Prime Evil

Wow. Does this mean that Issaries never approved the release of the MRQ SRD in the first place? If so, that would imply that Mongoose was in breach of Section 5 of the OGL, since they never had sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by the licence.... At least it looks like downstream works based upon the MRQ SRD such as OpenQuest and Renaissance are protected from this mess since Section 12 states that even if Mongoose failed to abide by the terms of the OGL (causing their license to terminate automatically), all sublicenses survive the termination of the parent licence. Is this correct?

That's clearly covered by Section 7 of the OGL. You are not permitted to use any Trademark or Registered Trademark in conjunction with any work containing Open Game Content unless you have an independent agreement with the owner. There is a limited exception for updating the copyright notice at the end of the license. Also, you must agree not to indicate compatibility or co-adaptability with any Trademark or Registered Trademark. And Section 11 of the OGL states that you can't market or advertise the Open Game Content using the name of any upstream Contributor. So technically the only place that you could mention RQ at all without a separate agreement with Issaries would be in the list of upstream sources in the copyright notice at the end of Section 15 (assuming the material was correctly released as OGC in the first place).

The OGL notice in Raiders of R'lyeh mentions the MRQ SRD, the MRQ Companion SRD, and the Legend SRD. This seems a like overkill since there is so much overlap between these three sources. And they don't seem to reference any material from the MRQ SRD that is not already in the Legend SRD (such as the Command skill). It's a bit weird that their OGC notice references the Core Rules Document - a 275-page version of the rules distributed via backerkit. An updated version of this was to be released alongside the final rulebook, but it still hasn't appeared. Out of curiosity, did the MRQ SRD actually expire? I thought the terms of the OGL offered a "perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license" to use the Open Game Content in the SRD, provided that the terms of the license are observed? Although use of the RuneQuest trademark is not permitted, my understanding was that material released as Open Game Content remains OGC after termination of the publishing licence? Or is this incorrect?

The blog post does specify that Mythic Iceland 2nd Edition "is slated for release in the first half of 2017". I suspect that this might be a typo.

You are a tease, Sir. Here, take my money....

I'm waiting to get paid so I can get a hardcover too - to sit alongside my copy of OQ2 in hardcover!

Alternatively, you can reduce the difficulty of the skill test by one grade for each level of specialisation the character possesses. If an adventurer with Handguns 47% is making a skill roll against an average difficulty, there is no modification to the roll. But if they have a specialisation with the Walther PPK, the roll is made against an Easy difficulty. The beauty of this approach is that there is no need to keep track of separate skill ratings for each specialisation - specialisations become mere descriptors that reduce the Difficulty Grade when they are applicable.

Yes. I didn't go down this path for exactly that reason. One issue is that is that the standard success level progression in most d100 variants isn't very granular. It normally goes Critical Success > Normal Success > Normal Failure > Fumble. By contrast, the old James Bond RPG assigned each successful roll a Quality Rating from 1 to 4 - so there were four different success levels. If you want this degree of granularity in d100, you might need a progression that goes: Critical Success Total Success Marginal Success Partial Success Failure Critical Failure / Fumble

In addition, have a look at the Renaissance system publications "Dark Streets" and "Clockwork & Cthulhu" from Cakebread & Walton. The rules for Sanity, Horror, Mental Armour, and Mental Healing may be exactly what you are looking for. Plus they are Open Game Content, so you can bolt them onto other D100 RPGs if you are a publisher

