g33k

I've got one game that we're going to try moving online. I'm the most devoted gamer in the group; most of the others are never-before or only-rarely players. However, I've never run online before. I'm looking at these tools for the first time, really. One of the players was actually the one who suggested moving online, using Zoom & document-sharing (not realizing, I think, that gamers have been working this issue intensively). I'm looking at three platforms, mainly... Roll20, because of specific content support (this game is really about my niece, who specifically wanted D&D, so <shrug> LostMineOfPhandelver it is; Roll20 has a LMOP module (otoh re-buying the same content kinda rankles...). Astral, (astraltabletop) because they've made their paid/premium service free through end-of-April specifically to support covid-19 isolation, and I want to throw my (presumed, eventual) money behind the kind of folks who do that kind of thing; also, I know Astral did some CoC-specific stuff a few months ago, so I'm hoping all the BRPish mechanical issues will run smoothly. DIY (based likely around Zoom, as per the original suggestion) Also considering a "blended" model running Zoom (and/or other non-gaming-specific collab tools) alongside Roll20 or Astral. My main considerations are two-fold: ease-of-use (gonna have a mix of technically-adept and very-non-adept trying to make this work); also least GM-prep to run, as I'm already juggling a fair number of RL items. Anyone with specific experiences with any of the above -- I'd love your input!

Agreed! Or if they feel to you like they are too "over-the-top" for the rest of the piece, put them under separate cover as another title in JC, subtitled "for very advanced adventurers only." Rework them to be easier to place outside Dorastor, or mark the high-level title "for use with Secrets of Dorastor, another fine Jonstown Compendium supplement."

Nothing that I have heard of. I think the best (public) list is the "Upcoming Publications" thread pinned near the top of the Glorantha forum; post #1 of the thread gets periodically re-edited to stay (relatively) current. There is a Wyrms Footnotes #16 listed as coming out, but it's way, way down the list. Still, as a collection of varied articles and essays, it looks possible that some Dorastor content might be in that. Depends in what gets pitched to Chaosium, really! Back around the time of the RQClassic KS, Rick (somewhat coyly) admitted that a similar reprint-KS for RQ3 products was possible. I haven't heard much since; I've no idea whether he is an the verge of announcing such a thing, or wincing and dodging (and hoping he dies of old age before the fans force him to the project). That'd be a RQ3 reprint though, not a RQG product! I stress that I'm just an avid fan, not part of Chaosium, so my ignorance of their plans is MUCH greater than my knowledge. Maybe if we summon @Jeff he will have more to tell us; or maybe he will say to let him ALONE, dammitall, to write the stuff we want and keep wondering about, instead of coming online to tell us he's trying to write it, but keeps getting @summoned to the forums & away from his word-processor... 😉

Except that (temporary) shelter-in-place & self-isolation is the ONLY technique we have that is effective. (If we hadn't screwed up initial test-production, we might have tried that method, like S.Korea did (to good effect); but we're so far behind that curve we may not be ABLE to catch up even if we get test-production fixed). This is neither panic nor conspiracy, it's fundamental disease-control. It has been well-known for many years. We just haven't had to face the realities of logarithmic disease-spread for so long that it's striking people as an unreasonable imposition on their "god given rights." This isn't a civil-rights issue, it's a public-health emergency.

I too got tapatalk-spammed. All tapatalk coming to my inbox now gets filtered as spam, regardless of content. Also, there's something weird (probably in my config, so it's "user error") in that I cannot find other tapatalk groups that I try to find; logged into TDM-forum, I try to hit another tapatalk site, and get denied or login-prompted. I've generally experienced tapatalk as more trouble than it's worth. It makes me visit TDM a lot less than I otherwise might.

You are asking US to explain to YOU why this preference of yours -- that you cannot explain -- exists? Sorry man... Even Lucy charged a nickel for that kind of stuff! For myself -- I like Mythras reasonably well, but my group hard-nope'd out of Combat Effects. I think that I'd enjoy Combat Effects, if I could get my group to play them; I certainly liked the idea. I enjoyed reading the section, the examples, &c... And (unlike you) I love hit-locations in BRP/RQ (and thus Mythras). To answer your question, I go back to looking at RQ2 v RQ3. Some RQ2 players moved to RQ3 and stayed there, but lots of them just stayed with RQ2, and pack-ported RQ3 content. Some players began with RQ3, and only looked at RQ2 because they heard about the great content (and were generally dissatisfied with the rules). "Which is better" was a perennial topic of debate (resurfacing recently as the RQ3 tribe griped at the RQG dev's for the RQ2-chassis path they took). I think a vague, yes-there-are-exceptions rule of thumb is, people tend to prefer the version they first got intensively into. So I ask -- was BRP BGB your first? Is Mythras just some flashy younger New Hotness that you've flirted with... but you keep going back to your First Love? That'll be 5c, please!

