nclarke

I see that this has been tentatively scheduled for Dragonmeet (1st December) this year. However I'm hoping that it might be available at Indiecon 9-11th November. Any likelihood of this happening? Nigel

In the absence of the man but with my own copy of the holy grail I can tell you that the special effects system is a slightly updated version of the one in MRQII/Legend. Beating your opponent in combat by a level of success allows the choice of combat manoeuvres which are now called special effects. If you grab a copy of the GM's package from Design Mechanisms website it has a copy of the chart included.

GM fiat in the first instance, maybe more than half of the loss - too much book-keeping for me though. Your game, your rules. Mythos creatures are Mythos creatures. Only allowing non folklore creatures will work, Your game, your rules.

A good way of dealing with this is to wait until after the sun sets and use artificial light to illuminate the scene rather than the glare from the window.

Great video Loz. A word of advice though (I'm sure you get these all the time), please don't sit next to a window. The light from the window messes with the camera leaving you in darkness. Facing the window or at right angles works OK, but not source of bright light in the camera's field of view.

Got your own TARDIS Trif?

Thanks Nick, didn't even think to check the BGB and the lack of a search feature on many forums is a nuisance to anyone seeking older threads. Nigel

Has anyone already statted up the various stages of the Alien organism? I'm planning a BRP Sci Fi game and want to use Face Huggers, Chest Bursters, Adult Xenomorphs and maybe a Queen.

As I understand it the moderator checks for uploads and approves them so they then become visible to visitors.

You probably don't see it due to the new moderation system where uploads need approval unless you have more than 100 posts.

Well you could get the Mongoose D20 Conan stuff for background (it was highly rated for flavour) and use any combination of MRQII/Legend/RQ6. As the major bad guys tend to be the only ones using magic then doing some conversion isn't much of a chore. For SOIAF grab any of the GoT RPG books for background and run your own version. The political infighting might be the only difficult part as I haven't tried using RQ6 to do any political intrigue games yet (being a bit too near to launch date).

Your review makes it sound great. I'll see if I can pick up a copy based on your succinct but informative post

You may have been 'having fun' but there are loads of posters on other forums who spout exactly the same type of longing for cheap RPG's and reminisce over how things were so much better back in the day. They seem to forget that they are wearing pink spectacles. The only way a company can sell an RPG and make any sort of reasonable profit is by eschewing the professional part of the production process and rely on free or low paid non-professional assistance. If someone writes their own material and uses someone paid UK minimum wage (UKP6.08) for all the rest they can probably produce an RPG for something like UKP750.00 and publish it electronically. They'd need to sell probably 1500 copies through RPGNow or somewhere similar to break even. Even many well known games don't sell that many in a year. If you want to make money don't start up an RPG company unless you have money to burn and love pot noodles. I hear most graphic artists need a second, 'real', paying job to avoid a diet of pot noodles and many would-be musicians would do well to learn to like pot noodles as well if they want to be full time.

Boxed sets are just too costly to produce nowadays. Licences are often priced beyond what a company can justify based on revenue. The demand for many of these long out of print games/backgrounds just isn't there any more except in people's imagination. It never ceases to amaze me that so many people have no grasp of the economics of media production. A 250 page book costs about in the region of USD10-12,000 if the publisher uses professional writing, editing, proofing, indexing and layout people. Add in the cost of producing a printed version which is in the region of say USD7.50 for a softbound book (unit cost is roughly the same for 1000 to 3500 copies). Multiply these costs by say 1.5 to allow for sales by retailers plus a bit for distribution and profit and you're hitting USD45-50 without even a box or map included. A printed box is likely to _cost_ something approaching USD10. So a boxed set with a map and a couple of supplement books could easily be USD100+ retail. Check out what RQIII cost and update it for current prices and factor in their use of in-house printing facilities to that price. Anyway as I understand it the grant that is involved in this has a sizeable training and assistance package that is not actually cash so it might only be of assistance in providing business help in areas like marketing, process simplification and intangibles like that.

Where's your review then?

SPAM or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) is illegal in the US but it doesn't stop some of the world's worst spammers from operating from there.

I use the Renown rules for my characters in a Lankhmar game as reputation is likely to be important in establishing the tales and stories of their exploits and leading to plot hooks. I've also mixed up the rules for factions with the material in the MRQI Guilds, Factions and Cults book to generate some organisations for use in my game.

Personally I hate stupid big clompy robots which is why CthulhuTech is out and I was looking at Cthulhu Rising for background and mods.

I just uploaded a copy to the Downloads section. I think I originally obtained it from the Chaosium site.

If the product is OGL why lock it down. The license allows the OGL parts to be used in full and I doubt that much RPG art (which usually isn't OGL) gets stolen when so much is available on-line at places like deviantart anyway. I've noticed that since they've been using Gareth Hanrahan as a Line Editor/Developer things have improved a bit but he's stretched almost to breaking point with his workload for MGP and C7.

I strikes me that MGP don't actually have any professional production staff. Their proofreading is usually rubbish, their products often show the lack of a good editor, and their technical production - indexing etc. shows a lack of professional input. I suspect that there is a page limit set at the beginning of a project and stuff is jammed into that limit without regard for the result. TBH I usually strip out the security on their PDFs and add my own bookmarks. Why they bother with the security that they do use is beyond me. It's like someone set up the software to always output with those settings and no-one knows enough to change it for more sensible/suitable options.

CthulhuTech (from what I've read) doesn't seem to match the feel I'm looking for. My players for this game like to chill on a Friday evening and not think much so too much investigation is not something that appeals. Having a campaign involving hitting things seems to match their Friday night no brain required style. The Aliens feel of much of the Space Marines material will fit the group while the depth of the material published so far seems to provide me with the incentive to run the game. I was mostly intrigued by some of the scenario material and interested in some of the part finished campaign/scenario material.

I am considering starting a CR campaign with the imminent release of Prometheus this week. I see that the author's web site has not had much in the way of activity in recent years. Is the material still being developed? Is it likely to be turned into a proper Chaosium release? Has anyone got any suggestions for material that could be incorporated in such a campaign?

To be honest one of CoC major benefits is the depth and breadth of the scenarios that are available both free and published. Cutting off those with a radical change to the rule mechanisms would not be a sensible move on the part of a publisher tat relies so heavily on the fans. I suspect that we'll see previews at Games Expo and Continuum in the UK and Origins in the US before a launch at Gencon 2012.