NickMiddleton

Elric! - Stormbringer 1-3 were a huge part of my gaming in the 1980's but I increasingly wanted something a little more robust and coherent, and was even by the mid-eighties co-opting material from other BRP and BRP related games (not just Chaosium but e.g. Niall Shapiro's Other Suns) to fill out the SB engine for wider settings. SB 4 was a great re-focus of the game on its source, and I admire what Ben was trying to do with the revised Demon Summoning and design system, but somehow it didn't quite cohere - it neither was compelling enough to entirely replace my battered copies of SB1&3 but equally, I always had it at the table to dip in to... Elric! seemed quite a radical change when I first read it... but as I read it and re-read it and then tried it in play, I kept finding that those gaps and weaknesses I had previously been patching by going to other games were either explicitly answered in the core game, or it was so logically and cleanly written that a sensible ruling was easier to infer. It remains as far as I am concerned damn near the platonic form of how to edit and layout a b&w interior RPG book. The base text is clear, accessible, rich in content and adaptability, effortlessly evoking a broad and appealing style of play that seems inherent in its setting; the layout and editing makes it hugely useful at the table as a reference work, whilst still be a thoroughly readable work to learn the game. Considering SB5 is largely the same text, its failings are salutary lesson in the value of skilled layout. Whilst I don't think Magic World is as poor a layout as SB5, it too suffers from a layout that was NOT focused on concise and effective presentation, but rather on achieving a page count that could justify an inflated price point. 😕 Elric! as adapted by Ben Monroe remains my default BRP engine; if I were ever to run in the Moorcock multiverse again, its what I would use. But I will have a nostalgic soft spot for the GW printing of SB3 which was the back bone of my epic 1980's SB games. The former barbarian from Pikarayd, field-stripping a squad-support waldo mounted blaster machine gun for a group of fascinated Demons of Combat in a side tent at Aricoh's Garden party in the 3rd of the 7th Hells... good memories! 😮

I would “tag” damage, armour and creatures/objects with types: either resistant to or vulnerable to in the case of creatures/ objects, and just as a quality for damage. Then I would have resistance halve damage, vulnerability double it (or possibly flat +5/-5 or some other simple pair of shifts). No need to track specific armour values in lots of categories, one can tailor the tags to ones setting. I’d probably limit things to one to three tags at most and keep close eye on the magnitudes etc in play and adjust. As implemented in Superworld / Future*World I found the separate specific armour values for different damage types way too fiddly, but I like the idea of something like the tagging system above to capture some of the feel of varying types etc.

Err, wut? Magic World Page 14 "Hit Points (CON + SIZ)/2" Page 32 "the Adventurer’s maximum Hit Points forever after equal SIZ + CON + POW." So, yes, HP would jump from average of 13 (assuming SIZ and CON of 13) to a whopping 39 (assuming also POW of 13 - which seems a tad unlikley). Where did you get HP=SIZ+POW/2 from? Interestingly in Elric! and SB5 the increase for Apotheosis is from (CON + SIZ)/2 to simply CON + SIZ, and in the BGB it is the same (or double previous HP total, depending on how the base is calculated), so I assume the SIZ + CON + POW was a decision of Ben's to give the Champion of Balance a chunkier benefit for Apotheosis. All that said - this is a Champion of Balance - likely facing down Champions of Shadow (whose Magic Points have permanently DOUBLED) and Champions of Light (who get... a small village to rule?!?) erm, and other mighty opponents... More seriously, I like the adding the raise in HP to such spectacular levels compared to average PCs - i t makes a Champion of Balance really quire hard to kill. Cheers, Nick

An on going bugbear in many systems with any sort skills is substituting generic stat rolls for skills. The way I have formulated it for many years is this is that default stat checks can give basic success but never as well as an actual applicable skill. For example, in DP9s Silhouette there is a Perception stat and a Tracking skill. A Perception test will reveal there are tracks - but can never interpret them; to interpret the marks on the ground in anyway requires the specific skill. If a character is asked to Tap Dance and has no skill, they can't do it - they know none of the specifics of the skill. They may have a DEX of 21 and be inherently graceful and well suited to learn the skill, and they can "dance" in the general sense of participate in a village festival celebration without tripping themselves or others etc - but without the specific skill, they can't do the specific thing the skill covers. If the character has a Flamenco Dancing skill, we would have a different discussion, of course...

