NickMiddleton

Who have you been emailing? Dustin's been "off grid" for a while now, and Meghan and Nick are iirc in Europe researching for the new edition of Horror on the Orient Express. Might be worth pinging a PM to Zomben here - he's in contact with them over the Magic World line and may be able to put you in touch with Charlie or whoever is appropriate. Cheers, Nick

That's an RQIII Sorcery skill - doesn't have a direct equivalent in BRP. The conversion of the Hag Ben Monroe has done for Magic World simply drops the skill, as its not relevant in BRP/Magic World Sorcery. Cheers, Nick

Magic World includes a variant take on skill category modifiers that I really like, and have used in an SF variant I ran earlier this year. Basically, each category is tied to ONE stat, and the category bonus is half the stat. In the SF variant I used Half POW as the stat for the Combat category - but I also tweaked the skill list as to where certain skills sat (and significantly revised weapon skills, but that's another thread)... But it must be said that I also remain very fond of th ebasic categoies, eitehr as they are in RQIII or the revised version in the BGB... Cheers, Nick

Arete was originally intended for a different book, but plans changed and Ben and Chaosioum was generous and flexible enough to find it space in Advanced Sorcery. I do know Iron Heroes, albeit it wasn't consciously in my thoughts when writing Arete and I have to say it's one of the d20 variants I like the least - but that's because I think the concept was excellent but the execution way too fiddly and involved... Which, funnily enough was probably my biggest fear with Arete, to be honest: allowing the abilities to scale up sufficently whilst keeping some mechanical control of them, all within the same ethos of rules framing as MW/BRP. Arete, as presented, won't let a high skill character match a highly skilled practitioner of Deep Magic or Sorcerer - but they WILL give a good accounting of themselves - and my thinking is that in general one should pick and chose between all these options for ones campaign. Which "powers" / systems / options are available defines the world that chracters operate in at a fudnemanetal level to me, so I'd always think carefully about each option before I decided whether or not to include it for a specific setting. Cheers, Nick

I always rather liked Marcus Rowlands riff on it - "Sniper at tthe Gates of Dawn"... Nick

The Hardboiled GMshoe's Office: Ben Monroe (Magic World) Q&A Log Gutted I missed it - had to go out last night Nick

Ohhh! Cool! *bookmarks for pay day*. Cheers, Nick

" No, don't do that, you'll just make him mad..." AWESOME cover Ben! Nick

I just finished a 2300AD mini campaign that used the excellent conversion avaialble in the downloads section here and the BGB (plus my extensive library)... Pick a set of ship rules you like from any SF RPG and plug them in - it's what I usually do. The only tricky thing is getting people to wrap their heads round the differences between SF and fantasy - unless you are doing really OTT tech, for all the technobabble etc, an SF setting needs to feel different to a fantasy setting, but it's far to easy to be hadnwavy and imprecise with stuff such that it ends up feeling like fantasy / magic with weak and thin SF trappings. Also, warfare / combat are very different with high tech weapons and players need to have grasped that or they can get caught out... If you can track down copies of Other Suns, Worlds Beyond, Ring World or Future World they'll all help to varying degrees. I personally adapt the planets and ships system from Space Opera by FGU, as they are fun and playable and without being math / science heavy give the right feel. Cheers, Nick

It's in Advanced Sorcery but it's explicitly NOT a magic system. One of the things I decided when I first started looking at the idea was that it should be something other than "magic" in any mechanical sense - so NONE of the options I've come up with use Magic Points, nor rely on POW. Inspired by (rather than directly and solely adapting) the ki skills idea from Land of Ninja I've created a number of different options for GM's to allow truly exceptional skills. There are options that allow characters to use a success with their exceptional skill to create an opportunity that benefits another skill (theirs or someone elses); options that allow chracters with skills over 100 to do extraordinary things that those with skills under 100 simply cannot; and options that allow the exercise of exceptional skill to have lasting effects. What I wanted were options that let characters of over 100% to do amazing things without being Sorcerers, or reliant on enchanted items and magic point batteries. It's always bothereed me that, for example, people described Anduril as a "magic sword" - my image of it was that it was certainly well made, but that rather any specific enchantments or spells (which I know ARE mentioned in the text), what gave it its "power" was that it was forged from the shards of Narsil, it was the actual sword Isildur used to cut the ring from Sauron's hand - it was a weapon of fate and destiny, that had played a crucial role at a pivotal moment in momentous events. Whether I succeeded is for the readers to decide for themselves, but I will say that I was reasonably pleased with the variety of options I managed to devise without falling back on magic points or POW based mecahnics. If I'd had more time I'd liked to have worked at more options for exceptional "powers" for skills over 100 - some skills in the Magic World skills list just stumped me, as I was trying to chart a happy balance between exceptional powers and OTT "wuxia" that would be fun to play but not wildly over powered. In particular, the interpersonal skills (Bargain, Fast Talk for example) I struggled to come up with specific options that didn't seem wildly OTT and potentially game breaking... so in the end, not all skills got every option, but GM's can of course devise their own additions and alternatives. Cheers, Nick

