Aycorn

My question, with all due respect is - How can your involvement with the hobby be dead? If you want to start a group playing BRP, do so. Make the effort and I have no doubt you will find some people to play with. As long as YOU have the book, and some people to play with, it's alive.

Yes, I thought the original Nephilim magic system had great potential for uses in other settings. I also think Nephilim is a pretty interesting game/premise. Someday, I might do something with it. I did cook up a FileMaker Pro database to help create characters which came out pretty good.

Hmmmm ... I had toyed at one time with a fantasy campaign with the characters as children. I referred to it as "The Children's Crusade." As I thought about it, the main thing that would change would be SIZ (obviously). Possibly CON, but not necessarily (kids can be quite hardy and the much lower SIZ would impact hit points, etc anyway). INT and POW would be normal as would DEX. STR would be roughly the same as SIZ. If you figure (as I do - and I'm not looking at any SIZ table which I never believed in anyway) that 11-12 is a normal-SIZ adult, then a kid is going to be around SIZ/STR 6-8. That's a guess. CHA (I don't believe in APP) could be normal or even a little bit higher). Knowledge skills would be lower barring some special education or training or experience. In my copy of the COC rules (which are old - I don't believe in constantly buying the latest edition) a year of education = a point of EDU, so a pre-high school kid's EDU would be in the 1-8 range. Skills depending on DEX could be pretty much as for an adult character, and certain communication skills could be pretty high - or you could add new ones - instead of Fast Talk and Orate you could have Whine and Cajole, or something. Seriously! Just off the top of my head.

I have a collection of ultra-spooky classical pieces I use for COC games. For Celtic, I'll use the Braveheart soundtrack and similar stuff. Music that I like for my own pleasure doesn't necessarily make good background for games, generally. Classical, soundtracks, etc. I might use other things, depending on need or mood - there's a 2-CD set called "Crime Jazz" that's all noir-ish jazzy pieces that'd be good if you were doing a crime thriller type thing, say "Pulp Cthulhu." I've never used it, but have thought of it.

Sandy's sorcery rules aren't actually difficult, but have to be read carefully and thought about. I went through them a few years ago, wrote out some examples and realized that it can actually be used in game play very simply, but to read about it seems laboriously complicated. I like his rules very much.

A very, very enjoyable series.

After I get the new BRP and read it, I will revise and post my "BRP Martial Arts" rules, which are basically an adaptation of GURPS Martial Arts. They are very simple (largely avoids the bloat/crunch) and yes, handle various martial arts styles in a manner similar to RQ cults (i.e. there are certain skills taught under each style).

Yes. I'm afraid I've always felt a bit lost when it comes to this subject. Sure I wish the creators of the game well, but as long as I have the rules, I'll be able to play the game, and teach it to others, whether the game is still in print, being marketed, or even successful.

Well, I guess Jordan got HIS didn't he? I read the first of these, and found it enjoyable even though it is schematically painfully similar to "Fellowship of the Ring."

I am like soltakss - I rarely buy any other kind of game stuff. I know a little about d20, and next to nothing about any other current (or even more recent than say, 20 years old) systems. I don't go to gaming cons or clubs. So I can't comment on a lot. I don't know about the anime influence, but anime is so popular now with college-age and below that I imagine it has influenced games. But certainly, the games are much more polished now. Sometimes, I think they lost as much as they gained. Sure, the artwork's more polished - but I wouldn't say a lot of it is "better." The books are cosmetically nicer but a lot more expensive as a result. The really tricky part is that I think some of the imagination has been stifled. Having these very detailed, heavily-supplemented settings - they're very nice, very impressive, sometimes even awesome - but it's taken some of the creativity out of the players. In a way, old D&D or AD&D had an advantage - you had spells, monsters, magic items - but no backstory. It was up to you to assemble them into a coherent (or incoherent) world or setting. I took it as a challenge to my imagination, and creating my first D&D world-setting was one of the most fun things I ever did with the game. Ah well ... maybe I'm just a ol' fart.

