NickMiddleton

RQ6 is a fine game. I can also heartily recommend the upcoming Magic World, which is a specific, well integrated (and explained) subset of the BGB fine tuned for fantasy. It takes the Elric! rules, removes the Moorcock IP, polishes up a variety of small details, smooths out some inconsistencies and adds in some well judged tweaks and refinements to produce a very effective, easy to grasp and run Fantasy BRP system. There are a number of planned support items for it in the pipeline as well. Cheers, Nick (Yes, I've helped out a bit on MW - but it's Ben Monroe / Zomben's project, building on the original excellent Elric! incarnation of BRP)

Yep - a sword was MORE expensive and more about prestige. It took more materials, more time and a more skilled artisan to make a sword and therefore carrying one demonstrated one was a person who could afford such expense. When battle was joined, they would NOT have been reaching for the sword first, even if they were highly skilled with it. Well, the wealthy or those who looted wealthy corpses after a battle... But I quite agree - any complex metal work was expensive and again, had elements of prestige bound up with its use as much as practicality. Mail is wildly overrated by a lot of gamers as a defensive protection for example - great for protecting gussets but brigandines / coats of plates / padded & faced jacks offered the same level of torso or limb protection for a fraction of the cost and were MUCH more common amongst the rank and file in mediaeval armies as a consequence. And yet officers in the firearms era do that - they go in to battle with a "weaker" weapon - a pistol. Because as officers their "main" weapon is the troops they command, so their personal side-arm is purely for personal defence and as a badge of status. And you'll note that I never said the sword was a USELESS weapon anyway, just that it wasn't the PRIMARY weapon: if you loose your main weapon you want something other than pocket knife or harsh language to fall back upon. Cheers, Nick

Use of the search function will reveal that this topic has been EXTENSIVELY debated here on several occasions. Shields are NOT as potent as they were in say RQIII or Elric! but they are still a (marginally) better choice than off hand weapons if one is expecting to face any significant amount of missile fire. Um, the effectiveness of a weapon is only one factor in the choice of using it - it's prestige is ALSO important. Historically, the masses were armed with pole / spear weapons (devastatingly effective and CHEAP). Swords were rarely, if ever a main battle weapon - they took a lot of expensive resources (lots of metal, lots of skill to make) and are, on balance, less effective in typical use than a spear, pole arm or an axe. Think of them as the pistol of pre-firearms warfare - very effective in the right role and in skilled hands; a highly portable secondary weapon and badge of prestige. But the Axe, Spear or Polearm are the main battle rifles of the pre-firearms era: they are the weapons the rank and file carry and the weapons that generally determine the outcome of an engagement. Now - they are, by definition, exceptions to every such sweeping generalisation - but looking for mechanical performance differences between side arms without first looking at the social and economic factors is IMO a mistake. Simplicity, at a guess. For every session of RQII/III I played were anyone remembered they could switch modes, I must have played a dozen where no one remembered (and I've been playing RQ since the late seventies). And, speaking as someone with ten years steel weapon combat experience fighting with halberds and similar polearms, the idea that you can't crush, entangle or Knockback with a Halberd is more problematic that not being able to impale... Well, your "wrong" in the sense of I'm sure the system WAS thought through - it's just the decisions the designers reached aren't ones that sit well with you! Bear in mind that BRP was intended as a generic core book - adding lots of detail about bronze age hand to hand combat in to a system that had to also accommodate 17th Century fencing, light sabre duels and 24 style special ops combat missions would have been problematic, especially give how large the book already was. Speaking as one of the play testers I do think we missed some of the wrinkles in the tweaks to combat, but I don't think any of them are egregious and frankly, depending on the campaign I am running I use different shield rules anyway. BRP RAW encourage swashbuckling MUCH more than RQII/III ever did for example (off hand parrying with a weapon and Dodging are more viable options) so I'm happy enough with them - if the BGB ever gets a revision I'd be the first to call for a sidebar spelling out some of the issues with shields as written and offering some alternatives (as the BGB is all about options), but the systems entirely usable as is. Cheers, Nick

Interestingly my latest email shot from Chaosium says that the "I WANT FREE SHIPPING" voucher STILL works for overseas orders of $125+ and is till automatically applied to US orders of $60+ Cheers, Nick

Rod, I'm, biased, and I know I said this already - but please, please, please talk to Newt! I think OQ (especially OQ2) is a VERY good fit for CF and there's a natural synergy between what D101 have been doing more generally and what you've done so far and were planning for CF. If Chaosium really are so foolish as to let this opportunity pass I really think D101 and OpenQuest are the way to go. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who would happily contribute to a Kickstarter to bootstrap CF in to a full distribution product, via Chaosium, D101 or your partner of choice, based on the excellent work and fantastic customer support you have offered on your own initiative / effort with the original monograph and subsequently. Cheers, Nick

