Mankcam

Hmmmm This comes at a bad time for me, otherwise I would take you up on that offer as getting delivery here to Brissy is pretty costly But I don't think I can do it just at present

Wow, this thread has been lingering for the last 8 years and won't die. That must surely indicate something This book should certainly go ahead either as a BRP BGB product, or a RQ Gateway product (failing that, even LEGEND or OQ). But the point is, a Sword And Planet setting will be great for the BRP system. I guess the only competition could be Chronicles of Future Earth, although the BRP book was pretty slim (I read somewhere that it may be getting further developed for LEGEND or RQ6, I'm not sure) The more I read RQ6, the more I see a setting like this could work well, and now that Luther Arkwright is out its easy to see that the system can do a good job at Sci Fi as well. We already know RQ6 can do Sword and Sorcery quite well, so it should have no issues mixing those genres to create a Planetary Adventure setting. I see a RQ Gateway product being the best fit for this concept I would love to see this one hit the shelves

Seneschal it's like you are living my life man, heh heh

While it would be truly great to have Chaosium doing the Young Kingdoms once again, I think it would be better for Ben to put all that vibe into the Southern Reaches and make it his own setting, full of all those years of listening to Heavy Metal and playing Sword and Sorcery flavoured games Make Southern Reaches the kind of gritty trippy place that Moorcock would have wanted to game in!

If the MW book was a hardcover, then I would want a much bigger chapter on the Southern Reaches, and this colour map would be on the inside covers Great stuff!

Works for me

I never thought to play a fantasy game using The Dreamlands as the origin setting. What a cool concept, that's a great idea. Can't get much more 'Pulp Weird' Sword & Sorcery than The Dreamlands

That would be a great FLG to hang out at !!!

Well, I think its a good book but with more resources it perhaps could have done with more colour art, especially regarding a title page and chapter headers. Yes it is keeping up with other products on the market, but thats what one has to do to compete, and if you are going to have a dead-tree version of a ruleset then it should be a nice thing to behold I think. But I do agree that the bulk of the book is better with clear black and white text and art, it works well for referencing. The Stormbringer variant of the BRP rules is not my cup of tea (I always preferred RQ3 mechanics of hit locations + static AP), but I do like much of the additional resources that come out for MagicWorld and will continue to support it for that alone. Call of Cthulhu will always be the BRP flagship, but having a fantasy genre version of the system currently in print can't be bad either. I like the 'standing on the shoulders of giants' reference, that's a very cool way to pay homage to all the previous work from Chaosium I do love the classic rocking sword and sorcery vibe that Ben tends to get on these forums, I hope we see much more of that in upcoming MW products!

Pen and paper and rolling dice with friends is what is has always been about for me. It just wouldn't feel like Tabletop roleplaying to me otherwise. The same group does a weekly MMO over Voice chat, and we think it pales incomparison to the fun we have with face-to-face roleplaying. It doesn't have the freeform narrative flavour of Tabletop roleplaying, and it doesn't feel anywhere near as social. Our face-to-face sessions are infrequent, about once every six to eight weeks when in campaign (less regular with one-shots), but they often turn out to be alot more fun than sitting in front of the PC gaming. Wouldn't change them for the world. When I GM I sometimes have a pdf of the rules and scenario handy in my tablet (currently an iPad Mini), but I still tend to have a paper print-out of the scenario during gameplay so I can make scratch notes on it, and I have a notebook handy. I have my own folder with useful charts in it for quick GM reference, so I don't need to have the actual rulebook at the gaming table. If playing at my house I occasionally get the rulebook out of the bookcase just for Spot Rules reference, and if playing at another location I just hand wave all that. My players currently have home made character sheets (done in MS Excel) which are tweaked to the setting and whatever houserules apply. If we don't have too many house rules that affect the character creation, then they use print-outs of official digital character sheets. They amend the sheets with pencil, just like we have always done, except once the sheets get a bit worn we tend to edit and update the digital versions and print out nice new ones. Each player has a character folio, which has the character sheet plus any other useful information (ie Spell descriptions, background, hand-outs, etc), and this works well. All the character sheets have a character portrait on the title page, and the next page is purely a narrative summary of the character's background and personality. That way the stats themselves feel secondary to the character. We do this with whatever system we are playing ( If not GMing White Wolf Storyteller, I GM primarily BRP/RQ/CoC). Having the actual character sheet further back in the folio tends to allow players to move more seemlessly between systems, as they are more focused on their character concept rather than game stats. As a GM I sometimes use the internet (via a tablet or laptop) during a game session to bring up images of locations, creatures, and NPCs, I find that this has been perhaps the best addition to tabletop gameplay