Thanks. I'm trying to develop an approach that provides decent flexibility without increasing complexity. One interesting thing about this approach is that it has implications for opposed skill tests - if one side has a specialisation in a skill and the other is resisting with a raw skill, the character with the specialisation has a significant advantage. This is not a bad thing! It also means that I've been developing specialisations for skills that don't currently have any. My view is that if a skill is too narrow to support a couple of specialised applications, it probably doesn't deserve to be in the game. Thus, in my variant, skills such as Sleight (renamed as Legerdemain) supports specialisation such as Cutpurse, Pickpocket, Filch, Prestidigitation, Juggling, and Concealment. Stealth has a couple of potential specialisations such as Shadowing and Ambush (and Perception gains an Alertness specialisation used to resist ambush and assassination attempts). I've also been toying with the idea of allowing characters to spend improvement points to purchase Stunts for individual skills. These are cool "cinematic" applications of the skill that require the expenditure of a Hero Point to activate during play. For example, the Perception skill might have a Deduction stunt allowing a character to perform the kind of incredible feats of observation and deductive reasoning associated with Sherlock Holmes. Of course, it would cost a Hero Point to activate the stunt whilst investigating a crime scene. However, I'm worried that introducing a Stunt mechanism like this makes everything too complicated again.

I've admit that the traits system in RD100 has influenced my thinking in this area too, but in a slightly different way. I want more traditional skill specialisations to allow GMs to select the level of granularity they want in their skill system. If you look at MRQII / Legend, many of the "Advanced" skills are specialisations of the "Common" skills. For example, Acrobatics can be seen as a specialisation of Athletics and Seduction as a specialisation of Influence. There are a few oddities where one "Advanced" skill can be seen as a specialisation of another "Advanced" skill. And there are a few cases where a "Common" skill is a specialisation of an "Advanced" one. For example, I regard Track as a specialisation of Survival and Evaluate as a specialisation of Commerce. For my homebrew game, I follow the lead of RQ 6 / Mythras and drop the distinction between Common and Advanced skills. However, not all skills are usable by without training. Also, I draw a distinction between skills with mandatory specialisation (such as Language or Culture) and skills with optional specialisation (such as Athletics and Influence). Mandatory specialisations are completely different skills - just as Language (English) is separate to Language (Japanese). But optional specialisations are individual applications of the parent skill. Thus, Influence skill now contains multiple specialisations such as Deception, Haggling, Intimidation, Negotiation, Oratory, and Seduction. Likewise, Athletics contains specialisations such as Acrobatics, Brawn, Climbing, Jumping, Running, and Swimming, As a rule of thumb, characters can only choose one optional specialisation per skill until they raise the parent skill above 100% (at which point they may develop a second one). To keep things simple, my approach is that whenever an adventurer applies an optional specialisation to a skill, it automatically reduces the difficulty grade of the skill roll by two levels. Thus, a brawny barbarian with the Intimidation specialisation can reduce Influence rolls by two Difficulty grades but only when trying to bully or terrorize people. This isn't as flexible as the Trait system in RD100, but it is a bit simpler in play.

Is this a trick question?

I must admit that when I was working on the Spells of Legend project over on the Mongoose boards, I thought seriously about converting some of my favourite 3PP D20 spells. Converting Common Magic and Divine Magic spells is easy, but converting d20 spells to the Legend / Mythras Sorcery system is harder because the underlying rules are so different. But it can be done, provided that appropriate care is taken. Has anybody thought of porting the superpower rules from Mutants & Masterminds as those are mostly OGC? These days, I am quietly working on my own D100 variant that combines material from Legend and OpenQuest - my aim is to develop something that hits the sweet spot somewhere in between the simplicity of OpenQuest / Renaissance and the detailed rules of Legend / RQ 6 / Mythras. My personal taste is for something a little more complex that OQ (which is based upon the MRQI SRD) but not quite as complex as Legend. It sounds like the upcoming Runequest reboot may be aiming for a similar target, but will be tied closely to the Gloranthan setting. I'm aiming for something in between classic Swords and Sorcery and Dark Fantasy - with some hints of modern Grimdark for extra spice.

Thanks! I was just playing around, but I'm sure that I could convert the entire OQ SRD to this format with a bit of work. I'll probably wait until Newt releases the revised version though. I might be tempted to do a custom version with a few of my house rules...

How about something like the attached sample? I've just mocked up a sample page from the OQ2 SRD for fun The embedded font is EB Garamond (which is available under an open license thanks to the Google Fonts project). Sample Page.pdf