NickMiddleton

*sigh* me too ;-( Nick

I think Shaira's correct, and that the section on Armour hasn't been corrected to reflcet the section on shields on page 204 onwards in my PDF: I'm holding off doing a thorough read until my physical copy arrives however, so there may be other details I've mised elsewhere. Cheers, Nick

I believe Jason's just sent the manuscript for the BRP Quick start to Chaosium... Cheers, Nick

Ah, that's a different thing - it's with Chaosium at the moment, and I'm not sure what they'll ultimately decide to do with it (download or monograph have both been mentioned by Dustin as possibilities): as soon as I know what form they've picked and when it's likely to be available I'll say more - but again, until there are firm plans and dates, it's seems premature to talk in detial about it. Cheers, Nick

No, shan't... More sensibly - I will when I'm sure it's about to happen. Or rather, I'll talk about it in more detail when I'm sure it's about to happen, as it's something for / about / in Uncounted Worlds, which is already announced. But I personally have an aversion to talking about stuff before it's ready - it encourages unfounded speculation and unwarranted hype, leading to inevitable disappointment and acrimony. And I knew as soon as I hit post on that comment I would regret it, so I'm definitely NOT saying anything further at this point. Sorry! Cheers, Nick

Ashes to Ashes is out in PDF, and soon to be in print I believe. Cthulhu: Dark Ages might appeal, and has some excellent support material available in monograph form (print & PDF). Further support in the fantasy vein is definitely on its way: I'm working on something, plus there's Pete Nash's Rome and some of the other stuff that's been announced: see the front page of this site. Just don't let the fact that some of us are crusty old grognards and argue about things at the drop of a metaphorical hat put you off! Cheers, Nick

This discussion was derailing Hound of Tindalos' Runequest... where to start? thread, so I thought it best to start a separate one. This is long, and a bit of a rant - and probably a storm in a team cup really: but as I get older I get increasingly annoyed by what I see as an obsession with "the new" and the concomitant assumption that "the old" is automatically less valuable / worthwhile / functional. So my apologies in advance for riding this particular hobby horse in public.... RosenMcStern made this assertion : "RQ2 is almost 30 year old, and even though its "atmosphere" was great, it contains game concepts that are terribly outdated." I, and others queried this. He responded: But other people find it perfectly acceptable and usable, and find the disconnection between POW and magic points inexplicable and fiddly to manage - personal preference, NOT fundamental game mechanical flaw. Re-read the RQII rule book - there were other options there as well. Some liked the combination of easy maths from the 5 point steps whilst retaining the "made it, JUST! 64 out of 65!!" feel of rollingd100 - yes, it's purely a player perception, as there is no mechanical distinction between 61, 62, 53, 64 and 65:but the game rules are there to create a specific player perception. Some people may not like the 5 point step - but again, that's a preference NOT a fundamental mechanical flaw. And how come Cleric's in D&D don't get Fireball? ALL rules have arbitrary limits - it's how they define the world(s) they describe. And, again, the Game Police never arrested anyone who allowed a Protection 5 (or 10) spell in their RQII game... The published RQII rules described a world with limits on battle magic - if one doesn't like them that's a perfectly fair thing to say: but it's a personal preference, NOT a fundamental mechanical flaw in the game caused by when it was designed. No one suggested that RQII and BRP were 100% identical - but the discrepancies in armour aren't huge, and the basic principle of armour in both systems is the same - and again, RQII's table is not inherently flawed simply because it's older. RQII had its main encumbrance rules (page 15 in my copy) plus two optional variants at the back of the book. Absolutely - and as I've said before elsewhere, personally I prefer RQIII to the point that I still run it regularly but can't really imagine a situation where I'd use RQII. But that's because my personal preference is for RQIII, not because there is anything wrong with RQII - and I'm disappointed to a degree that some RQII ideas (such as Defence) aren't available as options in the new BRP... On the contrary actually, many have. They call it some thing different, because of stupid prejudice over the terms perceived origin in D&D, but abstracting a person or objects ability to avoid harm (armour, manoeuvrability etc etc) in to a single defensive score is a perfectly reasonable abstraction and for certain styles of game (where detailed combat scenes are inappropriate) it makes perfect sense. Not using it because of a "fear of appearing stupid" is mostly a measure of incompetent game design: if it's the right solution, use it and if necessary, rename it "Defence Rating" or whatever. On what possible basis?! Why does the range of values for a characteristic being one thing have any intrinsic value over any other range? If DEX is 3 - 18, why not SIZ and INT? Or why not say they are ALL wrong and should all be on 1 - 20, or whatever?# And why is exploiting the ability to create the illusion of a fine grained scale whilst using a 1 to 20 scale any better or worse than any other dice mechanic? You may not like them, but that's hardly proof they are fundamentally flawed. Personally I find the Unknown Armies d100 mechanics really irritating, and GURPS use of 3D6 really dull - but both are still valid mechanics, just ones I don't personally like. Actually, you appear to be claiming that because C++ exists, not only should no one use Pascal, but that Pascal was never usable for writing programmes - and it's the retrospective reclassification bit that I'm arguing against. You don't, personally, like RQII, and prefer RQIII's solutions to a lot of things. Fair enough: so do I, as it happens. But there is nothing in RQII compared to RQIII or even BRP that is inherently flawed that justifies saying "do not play that version of the game, play this version." You other argument (play what is in print) I don't have a problem with: I think there is good material in for example the Moon Design reprints and that second hand material is sufficiently easily available that it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand: but, despite my personal distaste for MRQ, I don't have a problem with the argument that MRQ or BRP are the sensible recommendations because they are in print. I do have a problem with the idea that "it was published x years ago and is therefore inherently a flawed game." Now, where are my dried frog pills? Cheers, Nick # A fair and valid criticism of RQII's SIZ scores would have been that the suggested weights and heights for the 3 - 18 range were hard to correlate with real human norms, as 1 in every 216 humans being 70cm tall and weighing 10Kg is, even in a fantasy setting, pretty incredible - but surely the logical response is that the table of heights and weights is wrong?