Feel free to undertake such a project at your own risk - I've articulated my concerns (and Jon L continues to elaborate reasons for such concerns more clearly than I) and thus will not. I have, however, as a result re-examined the other licensing models Chaosium offer ( https://www.chaosium.com/fan-use-and-licensing/ ) and, despite their different restrictions, find them significantly more appealing - to the extent I have even started some tentative steps to reinvigorate a project long left fallow. At this point I doubt my scepticism is contributing much to discussion of the BRP OGL so I'll bow out. I wish everyone luck with it and I hope I am proven wrong in my concerns. NDM

See JonLs post. Section 2 of the WotC OGL and it’s equivalent in the BRP OGL (section 3 iirc) can be read as precluding “mingling content”, and “mingling content” between sources is one of the fundamental strengths / benefits of Open Licensed Content. I defer to Chaosium or a professional legal expert for a definitive answer, but my understanding would be you would be free to rewrite the Enlightened Magic rules in your own words (it is NOT “open content” under this license, but nor is any of it Prohibited Content that Chaosium have excluded from the scope of the BRP-OGL).

OGL =/= BRP OGL - I am not a legal expert, but I would strongly advise seeking a professional legal opinion before mixing WotC OGL licensed open content and BRP OGL licensed open content in the same "work". I have read opinions from people with experience with the WotC and other well established Open Content licenses that suggest there are issue combining Open Content released under the BRP OGL with other open licenses and vice versa.

REALLY? I do not believe the BGB is Open Content? One can emulate its rules (except where they fall under the Prohibited Content definitions), but nothing in the current license details makes that work Open Content as I understand it? Could you comment on this @Jeff Cheers, Nick

The problem is that the current license / SRD document license conflates several things: an Open Content License and a System Trademark License, and then embeds both in what is ostensibly a System Reference Document but is in fact so thin in detail it’s worthless. It’s hard to read this as a genuine, OGL conversant, attempt to encourage ”Open BRP content” I’m afraid. Discounting conspiracy theories of deliberate self sabotage (patent nonsense), I can only assume there’s some fundamental dissonance between Chaosium’s understanding of the OGL and related topics and, y’know, the rest of the industry... But that aside, what REALLY baffles me? No one wanted this as far as I can tell, and Chaoisum ALREADY operate several versions of what people did want: a BRP Community Content Program! A BRP CCP using the BGB for BRP as the rule book reference would provide a flexible platform for content creators, but rules distinct from ALL Chaosium‘s flagship titles (RQ!7, KAP, CoC7e, 7th Sea); it would automatically preclude people away from cloning those games, or old Chaosium titles. And it could generate a modest revenue stream for Chaosium that this will not. A few people utterly obsessed with the BRP brand will try something, find the effort excessive, and it’ll fizzle out is my prediction. It strikes me as a wasted opportunity. Ah well. (copy pasted from RPGNet thread as it felt disingenuous to only say this there)

See Fate Points, BGB Page 176... 😉

No offence intended Jeff, but compared to practically every other SRD since the original d20 SRD in 2000, this is more like a fragment of jawbone with a couple of teeth rather than an actual skeleton! To do anything of substance with this requires far more work than with any other D100 OGL game. Unless we can legitimately reference the BGB from a compliant product? I had read it to mean that was NOT the case, and that one can only quote / reference the SRD itself or Open Content from other BRP OGL compliant products? Also, I assume other Open Licenses are effectively off limits? So we cant co-opt material from say Monsters of Legends, any more than we could use creatures stats from the BGB? So we have to each come up with our own Goblins or whatever until someone decides to write a BRP OGL bestiary?

