CruelDespot

I was planning on buying my paper copy of BRP at Gencon (I already have the .pdf). It would be awesome to get it autographed. How do I find you? I'd love to buy a drink for the mad scientist who resurrected my favorite game. I'll be there on Thursday by myself, and bring the family on Friday evening through Sunday (I only live a couple of hours away in Louisville).

I think it sounds interesting. I enjoyed the movies "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Brothers Grimm." They strike me as examples of the setting: heroic fantasy with magic set in the late 18th/early 19th century. I am also a fan of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver series, which is swashbuckling adventure mixed with the history of science, computing, and math, set in the early 18th century. Is it set in historical Earth or a fictional world?

Ya'll want the answer? Cthulhu Dark Ages, Baby... "...each round last several to a dozen or so seconds. A combat round is a deliberately elastic unit of time in which every character wishing to act who is capable of action has the chance to complete at least one action." -p39 BAM!

Ayelin's suggestion is very similar to the rule in MRQ (Mongoose RuneQuest). It's not a bad idea. It is fairly straightforward and easy to use. My concern is that most skills start at a very low base chance. If a character has not invested in a skill with a base chance of 20% or less, one negative modifier reduces it to zero. On the other hand, a modifier of -20% is negligible to someone with a skill over 100%. However both would feel a modifier that halves their chance, but neither would be reduced to zero. Here is the system I use. In some ways is is like Ayelins, but uses multiplication and division instead of addition and subtraction: Every modifer is either adverse (negative) or favorable (positive). If you have both, then they cancel each other out. 3 adverse and 2 favorable = a net modifier of one adverse, etc. You divide your chance of success by the number of adverse modifiers, or multiply by the number of favorable (round up). So 1 or 2 adverse conditions= 1/2 normal chance. 3 adverse = 1/3 normal chance. 4 adverse = 1/4 normal chance. 1-2 favorable conditions = double normal chance. 3 favorable conditions = x3 normal chance, etc. In my system, conditions tend to have a bigger effect. If your skill is 60% and you have one favorable condition, my system would raise your chance to 120%, while Ayelin's would raise it to 80%. With one adverse condition, my system would reduce your skill to 30%, while Ayelin's would reduce it to 40%. OTOH, my system is more forgiving with multiple adverse conditions. If your skill is 60% but you have 4 adverse conditions, Ayelin's system renders a -20% (60-80) - unless he provides a minimum chance of 5% or something, while mine renders 15% (60/4). Either system would work and you could make arguments for either being more realistic. It's just a matter of taste, I guess.

I special-ordered it from my FLGS, and they just told me that their regular distributor is out of stock. The bad news is that I will have to wait a little longer. The good news is that it must be selling better than expected if the distributor is out of stock, don't you think?

I've never heard of Cthulhu Hungary but (or perhaps "therefore") I submit that it is not a very good representative of historical Cthulhu products overall. IMHO the main rulebook for Cthulhu Dark Ages by Stephane Gesbert is quite good. Since the technology and culture between Cthulhu Dark Ages (set in Europe 1000AD) are not that different from Stupor Mundi (set in Europe 1200AD), I think that you could easily use the Cthulhu Dark Ages rules with the Stupor Mundi setting information. chain mail is chain mail I reckon.

The sample intro chapter is very promising. It has an infectious enthusiasm. The art is fun.

I'm really looking forward to this game.

You should check out the GORE rules in the downloads section of this site. GORE has all (I think, or at least almost all) of the D&D spells converted to BRP terms. BRP Central - Downloads - GORE It might be interesting to compare and contrast the two efforts.

I am always glad for threads like this where I can get ideas for new tracks to add to the mix. My main criteria is: no lyrics. A lot of players and especially DMs complain about background music with words. They find it distracting. So my background music must be 100% instrumental. It seems to me there are 4 categories of source material: Movie soundtracks. This is the most obvious choice. It is designed to be background music, and you can tell if it is good if you saw the movie. Videogame soundtracks. Also designed for background, but usually just not as good. There are a few exceptions with great music: The Total War series, Diablo... The other problem is that anyone who has played the game has already become sick of the music. Whenever the diablo town theme starts playing, one of the players in my group chimes in with "What can I do for you?" as the shopkeeper from the game. Classical music: The quieter type of classical will put most groups to sleep, so you are most likely to use orchestral music, opera overtures, etc. This may be discouraging to find, because most people aren't that familiar with classical music. You are probably OK with anything that says "overture." Some of my favorites: Borodin, Polovtsian Dance Grieg: Hall of the Mt King Mussorgsy: Night on Bald Mt Prokofiev: The Alien God and the Dance of the Evil Spirits Respighi: Circuses aka Feste Romane Sibelius: Finlandia Suppe: Light Cavalry Overture Wagner: Siegfried's Funeral March, Parsival Heavy Metal: A lot of gamers are metalheads, but it is tricky to find stuff without lyrics. Here are a few I know, and I would love to find more: Faith No More: Woodpecker from Mars Iron Maiden: Genghis Khan, Ides of March Metallica: Call of Ktulu, Orion The Police: Behind my Camel Dredj, I don't know Bal-Sagoth or Man of War. Is any of their stuff instrumental?

