lawrence.whitaker

Quote

Dodge vs. Evade is a trivial example, I know, but you know Mongoose changed the name just so there would be one less thing to sue over.

Actually, no. Pete and I changed it for MRQII (if you check MRQ1, you'll see Dodge is in the basic skill list) because we changed the way dodging/evasion work mechanically to better fit with the new combat rules. This whole idea that Mongoose changed things to avoid being sued is just baloney. They had a legitimate license for RuneQuest and obviously had to rewrite core text to avoid standard copyright issues with BRP and earlier RQ editions - but no one was going to sue anyone for anything.

What 3d6 said.

16 minutes ago, Jae said:

 

Doesn't that free up TDM to finish off their work on Adventures in Glorantha and release it before their license expires in July next year? Or is it truly nixed by Mood Design?

We don’t have a license to publish AiG (beyond what was agreed for the GenCon preview), so we won’t be doing any further work in it.

I do pop by quite frequently, but on the next version of RQ there's not much I can say. It's in the hands of the Chaosium team and I'm sure they'll reveal more about the game's content and direction when they are ready to do so.

However, when the dust settles, the fantasy rpg of choice for me, and the game system I am invested in, is the RQ rules written by Pete & Loz. This is not only because of the quality of design, which is high, but also the direction they are taking the game. I'd love to see a range of well researched Mythic titles to pick and choose (and mix?) from.

Thank you for the vote of confidence. It means a lot and Design Mechanism is going to be working doubly hard to ensure we continue the work we’ve started.

At $2.99, it's both a no brainer and an educational aid.

:)

Splitters!

Unlikely that there will be an English translation, although it will be finding its way onto the DM site during the week.

You missed ‘Snakes? Why did it have to be snakes?’ 100%.

Where’s the RuneQuest theme gone?

Not sure yet. I would think that TDM books will be licensed for RuneQuest and BRP, and so carry a 'compatible with' notification.

I run a biweekly Glorantha campaign, using RuneQuest 6, at my FLGS, ‘Dan’s Books and Games’ in Cobourg, ON. I’ll post updates here, on Facebook, G+ and the Design Mechanism forums.

The characters are:

Dread: a Pavisite thief who sadly never knew his father (although everyone else apparently did)

Vicious: a Praxian zebra rider and initiate of Waha (and who carries his surrogate father’s spirit with him in his cloak and spear)

Erick: an Orlanthi initiate from Sartar (who seems to be incredibly unlucky)

Jaldon: an Agimori who has also initiated to Waha and taken the name Jaldon in honour of Jaldon Goldentooth (and is a fine, upstaning warrior)

See, Listen, Speak: a Beaked dragonewt from Dragon’s Eye, atoning for a heinous bout of Wrong Action many lifetimes ago (and who counts a grain of sand as one of his best friends)

The characters are heading through Prax and towards Esrolia. Having spent several days in The Dead Place, they discovered and defeated a nest of Vivamort cultists (who nearly butchered the entire party) and encountered the remains of a Jrusteli War Spell laboratory located in a remote chasm. Investigating said laboratory in a bid to wipe out remaining vampires, two of the party were infected with dreadful, Living Spells, and inadvertently brought back to life the God Learner sorcerer and Zistorite exile Loric Nygh. Loric Nygh now occupies the twisted, Cronenberg-esque body that incorporates two doomed lovers, and he is all the more malevolent for it. The party have managed to escape the sorcerer, taking his silver torc (resplendent with the runes of Law, Mastery, Death and Fate) and are now hot-footing it towards Jaldon’s Rest where they intend to make some more concrete plans.

Pursuing them at a leisurely pace is Gimgim the Grim, eager to punish them for a double-cross in Pavis and at Duke Raus’s stronghold. Will he catch them? Who knows… but wouldn’t it be just terribly bad luck if he and Loric Nygh chanced upon each other and formed an unholy alliance. It would?

Oh, goody...

Scourged Earth is Meeros' world, right?

No, it’s a separate world. Imagine a cross between Moorcock, Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith and Philippe Druillet, and you’re on the right lines.

