NickMiddleton

Quite possibly - but it is the only BRP / D100 rule set I have any remaining enthusiasm for and forms the basis of all the BRP gaming I still do (albeit mostly in recent years that's been SF based). *shrug* Nick

A corrected core book that eliminates the typos, and maybe streamlines the layout a touch would be great, but I would be opposed to any significant change to the core text - it would add unnecessary overhead and part of the games charm is that it is so close to previously published sources. I'd also like to see the Bestiary resurrected and completed somehow - the draft I saw had some great stuff in it, and in the hands of the right editor could still sing IMO. I'd also like to see some support material in the style of Sea Kings of the Purple Towns (Stormbringer) or Arkham Unveiled (Call of Cthulhu) - compelling, well woven and rich but geographically modest in scale settings fleshed out with a few scenarios. IIRC the revised Shillingshead monograph was heading for that; and there are other possibilities within the Southern Reaches. Equally, it is a model that would allow _other_settings to be explored. I'd also be delighted to see a Community Content Program for Magic World. I don't expect any of these things to happen of course, but one can dream. Nick

Not really - unless you are specifically interested in the setting, or the summoning magic systems. Bother the demon and elemental summoning systems from Elric! are in the Magic World Supplement Advanced Sorcery. Otherwise there are very few substantial rules differences; Elric! Is a paragon of the layout artists craft, but materially bare the setting there’s little difference. Cheers, Nick

The best looking incarnation of this is here: http://www.stormbringerrpg.com/?p=160 Cheers, Nick

My point, not really expressed in the previous post, is that all _permanent_ effects in MW have a POW cost, and I'd be wary of changing that in the player facing rules (but as previously indicated, for shaping a compelling villain, all bets are off). One could certainly look at tweaking the individual spells to more closely resemble Demon summoning: so to call up a skeleton / revenant /ghoul etc to serve the Necromancer for a limited service (say POW hours / a day and a night) only costs Magic points, but to make the summoning permanent (Like binding a demon) requires a permanent point of POW as well. TBH, it's a while since I looked at the rules and that is how I _thought_ they worked. Fairly sure I'd make it possible for a Necromancer to repair a Revenant too or making the decay slow if it's "bound"; mind I am re-reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen so my thinking about Undead is rather tainted by ideas about the T'Lann Imass... Cheers, Nick

Are you intending on running a campaign of warring Necromancers, where everyone else are merely footnotes in the struggle between the Lords of Death? If so, eliminating the POW cost isn't an issue; if not then I'd be wary of making magic that can put an utterly loyal army at someone's disposal too cheap... The fundamental issue is a number of cool tropes from fantasy fiction (the Lord of Evil with the Legion of Undead in this instance) is one that most RPG's rules don't expect to be a PC. The Necromancy rules in AS (derived from Bronze Grimoire) are intended to allow a PC "scale" Necromancer. They suffer from the inverse issue of the RQIII Sorcery rules - the later were quite good at producing "lone wizard in tower with phenomenal power but who interacts very little with the outside world for huge chunks of time" and thus were terrible for archetypal "murder hobo" player characters; AS / tBG's Necromancy rules are quite good for player character dabblers in Necromancy but don't really scale well to produce major antagonist lords of Darkness with undead legions... On balance I prefer the AS/tBG approach and my solution for "undead legions" would be to create suitable plot McGuffins that boost necromancy e.g. the Cauldron of Annwn which allows a necromancer to produce a special form of Revenant that does _not_ decay, and if used as the focus of a ritual (cast at midnight on the dark of the moon on the mid-winter solstice etc etc) can summon an undyng legion of the dead that lasts indefinitely and is completely loyal to the summoner. In other words, use the _rules_ of AS for "PC scale" Necromancers, and if you need Undead Legions / Evil Dark Lords bestriding the land like a colossus, fudge their power set using enchantments / rituals (basically, Chronicler fiat). Cheers, Nick Middleton

I have a rough outline of a short campaign set in England and the Caribbean in the 1680s to 1690's (straddling the Great Frost Fair, Monmouth's Rebellion, the death's of Henry Morgan and Christopher Monck and Port Royal in early 1690's... Really must finish that some time... which I could say the same about a DOZEN different rough outlines and stray bits of notes I have... Cheers, Nick

https://www.thediceshoponline.com/dice-sets/153/-Specialist-Dice?view=ALL&FilterDiceSideID=12,%2013,%2014,%2016,%2017,%2033,%2035,%2018&FilterDiceColour=13 https://www.amazon.co.uk/20-Unusual-Dice-Set-Miniatures/dp/B00YLU8PW0 IIRC I was also thinking of doing them as roll 1D(n/2) with 1D2 - if the D2 rolls 2, add (n/2). So D14, roll a single D8 (re-roll 8's) and a D2 to see whether you add 7; 1D8 and a D2 for 1D16 and 1D10 (re-rooling 10's) with the D10 to decide whether your add 9... The existence and (relative ease) of obtaining D14's. D16's, D18's etc removes one big element of fiddliness. Cheers, Nick

