NickMiddleton

Yeah, plus there's all that stuff about the conflict between giri and ninjō and how that interacts with bushido... I'm roughing out a creation myth / origin story for the five species that make up the empire and trying to craft a code for the ruling elite somewhat analogous to bushido, but such that it will allow for a more diverse adventuring group. I then need a mechanism to encourage players to keep their characters conforming to that code, whilst frequently aware of the tension with it. I THINK I'm leaning towards Honour as a SAN like skill, with Allegiance being to two fold (or possibly threefold) between Devotion to the Song of Silver & Gold (basically, the Laws of Heaven), Devotion to the Song of Night (basically, selfish, self serving opposite of Laws of Heaven) and POSSIBLY a Devotion to the Song of the Void (a path of true balance). I like the idea that the duality the Empire is obsessed with may not be the only path, albeit I may drop it as distracting form the main themes. Need time to do some reading and thinking. Nick

Magic World is a concise, complete "fantasy" (as in, Sword and Sorcery) game. It contains everything a GM needs to run a game in any Sword and Sorcery / "Fantasy" setting of their choice or creation - magic, creatures, enchanted items, characters all in one book. IT's also a relatively "light" implementation of BRP that plays very fast, is easy to understand and stat things for. The BRP "Big Gold Book" is a tool kit - by picking the right options you can get something very close to MW, but there is then a LOT of the BGB you are not using / had to wade through to get to that sub set. Magic World also introduces some small, but IMO very elegant, refinements to character generation (cultures, skill assignment in predefined blocks as the default). As I'd been a playtester for Jason on the BGB and helped Ben by commenting on the Magic World manuscript, I also put a LOT of time in to trying to clarify combat: the original Elric! rules (which Magic World is directly derived from and which were one of the major sources for the BGB) contained some typos and poor wording, which we as playtesters didn't do the best job of getting resolved in the BGB, so I was keen to make sure things were crystal clear in Magic World. Put it this way - something approximating the Elric! rules was the baseline configuration I used from the BGB for BRP powered games until Magic World was released. Now, I just use Magic world as the baseline and add options from the BGB. My BRP powered 2300AD and Space: 1889 games use a version of Magic World, with adaptations for tech and firearms / futuristic weapons (if things had gone differently it would one day have been offered to Ben as a new Future World, but alas that's not an option anymore); I'm developing a Restoration era alt-history setting and a unique "pseudo-Rokugan" setting, both will use "Magic World with options" because its just a fantastic baseline configuration IMO. Cheers, Nick

Err, two copies actually - the contents of the AH boxed set (but no box) and a copy of the GW book. Both in storage at present but on my list to dig out to read. cheers, Nick

"Don't forget, <RuneQuest> came before BRP..." Nick

I really must take another look at my musings of what can be achieved with the Legend OGL and d100ii SRD's in relation to cloning Magic World... Nick

Sunwolfe - actually that speaks EXACTLY to one of the things I DO want to address - the "code of conduct" that binds a suban, of the lowest rank or close kin to the Child of Heaven on the Amber Throne them self, to act and often in ways which serve neither personal self interest nor those of ones lord. I need a framework, probably modeled quite closely on fictional versions of bushido, that will put the suban in a potentially constantly conflicted position, balancing world obligations, personal aspirations and spiritual well being. Hmm - need to re-read the sections on bushido in various RPG's... cheers, Nick

So, I'm noodling away at a Magic World powered game with highly honorable warrior nobles, clans and the like - influences are Robert Shea's Shike books (which I read as a teenager and adored); Eric Van Lustbader's Sunset Warrior sequence (ditto) ; but most importantly Peter Morwood's Horse Lord / Demon Lord / Dragon Lord / Warlord's Domain sequence. Oh, and I played some L5R 4e recently. I'm specifically crafting a unique setting, because I DON'T want to get caught up in details of historical Japanese culture (nor the "Orientalism" and cultural appropriation such things can be prone to), and I want to import some of the distinctly NON-Japanese ideas from Rokugan (L5R setting) and the Alban clans (Morwood). But I DO want Honour to be an important driving force in character actions; I want it to both be an aid to the PC's and to be a source of difficulty. And I don't really want to add too much in the way of additional rules on top of basic Magic World, plus Deep Magic from Advanced Sorcery. So I'm wondering about using Allegiance as the basis for my "Honour" / following the Warriors Code. I quite like the threefold split in MW's basic allegiance - and I quite like the idea of "balance" as the ultimate ideal. Less sure about "Light and Shadow" as the "flanking" forces, and I'm wondering about ways Alleigance can pressure / encourage a character's decision making. But, again, I don't want to add too much in the way of rules complexity. Any suggestions / ideas? Cheers, Nick

Actually Akrasia asked the wrong question: the right questions is why was one plan announced at GenCon, elaborated on at Kraken and alluded to as recently as last Thursday, if (per Jeff's post from Sunday), the new plan 'is what we always do'. Why say one thing, and then do something different? Nick

Or even at short notice, given Rick Meints post from last Thursday in this thread, and Loz's from Friday before the change in direction was made "public" at Dragonmeet on Saturday. Nick

RQ4 as the internal name makes perfect sense. The published book being just "Chaosium's RuneQuest" is fine. But in general usage, people simply will call it RQ7, because that's what it is. *shrug* cheers, Nick

Throw away lines in convention seminars lead to wild speculation and rumours: how unexpected... seriously? You drop fractions of information in limited circumstances, DONT follow up with a definitive "official" announcement / press release, and are then surprised that the rumour mill runs rampant? Cheers, Nick