Really sad that CF isn't likely to remain part of the immediate BRP family, but there are several options for you to look at. Personally, I cannot recommend OpenQuest highly enough - it's a flexible, stripped back core that emulates the feel of Chaosium's RQII really well and would make a fabulous basis to build your own stand alone version of "Classic Fantasy" that would remain fundamentally numbers compatible with most BRP / D100 family games. Cheers, Nick

Chaosium Inc. - - Chaosium News - HORROR ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS KICKSTARTER I'll be pledging... Cheers, Nick

I have "aspirations" to return to the Gate Warden setting - but real life issue (and not just the big dramatic stuff but tedious trivial stuff like a horribly busy day job!) have eaten my spare time in the last few years: circa 2009 I was in thee regular game groups (two fortnightly and one bi-weekly one) but these days it's effectively one and I've only just started running something again this year (BRP SF funnily enough, but not GW). We'll see - I started noodling away at a possible sequel a few years ago, but we'll have to see if I can get the time to return to it, and entice my regular group to help me play test again. Cheers, Nick

Firearms in some various older iterations of BRP had simple penetration rules - weapons had a rating that was the number of Armour Points they ignored. That's from Rogue Mistress, the Stormbringer 4e adventure... Nick

Well, the basic Alien is in the BGB - (Alien Xenomorph, page 358) and Arcturus had another stab at them and the Face Huggers in a thread here - http://basicroleplaying.com/basic-roleplaying/brp-xenomorph-2334/ Nick

Ben - as I said at the Tavern, could you explain what the asterisk and underlines in the skills list mean? Cheers, Nick

The RT going is a cosmetic consequence of the change in stats from 3-18 to solely using the stat rolls (so no INT 2D6+6, only Idea 40-90) and the changes the follow on from that - mechanically it's not intrinsically problematic but it will make stat blocks notably different between CoC and other BRP games, which is I think a mistake. *sigh* People have been using those play styles and devices, and debating them, since the early days of the hobby. I was involved in fanzines debates in the 1980's about "narrative" and we were regular being told that the debate was stale as it had been gone over before in the mid-seventies. People have always played Call of Cthulhu (and yes, most other RPG's, INCLUDING (A)D&D) that way as well as in other play styles. Dogmatically insisting one or the other is the only way is toxic - most groups actually use a constantly varying blend of styles, just as they constantly vary between a more task or conflict centred view of the resolution mechanics in their games. BRP / CoC has always "tacitly" allowed those play styles and I see nothing wrong with revising things to make the support more explicit, PROVIDED it doesn't preclude other established play styles. Whilst I am very wary of any of these things, for precisely the reasons you give, I'd also say that used judiciously they actually help smooth of the "random idiocy" of raw dice. I have lost count of the times (in CoC and pretty much every other RPG I have ever run or played) letting the dice just roll would have resulted in an outcome that was dull, counter productive to the player's engagement with their characters and just ruined the game for all of us. Mechanics that let us avoid these sorts of derailments I put in general in the same box as stuff like not having a clue require a critical Spot check to find - it's basic common sense, not rocket science (nor is it "game design genius!" but that's a separate topic). Absolutely - my concern is that if 7e is too substantial a fork, the substantial synergies between Call of Cthulhuand BRP will be eroded. NOTE: eroded, NOT lost: even in the raw proposals we've had outlined the numbers will be substantially the same and the existing back catalogue remains available. However, revising combat extensively WAS needed. I tend these days to have Firearms as a skill, with specialisations in Handgun; Close Quarters (FIBUA, snap shooting long arms without bracing etc) and Marksmanship (shooting at taregts where the shooter has the opportunity to brace, take up a correct shooting posture for the long arm / pistol they are using) because frankly whether it's a Browning, a Glock or an M16 from a game play perspective the big differences are NOT inherent in the specific weapon design but in the type of shot you are trying to make. And unarmed COmbat in CoC has long attracted criticism (not all of it justified, but it certainly needs extensive revision). This. Having seen what Jason & co have done with BRP in the Laundry, and what Ben Monroe has done with the revision of the old Elric! rules for Magic World I think there is real potential for a new version of Call of Cthulhu that is BOTH highly compatible with BRP AND genuinely innovative; that can tidy up and clarify a lot of the long standing criticisms of the current rules, add options for character engagement and motivation and streamline the system in general so that it plays better and is MORE approachable as a system for new players. And SOME of what's in Mike and Paul's proposals may well have a roll in such a revision - but the whole package misses the mark for me in its current form...

