Questbird

I use Allegiance points to power Channeling spells. That is, one magic point from the caster and the rest from his or her Allegiance.

I really like some of your ideas, especially the half-INT number of initial spell lists and the magical damage bonus idea. My players never really used the damaging spells so I didn't come up with a way to adapt that. The advantage of Spell Law is that you can create really diverse and specific spell casters by using the various spell lists in the book. Good job! The Arms Law criticals idea is interesting too.

Sounds like a Renaissance Big Gold Book project. Good luck!

Don't forget one major difference between Magic World and OpenQuest: the latter is still in print. (Although the former is not too hard to find.)

The Hârn Pilot's Almanac, if you can get it, also has a lot of fees and charges for ships. It includes port fees and tide times for every Lythian port. Which is kind of useless if you're not playing in Hârn, but it would be easy to make a similar table for Southern Reaches ports if you were running a maritime/trading campaign.

Yes, and if you have some method of increasing your skill, you gain access to the appropriate spells. Mentalists do: they use the skill as a chance to 'cast' the mentalism effect as normal; they just don't use Magic Points to power them. Channelers, not so much. They need the basics of the skill (maybe 10%) but most of the work comes from the deity. If you think that makes the skill worthless, an alternate way of doing it might be to make an Allegiance check to your deity to cast the spell, adding the skill level to the check. It depends on how powerful divine magic is in your world. Hmm. Sorry I haven't had to rule on these.

I use a few magic systems which I've cobbled together from other games but they suit my style of play and probably not yours (entirely). I play mostly a low-power magic world, so that will turn you off. However I do like strategic and long-term spell casting, and these are not in your list so that might interest you. 1. The Maelstrom magic system from a little game from the 80s. Freeform and based on probability. No pre-written spells, just desired effects and influencing the chance of them happening. Effects are more subtle because 'natural' events are more likely (and therefore easier to cast) than unnatural ones. 2. An adaptation of ICE/Rolemaster's Spell Law for BRP. This would work for any third party spell list with levelled spells. 3. A 1980s board game called Magic Realm used an interesting magic system based on magical colours which were sources of power for particular types of spells. The colours could occur 'naturally' in certain places or times, and where one was present all spells requiring that particular colour could be cast. Portable versions of the colours could also be created by spell casters by locking up some of their power; they could be used to power spells later. Also some artifacts were sources of one colour or another. This system allows for arbitrarily powerful magic, but only in the presence of the right colour, requiring some forward-planning by would-be sorcerers.

I couldn't do the poll (maybe I already did it in 2016) but I use Elric! as my base, and homebrew from whatever other d100 things make sense.

I think the Allegiance system expects most people to do a mixture of actions, earning them points for all the forces. It's only the dedicated ones who attain and keep >20 point difference between their allegiances. The system encourages roleplaying in a small way without being too heavy handed if you 'fail' to honour the allegiances.

If you can find the monograph Rubble and Ruin (a more..immediate post-apocalyptic setting), the author has done the adaptation you're talking about; choosing which BRP options to include or not. The Big Gold Book is like a toolkit if BRP variations, and you can define a game system at minimum by simply choosing between them. Swords of Cydoria and some of the other old monographs have done the same.

I don't have any limits on how many allegiance points can be earned; but how they are earned will vary by deity. And as Coronoides suggests, the spend of allegiance points is permanent. My system has the first magic point come from the player, and the rest from spent allegiance points. You could get points back by (for example): praying, making appropriate sacrifices, acting out some of the tenets of your religion, attending rituals, smiting or foiling your religious enemies, preaching or converting people to your religion. Elric! has the concept of commitment to one of the powers: that you must have significantly more allegiance points (>20) to one power to get game benefits, but this idea is less useful if you have allegiance to individual deities or beings.

True. Then you'd be better off with allegiance scores for particular deities (maybe counting against allegiance to those deities' godly enemies or rivals of the moment). I think Mythic Iceland does something like that. There are pantheons where there are different 'sides' where the generic allegiance system would work. For example Zoroastrianism (good vs evil), Tékumel (Change vs Stability), even Hârn (the 'good gods' vs the 'bad gods'). Even the above-mentioned Norse gods have (Hel and Loki) vs (pretty much all the rest). One thing I like about the allegiance system is that it does tie game system to religion or at least metaphysics. It's very easy for atheist modern timers to forget the historical (and fantastically-historical) importance of religion in daily life, but game-system rewards are never overlooked. I use allegiance points directly to power religious (ie 'Divine') spells in my campaign.

If you have active gods (as was the case in Elric's world) or Divine magic the allegiance system works well as a means of determining how favoured you are by the Higher Powers. If your campaign is more down-to-earth it may be less useful. You could use it as an affinity gauge -- people of one allegiance might instinctively recognise each other. I found it more subtle when it was Chaos v. Law v. Balance -- each side has its positives and negatives as pointed out above.

The thing I like about Elric! is the slimness of its rulebook. I don't even use the Young Kingdoms material (I run it like Magic World in Lankhmar) but it is my preferred game. It has very similar rules to Magic World in about 2/3 the size of book. If you have one, probably not worth buying the other unless it's a reasonable price.

The Hârn Pilot's Almanac has quite detailed rules for this sort of thing (navigation, shipboard roles, trade), and it's still available after all these years. It's worth a look if you want to drill down into seafaring.

I have sessions only monthly, so I always allow checks at the end of each session, even if the players are 'in the middle of something'. (Of course I also try hard not to leave my monthly sessions on cliff-hangers.)

I agree it would be pretty hard to stomach the Blood Magic as a Puritan, unless the Witch Hunter could somehow justify it. Maybe the end justifies the means, like cops bending breaking the law to catch criminals. The Puritan presumably also hates witches, so he might be able to bear it. It also depends on the Zealotry level of each character. In my group the Puritan noble spy is the most zealous; probably also likely to be the biggest source of trouble, except that he's a spy and has an interest staying quiet.

Well it's my first game so the short answer is I don't know. The (secretly) Puritan noble spy is just..conflicted in many ways. The Alchemist is obsessed with the science and not the politics (self:Pride). The Warlock (also a noble who fought and lost a duel of honour with the Puritan long ago) keeps that part of his life secret and is on the board of the Invisible Council at Oxford (more obsessed with the politics than the science, which he fakes or ignores). We took a long time picking factions and coming up with connections and reasons for these three wackos to be together. Reminds me a bit of Paranoia (the good parts). I'm looking forward to starting the campaign (I'll start with the mini-adventure in the rulebook) next year.

You might be interested in Maelstrom Domesday (review at: https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/16/16059.phtml) which is wound back five centuries from the original sixteenth century English setting. Still Britain rather than Europe but interesting. Certainly has historical prices etc. though probably not to the level of detail of Harn. Cthulhu Dark Ages is the other one I was thinking of for 'dark medieval'.

In the old Dragonlance D&D modules there were thousands of gold pieces lying around in various old treasure hoards -- but post-Cataclysm people only traded in steel.

I would agree with that. There was a comprehensive price list in the old Encyclopedia Harnica vol 5, which I have but can't find online; also a supplement for running a medieval Manor (review here: https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_5171.phtml) or household (http://columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/harn/cfg/single.cfg?product_id=4918-PDF)

The Alchemist does have Air spells..

I'm just about to start the Kingdom and Commonwealth campaign, so War Torn England it is for me. My players have a Puritan (but also Noble) spy, an ambitious Alchemist and a Warlock.

I like simple yet effective rules like this.