Excellent cover. I have seen it before somewhere...I suspect it may have been going to be used for another product at some stage. It captures the ancient feel quite well, which is pretty relevant considering the Gloranthan and Roman scenarios. I love the Gloranthan Runes section. I had been tinkering with RQ3 for a few years and had developed a similar concept after being influenced by HeroQuest. I think if we return to that campaign I will use this Rune system as is, unless the troupe is happy to jump over to RQ6. In that case I hope Design Mechanism does something similar, otherwise I'll port this across to it. I love OQ, its a neat version of BRP yet so easy to use its resources for other games such as BRP BGB or RQ6. You've done a good thing here Newt

Congratulations Ben! Well I definitely know we'll be seeing more MagicWorld resources now, which is great news Exciting times ahead!

I would love to see a First World War setting for BRP, this would be great. Having an occult edge or dieselpunk options would be pretty good as well, but not essential

Wow, Charlie Krank is no longer with Chaosium? Holy jeez, with Lynn Willis gone I thought that Charlie Krank still held the wheel firmly. I guess it was naive to think that there would be no impact from Mr Willis's passing, given the length of service he had been with the company. This is really a cottage industry with global distribution, and I speculate that any loss of a member like that would be difficult to handle, from so many different aspects. Had no idea of the turmoil going on; it sounds like Chaosium's future was becoming uncertain, despite the great release of HotOE and having CoC 7E in development. I expect that the company will move on from it all; if any rpg company is an industry survivor, then it's Chaosium I wish Charlie Krank all the best, his name is over all my Chaosium books as well This kind of feels like we dodged a comet But good to see Stafford and Petersen back with the company. It certainly is coming full circle

I kinda always associate Greg with RuneQuest/Glorantha and Pendragon, and Sandy with Call of Cthulhu. So I can see where Sandy's content niche will be, but Greg? Well I guess being CEO itself will take up a fair bit of time. RuneQuest is currently published by the Design Mechanism, and Glorantha is a property of Moon Design (who appear to be in close consultation with Greg, given the recent products and presentations). I don't think I have ever seen Glorantha so fully realised as it is now. Maybe we will finally see a BRP version of Pendragon perhaps? It would not take much to have BRP as its core system, and just add the bells and whistles which make it Pendragon. I'm just sayin' But as a teen in the 80s, most of my old Chaosium books have Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen's names emblazoned on many of the products, so it feels kind of like a home coming seeing that is how its going to be again "I'm putting the band back together" You just gotta dig that last bit :-) Great news

Yes, awesome news! This is kinda like it would have felt if the Beatles got back together in the '70s, well kind of... I hope this is a return to the good old days :-) "Contact us with questions, kudos, curses, or kindness. We are listening, and we will respond". Well, that indicates a new direction for Chaosium, heh heh (just joking!) I have a more optimistic feeling about Chaosium now, I think this can only be good thing

I really don't like having all these different core rules for BRP, I would have preferred one current core system with a lot of bells and whistles for each genre or setting. Kinda like GURPS makes much more sense to me. Having said that, there is no reason why you could not present a preexisting system, and change one or two components to suit your setting, such as presenting a new Magic or Powers system, for instance. Given the proliferation of current games, I would either just stick with BRP or perhaps go with OpenQuest - the later is an easy enough source to hack for either BRP or RQ6 GMs, it's a nice simple middle ground. Of course, Call of Cthulhu 7E may potentially render the BRP BGG obsolete to an extent, as it will not make sense for Chaosium to have their flagship setting with markedly different core mechanics from their core system. I would actually be surprised if any future attempts at a BRP Core Rulebook is inconsistent with the core mechanics from Call of Cthulhu 7E. Also remember if you are making up an ancient flavoured fantasy world setting, then although it is likely to appeal to a wide range of people, this may not actually translate into market terms. RQ6 already has Iron Simulculm/Korantia; its own setting of Meeros; and is returning to the iconic setting of Glorantha. The market for ancient-fantasy settings for RQ6 is already quite full, and many BRP GMs who want to have an ancient setting will probably tend to buy the RQ6 supplements as they are easy enough to port over. Chaosium already has The Realm as its fantasy-medieval setting for MagicWorld. There are also the mythic-historical Earth settings available for BRP from Alephetar Games as well, such as ROME, Celestial Kingdom, Merrie England, Amber Coast, Wind On The Steppes, etc. Some titles cover the ancient setting, whereas others are set later Plus a few good fantasy or sci fi monographs already out there, ie The Green, etc And its still easy enough to find a wealth of previous publications of Michael Moorcock's Young Kingdoms setting, whether it is from the Elric line for MRQ2 or the earlier Stormbringer line for BRP. This goes as well for earlier Gloranthan material published for RQ2 and RQ3. Not to mention current Gloranthan material published from Moon Design; granted that it is for the HeroQuest system, however 90% of the resources are content only, making it very portable for GMs of any system, and BRP/RQ GMs are probably the biggest market for doing that. I don't want to dampen any creativity, but from a market point of view, it doesn't look like too much standing room for an ancient or medieval setting for the BRP rpg family However, like anything, if it is different enough from what is already out there then it will always catch someone's eye. Look at Monte Cook's Numenera setting. The mechanics are so-so, but the background is great. His Ninth World setting somehow manages to capture the influences of Robert Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and mix them with liberal doses of Frank Hebert and China Mieville, creating something quite interesting and different from anything I have seen published recently. That's the only way to stand out, otherwise there is very little point trying to catch people's interests when they are already following other preexisting settings.

