NickMiddleton

Which is a clear variation from how Strike Rank worked in RQII/III and Elfquest. I'd reinstate the minimum SR separation of 3SR between combat actions, and the "two actions in a round unless you have the skill to split oe action" we've already alluded to - so with a skill of less than a 100% you could take the second attack, but only at the expense of being able to Parry or Dodge that round. Per my earlier comment, it being full skill doesn't bother me iff it's at the expense of the other "action" the character gets in a round. Cheers, Nick

Or two weapons - in which case you sacrifice the ability to Dodge and can attack or parry with either weapon. You can't use both Parry's against the same attack, and if you attack twice your second attack comes at 3SR after the first. But a charcater with less than a 100% skill can attack twice in a round by this method - which is why I'd allow a character with the SR to strike a second time in the round using the same rules. And, unlike the less than 100% skill two weapon case, you STILL got to PArry or Dodge as well... Cheers, Nick

RQI/-/III are copyright to Chaosium, as were the BRP Monographs (the text of RQIII with all references to Glorantha removed that Chaosium had in print from 2004 until earlier this year). Mechanics (abstract rules ideas) can only be protected by patent. The text expressing an idea is, in theory at least, protected by copyright§. So Chaosium retain the copyright on the exact text of RQII/III and the BRP Monographs and yes they could republish the BRP monograph text§§ - there has in fact been considerable talk of a BRP Magic book that wold be a supplement to BRP and include not only the RQIII Magic book, but also (suitably adjusted) the material from the Bronze Grimoire (the Elric! supplement about magic), the magic from Nephilim and its supplement Liber Ka, plus more. Whether anyone has actually formally pitched a proposal for such a book to Chaosium we don't know. Cheers, Nick § see the recent interminable thread about BRP and the OGL, or better yet, consult an experienced and currently practising legal professional with specialist knowledge of intellectual property law rather than a bunch of opinionated gamers on an internet forum... §§ They could in theory do the same with RQII but would have to remove ALL Glorantha material and IP, which is a lot of effort when they already have the BRP monograph text...

And yet in RQI/-/III, missile weapons got to launch as many attacks as their sheer speed allowed... The question is what was the rule in RQIII for a SIZ 18 and DEX 18 man with a Pike? He strikes at SR 2 in RQII: +5SR for second action, +2SR for the next strike and that's SR9 (well within the 12 SR of the RQII round. In the RQIII the first strike is at SR3, and the second at SR9 +3SR for second action, +3 for strike): still within the round of 10 SR. Since second (or third) shots with bows weren't penalised (possibly we got that bit wrong), we always ruled that if you had the speed and reach to get a second attack, you did so at full skill - but by doing so you were sacrificing your other action in the round (the Parry or Dodge), as you do when wielding two weapons. For free flowing combat, it is hard to beat the Elric! DEX rank system - it imposes just enough order on the chaos of hand to hand melee that it becomes comprehensible without bogging down in excess detail. I dearly love RQ's Strike Rank system, but they can be a bit fiddly. Cheers, Nick

Also, bear in mind that Lulu is not, strictly a printer - Lulu uses a number of different actual printing companies world wide with compatible PoD equipment. I believe Avalon Innovations was a US PoD company with their own PoD equipment. Think the OP's best bet would be to inquire in the industry forums at RPGNet. Cheers, Nick

Plus William Jones (the author) works at Chaosium now and has also authored game supplements for them - Secrets of New York, Secrets of Morocco and the upcoming Pulp Cthulhu IIRC. Nick

Bottom line is to always ask the people affected. If it's a Monograph for Chaosium, ask about using information from the Bronze Grimoire - my guess is they'll ask you to make sre that no references to any names etc from the Elric saga or other Mike Moorcock fiction are included, but otherwise it will be fine. As for the creatures from the MRQ monsters book, provided again you avoid proper names and directs quotations of descriptive text, converting the stats and abilities across shouldn't be an issue. But to be safe, why not ask on this forum, and possibly via say the RuneQuest mailing list or Yahoo RQ3 Group if anyone has statted the creatures you need for RQIII already? YOu may well find they've already been done in an old Chaosium publication, or that someone has already ported them to RQIII (which is very close to BRP). One of the members of the RQ3 Yahoo group is dead keen on statting monsters / creatures and has already done stuff like manticores etc. Cheers, Nick

"In this illustration of Zangrif Bei, an experienced adept, note the extensive rune carvings along his staff, and the tattoos in the palm of his right hand." It's on page 28 (Zangrif's stats are on page 31) of the Monster Book from Monster Coliseum, and Games Workshop reused the material in their hard backed RQ Monsters book. It's by Kevin Ramos, an artist Chaosium used a lot in the mid-eighties and whom I believe they knew personally§ - I'd guess that both artists and caption writer knew what they were doing but the only way to be sure is to ask Steve Perrin (the author of the RQ material in Monster Coliseum) or Charlie Krank (credited for "Production and Layout" which presumably included art assignments, layout and captions). Cheers, Nick § there is a moving tribute to Kevin Ramos at the back of my second edition copy of Cthulhu by Gaslight - I remember his distinctive and powerful art from that, Monster Coliseum and other Chaosium publications (e.g. Spawn of Azathoth).

