NickMiddleton

Yes, but like plasticine, eventually you just end up with a horrible off brown mush. Individual GM's can, and will, do whatever they like with O19 and it's setting - but I have (mostly in my head alas) a fairly clear vision of what it includes and Lovecraftian horror is not on that list. The entire basis of the large scale back drop in the Gate Warden universe is that it's easy to transport people via gate, but high volume / mass cargo has to go via FTL ship. I'm sure John will comment if he has time - but my impression from my early involvement with RoH was it was less about "moving on" than "diversifying". And having done the monograph route with CR / JN he was interested in a route with more possibilities whilst leaving him in control - which OpenQuest gives the project. As has been said, converting RoH OQ to BRP should be a doddle "Soft" Space Opera? Psi-powers, FTL starships and communication, multiple off Earth human societies that are all fairly recognisable, tech that despite being from millennia in to the future is remarkably familiar but not quite "now"? Oh yes, O19 fits the broad outlines of the genre... Quite deliberately. Speaking purely personally, it would have to be Chaosium - the setting makes reference to some elements from the original Future*World (albeit IIRC only the Quertzl and Sauriki are in O19) and I always conceived of it as playing in / with "their" setting. I have other SF ideas that, if I ever have the time, I'd like to develop and which could go in a number of directions (both conceptually and publishing-wise): but the Gate Warden's I see as a Chaosium thing. I just need to pull my finger out and write some more down in a coherent fashion that makes sense to other people... *sigh* Must buy a lottery ticket tonight... Nick

Outpost 19 is very much NOT intended to have a Cthulhu element, and reconciling it's very-limited and inimical to complex organic life FTL ships but ubiquitous gates with the FTL set up in CR would be problematic, to say the least... I am (amongst a gazillion other things) developing some ideas for a follow up to O19, but it's slow going at present. That would be the River of Heaven hard SF setting John and others are developing - I had a brief involvement early on and it looks very exciting (I believe John is planning an OQ version and Newt will also be doing a HeroQuest 2 adaptation) but it was, last I knew, definitely hard SF. And, fond though I am of CR, it's really not "soft" Space Opera in the style of the TV shows / films I listed up thread... Cheers, Nick

Predictably (given what I did in my port of Isho and Dysha's to BRP), I prefer the separate skill for each Dysha. I liked the Jorune 3e system that emphasised the martial-arts like feel of Dyshas - and I think a separate skill re-infroces that. For me, muadra Dyshas' are orders of magnitude more crude than anything the shanthas do with isho... Which is why for them it's always a big deal. Cheers, Nick

That's a fair point... In the early days of RPG's, clearly not, as Traveller (for all it was popular) never really overshadowed (A)D&D as far as I'm aware.But Traveller/FASA's Star Trek / both incarnations of Star Wars? There's a certain substance there. It was somewhat overshadowed in the 1990's by the gaming obsession with cyberpunk, but as technology has outstripped the baroque predictions of the genre cyberpunk's start has somewhat faded. Mind, transhumanism has largely usurped it's place it seems to me. To be honest, I'm not really envisaging this as something that will be as successful as Classic Fantasy: for whatever reason RPG gamers are obsessed with fantasy to a much greater degree than any other genre. But it's a model that I think might have lessons for other BRP supplements, and I do know that when Dave Gordon was talking to Chaosium back in early 2006 about a truly generic BRP Space, they (well, Lynn Willis IIRC) questioned if there was a market for such a non-specific supplement. Cheers, Nick

Yes. But they aren't really relevant precisely because they are edge cases. Few fantasy settings actually fit the AD&D model - but that's the one gamers (taken on mass) gravitate to. Likewise, I think "SF" for gamers gravitates towards something like Loz and I described - high on character and story, low on science (especially when it gets in the way - but not necessarily entirely devoid of it); an oppressive 'central' authority (to give characters something to fight against); a wide open back drop so that there is space for stand alone stories 9and so they don't HAVE to fight the central authority); space ships that both allow a plausible adventuring size group AND huge space battles... After all, precisely the point is NOT to try and create something that will truly cover the entire genre - it's futile task and deeply unlikely to sell. What I'm talking about is crafting a "non-specific" SF setting that captures the "centre field" feel of SF that would appeal to most gamers, in the same way that Classic Fantasy has for Fantasy Gaming... Cheers, Nick