Well, they are not _currently_ listed as Prohibited Content... This is the issue. A someone who regularly re-skins something close to MW / BGB BRP for wildly different settings / feels, often using tweaks of "base" features... Can I use Skill Categories? Magic World Style Weapon Groups? Can I refer to "Power Points" as "mana points" and have a spell system similar to Magic World / BGB Sorcery? What about redoing my Ulfland setting (which uses hit locations and has two spell casting systems derived from the BGB). Or do I have to laboriously recreate all those mechanisms and spells with different wording and mechanics to NOT count as Prohibited Content... and if I do, why wouldn't I just use a less restricted SRD / OGL or just write my own D100 roll under, roll low game? This is so limited, and so hedged with restrictions, it seems rather pointless? I appreciate Chaosium needs to protect its own IP (and that of its licensees), but the concept of an OGL / SRD is to provide a framework to let 3rd parties innovate and publish derivative support material that isn't viable for the source publisher because of the economics. I was hoping for a method of supporting the "BRP derived from the BGB, Magic World, Superworld and Worlds of Wonder" games (mechanically if not in terms of specific IP) that many of us play & run similar to what we once had in the monograph program, but less of a head ache for Chaosuium. This... is not that, at least at first inspection. Ah well.

It's interesting to ponder - as Vile says, the rule set was intended to be generic, and the "sample" setting was a discrete thing in its own chapter... But Elric! was a game intended to capture the wild inventiveness and imaginative flair of Moorcock's Elric stories and there is a tone and feel the reader infers from the "voice" any text is written with. For Magic World I would argue that voice (originating from Lynne Willis, Richard Watts, Mark Morrison, Jimmie Pursell and Sam Shirley's original work on Elric! and refined and polished by Ben Monroe in Magic World itself) is pragmatic, favouring clarity and immediacy over elaboration and intricacy. Whilst Magic World strives to give the Chronicler and players all the tools they will need, it doesn't seek to build a comprehensive system that models everything - the "Spot Rules" architecture in particular strongly implies to me an expectation that groups will improvise and adapt when confronted with novel situations not covered in the existing rules. My own list of identifying characteristics would be similar to Vile's above: Magic pervades the world but actual spell casters are rare and strange. Allegiance matters - it affects the world in both the general and the specific. Characters get mechanical effects, it shapes the feel of the world. It's a BRP game in the classic mode - whilst default PC's are distinctly more heroic than in some BRP games, violence is a dangerous option and the feel tends toward the gritty and brutal. The world is fey and strange and varied - no race is _explicitly_ "evil", any creature can plausibly be a PC, or at least an ally. Ships feature heavily. One of the missed opportunities of the line never getting off the ground was the possibility of explicitly expanding its horizons - one of the things I noodled away at one point was a series of alternative settings - worlds that one could run with Magic World alone and which still cleaved to those core characteristics but were quite different from the Southern Reaches. Ah well. Nick

Noble Knight in the US have some Mongoose Hawkmoon: https://www.nobleknight.com/Publisher/Mongoose-Publishing?ProductLineId=2137421219&InStockOnly=true it also crops up moderately frequently on my eBay searches for RPGs in the UK. Noble Knight do NOT have the Monograph - and apparently last had it 2010 (04/09/2010) - https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147379458/Hawkmoon---Adventures-in-the-Tragic-Millennium Cheers, Nick

Well, we are all waiting with baited breath to see what this "Open License" for BRP will actually, but whilst waiting for that there are also Chaosium's established license models: https://www.chaosium.com/fan-use-and-licensing/ Nick

Not sure about HC, but "TRI TAC Games" is a company - https://www.tritacgames.com/ Cheers, Nick

IT was supposed to: The link in that thread to Jason's original post doesn't seem reliable but this should work: As to the other options such as Disarm, in the BGB these are covered by Special Effects for Entangling Weapons and Spot Rules for Disarm / Entangle. IN the first instance I would look at those and then adjust for the tempo / feel of the planned campaign. Blod Tide is as mentioned another option. Sadly I don't believe Jason's more detailed fencing rules, intended for a "Sword & Planet" BRP supplement / game have ever officially been released. Cheers, Nick

Which to me explains the "there is no OGL for BRP, RQ, or CoC" stuff - if this was in the works, that topic would clearly have been more on Chaosium's RADAR, as would a desire to squash / minimise any existing confusion / misapprehensions currently circulating. I look forward to seeing the details. Nick