I'd be interested in hearing about that. "Highlander" would seem to lend itself to a typical RPG. The problem with doing a DS game is that, to capture the feel of the show, you're pretty much stuck farting around Collinwood all the time, and if you're really gonna be faithful most of the game would be people talking and wringing their hands.

The other day I found some old notes of mine - I was once thinking at one time of doing a BRP campaign based on "Dark Shadows." Betcha no one else thought of THAT one!

Count me in, too. I love those little Arduin books. Even just to leaf through them and steal ideas. RPG's may have gained a lot of polish and sophistication (although an argument could be made that it's all cosmetic), but they've lost that gung-ho amateurish enthusiasm, which is kinda sad.

Yuh mean - INJUNS? >:->

Looks good - but what about a bibliography/filmography? Also - a discussion of typical themes/cliches/etc found in westerns as ideas for a GM?

Yes, I hate it when they do that. Plus I don't like the artwork styles these days. Gimme Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko!

True. I love the comic books I liked as a kid, even though there are things in them that I now find pretty hilarious: in one old "Spiderman" I have, a super-villian named The Beetle, who used a suit of high-tech armor that allowed him to fly and was loaded with weapons, has been paroled from jail and has his suit with him. Leaving prision, he's thinking about all the crimes he's going to commit now, crowing to himself - "there's no law against a man having a costume!" Well, no, there isn't - but there is against him having a bunch of illegal weapons! On the other hand, today's superhero comics, which aspire to such "seriousness" (but are really just as dorky) I don't relate to at all.

Heresy!!!!

Yeah, "Hiero" is a blast. Some faves - fantasy: Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun," Leiber's "Lankhmar" stuff. Lovecraft and lots of the Arkham gang (esp. "Who Fears the Devil" by Manly Wade Wellman). "The Mists of Avalon," "The Once and Future King." Recently I really like Jim Butcher's "Harry Dresden" books (forget the recent TV series). Non-fantasy - "Lion of Ireland" and "Red Branch" by Morgan Llewellyn; "The Wanderer" by Henri Alain-Fournier, "The Magus" by John Fowles; "Lord of the Flies" - I probably re-read that one every 5-6 years. Also love the 1963 movie - one of my all-time favorites.

Yes, but I think most RPG's are more like movies or TV than real life. And I suspect most players would rather have their heroic character die on the battlefield than waste away in a bed somewhere. But I could be wrong.

This conjures up visions of the old Gahan Wilson cartoon of the gunfight - there's just been a gunfight, and one cowboy is lying dead, while the other, a huge hulk of a man, is lumbering off, riddled with bleeding bullet holes. Two old-timers stand by, commenting: "the trouble with ol' Claude is - don't matter if ya do draw first!"

I picked up one of Terry Goodkind's once and never made it past page 10. It truly read like someone writing up a D&D adventure. And this guy's supposed to be one of the best-selling fantasy authors?? Yeesh! Another baddie - "Mention My Name In Atlantis" by John Jakes. Supposed to be a parody of Conan-style sword-and-sorcery - but it just ain't funny. I also remember his "Brak the Barbarian" stories as being nothing special. However, last year I read the first of the oft-maligned "Circle of Light" series by Neil Hancock, and I actually did like that one. Very weird and somewhat incoherent (like a mish-mash of Tolkein, "Watership Down," funny animal stories and some sci-fi mixed in), but it had some really evocative moments and I found myself fond of the funny-animal characters. Some day I'll read the rest of `em.

This leads to the interesting possibility that people on the list could collaborate on projects, for official or unofficial use.

Try the now-obscure 70's DC comic "Starfire" - with a hero(ine) who was not only female but Asian (interestingly enough). Of course, she did wear skintight clothing that showed off her assets. But then she also ran around skewering green bad guys with a sabre, so, y'know...

Unfortunately, I think that's part of the problem. Older gamers may still have grown up at a time when cowboys were the big heroes (that was still going on when I was a kid - late 60's/early 70's - but it was the tail end of it), so I think the interest in a straight western setting is very limited. Of course, the beauty of a western setting is it could go in any number of directions - straight, supernatural, steampunk ("The Wild Wild West" anyone?).