And what about The Realm?

We’ll continue to publish Realm-set scenarios. I see this as how most of our campaign settings will be developed: as much background as needed, then fleshed out via adventures and scenarios.

You don't mention Classic Fantasy. So I guess there are things underway for this title that you cannot mention. I hope it will end up as a self-contained rpg.

It wasn’t deliberate. Editing is about complete and we have some rules-stuff to decide upon. We’ll be making a fuller announcement in due course, but ‘Classic Fantasy’ is our first, big 2016 release.

And, I know it's not published by DM, but do you have any news of Future Earth? The BRP version was a lot of fun.

I don’t. This is Sarah Newton’s baby, and hopefully she’ll swing by and talk about it.

Sorry Joerg, but it’s an expansion/companion to Mythic Britain, focused on the Saxon emigres and their attempt to carve out a society for themselves while the indigenous natives get a bit upset about it all.

So nothing about their native lands, or other places in the Great Migration.

I did not know about Kaleb D'aark. But they (GW) also perpetrated the embarassing High Elf Gilead!

In that hideous interregnum when White Dwarf ceased to be a roleplaying magazine and was morphing into a Warhammer catalogue (something the disingenuous editors at the time denied, whilst also denying that WD had ever been anything other than a GW mouthpiece), here was a dreadful comic strip drawn by either Brett Ewins or Brendan McCarthy and featured Kaleb D’aark, some sort of murderous high-elf thingy with a soul-sucking axe shaped like the jawbone of a very bad ass. It truly was bad, and quickly became known as Kaleb Cliche.

Mind you, GW were ripping off Moorcock and Tolkien wholesale and simultaneously for Warhammer, so one shouldn’t be surprised.

I haven’t read the Witcher novels, but this character doesn’t seem to me to be any less egregious an Elric knock-off than the Steve Erikson half-demon in the Malazan books, or the ludicrous Kaleb D’aark from Warhammer.

In fact, fantasy is filled with knock-off characters and pastiches. It’s all part of the heritage.

I'm surprised no Gloranthan stuff however, considering the upcoming RQ Glorantha book. I have liked previous stuff for Thennla, so at least that will be expanded upon.

I can understand the Moon Design crew handling the Glorantha  content, but I wondering how that ports to RQ? I think it's easy enough to port HQ on the fly for experienced GMs, but all the same, I would have thought Glorantha would also be supported with RQ - or are Moon Design doing both Glorantha RQ and HQ supplements?

Failing that, maybe PDFs could be published with the official RQ conversions of the HQ Glorantha products. Although I love RQ, I also really like Glorantha and still want to play RQ in the Gloranthan setting.

You’re misunderstanding the whole relationship. Moon Design (and subsequently Chaosium) own Glorantha. Design Mechanism has no license to produce Gloranthan material. Therefore, as RQ reverts to Chaosium next year, Design Mechanism cannot produce any independent RQ Gloranthan material. However, Pete and I, as part of the Chaosium team, are heavily involved in both RQ and Glorantha, meaning that any RuneQuest Glorantha material will come out via Chaosium, and not Design Mechanism. DM simply cannot produce any Gloranthan works independently.

I’m cross posting this from the Design Mechanism board. It’s a response to a question raised by Trippy Hippy, and it’s relevant here too.

Without wanting to ask you to discuss things you cannot currently, is there a plan to release a lot more original titles through [Design Mechanism], after the ones you have already planned for have been released? What sort of areas/genres are you interested in exploring?

Our release plans have had to be modified, and Pete and I have a few things to work out - more around how rules are handled than the titles we publish. Some things I can expand on.

1. More Mythics - Mesopotamia, Saxons and Greece. Not sure what will happen with Mythic Constantinople. Mob says he still wants to do it and has an outline written (indeed, Pete and I have played in part of it), but it’s a long shot. Mythic Britain will be extended by both a Logres, Saxon-based campaign (written by Paul Mitchener) and more scenarios from me (I have one I’ll be playtesting at a couple of local cons and with my own group).

2. More Arkwright - Scenarios and Parallels. I’m actually keen to see submissions for Arkwright adventures so if you have an idea, let me know.