Mostly for traditional reasons, hexes, as the first "battle mat" I ever had was a hex grid - but I have ben known in BRP games where scale / mini's aren't that important (e.g. Call of Cthulhu) to just sketch stuff out on a piece of paper... Provided you are consistent, you can actually use either, but IIRC the new BRP is metric... Cheers, Nick

(nah, not worth it...)

Don't know that they have a "policy" per se - I emailed Charlie Krank, outlining my intentions and he indicated he was happy with what I was proposing. So I'd suggest doing the same - albeit Dustin Wright might be a better first point of contact. Cheers, Nick

That seems a familiar concept... I'm pretty close, I think. I need to finish up a few bits and bobs on issue one, do a test to make sure the PDF for PoD is OK with Lulu, and then I can let it loose... But if I'm honest, that's been the case for a couple of months now, and things keep eating my free time. So other than "soon", I can really say... Cheers, Nick

I started writing a BRP campaign set in a variant of Eric van Lustbader's freehold, from the Sunset Warrior a while back, which is such a setting teetering on the edge of collapse - a vast underground city where humanity retreated to survive a holocaust that made the surface world uninhabitable, but where they have lingered too long such that the technology that sustains them is no longer understood, rigid traditions and customs dominate the society whilst the whole system is clearly (to select few) rapidly approaching a catastrophic failure point. Actually, that whole series would make a cool RPG setting in a lot of ways... Cheers, Nick

May be one day. I even found the write up I started of Shazaar and the Silent Lands based on that campaign and Richard Watt's outline notes for the Western continent volume of the Atlas of the Young Kingdoms... However, the nervous breakdown hasn't happened, and neither has the lottery win, so time remains at a premium and writing up the Voice of Silence is I'm afraid not high on my list of priorities... Cheers, Nick

Jorune's third edition rule system, once patched with the Sholari Pack errata, is actually pretty good and I'd happily run or play it again - but I think BRP is a good fit for the setting, and would make it more accessible for people (as do the numerous other conversions that are available). Somewhere in there there is a fabulous, gonzo "fantasy space" setting struggling to get out of the straightjacket of D&D cliché's. And it gets tantalisingly close at times... If I ever have the time I'd love to have a crack at building a BRP "Fantasy Space" setting from the ground up and I think if I'm honest Spelljammer very defintely falls in the "it would cool to create a BRP setting that riff's on the same idea" category, rather than actually doing a conversion. The original boxed set I think works really well as a setting, even if one retains a lot of the features that were driven by it's being a D&D setting (Elemental Clerics, Druids, ubiquitous psionics), as these can be translated in to BRP terms fairly easily. But I'd ignore the metaplot and being highly selective of the material from the subsequent supplements. But Dark Sun, like Jorune, is definitely a candidate for an actual specific conversion I think. Cheers, Nick

I think you are confusing stormbringer's stats with Elric's, which are pretty reasonable. The problem is that stormbringer is the central plot mcguffin in the saga - it is quite capable of doing what ever the author required, and frequently did: up to and including killing gods or even refusing to help the hero at all, if that moved the plot forward. At its most effective, it is pretty much 880% and +17D10 damage (Jason has already made reference to the Kelmain host incident - there are others), but on other occasions it is not hugely more effective than a normal greatsword. And here's the real, absolute kicker - there is no consistency to this variation in power level beyond what Mike Moorcock thought would make a good story at the time... It's not actually possible to model Elric and Stormbringer accurately in any rule system more complex than "GM fiat" - the Elric! / SB5 version at least had the advantage that the Young Kingdom's incarnation of the Eternal Champion is not "off the shelf" out classed by player characters on a routine basis , which in my experience happened rather a lot in SB I /-/ IV ... Cheers, Nick

There used to be a couple of web sites with BRP Dark Sun notes which has been discussed here, and there is a pretty comprehensive online resource for Greyhawk using RuneQuest. sadly however, it might well NOT just be Palladium's issue - their online policy (rightly or wrongly) is pretty unambiguous that publishing actual Palladium stats and stats for other companies systems with clear conversion notes is not something they permit. Whether they have the resources to enforce that is a separate issue - frankly I'm not sure it's worth the grief... Especially as one could take the broad concepts of RIFTS and write a new setting that Palladium have no claim over. I have a bizarre and inexplicable compulsion to try and make a BRP Spelljammer conversion work (possibly I need medical help...) and I must find time to go back to my BRP Jorune conversion. But to be honest, I'm more enthused by newideas, and frustrated that I haven't got the time to develop them all... Cheers, Nick

