highly accomplished experts in what they are doing facing off. It’s like a chess match, with each side making meticulous preparations, covering every base, eliminating each factor that might weigh against them and carefully working their way towards their preferred end-game. So it sort of makes sense there’d be a little more extended back-and-forth. Although actually a draw will be pretty common at 50% each as well. There’s a 25% chance both at least succeed and a 25% both fail. Specials will increase the chance of an immediate resolution slightly, but not a lot. So about half the time these situations will end up running to 2 or more rerolls. Sometimes I think that’s quite appropriate and fun, but I’ll keep the option of using ‘highest wins on a tie’ when necessary to keep things moving.

Right, but a command spell with extension would tie up Rune points because it’s a ongoing spell effect.

All cracking stuff, but I think a tie like this is also an opportunity for the GM to complicate the situation, or escalate it in some way. In a chase situation there is suddenly some obstacle or interference both sides must overcome. In the hide and seek situation, the first guard moves on, but a new one arrives; or the guard’s commander shows up to perform a check; or there is a sudden commotion outside distracting the guard but attracting others; a cat distracts the guard, but now it’s wandering towards the PC.