But Classic Fantasy doesn't cover multiple sub-genres of fantasy - it specifically goes for one particular genre - AD&D. Now, it's certainly true that SF RPG's, despite the early dominance of Traveller, never "homogenised" around a single dominant genre in quite the way that fantasy did around D&D. BUt I think there might be some mileage in this...And my instinct is that there is MORE mileage in coming up with an SF setting that cleaves to this baseline model, than trying to create a generic "BRP Space" that can do 2001, Firefly, B5 AND S:AaB... Hmm - but think Star Wars / Star Trek / B5 / Firefly / Farscape / Andromeda / Blake's Seven - is there a commonality, despite their distinctive flavours and styles? I think there is, you know... Hmm - story over precise science. JMS famously said of the space ships in B5 that they moved at the speed of plot - and whilst B5 was never really "pulp", and occasionally would play with / foreground "cool science"§ it was always first and foremost about a compelling story about plausible characters... Clear cut divisions of white hats and black hats - an oppressive central authority (Corrupt federation / evil empire) for our rag tag band of heroes to oppose... Small ships must be viable (so PC's on a ship is plausible), but that doesn't preclude BIG ships either... Sounds workable, but as ever the devil is in the details... Nick § Sheridan "falling" from the core shuttle - the danger wasn't the "fall", which was very slow, it was the speed at which the station was rotating... Of the fact that the Star Fury's regularly used their thrusters to rotate about all three axises...

I'd certainly be willing to include such material, but as Paolo points out, this stuff needs to be on the FLGS shelves... What would be the SF equivalent of Classic Fantasy? Cheers, Nick

From this thread about the monograph the list in BRP Creatures is as follows: Allosaurus, Ant (Giant), Baboon, Bandersnatch, Basilisk, Bear (Brown), Bear (Polar), Beetle (Giant), Behemoth, Brontosaur, Broo, Cattle, Centaur, Chimpanzee, Chonchon, Crocoddilians (Small and large), Deer, Dog, Dragon, Ducks, Dwarfs, Elelmentals (Gnomes, salamanders, shades, sylphs, undines), elephants, Elves, Fachan, Ghosts, Ghouls, Giant, Gorgon, Gorilla, Grampus, griffin, Hafling, Harpy, Hawk, Headhanger, Hellion, Horse, Human, Insect Swarm, Jabberwork, Lamia, Lion, Lizard, Manticore, Minotaur, Mummy, Nymph (Dryad, Hag, Naiad, Oread), Octopus, Ogre, Orc, Panther, Plesiosaur, Python, Satyr, Sea Serpent, Shark, (medium and large, but alas, no lasers...), Skeleton, Spirit (Disease, Healing, Intellect, Magic, Passion, Power, Spell), Stoorworm, Tiger, Toad (Cliff), Troll (Cave and, er, non-cave...), Unicorn, Vampire, Werewolf, Whale (Sperm, Killer and Dolphin), Wolf, Wraith, Wyrm, Wyvern, Zombie. That's noticeably longer than the list of creatures in the BRP core book: Alligator (or Crocodile), Bear, Brontosaur, Dog, Gorilla, Hawk, Horse, Insect Swarm, Lion, Rat Pack, Shark, Snake (Constrictor, Venomous), Squid (Giant), Tiger, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Wolf. Centaur, Dragon, Dwarf, Elf, Ghost, Ghoul, Giant, Griffin, Halfling, Mummy, Minotaur, Orc, Skeleton, Troll, Unicorn, Vampire, Werewolf, Zombie. Angel, Demon (Greater, Lesser), Elementals (Air, Earth, Fire, Water). Alien (Grey, Xenomorph), Blob, Robot (Giant, Killer, Utility). Also, although there are some duplicates, often it's just the name. The BRP Creatures version of the Zombie for example is not the simple modern movie zombie. Cheers, Nick

I've never quite understood the whole blogging phenomenon. I sort of understand the idea in relation to people with something to say, or a specific product to promote. And I can sort of see the role it would play for people who make a living from writing, as a way to keep their hand in. But I've never really understood either the fascinating with general blogs, or quite how some folk manage to maintain momentum with them. Since "maintaining momentum", especially in the face of my day jobs rapacious desire to consume my time and energy, I'm starting an experiment with the blog facility here at BRP Central. I'm going to try and post regularly, on (at least vaguely) BRP related topics. Hopefully it'll get me in the habit of writing a bit more regularly...