Mission to Epsilon is a scenario anthology, not all are SF: iirc there is at least one 1920's Call of Cthulhu scenario in there. Oscar Rios' Mission to Epsilon is an SF mission Jeromy M.Schulz-Arnold's A Mortal Coil is a Classic 1920's Call of Cthulhu scenario. Cabin Fever by Richard LeDuc is a Rubble & Ruin scenario. Descent, with Modification by Kevin Scrivner is an "ocean SF" adventure channeling Clarke's Deep Range / TV's SeaQuest DSV R. J. Christensen's Spacejack! is a Space Opera adventure. So they can be adapted, but they are not explicitly or even covertly linked to the settings / assumptions of Future*World. Cheers, Nick

Note that the BRP QuickStart contains both basic rules, some spot rules, and the balance is made up of multiple short scenarios in various different genres / styles (of which I wrote 2). cheers, Nick

Several - it was included in various boxed Chaoisium games in the late 1970’s / early 1980’s and reissued in the early 2000’s (in b&w cover, tape bound monograph era) as well iirc. Ah, basicrps.com, in all it’s copyright defying glory... fairly sure that _is_ the text of the booklet, or at least closely adapted from it, but I haven’t done a line by line comparison. In addition to the games Atgxtg mentioned I’m pretty sure it was also in the Elfquest, Stormbringer and Hawkmoon boxed sets, and possibly Ringworld. It was also included in the “... Paths” boxed sets. There was a point when the pamphlet was common, and relatively inexpensive, on eBay. Alas, the collectors seem have moved in with a vengeance. slightly surprised there isn’t a PDF available from Chaosium tbh. Nick

Only as a PDF from Chaosium (and other PDF vendors) - you may be able to source it second hand from elsewhere. Cheers, Nick

Well, I wrote, and Chaosium still sell, Outpost 19 in part as a riff on the original Future*World setting ( https://www.chaosium.com/outpost-19-pdf/ ), blending ideas from the original with memories of early Heinlein, and my fondness for Alistair Reynolds Revelation Space and other works and Ken McCleod's various SF works (Newton's Wake among them). Before the regime change at Chaosium I had started on an attempt to take the new Magic World and create a new Future*World from it - to build a similarly accessible, "broad church" Space Opera friendly generic BRP game based on the MW rules with suitable adaptations for tech / space travel etc. This was partly an evolution of the "SF core" of BRP rules I've been using for things like my intermittent Space:1889 and 2300AD campaigns. There was talk of some sort of Worlds of Wonder classic reprint / PDF a few years back - if such were to happen it will be interesting to see if that stirs wider interest in Future*World. Cheers, Nick

Dear God no. Re-attaching the MW rule set as it now exists to the Elric IP would throw under the bus Ben's original intent for the game to showcase Lynn Willis & co's fantastic rule set unencumbered by the constraints of that IP and the game was genuinely improved by its absence IMO (and I was a fan of Elric! back in the day). Frankly, the Elric saga as it now exists needs a very different rule set anyway. Production values wise it certainly was - personally I'd love to see a new edition of Magic World which got the same devotion to its production quality that RQG has received: I am fully aware that's not going to happen however. As to whether RQG is a superior rule set: since I'm not a Gloranthanphile, it fails at the first hurdle for me and nothing I have picked up about the rules in themselves suggests I'll find much to my taste either. I shall be intrigued to see a print copy when it finally hits UK FLGS however. The thanks is a nice nod to the early days of RPG publishing however. Nick

In that both Moorcock and Dickens were deliberately and consciously engaging in the very British tradition of mocking / criticizing the political, cultural and economic status quo of their country at the time they were writing, very much so. And in Moorcock's case, when people missed that aspect / layer in the Elric Saga, he doubled down on the parody in the Hakmoon books, where the pastiche of the British Empire became practical transparent. The "Roaring God Aral Vilsn"? The Eternal Champion stories, especially the early ones, are absolutely enjoyable sword and sorcery yarns, inspired in part by the young Moorcock's love of early Howard, Burroughs and Leiber... they are ALSO the works of a child of the London Blitz, and a radical and political thinker with a deep distrust of the self satisfied, self serving and self manufactured mythologies of the British Establishment; and an equally well honed awareness of the delusions and malfeasance of large parts of the counter culture in Britain in the 1960's and 70's. Cheers, Nick

I think it was a combination of things. First, at the time time, Stormbringer was a very appealing balance of rules complexity and simplicity. It allowed a play style that was more fluid and swashbuckling / pulp than RuneQuest, but with the same accessibility and intuitive core mechanisms as BRP / RQ. Second, it presented an accessible and compelling setting that gamers found really appealing: at the time (circa 1980), the world of the Eternal Champion series (the Elric saga, the Corum and Hawkmoon sequences as was at the time) was epic in scope, open ended and accommodating to a wide variety of tonalities, styles of play and, most importantly, player characters. Like Call of Cthulhu, but on a lesser scale, Stormbringer hit a sweet spot of system AND setting that has given it an enduring appeal, even though it was never as actively supported as Call of Cthulhu, nor as original a work in its own right as RuneQuest. Cheers, Nick

