NickMiddleton

Most of us independent publishers use Lulu Press (Self Publishing - Lulu.com). It does a decent job but it is not exactly cheap.

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

'S ok, you can always MAKE it a supplement

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

Sorry guys, I've been trying to follow the arguments here and the legalese is labyrinthine... I'm writing a BRP fantasy Monograph. I'd like to use the basic structure of some of the creatures from the MRQ Monsters book to build my own menagerie. Providing I alter them slightly this shouldn't be a problem (?) I'm also wondering if I can transcribe/rename some of the spells from the The Bronze Grimoire.

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

Heh, I just noticed the illustration on page 365, of the sorcerer-- this is a reprint from another book. I can't remember which. I do remember lying in bad with my girlfriend from way back when, who had an appreciation for many Pagan ideas. She read those runes verbatim, and if I recall, the message is pretty hilarious. I don't think Chaosium would have printed it (twice) if they had known. I can't tell for sure--will have to dig the older RQ stuff out of the basement to get a better look, just to make sure...

"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).

I confess, I enjoy playing with miniatures. Most of my battle mats have either 1" squares or hexes. I'm just curious what other people use.

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...

And off the topic, are the ranges for ranged weapons given in meter/yards?

Provided you are consistent, you can actually use either, but IIRC the new BRP is metric...

Cheers,

Nick

(nah, not worth it...)

Whats Chaosiums policy on fanzines?

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

I had planned one, but have cancelled that because of too little time.

That seems a familiar concept...

Nick Middleton and Uncounted Worlds is our best shot I think, but I'm not aware of the ETA.

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

Maybe it's my twisted love affair with shopping malls, airports, and caves... but the idea of playing something that is constantly 'inside' is attractive... that claustrophobic petri dish... people living on top of each other and fighting for every scrap.

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

Epic Stormbringer campaign? I think the answer is a definite, "Please, yes?"

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 certainly deserves to be revisited with a better system.

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).

I thought I was the only one who wanted something better for Spelljammer. I believed Spelljammer was a cool idea but I was disappointed by just about every aspect of it. How can you publish a space rpg without a spaceship combat game? You had ships. You had stats. But no goddamn rules?!

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.

There was certainly something intriguing about the original Dark Sun. It became less interesting to me the more they tried to cram it into the AD&D paradigm. It would be more attractive as an original BRP campaign world without the D&D baggage.

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

What (if any) pre-existing game settings do you use the BRP rules with instead of the existing rules for that setting?

I've heard (er read) people mention (er write about) BRP Rifts, BRP A/State, BRP Fading Suns and we have seen samples of BRP Middle Earth are there any others and do you have write ups for them?

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.

I would love to see a BRP Rifts PDF (if Palladium doesn't want to see it, thats their issue) and BRP Fading Suns PDF or even Dark Heresy as BRP.

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 am beginning to hate BRP for all the ideas and creativity and motivation it gives me. Unfocused and unregulated I will start three dozen projects and finish none before the next shiny idea spats me in the face.

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

Can you tell me when you submitted it to Chaosium Nick?

I finally e-mailed it to Dustin in April of this year.

I've put up a news blurb at the frontpage. Had a difficult time finding an image to use. Please PM me if you have any other image you'd like to use (or find something on www.istockphoto.com where I get most my images from that you would rather I use). Also, if you'd like the blurb changed in any way, send a pm.

SGL.

Looks fine - if I come across an image that seems more appropriate I'll let you know.

Cheers,

Nick

Outpost 19 will be a monograph according to Dustin.

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.

Now, can you give me some tips on what kind of image would be appropriate for the news blurp? What kind of world and buildings are we talking? How does the outpost look like? How does the aliens look like? (and when did you submit it?)

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

Anyone have this book? Is it good? What are its high points and low points? Is it worth the $18 on Amazon?

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

I'd actually really like to read Lynn's original post on that rule. My understanding was that the PC got a -30 every additional time they Parried or Dodged regardless of which one they did first. Meaning, if a PC had a Parry of 80% and a Dodge of 40% and they used their Parry and then had to Dodge their Dodge would effectively be at 10%.

This is a bit of a tangent, but that's what I always thought rule was supposed to mean actually...

You'll note that I agree with Nick. But I would argue that it's not well defined since there's errata out there that is contradictory.

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)".

Still, I think Summoning and Allegiance rules are a welcome addition to a game. I'm just pointing out potential pitfalls.

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

Know what's even crazier than the Demon Summoning rules? Allegiance. According to the rules, every time you cast a spell you gain a point of Chaos...

Err, no you don't. Charles is correct:

These are unusual rewards, made to recognise special circumstances or unique events. An evening of play might see one such award.

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

Will it be released as a monograph?

