smiorgan

Definitely. A huge lot of respect. He did a great job in putting out a very enjoyable game, working in very unfavorable conditions - as he makes even clearer in the rpg.net. thread.

Any videos? podcasts? reports?

I see what you mean here. It depends on how fine grained you want to be and whether you adopt a fan or business perspective. I was thinking in broad strokes and from the perspective of the company: old Chaosium was like "Hey, we don't have a fantasy rpg anymore, so why not put out MW as a low budget side project". New Chaosium's thinking is more "We have limited resources and we are doing RQ7, and 13A Glorantha, based on a hugely succesful d20 game, we are re-doing Mythic Iceland, which won a Ennie and has Vikings in it. So, we will think twice before putting out a generic-looking fantasy game unless we are sure it has a clear niche market worth the hassle".

For old Chaosium, without the rights to RQ's name and the Elric license, Magic World filled the niche of a fantasy implementation of BRP. Now, Chaosium is putting out a new RQ that goes back to the roots of the BRP tradition. So, that niche is gone. I'd love to see MW reborn as a supplement of the the new trimmed down BRP Essentials. Specifically targeted to beginners and younger gamers. Something like 64-96 pages including the Southern Reaches and 2 introductory scenarios. With beautiful art, character and monster cutouts and a colored map. That would rock. On a side note, the fact that the new RQ will be based on RQ2 is a great plus. From what I have seen, lovers of BGB/ Elric!/ RQ3/ ElfQuest/ Stormbringer/ CoC6, whatever will have zero difficulty in cannibalizing stuff from the new RQ, which is much closer to older Chaosium games than MRQ/ MRQ2/ RQ6 or even CoC7

Thanks. It may be true that a picture is worth a 1000 words, but sometimes you need to know the language to understand the picture. I agree he could have been MORE bitter about that. Magic World is one of the rough gems of the latter days of old Chaosium. I quite like its ruleset: it improves on the already strong Elric rules with many little touches (like skill category modifiers, levels of success,), I like the fact that it inherits RQ3 monsters and Elric's demon magic, I like its very evocative little setting. I like it was Ben's labor of love. Yet, its many typos, bland layout and (in my opinion) ugly art make it a low point for Chaosium in terms of production value. Also its title is problematic. It is a tribute to Lynn Willis and his Elric! rules and magic system (Sorcery in BGB), yet it takes the title of a booklet by Steve Perrin, in Worlds of Wonders, which proposed a different (and in my view excellent) take on magic rules (the Magic system in the BGB). Being a fan of both I am in two minds about that. I understand the new Chaosium management is not in principle against revisiting Magic World, they just have other priorities for now. But, if they revisit it they might decide to take a rather different approach than the one in Ben's labor of love.

Not sure I got what Ben is saying exactly.

I think that we are heading towards a scenario where Basic Rolepaying will be the title of the basic, stripped down version of the RuneQuest system. As it was originally. CoC and RQ have evolved on partially divergent paths. I'm not sure it make much sense now to say that they are powered by the "same" system. I think that train passed when the old Chaosium decided not to base CoC7 on BGB (not sure if they actually did decide or it was strategy by happenstance). Now, that CoC7 is there and is very successful there is no chance of going back. If I have understood correctly the strategy of the new Chaosium is going back to a situation where Chaosium published separate, setting specific, rulesets, which may share parts of the core engine. More a "family of Chaosium d100 games", than a sytem. Plus, they will publish also stuff that is not d100 at all (13A, HQ). Honestly, I'm rather happy with that and looking forward to what they will put forth.

There was a time when you were content. Attending to your duties, repairing the World's Machine. You knew what had to be done. And what had to be avoided: mistakes above all! But something happened. Suddenly, something was wrong with you. You were an Error. You were Broken. You wanted to know who you were. You weren't happy being a gear in the World's Machine. You wanted to be you, to be alive. You wanted to feel alive. Now you are out in the big scary alive world out there. There is no place were you fit. You are a square peg in a round hole. I'd play such a character right now! Challenging because he/she has no community were he belongs. But surely has a reason for adventuring. Become someone! As for the Morokanth, dunno... You are an intelligent overweight tapir who regards humans as cattle (or more correctly herds quasi-humans from the Planet of the Apes) and would like to have an opposable thumb... Sounds cool. But I don't find it inherently more approachable than the misfit dwarf.

