Jakob

Granted, I'm just saying that not everyone wants to write a setting. I'm writing a series of scenarios for Mythras at the moment (not under any kind of open license, by the way - I'm simply working with the German publishers of Mythras), and the background is nothing more than an implied, pseudo-European fantasy middle ages that feels slightly more historical than your average fantasy campaign and has some fairytale elements. You could drop these adventures in most D&D campaign (though tonally, they might feel a little different). There are a lot of people who approach scenario writing like this: They don't have a big campaign or a gaming world, they offer story-hooks and micro-settings that can be freely combined and hacked to fit into other worlds (often worlds that gaming groups just make up along the way). Now, if there's an open gaming license that allows you to just write a scenario without having to feature lots of additional rules, you can get this thriving community of many people offering little things that are then freely combined by GMs to create their own world from it; if, however, each product comes with its own setting-dependent subsystems, it will be much harder for GMs to make everything work together smoothely. For me, it is not that much about the limitations; I feel that most of them are quite reasonable. It's more about the decision to make the SRD so extremely rules-lite that you can't really use it as a rulebook in itself. BRP offers so many options - why not include them, where they're not married to specific Chaosium settings? Why not include passions as an option, for example? I get that they are fundamental building blocks of RuneQuest: RiG and Pendragon, but you could still use the passion rules as written in RiG for "Romeo & Juliet: The RPG" without coming close to violating Chaosiums Pendragon and Glorantha IPs. I just want to see that beautiful proliferation of weird and creative material that is out there for old school D&D (which, as a rule-set, is just not my cup of tea) for BRP. As someone else stated in this thread, criticism means that people care. I don't think anyone here is just trying to be annoying or angry because they wanted to build a BRP Glorantha clone, and now they can't. People just want to see more great BRP stuff.

Okay, I have to be honest here ... I, too, think that the BRP SRD could have been handled better. I really don't want to nitpick, but a document with only a minimal set of rules that doesn't feature the wealth and flexibility of BRP is just not very helpful. And I don't even mean that in terms of "being allowed to use things", but in terms of just being able to reference things without having to spell them out oneself. As things are, I can't just publish a fantasy scenario and give the NPCs magic as it is spelled out in an SRD and direct my readers to that for further details, because there is nothing like that in the SRD. I actually need to explain how magic is supposed to work in my scenario. That is not only a big hurdle to clear for an author, it will also result in community material that is much less inter-compatible, with each product having it's own magic system. The BRP SRD as it is may be good for people who want to create their own BRP-based RPGs; but I don't think it will lead to the wealth of small, sometimes extraordinarily creative indie scenarios that we get for old school D&D, because it just doesn't present a sufficient point of reference. Add to that insecurities about what is allowed and what is not ... Maybe the main intention of the SRD is to allow people to create their own BRP rpgs; then that's just how it is, and everyone who had something else in mind can just move on. It will certainly work for that, because if someone is actually creating their own RPG, they will certainly contact Chaosium about it at some point, anyway, to clear up any questions. But if the idea is also to allow people to publish all kinds of small stuff for BRP, the SRD definitely needs to be fleshed out to provide a usable common frame of reference.

Sounds like everyone did the right thing here! I was (and am) really looking forward to this RPG, and if it has become clear that it is such a personal project for Chris Spivey that he needs complete creative control, that actually makes it even more interesting. Chaosium has enough in its plate, and I kind of hope that the switch to Darker Hue Studios might even mean that we'll get to see Kadimah sooner rather than later.

Good point, although I tend not to think too much about stuff like this; a slightly higher chance for fumbles than for critical sucesses can be interpreted as a bug, as a feature or as just some rules artifact without much consequence - after all, there's no "rule" in real life that says that things should go extremenly well as often as they go terribly wrong in a linear relation to their chances of going moderately well or moderately wrong ...

Haven't heard of it yet, but I'm curious about it at the very least!