Depending on jurisdiction you are operating in you MAY be able to indicate "usability with" - in some countries laws, it is permissible to reference the name of a product or service that your own product or service can be used with, without claiming any direct compatibility or endorsement. In the US you can't use the trademarks themselves (hence the absence of references to D&D on kenzer&Co's 4e Kingdoms of Kalamar setting book). I think it goes further (Where's Peter?!) - the OGL explicitly permits "translation" as one of it's categories of "Use". The issue then becomes the status of the translated text: my guess is that the unique translation in many jurisdictions (including the EU, UK and US) would count as a new unique form of expression such that is is covered by it's own separate copyright (albeit probably as a derivative work of the original English text) - so it might require a separate explicit license for use of that copyright in order to comply with the OGL; but since any attempt to "close" OGC is a breach of the terms of the OGL, actually you probably DON'T, and the terms of the OGL require the translation to be declared as OGC as well... My reading would be that the thorny issue lies in the status of a specific translation (see above), but if one were to commission ones own fresh translation of existing english language OGC, that would be fine (subject to the complications mentioned above)... Everybody else's heads spinning? Nick

It's really not: if people go in to it without understanding it it can be a pain but it's actually a perfectly reasonable license. It's just not a trademark license, and people STILL (nearly ten years on from it's launch) confuse copyright and trademark and which part of a game is covered by which... No, it really can't - once text is designated Open Game Content it can not be made closed again. As to the translation issue, as far as I am aware Dragonnewt is correct in that the OGL permits it. The MRQ STL specifically prohibited it for MRQ logo publications, and since any translation would itself (in some countries) be covered by copyright, you'd probably need an explicit declaration of the translation of the OGC to the target language as itself OGC, just to be sure... But as far as I can see the OGL is pretty language neutral. Cheers, Nick

I never got on with these rules well enough to want to port them elsewhere (and the mangled translations into the early play test drafts in MRQ confirmed my distaste). If I was to use something like this (which clearly has a role in pulp games) I'd be tempted to borrow from Savage Worlds and similar games - each action on top of a characters basic two adds a -20% penalty to ALL the actions attempted. SO yes, you can try to do five things - but ALL at -60%... Jason included an optional Fate Point mechanic in BRP - depending on the exact pulp setting I might well use something more powerful. But you would certainly need something like this to catch the feel of teh genre. I got it from RingWorld, which I think is the earliest "official" source. I'd be VERY tempted to include some sort of "mook" rules (search the forums, we've discussed them several times before), so the Characters can plausible wade through a crowd of minions to get at the main villain... My (limited) experience with them was that, especially for Call of Cthulhu (even with a western flavour) they were just too fiddly. Get in to a moderately sized gun fight and the Keeper is tracking far too many hit point totals and the like. But possibly I went tin to it expecting something lower over head. I'd be intrigued to here how you got on with them. Understand that I have never played Exalted - but for a seriously cinematic / pulp action game I'd consider either extending the Fate Point mechanics or adding a "Fortune" system where by for actions strongly in character / genre the character gets a fortune award which they can spend later to alter the outcome of a die roll by one step, affect a wound etc. The key thing would be to give game mechanical benefits for acting strongly in character / in genre. Cheers, Nick

Mine too, which pretty much set the seal on my having no real interest. Nick

Friend sold me his copy of RQI he'd got on holiday in the US, having decided he didn't like it. er, Summer of '79 I THINK (it's been a while, y'know). I still have several rather awful dungeon crawls scrawled in exercise books but statted for RQI/II from when I first ran RQ. A couple are even notionally set in Glorantha... Cheers, Nick

What I said 11 pages back: As for licenses, I'll repeat what I said earlier as well: If you want to do something for BRP, ask Chaosium. If the BRP brand / specific rules set isn't important, just use the OGL and the OGC it gives you access to. Nick

At the risk of re-igniting that interminable tangent again, that's your personal experience. It happens to chime pretty much with mine - but it is also irrelevant, as every RPG professional I've ever talked to or heard / read talking about on the matter has said the same thing - whatever fans may do, in the end what sustains a game is product, on the shelves. Whether it's fan produced semi-official stuff (as sustain RQIII in it's lean periods), third party licensee's or the original publisher the only sure way to STOP a game dwindling to just a die hard core of established fans is for new material to be released... And if D&D could achieve the almost unheard of, a second epoch making surge in popularity (measured by sales) in as many generations, which is what by all accounts it managed with 3e , why can't BRP do well now. More importantly, with the system FINALLY gathered in one singe published reference, but with many of the fan favourite options from the previous specific incarnations included and thus easily accessible, why isn't this an exciting time for BRP? With Chaosium at their most co-operative and liberal with respect to fan contributions and third party licensing in DECADES, why is this NOT the most exciting time to be working with BRP? With (ok, mostly as monographs at present) MORE settings and support material than ever available for BRP, why NOT be excited about the possibilities of this game? Cheers, Nick