I remember two things... Very early on JD had given his feedback (which remained confidential) on a draft of BRP Essentials based on RQ6. I think this was the booklet that has now become "Mithras Imperative". At a later point, when RQ6 had already been set aside, he was listed among several people "giving feedback" on the manuscript of the new RQ. So, the news would be that he now has a much bigger role as editor of the whole manuscript.

That was my approach too when I run a (sadly dead) TEW campaign. WFRP is a nice flavorful game with a lot of BRP/RQ/CoC/Stormbringer influences. It's not worth converting it to RQ/BRP in my view. I did convert to the second edition of WFRP though, which streamlines some mechanics. You can find the 2nd edition conversions of all TEW stats online.

This is great news to see Jason Durall back to d100. As a fan of both "RQ-the-Gloranthan-RPG" and "BRP-the-d100-system" I am delighted. So, now I'm guessing who is going to edit that slim BRP Essentials booklet ....

Very useful!

This. Something like the reverse of what happened with Warhammer: when they did the (original) RPG they maintained a resemblance that made porting character from the miniature game to the rpg (and vice versa) relatively simple.

I'd love the skirmish rules to be tightly connected to RQ.

Resistance table still there! Love it. ... and yes, the whole background and runes thing seem to work well!

Emphatically agree! Chaosium have put the band back together but should not become a tribute band to themselves. I applaud that you try new things like 13th Age Glorantha, Eurogames and whatnot.

Seems a sensible approach. I look forward to the Malkioni book! Just to be clear: I also love Dragon Pass & Prax...

Can I play a sorcerer-warrior of the Order of the Swallow wading knee-deep in blood as he hammers the Kingdom of War with sword and sorcery? Can I play a secretive Arkati cultist in league with the Trolls in Safelster? Or it's Dragon Pass only? Smiorgan

You said it. This is the purest essence of runequestitude. P.S. RQ6 was quite strong on the woman-fighting-lizard front, and Grecian armor for that matter, but it was severely short on ducks. P.P.S. And add (not too) intelligent baboons, please. ... and a Kyger Litor cult, to get the ball rolling.

If it is modular like that, I'm sold. In fact, modularity is one of the great strengths of RQ/BRP games.

**JOKE MODE ON** Can your maternal grandfather die in chargen before your mother was conceived? **JOKE MODE OFF** Impressive tool for a Pendragonesque Dragon Pass campaign. Very immersive. I'd like also to have an alternative option for quick chargen to accommodate different play styles and the possibility of zero-to-hero for those who like it. Sometimes one just wants to fight baboons off Gringle's pawnshop and start worrying about ancestors, picking up passions, later in the campaign. Just my two cents.

That's very cool. I mean, I'm emotionally attached to the BW layouts of Chaosium of the early 1990s - they were clean and classy, but it's right that Chaosium now embraces the level of visual quality of the rpg books of this century! I really look forward to full-color editions of RuneQuest and Mythic Iceland.

OK, you got me thinking. But, beware, I'm thinking all kinds of awesomeness!

I applaud this sensible approach! And I much prefer to have fewer, well edited and well supported games/settings than a haphazard release schedule as we had with BRP in the last years of the old Chaosium. For instance, while I like very much Magic World's sleek BRP rules and delightful mini-seting, I hate that the game was full of typos, had minor rules inconsistencies, bland to ugly art and that it was not properly supported, It's very hard for a game presented like that to sell. And the same goes for Chronicles of Future Earth. Nifty setting. No support. Mythic Iceland is an exception. It is so good that it shines even in a modest presentation.

Mmh... So, I guess you were more excited in the early 2000s when Chaosium only announced Dragon Lords of Melniboné d20 and dual-statted reprints of old CoC books. Sorry. I couldn't resist! More seriously. These things happen. In the heyday of the d20 era I often felt that virtually nothing of what the entire rpg iundustry was producing was of any interest to me. Given that I wasn't interested in either d20 or Forge stuff and Chaosium was producing very little. I still remember how excited I was when WRFP2 came out around 2005. Perhaps the first game to break with the d20 mold and to reconnect to ages past. Then it was the turn of the flawed but important MRQ1. And then all sorts of things were possible again...