craigm

Hi folks. I wanted to let you all know that I have a bunch of Chaosium, Design Mechanism, and other BRP titles that I'm looking to sell. Full list is available on rpggeek. Feel free to peruse. I'll happily combine shipping for orders of more than one item. (USA only, as I use USPS priority mail exclusively.) https://rpggeek.com/geekmarket/user/craigm?pageid=1 Please feel free to pass this along to anyone who might be interested. Thank you!

So sad to read this. Sending love to Luise and the rest of the family. Gone too soon, and not forgotten.

I'm grateful that as many of them did make it out there so folks like myself that were just re-introduced to Glorantha could get a taste of what it was like. Thank you.

I have the print version of Classic Fantasy on my shelf, so I just opened to a table. Imagine the left-side of the table with barely any differentiating contrast until it gets about 1/8 of the way across the table(moving from left to right). Honestly the gradient on the table is a bit distracting, and with the differences between paper and screen it makes things more difficult than it need be.

Honestly, for $350 + S/H you can remove one of those obstacles and begin reading the document. That is your option. And then you can box it up and ship it to whomever you wish and allow them to read it for free, and they can do likewise. Think of it as liberating the document for those who wish to read it for free, and removing the artificial obstacles preventing folks from reading it. That's one option. Perhaps a more constructive option would be to pick up the PDFs of the Stafford Library (assuming you haven't done so) and make it so that transcribing the document, warts and all, is something worth pursuing. Money is a lubricant. Use it to make things happen. I've presented two options to help speed along the process.

It's available on DTRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/82087/BRP-Witchcraft

If you're using an OGL licensed work you are required to copy the OGL and cite where the material originates. So in the case of Jackals they had to put in the OGL license because it came from OpenQuest, which came from Legend. The part that I find troublesome with declaring that the book has no open content is that the open content had to come from somewhere for folks to be using it. So instead of having a clear list of what was open content and what could be considered open content I have to "pop the stack" to figure out where the open content came from. It's not that it's wrong, it's that it makes more work for me, and I am a fan of "share and share alike" in my licenses. (Aside: I find things where folks borrow from a permissive license and then declare "All Rights Reserved" a little disheartening, but that's just me). Just because a work uses the OGL doesn't mean it has Open Gaming Content, or that it gives you the ability to enjoy the same rights that were granted to it in their derivation. It just means you get to do more work to figure things out.

You're welcome. Licenses are a hobby for me, so I tend to pay special attention to them. It's a great conversation starter at dinner parties. 😁

The Mongoose Glorantha books are a strange case because the "This book contains no open gaming content" was redundant. I think that might have been a hold-over of their disclaimers from their d20 books. The OGL is not a guarantee of open gaming content. It has two categories of content: product identity and open gaming content. Both must be explicitly be stated according to the license. That leaves a third category of content: content that is in the weird limbo of not being either category. If a book doesn't contain any open gaming content then it's safe to say that the authors and publishers wish no derivative works of that content unless made by some other special arrangement. Just because it has the OGL license at the end doesn't mean the book is open, only that it is fulfilling a legal requirement stated by the license to state where the derivative content originates. Hope this helps!

Not as unusual as you might imagine. The Mongoose Runequest 2 / Glorantha books used a similar statement ("This game product contains no Open Game Content."), and it has appeared in subsequent OQ supplements and in the River of Heaven series. It's a catch-all statement that seems to be used to indicate that the author doesn't wish for any of the mechanics or setting to be reused without permission (whether that permission is impossible to transfer in the case of Glorantha, or requires special agreement in the case of the others is left as an exercise for those wishing to figure that out).

Unfortunately they've declared the whole book doesn't contain any Open Game Content, so it doesn't contribute anything back to the OGL ecosystem.

Thank you for this clarification. I know that speaking about the future is something that is best left for professional prognosticators and not forum-postings that suddenly become sworn vows to fans who take everything as gospel, but wondering if there might be some small life in this line as a form of Fantasy SRD or small POD line. I know that the immediate answer for the POD is likely "we still are paying to store current unsold inventory" but it feels like this was a good idea that never got its due that could have a comfortable life inspiring future folks who love BRP and fantasy but want to tweak it outside of established Chaosium properties. No answer needed; just some rambling thought of someone who felt this candle could have burned brighter than it did.

I'm not official Chaosium but I did just recently receive the updated POD for SoloQuest and it looks good. Hopefully things are fixed now with the POD. Really pleased with the PODs thus far. Thank you so much, Official Chaosium folks.

These are awesome for those of us who were to up inside a certain large fantasy game to pay attention to anything else. Thank you so much for these.

Adding to this: perhaps some guidelines for where you'd want to have a 3, 6, 9, ... M, M2 vs 5, 10, 15, M, M^2… might help as well. When I compared this against the published rules for HeroQuest I wondered why the bump as so large. (And I wasn't sure where to put the discussion about it.)

