nclarke

I've run a fair amount of WWC and played the Fate version of the A!C adventures. You could use concepts and ideas from one in the other but bear in mind that A!C is designed as very pulpy and WWC usually doesn't go that way (depending on the players). basically WWC is just 6e CoC with a different background but A!C is pulpy 40's action. Which one is better depends on your preferred play style. A!C has the Nazi's actively using the Mythos and summoning stuff to help them, WWC has the Mythos more as a background to the war where things with tentacles and cultists take advantage of the upheaval to gain power.

For a Cthulhu scenario set on a oil rig check out C7's Laundry rpg (based on Charlie Stross' books) and the scenario Case: Lambent Witch in Black Bag Jobs.

C&C is based on the MRQII, now Legend, rules and Renaissance Deluxe is based on Openquest.

They are known to sometimes pull a book and even if you paid for it it disappears from your library when you sync and you get no refund.

ePUB3 is not widely used as far as I can tell. Every picture or table in an ePUB2 book moves to fit the format of the device so it's hard to design a publication that can be used as a reference which is what an RPG book is in play. SDLeary has it summed up with his comment about the fragmented world of eReaders. With Amazon trying to use the Kindle format to keep people in it's own 'walled garden' and many other companies using some form of DRM to lock people in a prevent them using their purchase on multiple devices. Amazon's system of being in a position to remove things you've purchased from your library in particularly egregious.

That the problem raising`its head again. If the layout person has to do a different set of instructions for an ePUB version that is roughly six pages an hour at about USD60 per hour to do any alterations and the sales have to justify that. How many people will buy the ePUB version over a PDF compared to a hard copy. How many gamers even know the difference between an ePUB version and a PDF when it renders in a very similar way on their tablet. What proportion of the RPG buying public have an eReader rather than a tablet?

It's fine for reading but how often do you read an RPG if you are running a game, zero. You reference bits of the rules and searching ePUB's isn't easy because the page is different on each device that's differently sized for example. It may be page 5 on your 10" tablet, page 7 on your 7" tablet and page 11 on the phone. There is no added value for a publisher, one or two have tried it, and the result was poor at best. The additional cost of dealing with a different format (and it's not just outputting from the Indesign package) are way more than any additional sales will generate in the format. I'd be a big fan of ePUB if people followed the latest standard and didn't keep deploying their own personal variant to lock people in to their proprietary platform (Amazon I'm looking at you). Most material is output in formats that aren't the latest standard just variants of old versions with proprietary DRM on top.

The problem with ePUB format is it doesn't do anything but plain text novels very well so it's generally crap for reference books which is what an RPG book tends to become when you use it in play.

This post is mostly speculation based on rumour and things I plucked out of thin air. Chaosium has always been a small company (five people currently as quoted earlier). In the nineties they produced a CCG that was not a success and cost a huge amount of money that nearly bankrupted them (rumour was a million bucks). They've spent many years paying off that debt and are now in a position with the success of two Kickstarter projects to get new material out the door. They've brought in at least one new person, Mike Mason, who seems to be moving things along. They seem to have used the roll out of a new web site with a fresh hosting company to move some of their business practices closer to the industry norm. Postage, particularly International postage is now more in line with what other companies charge. Communication has been very bad for some time, they don't favour email often leaving it to rot rather than answering it - probably due to the small numbers of staff. These staff not only do layout and editing but the wrapping and shipping as well. I suspect that when Gencon rolls around Chaosium staff mostly man the booth rather than the office and longer delays may be the norm. The move to putting more stuff on-line at DTRPG may be down to the fact that they no longer have to get every penny to pay off that debt and the service charge made by DTRPG could be set off against expanded availability and higher sales. Could be a modern marketing move now they've realised that the 21st century has arrived. POD may be a step too far though. It may come but I'd expect Chaosium to be amongst the last holdouts against that. The download limit I seem to remember from the old site so I don't think it's something new but like companies putting watermarks and names on a pdf a way they believe will stop illegal downloads (one person buying the pdf and letting their friends download it) but as we all know it's simplicity itself to pass a pdf around a gaming group without multiple downloads. People tend to not practice safe computing and back up valuable data and expect to be able to re-download material if their hard drive fails.

My guess based on what has been posted over in the RQ forums is 2015 or later for most of those. Mythic Briton is probably closest. AiG had some kind of guesstimate posted there (2016?) but I can't be bothered to go and look it up. MOB is doing Mythic Constantinople and that's not had any sort of clarification on time scale that I remember. IIRC CoFE is another outsourced book and probably down to that author to disclose timescale-wise.