Nope, apparently irrational hyperbole IS the order of the day. Ah well. Nick

The copy of the rules I have with me at games is the hardback of 5th. The actual rules I play by are a heavily house ruled version of those based on decades of playing BRP games - it most closely resembles the simplest baseline of BGB BRP with a couple of small tweaks. I own copies of 2nd, 4th and 5th edition, plus the BRP BGB and I could from a rules perspective run a scenario written for ANY edition with ANY of those rule sets. Nick

OK, I know I was the first here to voice a negative opinion based on the seminar but this: is a ludicruous overreaction to a product that does NOT exist yet and doesn't even have a proposed publication date!! Chaosium have the ms in house and Mike Mason and Paul Fricker have made it very plain that what they were talking about was their PROPOSED changes - it is entirely in Chaosium's hands how many of those changes they actually implement. And to be fair, I heard a LOT of things I think would make sense in a "Call of Cthulhu Companion" as variants or options and a number of areas they have proposed changes in are, even if the changes DON'T sound like ones I'd make or use, absolutely areas where the current rules need a serious overhaul. So, can we possibly restrain ourselves from the sack clothes and ashes and / or tarring and feathering Chaosium and / or Mike and Paul and see where this goes? Or are we going to yet again prove the stereotype that frothing irrational hyperbole is the common denominator of geek internet discourse? Nick

Hmm - I listened to the recording of the seminar and... well, it's not what I hoped. It appears to be a rebuild from the ground up that sounds like it ignores the existence of the BGB version of BRP; some of the proposed changes sound like they will impose a much narrower range of play styles than previous editions; some of the proposed changes appear to be solutions in search of a problem... and on the whole, I heard a bunch of interesting optional rules but nothing compelling that made me think I need this new edition, and quite a lot of stuff that I'm pretty sure I'd never use... Ah well, will have to see what Chaosium actually publish. Nick

Psstt!... Aces High New Mexico PDF Chaosium Inc. Nick

Off the cuff, for weapons / attacks that don't normally allow the Knockback as a special effect, I'd probably impose a DEX / SR penalty (say 5 DEX / 3 SR) as well as saying the Knockback is calculated from rolled damage but only half that damage is taken as actual wounds by the target, whatever happens. Need to look at how RQIII handled it as it was a option in that and I can't recall the rule at present... Nick

Also, take a a look at Cthulhu Rising (monographs here and here )- one could strip the FTL elements out easily and just focus on the Solar System... But honestly, pick a reasonably well documented near future hard SF setting and just use BRP as the rules set - I ran an asteroid exploration / first contact weirdness game that started off pretty straight hard SF using bits of 2300AD and Martin Freeman's Space Traveller's Handbook using BRP (back then, that was Call of Cthulhu supplemented with Future*World). Cheers, Nick

The thing is, I do play some Pathfinder so having it for both pathfinder and BRP/CoC is a possibility. Now, if it was JUST CoC, I wouldn't bother (there are several perfectly serviceable freeware apps) - but if it can handle the Big Gold Book, especially of it lets me smoothly pick a set of options for a campaign and then remembers them for me, or if I can tweak it to generate "Leader and Follower" sheets of groups of NPC's for a particular set of BRP options... hence my curiosity as to what one can or can't do with it. Nick

So... some folk may be aware of Lone Wolf Developments HeroLab, which looks quite cool but which was never a great choice for me as it was Windows only and only handled Call of Cthulhu (for which there are a number of free options). However, it's now available for Mac OS X - see Systems Requirements here, and Lone Wolf are apaprently (see here going to add full BRP support to the existing Call of Cthulhu "License Pack". So, am now very tempted by HeroLab - anyone here had any experience of it's Windows version who can tell me how well it works? Cheers, Nick

No licenses - the history of RPG licenses is chequered and I'm really not sure Chaosium in it's current form is up to the challenges of managing a modern IP license. It's possible they could find one that would work, but I think their efforts would be better directed elsewhere. If there are going to be boxed sets they need to have lots of nice "bits" - look at the Pathfinder Beginner's Box for example. So I'd do a BRP intro set with stand ups, dice, the quickstart and scenarios etc. I'd then do "genre books" based off of Ben Monroe's announced Magic World - definitely a Future World and then maybe smaller more compact supplements for CowboyWorld; SpyWorld; plus an aggressive program of scenarios in PDF with print anthologies to follow. Note that boxed sets can work in the modern market (e.g. Dragon Age tabletop RPG, the aforementioned Beginner's Box for Pathfinder) - they just have to be focused and have the broadest possible appeal. So I think specific settings would have to be books, as would supplements. Cheers, Nick

Yeah, mine pitched up today as well - slightly confused now though as I had included it in a big order for free international shipping and I was sort of expecting it to arrive with some other books... Only had time for the briefest of skims but looks very good. Nick

It's pretty easy to borrow stuff from 2300AD, Aliens, Cyberpunks Near Orbit and Deep Space supplements as the broad feel is similar. There is a LOT of material on John's site: several scenarios (for both military and civilian PC's), significant expansion / elaboration of the setting compared to what's in the two published monographs. Beyond what's already available what specifically are you after? Cheers, Nick

Anyone who was having issues with the cart processing at Chaosium's website, try again now. I was having issues yesterday and emailed Chaosium: Aaron emailed me back overnight and the problem has been resolved, so I've placed my order (including Mythic Icelnad, yay!). Cheers, Nick