*shrug* In internet gaming forums it's almost exclusively used in the narrow negative sense of "no longer valid simply because it's old", and from the rest of the post that appeared to be the usage here. As ever YMMV Cheers, Nick

Well, RQII maybe (opposed skills are different, Defense) but RQIII? That's 25 years old and bar a few names and the magic system, the new BRP can reproduce it pretty closely, certainly close enough that you could use old RQIII supplements with the new BRP, and (with a varying amount of work depending on which BRP options are used) convert any modern BRP book for use with RQIII. And last time I checked, RPG ideas don't come with a "use by" date mandated by the Gaming Police, so "game concepts that are terribly outdated" seems to me, no offence, a pretty silly comment. "No longer / not currently in fashion" certainly, "ideas that have been improved on in the light of experience in more recent games" quite possibly. But "outdated" just makes no sense to me when applied to game rules. Cheers, Nick

You asked two questions. I answered yes to the poll because IDO like hit locations and always have since I first played RQ. In answer to the question in the thread title, yes I do plan on using them, but not in every BRP game I run, only those where they seem appropriate. Cheers, Nick

If you need a hand testing I'm sure I'm not the only Mac user here who'd be willing to pitch in - I'd offer to help on the coding side but alas wouldn't know where to start... Eighteen years since my IT post graduate course and counting, and 13 years since I last programmed in anger, and that was on a PIC micro-controller... Cheers, Nick

Which seem more appropriate to the situation? Which serves the game better? If a quick, overall assessment of the challenge, will serve then modify the base score by the difficulty: "It's a hard Pilot roll to do that." "Getting up the wall requires an easy Climb roll". If the details of the situation matter, or can add something to the players enjoyment of the game then use circumstantial modifiers, but don't let them bog the game down. To quote the rule book: "Circumstantial modifiers are intended to be dramatic tools that add drama to tense situations, not strict guidelines that attempt to simulate absolute realism." Cheers, Nick

The SAN rules in Demon Magic were adapted from Call of Cthulhu circa 1985 by Mark L. Gambler. They are designed to emphasise the mind shattering qualities of Chaos in the setting, so characters are significantly less fragile than in CoC (temporary Insanity only occurs once SAN loss exceeds TIS, half ones starting SAN, in any ten minute period), especially if Melniboneans (they get huge bonuses to starting SAN, and are exempted from a number of circumstances that cause SAN rolls for other races). The system also suggest that subsequent viewing of SAN draining things is less severe on subsequent exposure: and unlike CoC, there are no 1d100 SAN shattering horrors. A lord of chaos in their most grotesque form when first encountered is rated 3d10 / 2D10, but only 2D10 / 1D4 on subsequent encounters... Ben Monroe proposed a variant Sanity / mental stress mechanic for BRP / RQIII in his Yahoo RQIII Group a while back which I tweaked and used in my After the Scouring RQIII-ish game last year - He was talking about it being included in a project for Chaosium IIRC... And further fine tuning of the BRP SAN systems can be developed from the suggestions in "Growing Numb to Horror" (page 318 in the ARC, page 323 in the PDF edition of BRP). Cheers, Nick