No, Chaosium doesn't DO updates when there is nothing new to say. They were working on it last time, they aren't changing that, so they're STILL working on it (they'd have announced a cancellation). Read the most recent from Rick, a dozen or so posts upthread from this post ... It discusses that "when will book <X> be out" is something they just cannot answer.

Unfortunately, it did not. This -- and other similarly nutjob-origin theories -- are out in the wild. 💩💩 As witness the sub-topic -- right here in this thread -- where multiple theories are being reported as currently-believed, by multiple people. 🤡

Gadzooks, sir, but you're right!! That quirky little gem /most/definitely/ should count!

It's one of the 3 most-advanced (furthest-along, closest to printing) RQ projects that Jeff has! Why would he abandon all that work???!?

Not to mention the thing where Prax/etc mostly experience Inora from when she's NOT Stasis-ing on her mountain-tops! Does she have some twin sister, or maybe a transformation myth? Or ... ?

That was, to put it bluntly, "fake news." Someone speculated, "hey maybe it could have been..." and the fearmongers picked it up and ran with it as if it were proven fact. I'll even go on to caution you that -- if your news feeds have fed you that "misinformation" and not corrected to the real info -- you may be relying on news that intentionally pursues fearmongering over facts; it's the profitable model of producing "news" these days. https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/tracking-coronavirus-epidemic-wuhan-world https://fullfact.org/health/new-coronavirus-not-genetically-engineered/ documents misreporting in the Daily Express: https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/theory-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-a-lab-lacks-evidence-67229

No, no, NO... you blinkin' Barbarian!!! The excuse is, "Jus' drawing a portrait": O-<--<| <sheesh, can't get the covert surveillance goin' nohow!>

uhhhh... you *DO* know there are wingnuts promoting the stupid idea that this is a genetically-engineered virus??? FWIW -- in case anyone doesn't know / hasn't heard -- that sort of gengineering can be spotted (and has pretty definitively been ruled out) by independent researchers all over the world.

Eagerly looking forward to the expanding Weaver setting! Also the new Elevation setting... I am... kind of amazed that the 3rd-party expansion to Mythras (that is Frostbyte's M-Space) is pursuing TWO separate campaign-settings! It speaks to the passionate interest many of us have in some good sci-fi gaming! It's pretty clear to me that Chaosium is missing SOME boat, here...

I'd expect a clever use of familiars would be the go-to method of collecting hair/etc for dire uses! More-than-cat-smart black cat in the middle of the night? Offhand, I'd think that's pretty hard to see/find/stop...

My wistful that-ship-has-passed wish is that the Posthuman guys would have come to Chaosium, and licensed BRP as the engine for Eclipse Phase. 😢 My new hope is for Chaosium to jump on their announced OGL-ish & SRD-ish BRP initiatives, plus something like the MiskatonicRepostory / JonstownCompendium (but for BRP); and then someone to do some cracking-good work in sci-fi !

There's two options, really, as I see it... 1) Take an existing IP with an existing fan-base, and develop the RPG of it. Many of these are already developed or in development (Star {Trek|Wars}, Dune, The Expanse, etc), but plenty of others exist. (I wonder which of the MANY properties that SJG did for GURPS (a) sold well & (b) would be available for re-licensing...?) 2) Get an author/developer (an individual or a team) who are passionate and devoted to a new creation of their own (one with the richness and depth and breadth that some of those pre-existing IP's have). Is there any other good/likely option than my (1) & (2) ? I note (with a bit of dismay) that they already had option (2) in hand, with Chris Spivey (proven successful! author/dev) and his own Kadimah setting. Evidently Chaosium feels (per the 5Mar announcement posted here by MOB) that their plates are full with existing projects, and they cannot adequately support this 2nd option: I am therefore uncertain whether they'd be (currently) able to pursue ANY sci-fi game (including option (1)). Per some other threads here, I'm likely to move ahead with my own hacked-together FrankenBRP for a sci-fi game (neither OQ's nor Mythras' existing offerings quite hit my mark).