(As I already said on your blog): Big yay to practically all of that! Skyrealm settings are always welcome, and this sounds really like the version of OpenQuest I’ve been waiting for. Ditching SIZ is definitely something I’m happy with, and so is rolled armor (good Stormbringer vibes there!). Just modifiying the skill of the PC according to her/his opponents resisting skill score for opposed tests also sounds very reasonable. And while Magic Points never really bothered me, I’m definitely on board with trying something different in that regard. Now, if you also go with doubles (11,22, …) as crits/fumbles, this will probably be the perfect d100 system for me (and if you don’t, it still sounds like the near-perfect d100 system for me, which is close enough). Just backed it and very much looking forward to it! #And an additional question, because someone has to ask it: What you say about the system indeed looks very much like what we know about OpenQuest3 ... so will OQ3 become the D101 system? I would not be against it - you could keep OQ2 as it is, as a game that hews more closely to its RuneQuest roots, and have the D101 system as an alternative that stands on its own feet.

Very much looking forward to this!

I'm just reading Cthulhu Invictus (by Golden Goblin Press) and haven't been so delighted by an RPG sourcebook in a long time. For a someone like me who is not that well-versed in classic history, it feels like the perfect introduction to Imperial Rome for RPG purposes. There's a lot of information about the harsh social reality of that times right there in the introduction, and it is all very concise and well-written. The text gives some suggestions about how to deal with status in play, especially with regards to foreigners ("barbarians") and slaves, and briefly outlines gender roles and relations. All of this clearly with an eye on how to make the setting work at the gaming table, and all on the first few pages. I'm about halfway through the book, and everything seems exceptionally well-done (including the layout, which manages to get a LOT of text on each page without compromising readiblity). There's Cthulhu Mythos variants of a bunch of mythological creatures like centaurs and harpies, if you feel you need these, there's write-ups of secret organisations for characters to belong to or to fight, there's a chapter on the Roman legion, on the City of Rome and on the Roman Empire and its provinces; and there's two scenarios (haven't read those yet, though). Really, this a great sourcebook - I think I'm going to throw a lot more money at Golden Goblin Press and everything with the name Oscar Rios on it in the near future ...

Of course ... it just sounds like if it happens, it is probably at least two or three years down the road ...

🙁 I was really looking forward to this ...

"When will justice triumph? When the bravest heroes command the ultimate fighting machines!" Sounds very mecha - which, to me personally, is a pity, because that's a genre that does nothing for me. Still, let's wait and see ... maybe I'll be surprised after all.

Gale Force 9 and Modiphius are working on an official Dune rpg at the moment, so it can't be that.

Somehow, I doubt that it'll be Iron Sky - The RPG (mostly because of the "40 years" thing ...). I'm curious whether it will be really scifi; underground/deep space could be Lovecraftian, as well, or some brand of weird fantasy ...

How about to try an (maybe over-)analyze the OP? This would seem to mean something like "the RPG you've been waiting for since there are RPGs." So it probably means that this is a setting that has been in existence prior to RPGs, hasn't been done yet as RPG and that mostly everyone would feel is overdue for the RPG treatment. Seriously, what could that be? Star Wars, Middle-Earth, the Young Kingdoms, Dying Earth, Lankhmar, Star Trek, Amber, the Cthulhu Mythos ... they've all been done several times, and most of them are actively licensed by other companies, anyway. The same goes for pretty much all major superhero universes (which the other part of the OP seems to point to); we certainly haven't waited 40 years for a Justice League RPG, since there have been several DC universe RPGs already ... My take based only on the first quote would be a fully realized, newby-friendly Tekumel RPG. I know there have been several Tekumel rpgs, but they are all quite esoteric (the take by the Guardians of Order was a valiant try, but it never really went anywhere). And Tekumel is certainly an essential part of RPG history. Still, that doesn't ring true with the rest of the OP. So, what am I missing? Is the "waiting for for 40 years" reference about the history of RPGs in the narrower sense (something that has always been a part of the rpg landscape, but has never been fully realized), or does it just mean that this is about a setting that should have been an rpg for a long time?