The GM is advised to penalise MOV for things like carrying a heavy load / wearing cumbersome armour in Elric! which was published 1993 and from which both influenced the BRP BGB and forms the basis of Magic World. The same advice to GM's is paraphrased on page 180-181 of the BGB: "The gamemaster can also lower your characters MOV attribute based on circumstances such as being overburdened, fatigued, cautious movement, etc." Sadly, I don't think there is any more detail than that, not even the specific figures for penalties seen in Elric! / MW. The Outpost 19 fatigue rues are part of my arsenal of house rules I use for more rule detailed games where I want to emphasise physical limitations - I really never cared for the RQ3 encumbrance / fatigue points system, hence came up with my own system. cheers, Nick

To be pedantic, IIRC it was Vance's Dying Earth stories that inspired the "memorization / preparation of spells" mechanic in D&D (Lyonesse post-dates D&D by ~ a decade)... the irony regarding the previous connection to AH's aborted RQIV is however quite delicious. Very intriguing, especially to see Dave Morris' name (and Dom!) as a contributor on the full press release, alongside the DM! Oh, and I love the artwork in the press release.

Pretty sure that would count as a derivative work of Moorcock's IP and thus open Chaosium up to all sorts of legal hassle in many jurisdictions. It would use both a highly recognizable name and large scale ideas from MM's work. Fond as I was of Stormbinger back in the day, I struggle to see how this would in anyway be a viable product - it sounds like a blatant attempt to use Moorcock's ideas / IP without getting permission / a license, which is just a non-starter. A genuinely new setting, inspired by Moorcock's ideas and themes but which has its own actually innovative ideas might get better traction - but I'd guess NuChaosium would be wary, if only because they are attempting to repair their relations with Moorcock (and others) and they also have other irons in the Fantasy RPG fire; so why stir up these potential issues. As a fan exercise even, Magic World is still available, and one can construct whatever setting one wishes for it (distributing such work, other than informally, is a slightly different thing). If I had the time or inclination building / distributing new settings / support material for Magic World is still something I occasionally contemplate. It's still my favorite BRP system by some considerable margin, and NOT because I helped Ben with the manuscript, nor because I wrote something for the published supplement. But alas, I have other calls on my time and the landscape has changed somewhat since the games was published. Cheers, Nick

Chaosium no longer had a licenses for that IP and part of the intent of Magic World was to present the excellent and well regarded rule set without any of the legacy IP issues. Cheers, Nick

I generate full characters sheets for major NPC allies and antagonists; I use variations of the old "Leader and Follower" sheets for specific bands of NPC's I feel I might need that sort of detail on, and most NPC's I rate as Minor, Average, Experienced, Heroic or Epic, as per page 221 of Magic World. Historically I had a slightly more fiddly variant of the Magic World breakdown, but play testing of the MW idea made me realise that the extra detail was pointless cruft - if the NPC really mattered, I would have created a full character sheet and if they didn't, I only need the bare minimum data to make them function as an NPC. Cheers, Nick

It's been a while since I read either SuperWorld or the Wild Card books but my recollection is there are NO elements of _setting_ common between the two. Cheers, Nick

I generally award ticks on Critical's and Fumbles. When there is a "logical pause point" in the over all flow of events in a game, I will also ask the players to assign a number of additional checks to skills they feel they can justify to me on the basis of events; so for example skills they feel their character will have used a LOT but the active play has not focused on: for example, the last three sessions have been in a particular country and everyone has been speaking the local language, but we've not be rolling for it as everyone has at least 30% so for speed of play we've just assumed everyone apart from the native speaker can get by but is obviously foreign; but everyone HAS been practicing (and immersed in) the language for several weeks of in game time. But I, as GM, award ticks - players don't get them without my consent, even if they criticisms or fumble (and if they special or succeed in the right circumstances I may award them a tick, and I always keep track of who is regularly succeeding at what), if they go tick hunting they get asked to stop, if they don't stop they get asked to leave the game. In 38 years of playing RQ / BRP derived games however tick hunting has never been an issue - it's been joked about, I've seen it discussed on the internet, but it has never happened in my games, or games I've played in. I also award "hours" so a character who has been in an environment can "train" a skill - if for example we end one session with the arduous trek across the desert concluding with the PC's successful arrival at Lut Gholein, and I want to start the next segment fo the campaign with the established in residence in the city after three months, I may well say "have 120 hours" and then can spend that using the training rules on plausible skills (the local language, skills they have been using to generate an income etc). Cheers, Nick

I don't allow more than one defence against a single attack (so you have to pick whether to Dodge or Parry, no second chances); but I allow multiple defences in a round and simply apply the -30 cumulative penalty to each subsequent defence (Parry once and then dodge, then parry again and the second parry is at -60 etc). I also allow a "counter strike" for special or critical Dodge. Generally, I try to go for simplicity of book keeping and fluidity in play. Cheers, Nick