I'm horrendously busy at work sadly, although I have passed Marcus a scenario for the Magic world site ( a reworking of Chaosium published Elric! scenario) and I'm hopeful of having some more time in December I can spare for MW stuff, so I can try beat some of my rough notes in to shareable / publishable form. Cheers, Nick

Looks fantastic - do keep us posted! Cheers, Nick

I was indeed referring to the Thieves World Companion that updated the Thieves World pack to the Beysib era of the stories. Nick

Ringworld and ElfQuest were different games, rather than RQ2 supplements. The original Thieves World boxed set and the FASA scenarios were RQ2, the companion was RQ3 IIRC. QuestWorld is one of the back catalogue items that I suspect is complicated by rights issues, as it may not currently be clear who exactly owns the copyright to the published text; as with Worlds of Wonder and some others, its then a question of whether the effort required to clarify that situation is worth the potential returns, especially at a time when when money and other resources are severely strained. Sadly I don't think we'll ever see the chunk of GW's QuestWorld Dave Morris wrote, as that got re-purposed for Dragon warriors and although he found it a few years back, if it ever appears I assume it would be for DW. Nick

Cool. I had noticed the sort by columns and to be honest I think alphabetical as the default is a better idea, but it's not that urgent. the notes section is probably fine - could it be made a bit larger on the web page though? Creatures like the Greater Demon have a bunch of powers AND special weapons that transcribing into the existing box is a bit irritating. cheers, Nick

Leaving aside trying to correlate the numbers, IIRC the original conception of Demorgogon as a Demon Prince is as an adversary a high level AD&D party could potentially defeat...which in Magic World terms puts him slightly above an Angel or Greater Demon. So, in that regard I think your basic numbers are pretty solid. I'd look at giving him some additional powers, derived rules wise from the Greater Demons Aura of Terror and similar to cover the gaze effects of both heads, and each head singly. will have a proper look at numbers tomorrow after work and see if anything more substantial occurs to me. cheers, Nick

Have been working my way through the MW bestiary. Couple of observations: I can't seem to assign whether a custom weapon can parry or not? There's nowhere obvious to add notes regarding weapons / attacks (e.g. the Cattle's Trample is contingent on the opponent being on the floor, Chunchon MP drain...) Is there any particular reason why the default list of published entries ISN'T alphabetical? Cheers, Nick

Logo to the right of the barcode on the back cover of Magic World, which appears on a bunch of Chaosium BRP books over the last few years not just Magic World and Advanced Sorcery - I had assumed they'd registered that graphic along with "Basic Role Playing" itself. cheers, Nick

But equally, it hosts the "official" Chaosium HeroQuest forum... and presumably Chaosium's future boardgames will be covered? The advantage of "Chaos Central" is that it does not DIRECTLY mention a specific Chaosium (or D101, Cakebread & Walton, Alephtar, Design Mechanism or Mongoose) trademark, but will suggest the connection to Chaosium and Chaosium related games. It also doesn't mentioned a specific system / family / branch of the family - which might make it less confusing for players of games like Legend and Renaissance (who may not immediately get the connection between their games and Chaosium's BRP) or games like HeroQuest. And "BRP" in this context is a trademark Chaosium OWN - whether they want to or not, that fact notionally places a certain onus on them to be aware of exactly how it is being used and what it is being associated with. *shrug* like many of these things, I'm not personally that bothered either way, beyond a vague feeling that something marginally less system / company specific and more embracing of the newly widened scope of the site (such as "Chaos Central") might be a better idea. Cheers, Nick

In Ulfland (my BRP fantasy setting I wrote up for uncounted Worlds 1 and which I may yet "retool" for Marcus' Magic World site) religion involved specific Allegiance to a deity. So there were the great forces (Weaving and Unweaving), but most characters were defined by their Allegiance to a specific deity. Characters could have more than one (and commonly people respected MOST of the Pantheon), but priests were devoted to a specific Deity and their access to powers depended on their allegiance being sufficient for them to be Allied to that deity. Each deity had specific lists of "positive" and "negative" things for raising / lowering alleigance. In the original write up I didn't get in to the details, but somewhere I have a set of notes on variant powers of Apotheosis derived from the BRP Super Powers section and stuff fro some of the old Stormbringer monographs. Nick

The irritating thing is there used to be a button that basically did what most people wanted ("show me new forum posts since my last visit") and now there are a bunch of buttons that LOOK like they do the same, but don't... and despite creating a custom, personalized "activity stream" that shows whhat I want to see (all new forum posts since my last visit) all that does it force me to make several mouse clicks when I arrive to get at where it is buried in a drop down menu... As a piece of interface design it's lacking, I'm afraid. Is there no way to place my custom activity stream (or at elast SOME of them) on the front page when I#m logged in? So that when I get here, I can just click on the button I want, rather than having to a) ignore the default one (which doesn't do what I want) and b) go digging in drop down menus for the custom one I made? Cheers, Nick

no - I have a copy, picked up a few years back when I first became aware it existed and was BRP related (from a thread at RPGNet IIRC) and I DID read it at them time, but I've never had a chance to use it in anger. cheers, Nick

Question - what effect does the Rank rating actually have? Cheers, Nick

Few quick observations from having generated a small orc band: there is NO "Stat x 5 " roll for SIZ in Magic WorldTHP seem wrong; looks like they are CON+SIZ; should be (CON+SIZ)/2 There are no Major Wound Values (should be THP / 2)Otherwise looks good. cheers, Nick