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

Does anyone know if these were ever translated into a PDF format over the years? I've looked around the Chaosium site and rpgsheets.com, but didn't see any offhand.

Not to my knowledge. The closest thing I ever found was Peter Wake's PDF sheet that I tweaked a few years back.

Ironically, I discovered that despite the wonderful new BRP book and all the accumulated material contained therein, my favorite combination of options and mechanics still turns out to be essentially what was presented as RQIII.

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

I am enamoured with the new BRP corebook, and curious to see what everyone is doing with theirs.

• Outpost 19 - scenario and setting - with Chaosium awaiting art IIRC
  
• Couple of short quick start "shorties" for Chaosium (with Dustin, dunno what he's planning to do with them exactly)
  
• GEt Uncounted Worlds #1 out the door.
  
• Converting my old RQIII fantasy setting Ulfland to BRP
  
• Converting my recent post-apocalypse England setting "After the Scoruing" from RQIII to BRP
  
• Planning the next phase of my ongoing Call of CThulhu campaign "Northern Lights", as we start again in early November
  
• Various scenario ideas percolating away. Have to pick one for the Halloween contest, as I'm annoyed I didn't get the time to finish the one I was working on for the recent BRP contest
  

I have some time off at the moment, and once I get back home I think I need to sit down and prioritise a bit as well - too many projects on the go at present and I need to re-focus.

Nick

Some of these animals we fudged from stats of similar sized animals in the old 'RQ Monsters' book that GW published when they published RQ3 as Basic and Advanced books.

I'm guessing that RQ Monsters will serve as the default BRP bestiary (IMVHO) until Chaosium publishes one.

Well, there's a small bestiary in the core book, and the Malleus Monstrorum is fully compatible with BRP and in print as far as I can tell, whereas the the RQ Monsters Book, even in the form of the BRP Monsters Book monograph is I believe OOP. Still, a BRP creatures and races book would be a rather nice supplement...

Cheers,

Nick

The word "abyss" was really used to distinguish it from a rose-tinted viewpoint of science: it's a world where order's collapsing, science is outpacing itself, religion is obsolescent and the common man is supersceded by burgeoning industry. A worm's eye, prole viewpoint, really.

More like Sleepy Hollow meets Brotherhood of the Wolf during the French Revolution. True, it's not really Enlightenment (it's a bit dark for that), but the world's teetering on the edge between a new rational order and plunging into chaos much like our own late-18th century. War, politics, and colonisation are the main themes, with strong emphasis on characters (and players) selling their souls, beliefs or friends out for survival or a greater good.

This as a setting sounds very appealing.

Rather than working together for a common goal, each scenario has various 'solutions' - many mutually exclusive - that force the characters to act in their own best interests; be it for the state, their religion, their personal furtherance, or simply survival in a society where the Revolution will cut your head off for stealing a loaf of bread (or selling a loaf of bread for an unregulated price.

This doesn't appeal to me.

So how much of it will be setting and how much scenarios?

Cheers,

Nick

This is one major issue I have with BRP is that combat rounds are thought of as 12 seconds intervals. Having been interested in both sports and martial artist, It seems to me 12 seconds is an incredibly long time to act as a gage when you have people engaging physically with one another. In fact, if you were to break down and analyze what's happening in a sporting or martial arts event, the six second rule does make sense as a lot go's on within just a few seconds...

*shrug* change it if you like. In the end, it's an arbitrary figure pulled out of the air that has little impact on the specific game mechanics. Provided you leave the rules governing what goes on within the round unchanged you can redefine a round as 1 second, 3 seconds, 6 seconds or a minute, it doesn't really matter. The round, and whatever sequencing rules you choose to use (DEX ranks or Strike Ranks) are an abstraction whose sole purpose is to make a playable game out of sitting round a table rolling dice to pretend we are in a real melee.

Back when RQ/BRP was first on the scene it was regarded as a bit weird as the combat round was so short (D&D was a 1 minute round, Traveller was using 15 seconds IIRC). I first encountered six second combat rounds in FGU's Space Opera I think, and like a lot of the details in that much maligned game, I think they make a lot of sense - but it really doesn't bother me that much.

Cheers,

Nick

Good News...

I've received permission (from all parties) to upload not only Gods of Law but all of the Stormbringer Monographs to Stormbringerrpg.com.

Excellent news Marcus.

I'm fortunate enough to have .pdf copies of both Old Hrolmar and Gods of Law on my HDD (as I was the one who did the layout) and Charles has kindly forwarded me a copy of his Gods of Chaos Monograph (which I'll reformat to match the other two in style).

Even better!

Don't hold your breath, but they will slowly make their way up to the site!

You know, may be I should go back to trying to finish the rewrite of that epic Stormbringer campaign I was planning to offer for a million spheres...

Nick

(who already has FAR, FAR too much to do as it is!)