3. More Sword and Sorcery - I’m actively thinking about expanding the Scourged Earth setting hinted at in the GM Pack, and resurrecting a set of Elric/Stormbringer scenarios I wrote many years ago to fit with the setting. One scenario is complete and I’m working on another. I’ve also been fleshing out the Scourged Earth/Wall background with some physics and dimensions for the Wall itself.

4. More Thennla - I have Jon’s Taskan Campaign waiting for review and layout. I’ve postponed work on this pending some of the rules considerations we need to make, but it will certainly appear. I will also be talking to Jon about Assabian Rites as the next book.

5. More one-offs - Short scenarios and so on.

6. A project we can’t announce yet, but is genre-based and should be a lot of fun.

What you won’t see from us is any Gloranthan material. That will be handled through Chaosium. However, I’m heavily involved in laying out Ian Cooper’s ‘Coming Storm’ books, and I’m very keen to create an RQ stat pack for it.

There will be a much fuller announcement on Design Mechanism’s future this side of Christmas. There are going to be some important changes, but we’re still writing, developing, commissioning and publishing our own stuff, so from that POV, it’s business as usual.

Seems like the easier solution when you have players that do nothing but target the head is to have NPCs ward that location with their shield and wear helmets. Warding that location covers "the enemy sees it coming" and doesn't rely on adding another layer of rules to keep track of. 

In MRQ2 we introduced a penalty to the attacker's hit roll if he or she continually chose the same Effect, thereby simulating the fact that they were at a disadvantage because they were predictable in their combat style. It's easier to do it that way, for the reasons you suggest.

I think it's more accurate to say that damage is the icing on the SE cake.

This is very true. A little while ago, Jeff Richard remarked somewhere on how RQ combat was really just a war of Hit Point attrition. That used to be the case, and still is with some d100 games, but it isn't true with the Special Effects in play. It suddenly becomes about preventing your opponent from retaliating, be it from an offensive or defensive standpoint, and the range of effects provides for many different ways of gaining this advantage. Most RQ6 fights aren't lost on Hit Points going into the negative; they're lost from combatants simply being unable to retaliate effectively - or at all.

I watched the first two episodes back to back last night.

It's... okay, but at the moment neither Game of Thrones or Vikings have anything to worry about.

Large sections of the first book have been jettisoned, and to me the thing felt rushed. Some scenes were far too dark, and there was a lot of mumbling going on. The battle scene was okay, but there should be better to come. It was reasonably faithful to the book, save for dumping lots of plot, and it'll be interesting to see who they develop the story over the next 6 episodes.

So not bad, but not brilliant. There's time for improvement though.

By the way, people missing the point of a game mechanic can be very informative for a game designer.  Maybe the mechanic is OK, but its presentation can be improved...

Of course, and we do listen to feedback, whether direct or indirect :). My point though, is that Jux said: they are too detailed and are suited only for specific flavor of gameplay. I'd disagree that they're too detailed, but agree that, until one is used to them, they can be overwhelming (and how they're introduced is partly about presentation - no argument there). Where I think the point is missed is the 'specific flavour of gameplay': well, the Effects are there to take what is otherwise a quite bland combat system and turn it into something evocative, flexible and, most importantly, fun. In other words, to introduce some flavour. The effects don't favour any particular style of game play, but they do encourage people to be a little more creative than Hit/Parry/Damage/Rinse/Repeat.

Anyhow, Pete and I are hoping to be able to share more of BRP Essentials with people quite soon. We've had to be very quiet recently, but we do want to talk about the game more openly and, once the current review round is complete, I'm hoping that will be possible.

It airs on the 22nd, I believe.

Characteristics are the traditional range. They're not percentile. And combat will include Effects. Saying that they're only suited to a specific style of game play is to miss their point entirely.

Personality traits were originally in Griffin Mountain, and then found their way into Pendragon.

Passions as found in RQ6 (and they are in BRP Essentials) were created by me for MRQ1 Elric of Melnibone, and subsequently developed through MRQ2 and then into RQ6.