Is there any reason it really has to be here on BRPC? Couldn't you get almost the same functionality from (e.g.) an online/cloud document or spreadsheet or whatever?

I too long for a BRP-engine sci-fi game. I don't believe "Future World" (as itself) is what Chaosium will use; bear with me on this, it'll take a couple of steps... 1) You see, Chaosium -- the new management -- has brought a bottom-line attitude that I don't think the company has had before. Yes, they're gamers who love gaming, with a deep and rich history of fannish activity. But it's no longer just a hobby for them: it's their bread and butter. And housing. And everything else. At the end of the daypayperiod... if all of them aren't taking home a reasonable paycheck , then the company isn't WORKING, its FAILING. And for "reasonable," read a "professional" paycheck, not some "side-hustle" bullshit: they're giving it their all, and it needs to support them. They left behind professional careers, not from feckless "I wanna do this, so screw reality & practicality" but in the genuine belief they could make it work as new professional careers. 2) They have all the history of Chaosium at their fingertips (or in musty boxes; depending). Sometimes that emerges in fabulous finds of ancient Greg'ory. Sometimes it's boring ledgers and accounting, sales figures, &c. And this "boring" stuff is fodder for their bottom-line geeks; yes, there really are multiclass Gamer/Accountants in Real Life... and at least one of them works at Chaosium. 2.a) Chaosium has stated that -- based on the sales numbers they can see -- the general rule is, "generic rulesets sell poorly / setting-rich rulesets sell better." This was the basis on which they elected not to further develop Magic World, for example: it wasn't selling in sufficient volume to justify the hours of labor. (I note FWIW that we're not seeing much from them about Superworld, either.) I don't think they have ruled those out in a "never again, under any circumstances" way; just that they don't realistically see such circumstances in the foreseeable future. 2.b) Notwithstanding however much some of us just luuurve us some generic rules that we can slap onto our own setting -- without having to excise some other stupid stuff (like Glorantha or Cthulhu) -- Chaosium has the sales numbers to demonstrate that we just don't buy BRP games in sufficient numbers to be a viable market for them to make that product. 3) It follows (almost inevitably) that Future World won't be something they see as a viable (in a business sense) candidate for further development. If they had some IP to hang it on -- something with an existing fan-base -- it would be different; I expect the FW engine could be used as the basis for any number of viable games... but that nice adaptable-and-spare feature turns out to be a downside (sales-wise) not an upside! * * * Mind you: A. I'd love to be wrong, and for Chaosium to just go, "fuck it, we'll make it work!" and do a full work-up of Future World. B. I do think a FW chassis could underlay a very successful SciFi RPG... I just think that Chaosium has proof in hand that it needs a rich deep setting to really drive the game in the market.

FYI - Here's a link to the campaign reports (n.b. it's the 2nd part of them; part-1 is over on TDM's forum (linked in the first post)) using M-Space to run the very highly-regarded Pirates of Drinax campaign (which is written for Mongoose-Traveller) : Looks really really good! I'll just tag @Pentallion in on this (as it's his stuff I link), in case he doesn't notice the thread...

This. The Crit/Special rules for Crushing weapons are meant, in part, to make Trolls particularly scary. If you don't have a LOT of Strength to give a big ol' damage bonus, the Crushing weapons are dramatically less scary.

I will argue that we almost-certainly need /SOME/ sort of tech rules. Maybe the Space Marine grunts seldom need starship rules, but they need rules for infantry-scale energy-weapons, high-mach kinetics, advanced armor, etc... the genre staples of "Space Grunt" warfare. If reasonably advanced or future-projected science/tech/etc (and the PCs' corresponding skills!), and high-tech threats (and responses, and counter-threats of your own) aren't part of the rules and rolls... then IMHO you aren't playing a sci-fi RPG, you're playing some other genre with sci-fi elements in the background. Or maybe you're playing a more Narrative-style ruleset, rolling the Conflict in an abstracted sense, rather than rolling your Skills in a universe-simulating pseudophysics of the game-engine.

Ducks... drakes... Po-TAY-to... po-TAH-to. Ain't so far from dragons, eh?

<looks at some of the 70's & early-80's art> No, no. I think you nailed it. ahemm... So to speak.