frogspawner

Daniel Proctor should sue! Mr D./Chaosium failed to include a copy of the OGL... PS: In their defence, I expect they intended to - just overlooked it, like other minor things such as Tables of Contents... >:->

Patience! There's been a heck of a lot of interest hereabouts over the last few days. (I for one have certainly been spending too much time on this!) If we can find out what's legal/moral (in that other thread) then maybe we can publish stuff (QuickStart-UltraLite, How to Use BRP Guides,...) - free stuff people can distribute. If we can get the SharedWorld going again, we'd give BRP a setting, and hopefully adventures too - again freely distributable. And maybe one of your slogans will take off... "BRP: So old it's cool!"

Well, I've just re-read GORE and now I can understand the disdain, and specifically NickM's righteous outrage. It's clearly (new) BRP, with very few changes. Some spells from D&D, increase-rolls from MRQ (or similar? I don't know it that well), Criticals replaced by Impales and Specials renamed Criticals. That's pretty much it for differences, as far as I can tell. Was it really available before BRP? Was it based on Zero, then? (Or was the 30% per Parry/Dodge reduction in Stormbringer, or some such?) And he has the gall to put his copyright and an OGL on it! That said, I think it's pretty good. Just the sort of thing I'd like to do for my own homebrew...

Mainly I was wondering about example text, interspersed amongst the rules. But other things might surprisingly qualify, like layout, typesetting, section-headings, and I-don't-know-what-all. I guess with what Rosen says about "brand" it could be quite woolly - if some or all of those things taken together can be argued to be "too similar" by an expensive lawyer, then you're stuffed... Ah, yes of course. Thanks. But the current RuneQuest brand doesn't extend as far as the BRP rules, which derive from, and are closely associated with, RuneQuest? Hmm.

Just what I prefer. Great! Phew, what a relief! Only joking - that wouldn't be a problem here at Frogspawner Mansions, anyway... I'm not a serious wargamer, but use HOTT for fantasy battles - and it's pretty good. By WRG, a decent pedigree, so it has some authority. Consistently delivers unexpected results and, even more surprising to a die-hard RP-er like me, FUN! The downside: you need fluency in Abstruse Legalese to understand the rules... Ah, but you can help! Just keep writing more good stuff, so I can get free postage from Chaosium when I order it all! :happy:

Surely all they bought was the name "RuneQuest"? That's different from a license to the rules, in my book, at least morally.

I thought they did do it. But just made such cack-handed changes that MRQ turned out to be a different animal. Is GORE a BRP-clone, then? (Or MRQ=clone? Or RQ3-clone?) I gave it a look, but all I recall is I wasn't keen. So, what sort of things are IP that we might not expect to be IP? Yes, by far the best way. IF they give the right answer...

Hey! Shouldn't d100Rules be on the Home page, under Works In Progress, with an estimated publication date and all? :confused:

Hmm, that seems like a lot of extra work, just to avoid a map. And people generally like maps... The idea does have a nice mystical feel to it though. Can anyone think how we could combine that mysterious uncertainty within a world that's mapped-out?

Well, I think it's still on-topic. But it just wouldn't be Chaosium's BRP... >:-> However, you are right about not wanting legal stuff clogging us up on this thread. Back to the kosher ideas...

What legal issues might there be for d100Rules? (I must admit to being worried by this thought myself, when Trif announced it). Surely there is another alternative (and isn't this what d100Rules is?)... f) Do a BRP-clone (without using Chaosium's copyrighted words, Logos, or Trademarks e.g. the name "Basic RolePlaying" or even "BRP")

Presumably, self-publishers usually think their baby is good. Many are trash. It's the buying/downloading public that decides, in the end... Anyway, what good are licenses? Can't people publish what they like, so long as they don't infringe decency, copyright or trademarks? So long as you don't use Chaosium or Mongoose logos you're fine. Right?

We could do with an OGL clone of BRP then. "BasicQuest"? OpenQuest is still too MRQ-ish for my taste. (Sorry Newt)

Since the rare subject of alignment has come up, just thought I'd mention a mechanism for this I hit upon recently, that others may find useful. In 'Classic' D&D alignment is just a label, and many people object to that. But I'm using the Pendragon style Personality Traits and have decided which ones are Good/Evil or Lawful/Chaotic or both or neither. So by applying a little maths, you can work out what alignment characters are. And since the traits are developed by what they actually do in-game, this gives a measure that's more objective - and hopefully less objectionable. Great. Are we talking rules for Wargaming (a la Chainmail) or Square-by-square melee movement (a la D&D3.x) ? And, when will hard copy be available in the UK?

