nclarke

You could look at how many of the political families of the US are linked and how many people get jobs in the various state and federal government departments based on who they are related to. It's pretty much the same thing.

The Last Valley - Michael Caine in decent form as a mercenary captain in the Thirty Years War. There haven't been many depictions of that war in film so you'll be hard pressed to find anything else in English, Might want to take a look at Cromwell for another period piece but that's English Civil War, same period just not set in Europe, A Field in England is interesting but probably a bit weird for a representation of the period (it's ECW again). Witchfinder General (Conqueror Worm in the US) for another period piece that could easily be transported to Europe although again it's 17th century England (East Anglia - the low-lying bit that sticks out towards Europe on the right hand side of England). There might be some Polish films of the period, you'd have to check as many will feature the wars against the Russians rather than anything more European. The British Film Institute rates some 17th century set films as well.

I suspect that the level of whining has taken it's toll and you got the short stick.

Are you advocating anarchy where the rule of contracts does not apply because you didn't get what you want?

It's for the Crimson Letters scenario that comes in the 7e Keeper's book. I suspect that it's a bigger version of the maps in the Keeper's book and was given away with the screen pack.

I'd suggest that a good starting point would be wikipedia and then follow some of the links from there. That should give you a decent foundation in the Cthulhu Mythos. I might also suggest that Chaosium's Malleus Monstorum (currently OOP but possible to find on eBay) as that has just about everything relevant to gaming in a Cthulhu Mythos sphere. I would second groovyclam's statement that the Handbook isn't what you want for an intro to placing Mythos entities in your games. If all you want is to know how to add horror elements to your games I'd suggest that Savage Worlds Horror Companion at $9.99 might fit your bill as it's a toolkit for putting horror elements in your games. That together with information from wikipedia should get you Lovecraftian horror in your games.

RQ-QS in Bournemouth went well. A couple of guys who had played earlier versions and two newbies but experienced gamers. Great fun although they didn't follow the tracks and I had to do a lot of on-the-fly adjustments to make things work. They never got near the Tower but did fight the rock lizards and the cattle raiders. They had some great moments as did I - the bison killing three of four raiders being one and a raider/bandit lopping the head of the bison another. Game ran about 3 and a half hours and I made sure of MGF by allowing their Runes to augment various rolls as much as possible so they got a good feel for how the new version is going to play.

Shaman and rules out in July when the QS goes public.

The maps are Chaosium's IP and probably shouldn't be posted even with keys and notes removed. Note also my previous comments about the cost of adding extra maps. The easiest way would be to include layers in the maps in the pdf's of future products or the separate handout files. That way the layers showing details and map keys could be turned off before printing. The cost of redoing the maps in layers for older products is likely to be prohibitive though.

According to the Chaosium guys at UK Games Expo on Friday Dustin will be mailing out vouchers as soon as the consignments clear customs and are in the warehouse and up on the web site.

Chaosium often do supply a pack of the handouts in pdf format particularly for some of the bigger campaigns. Their current policy of supplying a pdf with purchase of the hard or soft back book is laudable for the very reason that it makes it much easier to prep stuff. Some companies do provide a layered pdf where you can turn off some layers prior to printing to eliminate hidden facts, but it's a lot of extra work and someone has to pay for that and gamers are notorious tightwads. Kudos to The Design Mechanism who do a couple of extra supplements for campaigns, Monster Island and Mythic Britain, where you can turn off various labels on maps. These extras costs a 1/3 of the price of the full campaign book and you need a colour printer to make use of them making the whole thing a bit pricey. Personally I often just sketch out rough plans of the interiors of buildings or small sites as detailed maps are only really of use to folks who come from a background of playing games that use miniatures and grid based combat. Looking at some of the handouts you mention: The one labelled The Dig Site has nothing on it that wouldn't easily be done with a dry erase marker and a white board and anyway the pretty colour map does nothing for passing on the information on that map. The piece labelled Leiter's Cottage has a piece of a note about the locksmith that is found and the asylum letter but if they search the cottage then they get that anyway so where's the harm unless you insist that the players don't get information without a die roll (described I think as 'not fun' in the corebook). The map of the antique store has a concealed trapdoor and that part of the map is easily concealed by folding the map in half if you really need to use the map. As for the map of Southern Vermont that's really more than a native of Vermont and the surrounding area would know about in the 20's. Think of all those stories in the current press where people are asked where major countries are and they can't place them on a globe. People are generally ignorant of things that don't immediately affect their everyday lives and one has only see news stories of people who will blindly follow a satnav when it tells them to drive into the sea because they didn't realise the ferry was needed to cross the blue stuff. Coloured maps are nice but TBH are much more of a device to attract buyers who like bright, shiny, new things than Keepers who want to actually run the game. There are people who process information visually and there is little that publishers can do to turn most blocks of text into easy to comprehend graphical displays but the whole rulebook for learning the rules versus rulebook for reference/looking things up is another discussion that will continue to cause problems for gamers. Personally I have really no use for a Keeper's screen especially for CoC as the rules are simple enough that having learned them I can keep them in mind without trouble. I often see a screen as a barrier between me and the players rather than anything containing useful information, but different strokes for different folks and I can see that people new to Call might find it useful to have a summary of the Combat and Insanity rules to hand.