Not really: Common thug - 10HP, MWL 5, no armour, all skills 25%, drops immediately on Major Wound, all attacks do 1D6 damage. cosmic Elder God fighting superhero - Heroic Hit points (CON+SIZ), Stats rolled on 2D6+6 and allowed to increase to any value, skills allowed over 100%. Campaign starting level Superhuman... It remains within the bounds of probability that the Thug can drop the PC, but it is vanishingly unlikely. I have run very OTT / pulp BRP games with no issue: one needs to be very aware of the action economy (as in any game) and ratio of opponent skill to PC skill, but once one has a solid grasp of how BRP hangs together it is actually a remarkably forgiving system for dialling between harsh gritty realism and pulp heroics. To a degree, but also, if the intent is for PCs to "mow" their way through the horde, make the horde "mooks": any hit from a PC drops them (Special drops two, crit drops 3, subject to suitable player narration of appropriate pulp heroic move), they have a 20% skills and do 1D4 if they hit. Cheers, Nick

See Loz’s post in this thread back in 2008: cheers, Nick

Organisation. I think Jason (as primary author of the revisions / collation of prior art that is the current BRP BGB), Charlie Krank and Lynn Willis (as the editors) did an admirable job of marshalling a large, multifaceted text in to as concise and coherent a whole as they could - but with ten years experience in the wild and perspective I think more could be done to delineate the various optional systems (which ones don't play well together, which ones do; which ones suite particular types of games etc). And absolutely there are options from CoC 7e, Pulp Cthulhu, RQ!7 and indeed Magic World# that are worthy of inclusion. But the crucial thing about such a work of synthesis is organisation. I DON'T think it needs a radical re-write. Chaosium in their hey day were the gold standard in RPG publishing for sparse, elegant layout; concise, direct writing and masterful precision and economy in editing and presentation. The BGB didn't quite hit those heights, nor have subsequent publications IMO (albeit huge strides have been made in the new era in terms of presentation at least) - it would be grand to see a revised BGB that hit those heights again. I agree with G33k that an "outsider" in the editors seat would be a good thing. No offense to the Design Mechanism or Mythras, but the place I would look for pointers in terms of organisation and layout is Monte Cook - since the Ptolus setting book, the large scale published works Cook has put out have set the standard as far as RPG books as reference works go IMO. Cheers, Nick Middleton # I'm flattered someone mentioned Arete - my own feeling is I'd want to extensively re-write that to simplify and streamline it; but I think there's is much in core Magic World's character generation in particular that would be worth including in a revised BGB - the skill allocations by blocks, skill categories and cultures in particular. Put it this way - they are included in every BRP game I've run since I first encountered them.

"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and all of this…all of this…was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars." Nick

Yup - fundamentally, don't go up against a master of the sword unless you have a way of tilting things in your favour (e.g. superior numbers). And note that he's rolling a critical on 24 or less - near as dammit 1 in 4 attacks with the Greatsword... 😮 Cheers, Nick

That HPL’s racist and misogynistic views were far more common, even prevalent, during his lifetime is certainly true. Does that make them acceptable, then or now? Even during his life time, Lovecraft's views were not universally accepted - Mahatma Gandhi to pick one famous (and equally if not more complex) contemporary had different views. Lovecraft is rightly regarded as a seminal figure in the development of weird fiction and horror: part of any honest assessment of his contribution has to address his misogyny and racism, both in the context of his life and times (and correspondence with fellow writers such as Robert E Howard) and in what it says about subsequent generations appreciation of his work; especially that apparently it is acceptable to ignore or gloss over this part of his world view. Regards, NDM

In the Southern Reaches I'd make Demons dark spirits of the bleak and forgotten places, tortured denizens of dark and abandoned lands, the bitter children of the misdeeds and vile ambitions of great lords and high princes of ancient times (Fey and Mortal) that sowed poisoned seed on twisted soil. In other settings I'd stick with a more Moorcockian take and similar. I am very fond of the Malazan setting, and in Midnight Tides(the ffith book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen) there's a whole thread where a character befriends a summoned / bound demon - and discovers that is just a citizen of another plane, dragged to the characters home plane and bound in service. Some are also just comedy monsters... (spoilers, obviously!): https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/Lilac https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/Kenryll'ah_demon_princes Cheers, Nick