@Ian Cooper I'm interested in this, but Facebook is a complete non-starter for me. Would Github issues and PRs work better for those of us not inclined or unable to be on Facebook?

Once you pull away the higher-tier pledges for special items (illustrations and special GM sessions), you've got folks spending around 168K for a boxed set and some additional goodies like the How to be a GM, dice, etc. The average someone spent was $112, and cutting out the large spenders you have around $107 per person. Not bad for a $50 box set. Also consider that the retail market for these didn't appear that great. I thought for sure that the copy that my FLGS had would be gone within a month. I think it took around 3+ months to finally sell, and I doubt they'll be restocking it. Also keep in mind that a lot of the writing had been done already for Dungeon Fantasy over the past 10 years. This was more of a "we're finally going to test the waters to see how well a combined version does". Quite a far cry from updating BRP to bring it in line with current product. Also also keep in mind that the only issue that POD solves is the storage and upfront costs. I've witnessed folks doing POD projects and it takes a lot of effort to get these laid out for printing. It's like comparing making a CD-R or a download of music vs making a CD of music: it still takes just as long to write, practice, write, practice, record, re-record, mix, re-record, mix, and lay out an album regardless of the final media.

(Note: Not a member of Chaosium, just a happy lurker, so take opinions with adequate grains of favorite substance.) I doubt we'll see a new version of BRP until a few things happen., The first is a demand for it outside of a few faithful onlookers of a forum. BRP is not known as a generic system the same way that GURPS, HERO, Fudge, et al are known. So convincing folks that they need yet-another-generic-system is going to have to come from outside of Chaosium. That is likely what the BRP Open License is about: creating that demand. The more we can get folks to adopt the system the more demand we create for the system. The second is committed resources. Kickstarter is not a great way to get committed resources to a project: those resources need to be in place prior to the project. That means picking up BRP products now and creating more positive cash flow for Chaosium to even consider such an avenue. Those two things are key shifts that would help make a new BRP version a reality, and they're things that are simple for us to do now while we wait. Play more games, purchase more products, and spread the word about your love not only for Chaosium's games, but the BRP system. And if you're a designer and the BRP Open License fits your needs then use it for your upcoming games. Rising tides and lifting ships.

I have the PDFs of the Glorantha Classics (and one hardcopy of Borderlands and Beyond). From a layout perspective the POD versions are easier on my eyes (10+ years of layout iteration will do that). The other thing (from a PDF perspective) is that the PDFs are indexed so you have the Table of Contents handy. The Glorantha Classics have more artwork in them than the POD versions, but that was true compared with the originals. The biggest reason I can think to get these is that they're POD, so if something happens to them you can pick up another copy. You'd be hard pressed to pick up another copy of the Glorantha Classics (anecdotal evidence here. You might be located near an underground bunker full of them.)

As someone who has picked up a (not insignificant) number of these POD books I can say they're absolutely gorgeous. I've only ever owned a few fleeting copies of some of the supplements so I have no direct comparisons to make, but what I've seen is quite good. I'd rather emulate the content and some of the layout and have a searchable PDF than have scanned copies that forego all of that for the sake of semi-fidelity. There are few things more distracting to my eyes than seeing literal cut-and-paste artifacts, but that's just me.

Never played a lick of Pendragon, even though I picked up the bundle a while back. Looking forward to the changes in the game, much like the changes that got me to pick up Runequest Glorantha and many of the reprints of games that I missed. That said, the quickest way to get me to leave a community is when I see that it has gone completely moribund; worrying more about protecting the past than about actually engaging with the present. I gave up GURPS because it became tiresome to follow conversations about what chart to use for how many angels could dance on a given pin (is it a shirt pin or a sewing needle, and do we have rules for that? Bleh.) As far as I'm concerned Chaosium have been incredible stewards with their products and for making things accessible to folks that haven't been steeped in all of the lore of over 30+ years of gaming. I applaud them for adapting and tweaking things as needed. There's plenty of games out there that haven't updated. My hope is that Chaosium adds POD options for Pendragon where they can. That way those who feel that the old ways are best can have fresh new copies instead of polishing their collection. Me? I'm ready to see what's over the horizon.

Remember: If you roll doubles on a 1d10 it's an automatic critical failure.

What have I waddled into now?

(and in the "make more work for folks who are already overworked department", would it be possible to have those videos posted on somewhere like Youtube or another platform external to Facebook? Sadly I've got Facebook blocked at the router for reasons. Understand that I'm an anomaly here, but figured I'd ask, while also covering that the post I made up there was a duplicate. Thanks!)

Needs to have the packing tape on the spines to give it that boxed set look. 😁 Seriously, though, these look amazing. Looking forward to seeing them in person.