Okay, this is that very special license? I must confess that I'm curious. I mean, I've been waiting for this since I was one year old 😉

I just finished reading Jo Walton's excellent novel Lent, which is set in 15th century Florence. Made me think of Fioracitta and how much I'm looking forward to this setting book again ... Any idea when we're going to see it? Hearing the podcast again (thanks, inwils!) also made me wonder if this could turn out a "backdoor pilot" for a bigger setting spanning several books, but I guess it is much too early to ask questions like this ...

I'm very curious about this - I actually haven't read Agony & Ecstasy yet, but Mike Larrimore did some great conceptual work with elevation, so let's see what he does for a superhero setting!

I'm taking the opportunity to mention that the Mythras Gateway license is really the most creator-friendly one I have encountered (and I've read a lot of these licenses recently). A lot of the so-called "community content programs" go far beyond protecting their own IP and take away your IP or block you from using it. And a lot of them are not as up-front about this as one would wish (you don't get to read the terms of the Cypher System CCP before you are actually ready to publish something for it on drivethru rpg - so you've already done all the work, and then you find out that you can only publish it by giving up your IP ...). The Gateway license lets you keep your IP and is very straightforward about what it allows and what it doesn't. And it's extremely fair.

I'd suggest looking into either Mythras (if you want a complex, extensive set of BRP-derived roles) or OpenQuest (if you want to go rules lite). Mythras has the so-called Gateway licence, which is, from all that I hear, very creator-friendlich. You can contact Lawrence Whitakter ("Loz"), one of its authors and publishers, here on the boards. OpenQuest ist totally open to everyone, you don't even need a license - there's a third edition in the works right now. You can contact OQ's author also here through the message boards ("Newt").

Yes, sounds defintely like the first or 2nd edition of Unknown Armies.

To be honest, that's pretty much the extent of it for me ... I read some parts of the rules in earnest - basically everything up to advanced combat; and at some point, I just felt lost. I feel that I should not need to read a set of rules several times before understanding them well enough to give them a spin. Of course, if I play something for I while, I keep re-reading sections, but to be honest, when I try out a system (especially one based on a "school" I already know, like BRP), I normally expect to be able to run a first game (warts and all) based on reading about a third to half of the actual rules. Afte reading a while in RD100, it became clear to me that I'd probably have to work through the whole thing two times to get a grasp of the basics. Something that especially stuck with them were the rules for Fate points - I just couldn't follow the text, I didn't understand what "activating" and "de-activating flaws" actually meant, and the whole thing just felt overwrought to me; however, I can't say if that is a problem with the actual rules or with their presentation. On the other hand, I love the concept of traits, of advantage, I like the fast-and-easy character creation, I find it very interesting how armour works, and I think I like how strike ranks and hit points are basicall merged to interact (though I have some reservations about the bookkeeping).

Okay, I'm satisfied that I have understood the rules correctly! I'll have to see if the rules fit my planned campaign - they sound great for Stormbringer/Elric (I think the edition of Stormbringer I played didn't have them in this form, but I'm not sure, it's been so long ...). However, I'm planning for something more low-key with less active cosmic forces.

Sounds good - I'm pretty happy with the core rules from what I've read, I just want to see them spelled out more clearly (I'm a lazy role-player - if something seems to complicated in reading, I usually never try it out, even if it might be simple in practice ...).

I'm just re-reading Magic World with an eye to using it for a new campaign, and I'm wondering whether I'm getting the Allegiance rules right. Allegiance Check: Roll UNDER current allegiance to raise Allegiance by d6. Okay, that kind of makes sense - the stronger your bond, the more likely it is to increase. Allegiance Test (if you act against allegiance): Roll UNDER corrent allegiance to avoid losing d6/d8(shadow) from your score. Also makes sense - a stronger bond is harder to weaken. If you make use of your allegiance Benefits, you have to make an Allegiance Check at the end of the session - that would be the one where Allegiance can go up (not go down). Also makes sense, especially if you think of the clichees about shadow: the more you are using its power, the farther it draws you in. However, all in all, it looks as if Allegiance is bound to skyrocket from a certain point on, especially when it is beyond 100%. Given the hefty Benefits of Allegiance, this seems problematic. Am I getting the rules right? How do others read this? Has anyone ever encountered problem with a player powergaming an allegiance to the extreme?

So, any news on AB&B?