You might want to check the posting date on that one - 25th September 2011... Not really - I didn't know at the time and since it's over a year back I can't remember what my informed guess back then was. Since I have had site of the Magic World layout (including art etc) recently it certainly has not been recently delayed by a specific amount / for any specific reason, albeit it's progress hasn't been as rapid as many of us (eagerly awaiting the book or involved in it's production) would like. I have no insider knowledge, but I remain hopeful that it'll hit distribution "Winter 2011/2012" - so probably not before Christmas but hopefully shortly after... Cheers, Nick

There's some stuff in Advacned Sorcery you will find VERY interesting... Cheers, Nick

Depending on the clothing and the torch, quite possibly. With heavy matted fibres and low temperature burning torches I'd be surprised if even fifteen seconds would be enough to ignite it. Light dry fibres and a high temperature burning torch on the other hand... Bear in mind that most real world torches do NOT behave like the perfect portable incendiary devices they are portrayed as in TV and film; nor does most historically accurate clothing burn as easily as some modern fabrics, and certainly not as easily as modern media would suggest. Like most RPG rules, it's a plausible compromise between excessive detail and playable abstraction. Regards, Nick

According to the notes in the table in my PDF copy there are TWO advanced melee weapons with the Stun effect (note 1 applies) and two Advanced Missiles Weapons (Pistol and Rifle) - but weirdly, the pistol damage only has footnote 2 applied to damage - I believe this is a typo and it SHOULD be footnote 10 (same as Stun Rifle) as well, and that the stun Rifle should ALSO have footnote 2: So Stun Lances and Whips deal normal melee damage AND have a stun effect where as: Stun Pistols and Rifles only Stun, but if they fail to stun DO reduce THP AND they are significantly more effective through armor than conventionally damaging weapons. At the very least, footnote 10 applying to Stun Rifles and not Stun Pistols is a typo I think. Cheers, Nick

Mechanically, the only serious issue we ever had was Free INT - A complete novice with say 15% in some Sorcery skills and a couple of spells can do MORE with their spells than a more experienced Sorcerer with say 55% in their skills and half a dozen spells, as the later (absent any items) has less Free INT to manipulate their spells with... One can criticise the way the manipulations scale, and the overall utility of the system for typical adventurers but these are more flavour problems than systemic, and I found they were all (to a degree) addressed by the same fix: get rid of Free INT. Limit Manipulations by skill / 5 (for powerful Sorcery) or skill /10 for moderated sorcery. So a Palsy skill of 66% allows a total of either 14 or 7 levels of manipulation: if the casters Range skill is 24%, their Duration is 32% and their Intensity 49% they can apply up to 5 (3) levels of Range, up to 7 (4) levels of Duration and up to 10 (5) levels of Intensity - but whatever combination they choose cannot in total exceed 14 (7) levels of manipulation. There are more extensive fixes: Dave Cake had a set I remember rating quite highly a few years back; Sandy Petersen wrote a comprehensive revision the entire RQIII magic rules that's generally very well regarded. Cheers, Nick

So, a thought that occurs whilst I sit here eagerly awaiting the game and in light of Seneschal's comment: What, besides what has been announced would people want to see in the way of support for Magic World? Not that I have any say whatsoever, nor any influence with Chaosium... But, having had some small input in MW and a couple of the planned supplements it's a game I really like and would love to see succeed. So: the core book is coming, there's a couple of magic supplements and a Chronicler's pack under way, and a couple of others in development. But what ELSE would people really like to see? Cheers, Nick

