tzunder

I'd say that a CC or OGL (but not both) core set of rules could be done. I think the generic core under CC and then an OGL rule pack for RuneQuest or GORE and a "hey don't sue us" rule pack for BRP. That ways the rules guys can play in their fave system, the setting people can just riff and have fun and anyone who wants to run it with Savage Worlds or Castle and Crusades can.. BTW this is exactly what we did with Gwenthia, how strange I never said it: Setting and Rules are best Separate

I disagree. Islands are easy and they can slot next to each other but they aren't shared and release very little synergy..

I just meant with a single weapon skill rather than separate A% and P%.. But actually it might be best to leave them in so that refs can decide either way..

Do you have a website Erik?

That sounds really good. Are you going to release it under a CC licence so we can all use it and integrate it into games and projects? Either OGL or CC would be great, and of course you can also sell a POD version on lulu!

We have Smoking Mirrors in Gwenthia to allow vast travel by players and also cros cultural contact. These almost definitely go between worlds. This is a very sensible option for a shared world, mixed culture project. Everway used it well, and so did Shadow World for Rolemaster.

Baroque fantasy where tech can co-exist with magic and no-one fusses too much. So not hard SF nor Warhammer fantasy.

I actually agree and would go for the fullest and free est CC licence or OGL. OGL is good if you want to integrate with Mongoose RuneQuest, although you'll need to be careful not to actually integrate any copyrighted material from Chaosium into the Open Game Content by mistake. GORE is a good basis, since it is very well licensed under OGL. Problem is is isn't BRP as write by Chaosium. All of this would be so easily solved if only Chaosium would create a core SRD and release it under OGL. To my mind release all content and new stuff under the widest attribution CC licence. It doesn't stop anyone doing anything with it, but still give credit to the original authors. Let's face it, we won't make money, so let's share..

I'd suggest that we avoid retreading the Gwenthia alien fantasy route. I would suggest we don't do another cookie cutter fantasy world with all the usual cliches. On the other hand, we want to be able to pull in familiar tropes and stuff, so how about a RIFTS/GURPS Yrth/multiverse setting where all sorts of stuff from Earth's history and myth have become sucked in and mixed up? Or.. and this is my favourite option that I would work on.. a universal city, with a faded baroque style, but just as home to trolls as bon vivantes.. BUT, and this is key.. by making it explicitly for BRP then the whole licence thing raises it's head. Maybe it's better to say "Suitable for popular d100 based rpgs"?

;-) Thanks

Very smart. You should upload it to the RPG Archive for character sheets.. RPG Sheets: Role-Playing Game Character Sheets, d20 Character Sheet, NPCs, Equipment, Swords, Magic Items I'd like a stripped down version with a more Stormbringer set, so no hit locations, no strike ranks, no AP and single weapon skills. That would leave a slot or two for portraits, notes or just increasing font size and filling the space a little.. Could you do one of those too?

It pegged out. But Nick Middleton is very keen to start a new zine: Uncounted Worlds that I think could be exactly what is needed. I know Nick is keen to solicit input and submissions: Uncounted Worlds | d100.org

Ok. Here's how Gwenthia works: There is a core group of people who write for it. We all agree to release our stuff under the CC licence below, and that if we publish commercially we will share the monies. It all started with a map and handing out chunks of geography to each of the core team (actually we have 1-2 members without portfolio). When we started we put up a wiki (PMWiki) and a core set of editing rules. In addition we have multiple support forums on the Tavern BBS (tavern.zunder.org.uk :: View Forum - Gwenthia (public)) most of which are private. But the core strength of Gwenthia was that we met up every Monday night and collectively agreed the history and chronology using a very simple sort of game system, such that we collectively synergised a core mythology, history and interchange of ideas. In parallel each author wrote a guide to their area of the world. All of this is accessible from the Gwenthia home page and is useable non commercially by anyone. (Gwenthia by the Design Mechanism - Main - HomePage). We did have some issues. Some people burned very bright, wrote some great stuff and then lost enthusiasm but given the open nature of the licence that need not be a problem. Others plugged away and slowly got a lot of good stuff. A few people have been very good joining the gaps and blurring the edges, or doing stuff like a full climate. One guy has done gorgeous maps and the world is very well illustrated. We had some spectalcular flamewars and one member left and deleted everything he had written from the wiki as he left.. but on the whole we have a good and interesting setting that is a little like the "alien fantasy" of Tekumel/Jorune/Talislanta with a good dollop of dark Moorcockian angst and lurking horrors, all wrapped in a culture well suited to the RQ cult style religions. I commend it as a place to have fun, you can add to it as you like and non commercially publish new stuff. Note that if you do, it also has to use the same licence, so your new stuff is then free to be used again by others. Downsides? The group is closed, how people leave and join isn't always perfect, in fact you never leave, but it's not easy to join. It's a democracy but participation varies, and I think many people would have preferred a benevolent dictatorship, but I was clear from the start that I didn't want to stifle creativity and the opportunity for left-field ideas to come from nowhere. The biggest long term issue I see is that because we geographically allocated areas to people, they tended to 'own' them, and as such developed it alone and in some ways we have some great places with clear identity, but we then had to do a lot of work to reknit it all together into a more integrated real world with geopolitics and cultural links. The Monday night meetups to decide history and culture really helped with that. I would recommend that any project doesn't allocate by geography, but rather does so thematically: maybe religions, military, cities, ethnic groups, art, etc. I also think that a collective mechanism to generate cross border/theme ideas/facts/cultures. We still have the northern continent of Gwenthia to work on and I think that we will go for a non geographical approach for that. How do I think that a new project should proceed? Well I think you have to address the following questions: Anarchy/Democracy/Autocracy Which CC or OGL License and what to do if a commercial opportunity emerges How to allocate work, geographically or by theme? How to release synergy and work as a team and not a disparate group of individuals How to have fun! (It is the objective after all) I would recommend a wiki, they're so good for absent minded jotting over months that builds to a huge resource (Gwenthia by the Design Mechanism - Main - HomePage) My view is that BRP could do with a nexus point: a city of some scale and mutable changeability where visitors from any BRP-like setting can meet and twist in and out of the myriad possibilities. The Viriconium city of M John Harrison, or Mieville's cities or the gothic structures of Peake would work. It has been done before with Planescape and it fits well with the whole Moorcock multiverse idea. A city that isn't quite the same every time you visit, where you can meet up with Lord Byron and Andy Warhol in a bistro run by a Hive Mind from Proxima Centauri sounds great. I hope this helps, I hope that I have represented my colleagues in the Design Mechanism fairly and I wish you luck. I may even help.. Tom Gwenthia is developed by the Design Mechanism Gwenthia is an idea by Tom Zunder. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license, visit Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

