SDLeary

It looks good, but very dense. If you could reduce the color (page density) then it would probably work. I've found the Pendragon one. Attached for reference. SDLeary

Agreed, but if its minimized to this extent, it should be more along the lines of a checklist, omitting narrative. "How to create a character" and whatnot. There is a Pendragon document like this floating around... now if I can only find it... SDLeary

Dustin is still incommunicado, so I think thats whats holding things up. SDLeary EDIT: Well now... someone must have worked a Summoning, because there is a blurb about a new product from Dustin on the front page of the Chaosium site.

Just as a quick side note. PD is NOT the Star Trek universe, its the Star Fleet Universe. Phasers should still be able to disintegrate targets, but to be fair most of the more recent series and movies seem to have issues with this too. Mechanics should be split I think. Not setting though, as for a good number of us this seems to be one of the core areas that affects popularity. Now if someone wants to discuss a specific setting, then yes, I would say new thread. SDLeary

The Ritual itself? Probably not unless the other players had a part to play in the enactment. The prep for the Ritual? Thats another story. Rituals generally require components of some type. An example would be the correct type of wine and the correct flatbread wafers. Does the magician have all the stuff that they need to enact the ritual? Do they have the jawbone of a murderer (yes, I've been watching Supernatural)? Do they have edelweiss? The feather of an eagle, or something of the targets if this is a ritual targeting someone/something? The ritual itself might not be fun for everyone, but the prep certainly could be a few sessions of more general adventuring. Rituals can be easy to implement. Brainstorming now... Enchanting: Enchanting costs POW rather than PP. The cost to enchant an item with a spell effect is n+2 POW; if the enchantment is performed when the item is created, you get a savings, the cost becoming n+1. The enchanted item still needs "juice" when used, costing the user of the item n PP at the time. If the Magician wants the item to not cost PP at the time of use, then n x2 POW must be expended at the time of enchantment. The POW needed for the enchantment may be gained either by sacrifice or by the cooperation of others (they need not be magicians). The Enchanting Ritual takes an amount of time equal to the POW expended in hours. Summoning: This takes an hour rather than a combat round. If you know the true name of the entity, then it takes one combat round for each point of POW the entity has. Thats what I got for now. I've actually been thinking about this for a campaign that I'm getting ready to run. A Shaman for example would use the Pacting rules from Corum and be mainly a summoner and healer. SDLeary

There were some settings. Certainly nothing big until Traveller or Transhuman Space, but there was Camelot, Robin Hood, Vikings, Conan, Discworld, etc. The stuff you have produced so far is excellent, both the BRP and the mRuneQuest stuff. But at some point, Chaosium has to step up to the plate to support its own product. It cannot and should not rely solely on third party publishers. Yes, hence the item at the end stating that I didn't think they would do it. And, honestly, it wouldn't be seppuku, but it would be a change. In fact, the first real change in Cthulhu in a long time. Not much difference in the last three or four versions other than an unreadable color/layout choice in the 20th anniversary edition, which was somewhat fixed in the 25th. The headers font still needs some work. SDLeary

Semantics... at least with Champions (and Superworld), and DI. True, no specific settings like LXG, but certainly settings in the sense of the world of Superman, or the world of Batman, etc. for Champions; the James Bond world for DI. That is, generally played in the modern world with the augments provided by the books. Perhaps, as Rosen has pointed out, genre probably fits better as a descriptive term, but it doesn't quite fit either. In those particular cases, you don't need as much information or support as you do with a full blown fantasy or scifi setting. UA for example doesn't have much of a "setting" either, but there is no denying that its set in the modern world with all the arcane nastiness bolted on. Middle Earth on the other hand, or any fantasy setting, requires much much more focus and support to get across. Same with SciFi. This is because people imagine these types of worlds in different ways. Is SciFi Star Wars or is it Firefly? BRP's setting agnostic stance, while very beneficial in terms of versatility is also its biggest liability should nothing come out that focuses it on a particular setting or genre. Monographs do mitigate this to some extent, but seemingly only for those in the know. Now, one thing that would be really really good for BRP would be bumping Classic Fantasy up, similar to the treatment of Cthulhu Invictus (which I am looking through now, and it looks great!). That would handle the Fantasy genre/setting (it has The Realms). A similar treatment of Cthulhu Rising, with the Mythos stuff as optional would handle basic space faring SciFi (yes it would need a name change). SDLeary

This is of course true, no strong setting. More to the point though is that they do have "Settings", whereas BRP has none. You need at least one supported setting. Hero and GURPS use a more shotgun approach, but I don't really think these games would still be around if they had only published the rules. Hero did come out (like BRP) as a core system for a game, Champions, then with Danger International. Those were already established when Hero was busted out. GURPS, iirc, did have issues at the beginning until setting/supplementary books (magic, monsters, et al.) so that people could have an idea of what could be done with the system. In this particular case, Cthulhu doesn't work as that setting, because its being marketed as a separate game with its own line of supplements. It is generally identified as "Cthulhu", not Cthulhu BPR or some such other linking title. Chaosium could change this by making the next version of Cthulhu into a BRP Setting book, but I don't see them doing that. SDLeary