What about Pathfinder? Looks like the survivors are already downloading the free version alpha of their "life preserver." I think it will take more than a great system to make a dent into this market. Paizo is gearing up for a major turf war with WotC. To that end they are publishing 2 or 3 items a month. And they look slick. Good original art, smooth layout, etc. They are starting their own version of the RPGA, they have events scheduled at Gencon...And even they have an uphill struggle ahead of them. That is the level of effort that will be required. I love BRP better. I just wish it it had the resources and marketting savvy worthy of the product.

I had the same idea as Kloster (and am also a former Top Secret player). I plan on using a house rule where the 1s digit of the attack roll determines the hit location 1-2=head 3-6=body 7= l arm 8 = r arm 9= l leg 10= r leg That seems to me to be the simplist method. You don't even have to roll a seperate die for hit location. At the same time, I recognize that the purpose of the new BRP rulebook is not to change the system, but to compile all the rules from the different pre-existing BRP games into one consistent set of rules: "Chaosium's Greatest Hits" so to speak. Don't you hate it when a band records a new version of one of their songs for the greatest hits album? Same principle applies here. That's why I am content to keep it as a house rule.

Boo to your undermining, Badcat! Go, Threedeesix!

Skunkape, If you want to use D&D style magic in a BRP game, you should check out the GORE rules if you haven't already. There is a link in the downloads section on this site. The author took the D&D SRD spells and adapted them to BRP.

What corner of the world is that?

I am not a fan of RQ3. I'm a former Elric! player. I think Elric! was the pinnacle of RPG perfection. I am also a big fan of CoC. So when I read that the primary source for the new BRP is Elric, followed by CoC, it made me happy. I understand why Runequest 3 fans would be frustrated, but you can't please everyone. Jason "I am designing a new motorcycle" RQ3 fans "But I want a pickup truck." Jason "OK, but other people want a new motorcycle, so that's what I am making." Later... Jason : "How do you like my new motorcycle?" RQ3 fans: "What? It doesn't have a cargo bed? How am I going to use this as a pickup truck?" Jason: "How do you like it as a motorcycle?" RQ3 fans: "Could you add 3 seats, a payload capacity of 2 tons, four wheel drive..." Well I want a motorcycle. The pickup druck division is over at Mongoose publishing. If you don't like their new pickup truck product, don't blame the motorcycle division.

Stephen King specifically credited HPL as a major influence. So has Clive Barker. Brian Lumley even wrote a series set in HPL's Dreamlands. I could go on and on. Hugely influential. But I concede the original point about HPL not seeming scary to the modern reader. I think that is because he was such a huge influence. His ideas that were ground-breaking at the time have now become routine. Since everybody else is using his ideas, they don't seem remarkable any more. Kind of like any invention. The airplane for example. The Wright Brothers and their plane were important because they were the first. But that doesn't mean it is a good plane by today's standards. :focus: Worst Fantasy? I have to jump on the Wheel of Time bandwagon. I was only able to get through the first few. Started out hugely derivative of Tolkien. The only romance was a very juvenile "We are both too shy to express our love" subplot. Tiresome. And the climax was always a big magical battle within the minds of the hero and the villain. So there was this grand abstract imagery, but really it was a lot like Dragonball Z. "I just unlocked a thousand times more power" "Oh, yeah, well I just unlocked a bazillion times more power!"

Thanks to Shaira for posting the actual rules from the book. What Shaira posted from the book is different from what I expected based on the earlier comments in this thread. I assumed the rules in the book followed the more common BRP rule of "best degree of success wins; if both roll the same degree of success, the higher roll wins." That is what I would prefer. I understand why a crit vs a success should be less overwhelming than a crit vs a failure, but the genius of BRP has always been in its elegant simplicity, IMHO.

Bah. I don't see why. The rules as described above work great. It may look complicated on the first reading, but in practice it is very simple, and it has a certain mathematical elegance. The reason that the higher role wins on a tie is because it favors the side with a higher chance of success. Example: Bob is hiding and we are checking to see if Joe spots him. Bob has a hide skill of 75% and rolls a 63. Joe has a spot hidden of 50% and rolls a 12. Bob wins and isn't spotted. Note that if Joe had rolled a 63, it would have exceeded his skill, but it is a success for Bob. The side with a greater skill score has a proportionally better chance of rolling higher if they both succeed. Easy!

Maybe the power point cost could be adjusted, but I think the spell should stay. I was just reading a Conan novel in which a spell like this was used to order a suicide. So if one goal of the rules is to simulate fantasy fiction, then that spell is doing it. Another possible limitation could be a requirement for the caster to make eye contact first. See below: The stranger did not seem perturbed, though the spear-point touched his bosom. His eyes held the warrior’s with strange intensity. “What are you obliged to do?” he asked strangely “To guard the gate!” The warrior spoke thickly and mechanically; he stood rigid as a statue, his eyes slowly glazing. “You lie! You are obliged to obey me! You have looked into my eyes, and your soul is no longer your own. Open that door!” … Lifting his voice slightly, he spoke to the guardsman. “I have no more use for you. Kill yourself!” Like a man in a trance, the warrior thrust the butt of his spear against the wall, and placed the keen head against his body, just below his ribs. Then slowly, stolidly, he leaned against it with all his weight, so that it transfixed his body and came out between his shoulders. -from “The People of the Black Circle” by Robert E. Howard.

My question is this: Does the magic system more resemble CoC/Stormbringer, or is each spell a skill, like in Magic World or Runequest?