You could read the fine manual :-) According to the IPS page (the software authors) help is at the bottom of the front page and wow! sure enough it's at the bottom of the front page. Here's a link http://basicroleplaying.org/index.php?app=core&module=help

All that seems to say is that Legend is now digest size, nothing except indirectly about other lines. Why not ask on the MGP forums, Matt should be able to tell you directly what format he's going to be printing them in and when they'll be out in print format.

Mongoose seem to be concentrating on putting out Traveller material which sells rather better. They also seem to be having issues with being able to fund hard copy material and their freelancers for Legend type material are paid only on the PDF files sold so there is little incentive to actually print material. For some time people were pushing Legend as a cheap introduction (the PDF at USD1) to RQ6 but now that Essentials is available for PWYW there is not any reason to continue to push a limited subset of the RQ line. This must be cutting in to MGP's ability to fund further development plus they'd need to get someone in to rehash material. The freelancer(s) are OK for converting material from old D20 material vis the Spider God's Bride line but they aren't big name designers likely to get people to rush out and buy rulebooks. Even the conversion to Legend for the MGP RQII material (Vikings and Pirates) was a bit of a bodge job as tables and charts weren't properly updated or were missed completely in what is Mongoose's signature editing style.

Not sure how important it is to have a character sheet for a d100 game on Roll20. After all the die rolls are not complex /r d100 in the Roll20 chat window is all you really need. Alternatively you could put that into a macro called 'Die Roll' and check the In Bar box to have it in a button on the screen that people can click on. A second alternative is to use the Dice GUI and enter the die size each time but that's laborious

No doubt Chaosium may have their hands full with fulfilment of the HotOE KS and the CoC 7e KS and not enough warm bodies to send out email. On the other hand have they ever bothered to email their customer base with useful information like this?

I also pointed out the reinvention of the wheel over at the MGP forum. Necromantic Art's has something that covers Fear and Madness with a lack of multiple tables to work out the result.

Raging Swan does useful stuff. True it's mostly Pathfinder which sells of course but here's something that could help you out. http://www.rpgnow.com/product/106607/Dungeon-Dressing-Secret-Doors?term=secret+door Dungeon Dressing: Secret Doors presents: One table providing detailed descriptions of a secret door’s characteristics. One table presenting additional secret door features such as contents, hidden treasures, magical properties and more! Four clever secret door-based traps (CRs 6-8).

You should find a huge part of this in RQ6 Essentials (p75) available as Pay What you Want from Design Mechanism's site. It's almost directly portable across to OQ.

I'm sure that many GM's could stat up things like those shown in this link. http://www.outdoorlife.com/photos/gallery/survival/2013/03/how-build-trap-15-best-survival-traps For bait one could use an item of loot, say a silver platter, and when that is picked up it trigger the trap with a net and a spring loaded branch. You could always watch Predator for Arnie's method of setting a trap :-)

say 'Hello' from me to the nice ladies in the windows :-)

@Simon, it was available through Sky in the UK., I watched it over at a friend's who has the service. Well worth picking up when they offer the boxed set. Warning: Some of the themes can be triggering and the content is more mature than one usually sees on US made shows (basically less violence and more sexual)

Err, there's already one for RQ6 that produces anything from a single NPC to whole mixed parties. http://ouropa.planeetta.com/rq_tools/enemygen/

Actually Rod there's five episodes in the series. It was done by York University in conjunction with a production company for the Yesterday channel on UK TV http://yesterday.uktv.co.uk/shows/medieval-dead/ Has the shows on demand for another 12 days or so, not sure if it's limited by area so you might have to anonymise your location if not in the UK.

I'd point out that the show has nothing to do with Cthulhu despite the references to Chamber's work and the show's writer had little knowledge of the penetration of the King in Yellow trope in the geek community being very surprised that so many people knew about Chamber's book and the content therein.

The UK tv series called Medieval Dead which featured the Visby grave and the skeletons with some analysis is interesting in that it explains the predominance of lower legs injuries by noting that the bodies were local militia who were backed up against the town walls by professional mercenary troops. These troops attacked their unarmoured lower limbs to force the defenders to the ground before finishing them off. The amount of armour in the grave is because it was mostly very old and not worth salvaging for the mercenaries and with the battle fought in Summer there was a need to bury the corpses quickly.