TSR built (A)D&D's popularity in its "golden age" (late seventies / early eighties) on a high volume of adventures. Call of Cthulhu owes it's pre-eminence and longevity as THE horror RPG to its extensive library of campaigns and scenario anthologies. The most explosively popular RPG line of the last five years or so is Savage Worlds - practically EVERY substantial supplement has included significant numbers of adventures and some lines (e.g. Hellfrost have published more adventures than anything else. Goodman Games and Paizo are both still doing well, despite the d20 collapse and the more restrictive D&D 4e market, selling predominantly adventures. Building a game line round adventure sales is clearly a bad idea - but equally they are clearly intrinsic to a successful game line. If there are easily accessible off the shelf adventures for a setting, GM's are more willing to take on the setting (as they know they have a safety net), and if the GMs are enthusiastic the players are more likely to be interested. They key is finding a way to sell the maximum number of books to players and GM's whilst also be able to supply the much smaller GM only market with the scenarios they need to to make a setting work. I think there are two methods: 1) Hellfrost / Savage Worlds - sell adventures in PDF only form, and do lots of them. The PDF format has much lower overheads than print and normal distribution, and is an ideal format for including lots of nice add ons (GM and PC maps, handouts, NPC rosters etc etc) that would seriously impact the cost of a print edition. Plus, they are universally accessible - it's as easy to buy a PDF from New Zealand as from San Francisco or Luton.§ And this is clearly an element of the future of niche publishing, for all many of us prefer dead tree's in our hands. 2) (I seem to sing this song every time this discussion happens...): Griffin Mountain Griffin Island, Sea Kings of the Purple Towns, The Traveller Adventure, Arkham Unveiled - sourcebook plus scenarios that will have utility beyond the the life of the scenarios contain with it. Te best ones (Griffin Island, despite Gloranthan Grognard prejudice) have a modular presentation that makes portions useful to players as well as the GM... Cheers, Nick § Speaking as a reluctant fan of PDF's, I'd dearly love to see Chaosium do "proper" PDF scenarios (i.e. Chaosium edited / produced) for BRP AND make them available via LULU or similar as PoD - I'd happily pay the PoD mark up if I could buy them in print...

No, they really can't. If you assign the rights YOU hold of a work to the public domain, it's public domain. No can reverse that. You cannot take the text Shakespeare's Hamlet (assuredly public domain throughout the world, what with him having been dead for centuries) and publish it with your name as author and now claim you hold the copyright and expect it to stand up in any court in the world. Yes, I know you can copyright your specific presentation of that text separately from the text itself, and yes, I know that there is the whole complex area of "derivative works" - but the basic point stands: Evil RPG Publishing Corps could NOT take your explicitly Public Domain document and claim that text as their own copyright and expect it to stand up in court. I suppose they might hope to have deeper pockets for an extended legal battle BEFORE it got to court - but contrary to popular myth, that's NOT tactic that most legal briefs would recommend in this case... Nick

Err, to quote Rosen's orignal post - " what are the alternatives for small press who want to make something with a BRP-like system?". And your own words ("None of these effectively promote or support BRP or D100.") led me to infer that you were interested, at least to some degree, in using BRP specifically. Hence, if you want to actually reference BRP, ask Chaosium. If not? MRQ SRD, OpenQuest and any other OGC under the OGL - the OGL can never be rescinded (by its own terms) and the MRQ SRD, plus a huge volume of OGC material in other SRD's, is freely available under it. Provided the work you intend consists solely of material that YOUR hold the copyright for, and OGC properly released under the OGL, you are golden. The work cannot use anyone else's trademarks or copyright materials (without explicit separate licenses), but that's the only limitation. Nick