Ooh, too much detail on second scenario: spoiler alert going off!

I will post my feedback on Gwenthia and the project structure tomorrow. I am quite happy to posit a model and structure. Not going to take a lead but very keen to help transfer knowledge and ideas. It isn't a right-wrong thing, it's choices. I like the licence you suggest, and yes, some people don't always realise that they are having to to be truly open and what that means.

Tekumel. Setting is heaven, but the systems are cursed..

I'd suggest some hard thought about structure. One thing that is worth thinking about is whether you have a core of writers, do you accept others and on what basis, what is the copyright/licence model to use. Is it a democratic, anarchist or benevolent dictatorship model. Do you use a wiki, if so is it open or limited access? I would also suggest that you see if you want to use a geographical or thematic allocation of writers to the project, thematic may prevent the danger of having multiple unrelated locations. How do you arbitrate decisons about the setting, how to resolve conflicts and release synergy and not stalemate..

Just run it, the age reflects when BRP was at the first peak. Once played with younger people the age will fall as they pick it up.

Gwenthia is a shared world fantasy roleplaying setting released under a Creative Commons licence. Now it is a core group that develop it, but under the licence anyone can use it for non commercial use. We are about 85% finished on a MRQ compatible ruleset for Gwenthia, which will be quite useable with BRP if you wish. Ok, plug over, here's the link: index What I will say is that the process is very difficult, the balance between democracy, anarchism, shared ownership, egos, enthusiasm, apathy, friendship and the degree of benevolent dictatorship is very difficult to manage. It is a great thing and we have produced a great setting, but I would suggest that the way that that any project is set up is very very crucial. To that end I stand ready to answer questions and help with ideas.

Terra Primate from Eden is the best guide to the whole Ape genre. Frankly I'd run it as written but it is also a great guide to the genre and more.

Excellent news!

Not disagreeing, but Glorantha and therefore RQ is very high magic, as was Stormbringer..

In some ways I wish they'd do just that. Have a core and stick to it. It's the constant accretions to D&D that turn me off. Now, I think from what I've seen that the new BRP will support layers from detailed combat to simple and/or simplistic. Talk to Jason, the sidebars/optional rules and so on will allow you have your own modular house ruleset and yet stay within the BRP canon and use anything from the past or future.

Chaosium. BRP in the form of RQ2 and CoC was at one point one of the most popular games in the UK. BRP games have been extremely popular in many European countries. It has been allowed to die due to the deep monetary crap Chasoium got into, so all effort went into CoC and fiction and slowly crawling from the pit. This combined with a rather low key marketing approach that just doesn't stand up to that used by Wizards or White Wolf and BRP games have dwindled. That can change but has Chaosium the modern marketing skills to do it? I hope so, I like Charlie and even though his style is retro I believe that BRP games are fun and easy to play. They also have a core mechanic that can be adapted to support new schticks without layering another set of rules on top (my problem with d20 and Mongoose especially). Unlike many here, though, I don't think that a new multi genre generic rulset ALONE will help. I think most successful BRP games have been successes due to the settings and the depth of them. Good supported settings and a groundswell of fan support will raise the profile. However.. simulationist games with simple mechanics are not all that people want. Some people like the gamist schticks of Savage Worlds and some of the indie games, others like the roleplaying support of White Wolf and HeroQuest, others just love the defined career paths of class/level games. CoC itself introduced Sanity, a roleplaying support mechanic, itself. Simple, simulationist and gritty do not appeal to all, so I would be careful pushing it. BRP is quite capable of being utterly over the top, heroic, world destroying..

I quite enjoyed it. Every gamers wet dream (and I include *all* gamers).. IMHO I am not a big Tolkien fan but I respect his work and the Silmarillion and the Children of Hurin are full of Germanic (Anglo-saxon and Norse and German) and Finnish inspired tales and names. His world outlook is also quite doomed and fated, also very Germanic. I have run many short Middle Earth BRP games, slotted around the main LOTR stories, using the Pinnacles source books, I wish they had published the final one. Now, there is a standing joke between me and my mate that NEXT year I will run a BRP Vikings game, but I never have, despite having all the sagas, and history books, and novels and most rpg books. I welcome a tight very NORSE setting book with a series of adventures. I also think the generational approach works, so that you play the summer Viking season and then summarise harvest and winter in a few rolls (but not always of course, the draugr and wyrms come out in winter some years) and then off again next year. If this was supported by fan or web based supplements for Britain and Russia and Byzantium it would be fun. the danger is that it becomes the RQ Alternate Earth which was quite dry. So some depth and/or optional twists need to be in there. Maybe NEXT year, after all, Ragnarok is always an option.