NickMiddleton

Well, there's also a Cthulhu Invictus Adventure contest running at the same time, which is quite specific, and it's pretty clear there will also be the annual halloween adventure contest for Call of Cthulhu Best to seek clarification direct from Dustin I think. Nick

Announcement here. So now we know what Jason's been working on for C7 - very pleased to see Gareth Hanrahan and John Snead are involved as well. Really rather looking forward to this. Nick

It's definitely Pale Rider / High Plains Drifter (i.e. gritty, plausible if somewhat non-historically specific "real" western with an occult / paranormal edge) more than it's Deadlands garish walking zombie's and the magic came back and history has radically changed schtick. Albeit a lot depends on how the GM chooses to handle things of course. Cheers, Nick

Monographs are printed in small batches and restocked when there are a number of small print jobs that need doing - and Chaosium's rather quirky web site management software removes out of stock items from the catalogue ENTIRELY (to prevent people ordering stuff that's not currently available, I assume), rather than say just marking stuff as "Temporarily Out of Stock". It wil no doubt be re-printed fairly soon, that's what usually happens. Nick

The only caution I would offer is that there is a pretty good Necromancy system as an extension of the Sorcery system available in the now OOP Bronze Grimoire supplement for Elric!/Stormbringer, so it's conceivable Chaosium might re-issue that material reworked to be non-setting specific (as they did with the RQIII Magic Book): indeed, if there is an old BRP game supplement that's begging to be "BRP-ified" and released to support BRP it's The Bronze Grimoire (closely followed by Liber Ka for Nephilim). Contact Dustin - there's certainly an opening for such focused supplement at present. Nick

Over at the Tavern, Newt posted earlier today that he'd sent for a proof print and that pre-order details would be going up soon... Nick

Err, so why not use those (plus perhaps a Spot Hidden to garner additional specific nuances)? If these elements are important to the game, breaking them out in to separate skill rolls seems to foreground them in the appropriate way - if they aren't central then why bother inventing a new skill that is largely a duplication / specialisation of existing skills to cover them all? Personally I think I'd just tailor the profession list (there's no scout in the core book for example) and may be give the players some additional notes on appropriate uses of existing skills, maybe widen a few skill definitions even, rather than create new skills. Cheers, Nick

I am 99.9% certain (but Paolo will correct me if I'm wrong) that Alephtar have a BRP License - Rome and Veni, Vidi, Vici are BRP, as is Charles Green's Dragon Lines and the Mecha game Alephtar are working on IIRC. Also, Jason has made reference to working on something yet to be announced for Cubicle 7 that is BRP. Nick

Having been briefly involved in some of the early brainstorming I'm really excited that River of Heaven is moving forward to publication and I can't wait to see the final setting. Cheers, Nick

My standard advice for running BRP with PC's that are less fragile than standard: THP=SIZ+CON for PC's and Major NPC adversaries Use THP only, no Hit Locations Consider using "mook" rules if the desired style is highly cinematic. Look at using the Fate Point option. Look at adjusting the Fatal Wound rules (pg 209) so characters reduced to 0 or negative THP are not instantly daed but e.g. are losing THP at 1 per round until -CON before irreversible death Adjust melee damage bonus to be a single die of increasing size (so the progression becomes 1d2, 1d3, 1d4, 1d5, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12). cheers, Nick

Charles, I have TWO copies of Gods of law - one is a purely black & white, tape bound copy based on what appears to have been a final proof copy (there are hand written annotations reproduced on some pages). it was one of a set in a "mega-order" by several regulars at the Tavern - when we told Chaosium about it they sent us all replacement copies or the corrected print run - which was also one of the first colour cover and perfect bound monographs... If we can't track Marcus down I'll slice up my black and white copy, scan it and run it through Acrobat 9 and send you the file if you want. Cheers, Nick

Nope - Pagan Call is the work of the original author of CDA, Stephane Gesbert. The Abbey is by Michael Patty. The contents in my 2004 printing are: Saint Bartholomew's Abbey Introduction to 10th Century France The Order of the Sword of St Jerome Plot Ideas Don't recall any shoggoths in the cellar - there is, obviously a mythos element, but my memory is that it would be easy enough to redress as traditional occult. Nick

No, as far as I'm aware. Monographs are printed via some sort of POD/short run print facility and in general Chaosium seem to order monograph prints in batches together, presumably to get a better price. There have in the past be significant gaps between the PDF release and the print release of monographs. Full distribution books are generally release in PDF only when the book is in distribution IIRC. Nick

*sigh* I've absolutely no desire to re-open (yet again) the whole licensing discussion, but that's not strictly true. If text has been released under the OGL, then it can be used under the OGL - which is NOT the same thing as "fair game". Open Gaming Content =/= public domain or copy right free... Specific names from copyright sources, especially where those names may also have been trademarked as well are best avoided: "Hobbit" is classic example (hence most RPG's talking about "halflings", a name that's generic and thus open for anyone to use). If your primary sources are established myth and folklore, and especially if its myth and folklore that was documented prior to any particular modern usage, you should have no worries - hence many RPG's having Elves, Dwarves etc. Cheers, Nick

I have a copy of the first printing from February 2004 - it's pretty good and not heavily biased towards the mythos. There's a description of the Abbey itself, some notes on 10th century France and the order of the Sword of St Jerome. I'm not sure how much it would add to another well researched historical setting but it's certainly not "mythos specific"... Cheers, Nick

Also, whilst things have been a little quiet at Chaosium of late, I noticed today a couple of updates from Dustin (re Arkham Now and Strange Aeons II) AND A new Blog post, so hopefully they should be a bit more responsive / communicative now... Nick

Pretty much. Proper cider should be cloudy and made solely from pressed apples (the yeast for fermentation should be the natural yeast that live on the skin of the apples)... Nick

*sigh* "Beer" is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize (corn), and rice are widely used. Most beer is flavoured with hops, which add bitterness and act as a natural preservative, though other flavourings such as herbs or fruit may occasionally be included. "Cider" is a beverage made from apple juice. Non-alcoholic and alcoholic varieties are produced. Alcoholic beverages from cider are made from the fermented juice of apples.