I thought we were just sharing the creation (at least, for now, until it IS created). Only after that would PCs get involved, and then we're into "YGWV" territory. At least that was my thinking - anyone else? Mmmm, very nice and mystical. Without a map, though, is it a World at all? And interactions would be very difficult to work out, if someone thought A & B were next-door neighbours, but someone else thought they were far apart, and we'd no way of knowing...

Certainly sounds feasible to me. Now you've mentioned it, we should probably have it! Makes a map tricky, tho' - especially if there could be whole continents lurking in thoses mists. And part of the idea is, I think, to have cultures that can and do interact, so the default option should probably be putting them together.

Q.E.D! And maybe the '32 Generations' is just barbarian hyperbole... (I really should learn not to take what some people say at face value).

True. I guess it's not the number of generations, it's the conditions. But this was 32 generations in the 'Place of Rich Grasses'...

Not so keen on this as the rules - sorry. I wasn't gripped, and only got through The Earliest Days. Maybe it's better later on... Anyway, 32 generations is a long time to stay somewhere - wouldn't they have gone soft & civilized? Less words, less shaggy goat stories and more deeds of the legendary heroes, please! (Shouldn't each generation turn up at least one hero - or villain - worthy of note?)

Those Birth Omen stories are great! The bonuses seem trivial, though, and don't do them justice. Maybe something like +30% instead? Alternatively, perhaps the 'Nature of Birth Omens' table could give a multiplier to the Effect bonus: Unexceptional x1, good/poor x2, positive/ominous x3, magnificent/dire x5? The Dominating Influences could be interesting, but essentially just +1 on a random stat: Roll it, add it on, forget it. Meh. Now, if you had to choose your influence, and maybe got tattooed accordingly and made a social commitment that'd have repercussions later (i.e. it reflected your upbringing/attitudes, rather than just birth-day), that'd give them the importance they deserve. And make them more useful. Perhaps the range could be expanded, too? Good start!

The play level is something else. None of your group's Gloranthan adventures will have had any effect on mine - they are in different instances: "Your Glorantha Will Vary", as they say. Here we're concerned with only the sharing necessary to develop the 'initial concept and starting point', or template, as you say. And hopefully "Your SharedWorld Will Not Vary Much".

No pressure. Some guy just said self-criticism (of BRP) might be due, so I started this thread to avoid the terribly negative-sounding title of the previous one (which was also out-of-date). And it's taken off - so clearly it's something many folk hereabouts are interested in doing.

Shouldn't worry. These days their summonings only fetch is Nick the Imp - unpleasant, but ineffectual. Pretty much exactly what I've been suggesting. Except, I'd say that by default everything should be on the same map - just that each author would/could have their own version of the map (with things they didn't like missing, much like GMs would). That way we wouldn't need to stifle grand, over-arching ideas like Sky Mountain, that weren't to everyone's taste. By default, contributions should fit in the core SharedWorld, so that would be a group effort. Yes, quite like Worlds of Wonder (which btw I just nabbed off ebay - looking forward to that arriving!). Except many of the parallel worlds would be pretty-much the same, with only slight variations on the main shared setting. (E.g. Rurik's has no Trollkin, mine has no Sky Mountain or The Green - because, in my version, the latter has it's own entire plane). The idea of alternate, very-similar worlds is well established. Of course some "Worlds" could be very different - over-run with laser-headed charnjibbers, futuristic, futuristic plus cthulhu...

Actually, I was just referring to choosing options to recommend in the "genre-primers" Thalaba suggested (to make the Big BRP Book more accessible to newbies), not saying we should define the rules-options to be used in any settings we might create.

In the absence of consensus, I guess we should emphasize the options Mr.D has used in the QuickStart as the defaults. The trick is to show the possibilities, without making it seem an off-puttingly confusing array. "Fairest in the currently in print land"? Right with you on this one. My (fantasy) campaign is built around the principle that it is possible to defeat the cthulhoids. But maybe we can get some insight into those others' attitude from this guy's recent outrageous ranting...