Unless of course you ask Chaosium. There is no "off the shelf, self service option" that will let you copy any significant proportion of their copyright text without permission, nor grant access to their Trademarks without their express permission - which is entirely understandable when those things have value. If what you want to do does not diminish the value of those things, I'm sure Chaosium will consider any reasonable proposal. Pinnacle (Savage Worlds) and Moon Design (HeroQuest) effectively do the same thing - they have an announced "licensing scheme", but read the fine print and both are quite explicitly on the basis that third parties put a proposal to them for approval. Now, does this mean that there is a case for asking Chaosium to come up with something like the Issaries Fan Materials policy (don't spit!), FFE's Traveller Fan Policy or (a better model), the Pinnacle licensing scheme for Savage Worlds? Yes, absolutely - but the best way to persuade Chaosium that's a good idea I think is to accept that in the first instance it's THEIR decision... Ehn? If you write the game system yourself the copyright on that text automatically resides with you, no requirement for any license - and if you are frustrated by the problems of IP laws, why apply ANY license? Explicitly designate your original work as public domain, i.e. free of any and all copy right restrictions. Voila, text of a rule set which requires no license whatsoever, which the entire world is free to use, manipulate and do what they like with... Just don't complain when it's used to power Fatal II :eek: Chaosium, like WW, Palladium, SJG (and WotC, Mongoose and several other companies previously heavily involved with the OGL) set value by their trademarks and copyright text, and limit access to them to protect that value. Rather than expecting to give away to all and sundry the text of the BRP core rules (or any other rule system) for free, would it not be more constructive to adjust ones plans so that they don't so flagrantly impact a publisher's rights and therefore earnings? The BRP quickstart contains a substantial portion of the core BRP rules. It is owned (both trademark and copyright of the text) by Chaosium - but it is also freely available from their website and, whilst they haven't stated this explicitly, a reasonably inference is that they have no objection to someone downloading the quickstart, and then printing a copy for every member of their group (or giving them copies of the PDF)... So, where they can see a benefit to the value of their IP, they may well listen to a reasonable proposal (as they did with Uncounted Worlds). But there is no freebie option, so if you want to work with BRP (specifically the trademark and Chaosium's copyright text) the only route is direct negotiation with them. Cheers, Nick

I wonder what would happen if someone used the OGL and d20 SRD to produce a "retro-clone" of D&D 4e? The "new" BRP is Worlds of Wonder and Stormbringer/Elric! and Call of Cthulhu, plus a few bits from other Chaosium games. The newest game in that mix is from 1993 or there about and predates GORE by nearly fifteen years - and was available in print through normal distribution when GORE was released... Nick

It's a legal alternative certainly - it's also as morally contemptible now as when Stafford and Sprange first claimed they were going to do it, or when GORE was released and frankly, the more often it happens, the more contemptible it gets, not less. Ask Chaosium politely, supplying them with some idea of what you plan to do. Worked for me. Yes, but you cannot reference ANY IP you do not hold an explicit license for in such a product. Ask Chaosium - it's their trademark and their copyright text. Depends on what Chaosium let you do - ASK THEM. No, there is no blanket statement that gives any third party open access to Chaosium's copyright text and trademark without seeking Chaosium's specific permission first. Doesn't mean you can't ask - and if you put a solid proposal to them, I'm sure they would listen. Maybe even including letting you use the BRP core text directly provided your final product correctly attributed their copyright and trademark ownership. Bear in mind that "free" (as Uncounted Worlds is) does not mean "released to public domain". The text of the MRQ SRD (or any other SRD released under the OGL) is NOT public domain - it is not free for any one to use how they wish. It has been made available under a specific license with specific criteria as to how it can be used and attributed... And here's the weird thing - for DECADES prior to the OGL/d20 STL RPG supplements were frequently published WITHOUT regurgitating great gobbets of the core rules over and over again, or worrying about "open licenses" and the like... Nick

Frantically busy at the moment. Feel free to look at this or the tweaked version in this for another take on the idea and I'll try and find some time this weekend to comment on your stuff. Ditto with regards to the setting stuff. Cheers, Nick

No - too many fans of one genre or the other will be turned off by such a blend. And fans who DO like such mash ups will probably buy both settings and do it manually anyway... Honestly? No. But then, this sort of consensus building will never IMO produce a commercial setting that Chaosium (or any other publisher) would want to get behind. BUt it MIGHT encourage someone to create one, and then help them find a team to build such a setting up to the point where it's an attractive proposition to a publisher (or that small team feel confident enough to self publish). Nick

A good idea. Not sure of it's direct impact, but as a secondary resource it's a VERY good idea, and if we're sensible about the copyright etc there's potential for further use at a later date in other formats. Nick