Generally speaking art costs are one of the most expensive parts of an RPG. The move by Chaosium to full colour and hardback for their books already adds to the price and adding an extra page for each map to provide a player version as well would start to push the cost right up. It is usually possible to sketch out a rough map with a pencil and paper or a marker and whiteboard to give the players an idea of the layout. If you have a pdf then judicious use of a painting program with copy and paste abilities and then an erase feature to 'rub out' extraneous details would probably be your best choice if you want to provide high quality handouts (or learn to use a drawing program yourself). A photocopy and TippEx/Whiteout is a second best choice.

Here's the ship carrying the container with the next two books from Chaosium arriving on the high tide this morning in Southampton, so they should be available for purchase at UK Games Expo next weekend..

Yeah, sending unsolicited manuscripts in the hope of getting a break into writing of any kind is a heartbreaking process. Even if it's in response to a call for submissions or a contest be prepared to wait months or even years for a reply from a publisher and be surprised if you even get a form letter or email saying, 'Thanks, but no thanks'. The ability of authors to self publish material nowadays is great and if you use a POD service your nearest and dearest may even be able to buy a copy. In reality put your work out there, if it's any good someone will pop up and say "I found a great scenario, here's where to get a copy." Run your scenarios at every opportunity is as many public arenas as you can, there's no hope of being a retiring wallflower if you hope to make any sort of name in rpg publishing. I'd also say get yourself into a writer's workshop where you can get help with your writing style, if you're lucky you'll get some good pointers and if not there will be plenty of wannabe writers to offer a shoulder to cry on. P.S. Note that in my career(s) I've managed to get material published for one game system (Chivalry and Sorcery) in a few supplements over the past roughly thirty years so don't think it's at all easy, but hope for a lucky break.

Dont worry if someone sees the scenario and thinks that you've screwed the pooch they'll tell you and possibly the whole world and maybe Chaosium who'll ask you to remove it and/or change the offending section. There isn't any point point in sending it to Chaosium as I don't believe they accept unsolicited manuscripts anyway so it'll end up in the recycling. As for feedback no doubt someone will take pity on you and tell you how they would have done it better. If you haven't had the pleasure of sending manuscripts to publishers for review then you may be in for a shock as probably no-one gives a f***. So any evidence of someone downloading it will be a plus.

As long as you only use material in the public domain (nothing that was made up by Chaosium) then there is nothing to worry about. If you do then you need Chasoium's approval. Simples! I.E. You can write a scenario and state that it's for CoC and as long as you don't repeat any rules text (including monster stats) in your work you're fine.

If you mean do Chaosium allow you to redownload the products you buy (and keep a record of your purchases) then yes (I think it's a max of 4 times rather than unlimited like DTRPG though).

They are a bit variable in scale, some are box scale and some as close to 1/56th as makes little difference. The height difference between a figure with a base and a 1/56th car shows, but 1/64th gives a better height against a figure with a base.

Look for 1/64th cars or better 1/56th scale vehicles for 28mm figures, 25mm is 1/72 scale but not AFAIR too many vehicles in 1/72 except war toys. Even S gauge model railroad stuff can work although it'll be horrendously expensive. A trip to Wal Mart, or any other large store having toys will allow you to pick up all manner of model cars. Take a figure along to check scale though as some are box scale (fit the model in a standard box) rather than exact scale.

Roll20 uses your browser to connect to the site so if your browser can access any sites then you can use Roll20. Basically everything is done via the browser interface and no firewall or router setup is needed. It works better with some browsers than others though so you might have to experiment or read the help files.

There is no animate skeleton spell in CoC although there's nothing to stop you from making one up. Plenty of other D100 systems have something you can cannibalise.

There's Create Zombie in the Keeper's book but the corpse continues to rot and needs replacement at regular intervals.

Simlasa, You do realise that the spending luck rule as one of the optional ones and doesn't have to be used in a game. You might think a lot of the alterations are "stuff we were doing already" but the average new player/Keeper has no idea of the various subtle alterations Keepers have made to the game to make it work for them. In fact GUMSHOE was written to get around some of these perceived issues. Having them written into the latest rules helps new Keepers and disseminates a method resolving those apparent issues for newer Keepers

7e is fully backwards compatible with earlier versions so you can use any published material. Changes are mostly to make Attributes percentile rather than 3-18 by multiplying by 5. There are a few other changes to make combat faster but it's really an evolutionary update rather than anything more. You could get the free quickstart from Chaosium and see how different it looks. Some people are staying with earlier editions as they are satisfied with the layout etc but as adapting new material only really requires division by 5 for attributes it's not hard to play with whatever you want.

If they ask the correct question give them the information without a roll, there's no point in putting a road block in the scenario. Only if the NPC has an antagonistic mindset should you make a skill check (7e core rulebook p93) . If they fail to ask the correct question then your scenario needs to take into account the three clue rule - put the same clue in three or more places to make sure the investigators get it. Idea rolls are often the best way to provide some sort of clue to where the investigator should look or ask a question or even guidance on what sort of question to ask. If the players get stuck then call for Idea rolls and provide information to help them make a decision.