It wil work - the important thing to tweak is the "getting used to awfulness" rule. In standard Call of Cthulhu, it doesn't matter how often you have seen Deep Ones i previous adventures, their mere existence is such an affront to humanity's world view that it will cost you SAN. In the Freeport setting I'd say it should be possible to become innured with these things - maybe allow Special and Critical SAN roles to make the PC immune to SAN affects from the specific creature causing the role? I'll have a look at Demon Magic (the second Stormbringer Companion) tonight - that had a version of SAN for the Young Kingdoms. Cheers, Nick

I'm still hoping someone will do a cross-platform equivalent since I switched to a Mac... :-( Nick

Good to see these Ken - I did post up a word document of some of your creatiosn from the RQ Rules mailing list to Ben Monroe's RQIII Yahoo group a while back, hope you don't mind? Cheers, Nick

It is I beleive a concession to the fact that one generally accepted flaw with Magic World (which used total hit points and simple major wound level rules) is that the magic damage was too cheap at 1D6/ magic point. And in RQIII (which DID use hit locations), direct magic damage (which ignored armour) did 1D3 per magic point. So 1D6 / 3 power points looks like a reasonable simple and fair revision to me. Cheers, Nick

Ah, but we are immediately shading into distinctions that are probably finer than is worth bothering with in an RPG combat system. The axe has characteristics of a typical crushing weapon, in that it has its striking mass concentrated at the end of its haft, so even without its cutting edge, it can deliver a lot of force in a small area, whereas a sword's striking mass is distributed throughout its length (and biased towards the hilt), and thus isn't as effective, weight for weight, as an axe. As I said, it's a very broad approximation, but for me it's acceptably accurate for game play. The usual distinction I make in my games is between "weapons of war" and utility items or dress weapons. So greatswords are as problematic as long spears, but a dagger or an officer / nobles broadsword (as a badge of office / rank) would probably be acceptable. RQII and III allowed some swords to be use in either cutting or thrusting mode, and allowed them to impale in thrusting mode. It's a reasonable house rule if the current set up bothers people - albeit even in RQIII most of swords couldn't trust / impale IIRC. Cheers, Nick

I don't personally see this as a problem though. I used to bother a lot about these sorts of details, and when I had the chance as a steel weapon re-enactor quizzed various historians, archaeologists and museum curators as well as doing a lot of reading about battlefield and forensic archaeology about actual weapon effects and the like. Plus some long conversations with various military types of my acquaintance (and a a trauma nurse with a PhD in the causes and treatment of head injuries). In the end, my personal feeling is that actually, impaling archaic melee weapons ARE typically the most devastating, and that blunt (crushing) weapons ARE typically more (for high strength / mass combatants) effective than cutting (slashing) weapons. It's a generalisation, and probably only accurate to within an order of magnitude, but it's more than sufficiently close for gaming purposes. Cheers, Nick Middleton

No, Loz did the layout himself in Word IIRC - which just goes to show that you don't need fancy software to do a decent page layout, as Hawkmoon is up there with Old Hrolmar and Gods of Law in terms of layout as well as content. Cheers, Nick

I've got a scenario with Chaosium for editing at the moment that's SF and the idea I'm planning on turning in to a submission for the adventure contest is SF as well, funnily enough. And one of the longer term setting ideas I'm noodling away on in the background is a vaguely battletech-ish SF setting. Mind, I usually have half a dozen or so setting / campaign ideas on the back burner at any one time... Nick

I had loads of fun playing Melee and Wizard and we did play TFT a bit, but by the time my brother had the full set of TFT books (Advanced Melee, Advanced Wizard and In The Labyrinth we were both more in to RQ and Stormbringer. IIRC he lifted the TFT/AM magic system as one of the (preposterously numerous) magic systems in his Eb-Kluash setting. I have a set of the TFT books on the shelf behind me. Cheers, Nick