An example for a combat action came up from a post in the LEGEND section of this forum regarding a 'Power Attack' as a Heroic Ability. I have a similar concept that I use with the BRP BGB rules, except it is a maneuver that anyone can attempt using the Combined Action rules, so I thought I should post it under this thread POWER ATTACK COMBAT ACTION: Action requirements: The STR minimum must be +3 greater than indicated on the weapon chart for this attack action (making it more likely that many characters may need to use two hands to attempt the attack). Take a -5 DEX Rank Penalty, then choose whether to attempt this action as a standard maneuver or a difficult maneuver Standard maneuver: Roll under Attack % and character's Effort % (STR x5) If successful, receive +1 minimum bonus to their Damage Bonus roll. This cannot exceed their usual Damage Bonus, unless they have no Damage Bonus at all, in which case they have +1 DB for this roll. Difficult maneuver: : May attempt to make the Attack % roll at Difficult (half), and to also roll under the character's STR attribute If successful, the Damage Bonus increases by one dice step for that attack ( ie: +1d4 DB goes up to +1d6) Anything more powerful than this would be in the realm of magic for BRP BGB I would suspect, rather than a mundane combat action (unless playing in a cinematic setting with Stunts). Anyway, I just thought this is an another example of using the Combined Action rules for a house ruled combat action. Maybe a way of portraying a Beserker style attack as well, for all those raiders out there Feel free to pillage this idea if it appeals to you :-)

If you are using LEGEND then this could definitely be a Heroic Ability. Yes, the cost should definitely be -20% for every additional +1 minimum damage. Perhaps also some kind of STR requirement, which would be less if using two hands perhaps As an aside, I do have Power Attacks but I use BRP BGB, and make it a maneuver using the Combined Action rules. I'll post that under the other thread, as I don't want to railroad this LEGEND thread.

Ok, Found it. Uncounted Worlds #2. Good stuff, I think it includes the article you may be referencing Obviously you are aware that the Uncounted Worlds issues are available from Chaosium as free downloads Perhaps Chaosium could repackage some of that material in a new volume of BRP...

Actually I think there was a really good article in one of those Uncounted Worlds that was about using Complimentary Skill Bonuses in a really loose way, augmenting actions From memory it was written by either Nick Middleton or Sarah Newton (? or both) I will have to hunt my archives to see if I still have it I think its the kinda thing you're after

The RQ6 Passions could be easily added. The RQ6 Luther Arkwright book looks like it has a Traits/Talents mechanic - perhaps that may also be of interest... But probably best just to clarify and provide examples of the actual rules as written in the BGB, such as some common manuvers with combined skills, errata, or some templates for Power Points costs with the Fate option etc There are also Mook rules in Astounding Adventures which may be further elaborated upon perhaps...

Yes you are right in not making it more complex as the rules are generally pretty good. The example I had in mind was firing a gun while driving a car. Then I realised that besides the DEX rank penalty you just roll both Drive and Handgun skill, although I would deem the handgun attack roll to be a Difficult action (as broadly indicated in the BGB), with the Drive at usual difficulty. So the BGB rules win out again, no need for altering :-)

This wouldn't replace a Feats system as this is a structure for manuvers, not personal trademark abilities. I think if skills are combined, then perhaps the rolls should have a Difficult (half %) modifer applied,I'm unsure. (In cinematic games you could rule that 1 PP counters this modifer) The Stunts system from Blood Tide is a great way of portraying a Feats system for BRP, if that is what you are after. It is easily ported over to over cinematic settings such as High Fantasy or Pulp Era Adventure etc

Personal trademark 'Stunts' may be a good addition for cinematic style gameplay. You could have a look at the Stunts system in Blood Tide, and perhaps come up with additional Stunts to add to the list already provided there. Also perhaps a more structured look at the Fate Points options in the BGB may be of some value Just some thoughts...