Excellent! SDLeary

Why I don know whash your talkin about! >:-> SDLeary

Hell no! But getting stuff into places where people look for games is important. FLGS, book stores like Borders (assuming they survive and can pay their distributors), etc. SDLeary

And I think this is the crux. There is no compelling core setting for BRP in distribution. ROME is excellent and could certainly become an excellent core setting, but not on my FLGS shelf. Yes, even in todays world this matters. Many many many people will not buy a book of any type unless they can flip through it and perhaps read the introduction or first chapter. A companion book or books to this that cover the Principate and the Empire would go a long way to establishing this, if it gets into distro. Classic Fantasy is very good. Combine it with the two other volumes in the works, a compelling cover (I'm thinking Hodgson's Dragon Warriors cover at the moment), a run through layout, and a decent amount about the core "world" (The Realms??) and it would be a very very good device to get people into the game.... if it hits distro. I know for a lot of small companies, distribution hits right at the bottom line, that it takes many many more books to make up for the distributors cut. The exposure though can do wonders for a line. Look at Savage Worlds, or other games almost as aged as BRP; GURPS, Hero, etc. Does anyone think that if these systems were launched now and only sold through their publishers sites or Lulu that they would become anywhere near as popular as they are today? So in short I think its a good compelling core setting that gets exposure in a traditional game store environment that would do this. A buddy of mine, who is part owner in a FLGS looked over ROME and lamented that he couldn't get it thru his channels. He has also commented on the excellent cover of Merrie England. SDLeary

Honestly, this time around, it sounds like LOZ will in fact be listed as author, at least from all I've heard so far. SDLeary

Just revceived a copy of Corum which I ordered on the 8th. As far as I can tell, the status of the order is still Order Being Prepared. Now to disclose, I'm only about 20 mi from their warehouse, but still SDLeary

Looking at the errata pages, not that much more than divine or spirit. SDLeary

Ah, that is actually on p.57. Critical Hits and Critical Parries: Critical Success Attack Roll... "... Though the target's armor may not subtract anything from this damage, a successful parry by the target will block the amount of damage that it normally would, only any damage beyond that will affect the target." And prior to that it states the normal armor bypass. The way we played that was, parry blocks AP amount of damage, parrying weapon AP reduced by one; balance of damage getting through while bypassing armor. This has always been the interpretation that I've used, and the GMs I've played with (including Sandy's campaign) have used. SDLeary

From p.50 of the single book version of RQ3, Damage to Parrying Weapons: "A successful parry blocks points of damage only equal to the parrying weapon's armor points. If more points of damage get through, they go on to the body of the parrier, doing normal damage. In this case, the parrying weapon also loses 1 armor point, simulating the damage it took blocking such an overwhelming blow. If the parry was a special success, the weapon takes no damage; a critical success parry roll means that no damage got through, even if the attack was a critical success." Thats the way we played it in Sandy's campaign in the beginning. Later, iirc, we also had damage done at same success level. SDLeary

AP was the way things worked in RQ3. HP, yes. But you only deduct from the parrying weapons or shields HP when it has parried a blow that is a level of success higher than the parry itself. SDLeary

Rough-ish ETA to the left side of The Pond? SDLeary

Unlikely, but not impossible. Even in RQ3 we had several instances where a green character would continually make their parry until the "skilled" character either whittled them down by destroying the shield or weapon, or a Critical occurred. Yes, the Critical was something that cropped up more often, but when using a shield even this doesn't always take out a character. In BRP, in similar situation, the crit is the only hope if your opponent consistently makes their parry. There is no whittling down option. Is it likely? No, but it does happen. SDLeary

Broadsword was an impaling weapon, so in theory you could do 2d8+2+DB, so you could potentially have a much nastier crit. Bastard Sword on the other had could not impale, RAW. SDLeary

Thanks Pete! Thats exactly the type of experience that I was looking for! Off hand, when a partial parry does occur, do you recall if it happens more often with a shield or with a weapon? SDLeary

We did have some magic in ours, but none of us were rune-level, so armor was not always possible beyond leathers and shields. Some combats later in the campaign were long, and would have been longer were it not for the magic, but I would hate to see what those would have been like if a parry blocked all, rather than X amount of damage. It was the fact that damage did get past the shield that would nickel-and-dime us to death, even before the fatigue began to effect us. SDLeary

Pete, In your combats, how often do you only achieve a partial parry; that is the blade of the sword, head of an axe or mace, etc., come in at an angle that you don't fully parry (using shield or weapon), so that you are still impacted by the business portion of the weapon with noteable but not full force? SDLeary

From what I read here, its not the system that is the issue. Its the amount of magic and artifacts being used. Remove the artifacts and take away the magic, the special shields, etc. and rerun combats (I understand its a long time ago) at that level and I think you'll come out with a very different result. SDLeary