Ugh beer *shudder* I quite like some european fruit beers (Fruli, Floris Passion) but otherwise can't stand beers / lagers / ales. I'm a cider drinker from Somerset originally and my favorite cider these days is probably Thatcher's single variety Coxs cider Nick

Three things came very prominently to mind as I watched the film - Jorune, Andre Norton's Janus and LeGuins "the Word for World is Forest". Some of the stuff in the film is scarily like how I tend to run Jorune's isho and the Glispeen... Now, Pandora is NOT, exactly, any of those worlds: but there are a lot of parallels and in particular the story has a LOT of similarities to the Norton and LeGuin stories - but then, Cameron's never been a hugely original story teller. The LeGuin story is (by her own admission) very much influenced by the war in Vietnam (during which it was written) - but it too in the end is about wider issues of economic and cultural imperialism... Nick

BP in Nigeria, the British Empire in India, the Spanish (and other European powers) in the Americas. I saw Avatar in 3d last night and the only politics I picked up was a general (slightly fuzzy, not very rational) pro-ecology and anti-imperialism (especially economic imperialism) feel. I suppose, given that everyone had American accents it could be read as specifically aimed at America, but it didn't seem that way. As a film, I thought it was typical Cameron - to the extent that several characters seemed very familiar from other Cameron films (I keep wanting to call the woman pilot Vasquez). Beautifully realised, thin (but generally well performed) characters running through a thin (but pretty well executed and structured) plot that any fan of written SF knew within the first minutes of the film (and even non-SF fans presumably deduced well before the end). Visually amazing (up there with Titanic and T2), as a movie nothing particularly special - I enjoyed it more than I did Titanic, but then the mawkish sentimentality in that annoys me and in Avatar I can ignore it by speculating about stuff on Pandora. Overall a B- / C+ Nick

Not to worry - Jason had originally intended to include a far more unified, single powers chapter that could be used to build setting specific powers, elaborated from the system in the stand alone BRP game Super World but the play testers (including myself) argued for more immediately accessible "off the shelf" systems, and that's the direction he finally went with. You CAN mix the systems - it just requires careful thought. You can use the RQIII systems with BRP of course (they are available as the BRP Magic monograph as well), and I do hope that something like Jason's "unified" power system will be be officially released. My Ulfland campaign (as seen in Uncounted Worlds #1) uses BRP Magic and redresses BRP Sorcery as Divine Magic, so the Magic enchantment rules for Magic apply to crafted magical items - Divinely Blessed / Cursed Items generally can't be created by mortals, requiring the direct intervention of a deity (which is contingent on appropriate levels of Allegiance and successful rolls against such). If you can track down a copy the old Elric! supplement the Bronze Grimoire it has a lot of a useful add ons for the Sorcery system - no specific enchanted item rules, but the stuff on Rune Magic and Necromancy would provide a good context for adapting / creating your own house rules and are useful additions in their own right. Plus it has a nice set of "pre-built" enchanted objects. Cheers, Nick

Protection increases protection by a flat amount, irrespective of whether you are using variable or fixed armour, and has no fixed upper limit. If you are using variable armour rolls Sorcerer's Armour "biases the roll" with variable armour, rather adding a flat amount of protection: and in any cases is explicitly limited to a maximum of 4 points. And, in the end, they are separate magic systems that are meant to feel somewhat different and are not meant to be seamlessly compatible. Read through each system's approach, treating it as a unique system. Pick the approach that best suits you setting, and, if you will be using BOTH Magic and Sorcery, adapt the system whose approach to items you are NOT using so that it fits the approach you ARE using. Chers, Nick

At present, and much though I like what Rod's done with CF, it's one of several fantasy related publications and monographs - even if one excludes the various historical settings (Rome, Val-de-Loup) that include magic as an option, there is still Ashes to Ashes, as well as at least two fantasy scenario - and significant portions of BOTH adventure anthologies are fantasy IIRC. Cheers, Nick

Having been pointing out why they aren't needed, I should probably fess up that the gate Warden Universe cheats of course - ships ARE present, both as the FTL transports of the Pilot's Guild (combination of the Guild Liners from Dune and Alastair Reynold's Light Huggers) and as smaller, low tech in system vessels in parts of the setting - one of the relatively unique features of the Tripoint Facility (from where the Outpost 19 expedition is launched) is that there is a small but thriving asteroid mining community using in-system spaceships based at the asteroid and NOT run by the Pilot's Guild... The problem, as others have rightly said, is that unless the rules are exceptionally well integrated in to the game system AND the setting, they tend to get ignored. My memories of playing SW d6 is that it is indeed one of the few that did a good job (but then, it had to - Space battles are avital part of the source material) - but my Traveller experience was far closer to the TV series Firefly or Star Trek:the Next Generation§: the ship was a home and means of reaching the next plot and exactly how it worked or interacted with other ships was not something the game needed to be centre stage... Cheers, Nick § Classic Trek was somewhat different and like Rod, my memory is that the FASA game did a rather good job of capturing the feel of Classic Trek ship combat...