Well, the actual rules component of the BRP Quickstart (which is in the downloads section) isn't that big - 23 pages of rules plus loads of scenarios... Cheers, Nick

Fair cop - albeit I suspect I wouldn't allow a DEX 1 character to use ANY melee weapon tbh... Awkward Weapons (take II) Some personal weapons (missile or melee, primitive or high tech) are awkward to use - whether because of the technology or the specific mode of combat they are optimised for. The game master can designate certain weapons (or even certain uses of a weapon) as Awkward: and when using an awkward weapon on a target within 3 meters, the awkward weapon ALWAYS go last and the GM may rule they cannot be used at all against such an opponent. Some example Awkward weapons - an English Civil War Pike (a good case for just NOT being usable against opponents closer than DEX/3 meters ; a black powder musket (used as a firearm, when used as a club it's NOT awkward); a longbow (always awkward); a Barrett M82 sniper rifle (again, as a missile weapon, NOT as a club...); a Jaffa Staff weapon (again, only as a ranged weapon, as a staff it's not awkward).

My Thursday group are about to play some Stargate (yay!) d20 (Boo!) but we got in to conversation about a notorious incident from another Stargate came several years ago, which lead to me mulling over this Spot Rule: Awkward Weapons Some personal weapons (missile or melee, primitive or high tech) are awkward to use - whether because of the technology or the specific mode of combat they are optimised for. The game master can designate certain weapons (or even certain uses of a weapon) as Awkward: and when using an awkward weapon on a target within the users DEX/3 meters, the awkward weapon ALWAYS go last and the GM may rule they cannot be used at all against such an opponent. Some example Awkward weapons - an English Civil War Pike (a good case for just NOT being usable against opponents closer than DEX/3 meters ; a black powder musket (used as a firearm, when used as a club it's NOT awkward); a longbow (always awkward); a Barrett M82 sniper rifle (again, as a missile weapon, NOT as a club...); a Jaffa Staff weapon (again, only as a ranged weapon, as a staff it's not awkward). Any comments? Cheers, Nick

Which is one of the main reasons I have no truck with the blackjack method, and simply use: roll under, roll low - if success levels are tied and we still need to distinguish who did better, I use the margin by which you rolled under to determines who did better. Mathematically it's identical to black jack's (highest roll under skill) but maintains the consistency of BRP basic dice paradigm (roll under, roll low). And it comes up so rarely, and even then it's incredibly rare to need to ACTUALLY do the (trivial amount) of maths involved that I've never found a group that find it hard work. And I cannot say the same for the black jack method, which I have seen several times frustrate / annoy some players to the point of them switching system / mechanic at the first opportunity... Cheers, Nick

Yeah - I discovered that about a decade after I'd house ruled it myself - albeit I first encountered the idea on line in a set of notes on tweaking RQIII sorcery by David Cake, as I didn't track down Sandy's revised magic rules until the early to mid '00s. Cheers, Nick

Just dump Free INT. Limit Sorcery manipulations to skill / 5 (or 10 if you want to really rein Sorcery in). So a Palsy spell skill of 75% means that Sorcerer cannot apply more than 15 total levels of manipulation to their Palsy spells, but if they only have Range 30% they maximum level of Range manipulation they can apply to ANY spell is 6... Nick

Used the Spirit and Divine Magic systems in my "Heroic BRP" game using D101's Savage North a couple of years back, mostly converting on the fly (magic points in spells caused a 1 for 1 DEX rank penalty etc). Don't recall any major issues tbh. Nick

Then you are in luck - RuneQuest 6 is setting neutral, it does NOT tie the core game to any particular setting. Cheers, Nick

Ehn? What? Re-read the Elric! Shield and Parry rules carefully - shields may not be quite as good as they were in RQIII but they are still SIGNIFICANTLY better for parrying with than an off hand weapon (and MILES better than an improvised weapon). There are some subtleties to the Elric! shield / parrying rules that were buried in footnotes that aren't in the BGB - either because of complexity or over sight, you'd have to ask Jason - I missed that they HADN'T come across because I wasn't paying close enough attention when I was play testing, which is why the first time we had this debate I was very confused... Cheers, Nick