I finally e-mailed it to Dustin in April of this year. Looks fine - if I come across an image that seems more appropriate I'll let you know. Cheers, Nick

Cool - that's sort of where I thought it was heading, given the final edited text with no illustrations or maps was over fifty pages, but it was never really my place to say. Don't know how Dustin's got on getting the art sorted though. In the setting (not necessarily the adventure... ) there are reptilian aliens (Sauriki) and a multiform insect-like alien species called the Quertzl. Plus the Pilots of the FTL guild, who look a bit like Borg from Star Trek or Caorlyn from "Ship of Tears" in season 3 of Babylon 5 but never leave their ships (they do have featureless humanoid robots they remote control from their ships though) are fairly weird... The core worlds are quite SF (think Ariel and other core worlds in Joss Wheedon's Firefly / Serenity or perhaps Washington from the film Minority Report (for all I hated the film) or Chicago from the film I, Robot (sorry Dr Asimov...) - very hi-tech to our eyes... But the adventure has a brief opening in a freeport / trade station "city" inside an asteroid, then jumps to a frontier world only recently colonised, where technology is much more primitive (far more Firefly), although the outpost itself is more Aliens / 2300AD. It's a hot, humid jungle planet environment, with filter masks recommended in the low lands where the Outpost is sited. Hope that helps? Cheers, Nick

The author knows his subject pretty well, and it does a good job of adapting the Call of Cthulhu rules and feel to late first millennia Europe. I think it would have worked better as a supplement, rather than a stand alone game, if only because it would have given Stephane more sapce for setting details, as it does "skate" rather lightly over a large area. There a re a few irritating editing gaffs and omissions (tables that don't agree, some creatures entities you'd expect to be included that aren't), but on the whole I was pleased with it when I bought it, and have enjoyed the games I've played. I like the support material I've read (two monographs - the Pastores and the Abbey). For $18 it's good value I'd say. Cheers, Nick

This is a bit of a tangent, but that's what I always thought rule was supposed to mean actually... Not to flog the deceased equine, but this is an errata only published on an "unofficial" Chaosium mailing list in September 1993, but which somehow never made it in to the revised fourth printing of the Elric! rule book in July 1994, nor the May 2001 printing of Stormbinger 5th edition? I think Lynn answered Dave Dunham's question off the cuff without thinking through the implications, which is why SB5 does not include this rule, and its allegiance table says "learns magic (per spell)", not "casts magic (per spell)". I think the big problem with porting SB5 demons in to other settings is the binding rules - just as in earlier incarnations of the game, they can make horrendously powerful items, and the system as is has no natural counter balancing aspect. Limiting binding to its traditional meaning (i.e. "held in service", not "stored in") so a sorcerer can have demons who serve them, but not demons that pretend to be swords etc. for them helps, as does increasing the role playing cost of summoning and binding demons (blood sacrifices etc.), and the consequences (e.g. Reduce APP by 1 for every demon summoned, 1D3 for every demon bound). I like both the allegiance and summoning systems from SB5 a lot - but whilst allegiance is, as a system, pretty setting neutral (just draw up different tables as appropriate), summoning is actually quite closely tied to the Elric! / Stormbringer 5th edition vision of the Young Kingdoms as an RPG setting, and transplanting it requires some thinking about how the target setting differs from that source and adjusting the system accordingly. Cheers, Nick

Err, no you don't. Charles is correct: A character gets a Chaos Allegiance point for every spell they take at character generation, and for every spell they subsequently learn (i.e. that they choose to acquire) in play. But I've never played nor can find in a quick scan of both Elric! or Stormbringer 5th edition any rule that says you get Alleigance points simply for casting spells. And, given the passage I quoted, it's clearly against the rules anyway - in spirit if not the letter. Constantly pointlessly casting a spell like Rat Vision simply to gain Allegiance points is neither special nor unique, and would simply guarantee (in my game at least) that the Lords of Chaos would never accept that character as an agent. Mind, it also wouldn't be an issue as I'd throw anyone pulling such a stupid stunt out of the group anyway... Cheers, Nick

Dunno, but I'd guess so - last I heard from Dustin was mid July when he was planning to get art assignments for it sorted for the following week. The final edited text (with no maps / art) came to 58 pages, plus the six pre-generated characters... Cheers, Nick

Not to my knowledge. The closest thing I ever found was Peter Wake's PDF sheet that I tweaked a few years back. My main play test games were the same, although I am quite enamoured of the heroic hit points option (THP=SIZ+CON) currently... Cheers, Nick