seneschal

The problem with "Sword of Shanarra" was the writing. Broke every rule you learned in creative writing class, especially "show, don't tell." Nice Hildebrandt Brothers cover painting, drek inside. Don't know why it was such a seller, unless fantasy addicts were desperate for anything else once they'd finished Tolkien. Elizabeth Moon's "The Deed of Paksinarion" triology. Paks and her world are interesting, and there is a good story buried somewhere in the series, but it was clearly padded out in the extreme to make the required 3 novels. If Moon's editor had had any guts, he'd have taken a chainsaw to the mess and could have pulled a diamond out of this coal mine.

You could take the Robin Hood/Pellucidar/Flash Gordon approach, where the player-characters start out hiding in the shadows but gain in strength after a series of successful missions until they can challenge the evil powers that be, whether it is the Ming the Merciless, the Sheriff of Nottingham or the evil Mahars (or Doctor Zaius). To pull this off, the PCs would have to find a refuge from the apes, then gradually gather and arm supporters (assuming they can find any supporters competent enough to fight the ape army).

There was also a long-running Logan's Run Marvel comic. The Logan's Run RPG was West End's "Paranoia."

Didn't want to derail the "what we'd like to see" discussion. Here's what we've got so far: From a game mechanics standpoint, a Planet of the Apes campaign wouldn't be hard to put together. We've already got the 19th Century firearms rules posted in the BRP Central downloads section, which is where the ape civilization is militarily, although they are more advanced medically. We already have professions templates for doctors, soldiers, and such, and psionics rules in the new BRP edition. You'd have to figure out appropriate ape stats vs. conventional human stats. In the 1960s movie series, and in the the short-lived 1974 TV series, apes were slightly stronger and slightly dumber than 20th Century humans but not so much that they couldn't interact and compete on equal terms. They didn't exhibit the outrageous agility of the apes in the 2001 remake. You'd also want to figure out appropriate stats and "professions" for the primitive humans (they're physically normal but mentally and socially deficient) as well as for the mutants (wimpy in the physical department but have psionic powers). The human astronauts from the 20th Century always lost their fancy gear when they crashed, so there isn't a lot of gee-whiz technological gimmickry to figure out. Even the bomb-worshipping mutants from Beneath the Planet of the Apes didn't have much in the way of sci fi hardware other than their "god." It's basically a Western in which the guys in the black hats also have fur, and parts of the Painted Desert are radioactive. From a sourcebook standpoint, ape civilization is pretty centralized. You've got a single adobe city-state surrounded by farmland surrounded by desert. The apes don't explore much, both because they pretty much have everything they need locally and because of ancient prohibitions. So far as the movie series is concerned, there aren't a string of ape cities trading and competing with each other. The apes have a three-tiered society, with orangutans controlling the political and religious bureaucracy, gorillas comprising the the military caste, and chimpazees relegated to second-class citizen status (why this is so is never explained). Ape religion is based on the pronouncements of an ancient Lawgiver who enjoined them to reject human foibles and live in peace together. They believe in a Creator God, but the rest of their theology isn't spelled out. The mutants live beneath the ruins of one of several ancient human cities which are all some distance from the ape city. They keep strictly to themselves and attempt to scare off people who wander into their territory with mental illusions. The primitive humans live in the desert but sneak into ape farmland to raid crops. The whole setting is inland from what used to be the Eastern seaboard of the United States, but the sea level, climate and terrain have been altered drastically by a long-ago nuclear war. And that's about it. You could expand on this tremendously, especially if you're in a "Gamma World" frame of mind. The ape city's zone of control is a tiny area of what used to be North America. You've not only got the rest of the continent (or what's left of it) but the rest of the whole planet to play with. Who knows what else is out there? Of course, if you get too wild and crazy, you no longer have a Planet of the Apes campaign.

Hmmm. From a game mechanics standpoint, a Planet of the Apes campaign wouldn't be hard to put together. We've already got the 19th Century firearms rules in the downloads section, which is where the ape civilization is militarily, although they are more advanced medically. We already have professions templates for doctors, soldiers, and such, and psionics rules in the new BRP edition. All you'd have to do is figure out appropriate ape stats vs. the conventional human stats. You'd also want to figure out appropriate stats and "professions" for the primitive humans. The human astronauts from the 20th Century always lost their fancy gear when they crashed, so there isn't a lot of gee-whiz technological gimmickry to figure out. Even the bomb-worshipping mutants from Beneath the Planet of the Apes didn't have much in the way of sci fi hardware other than their "god." It's basically a Western in which the guys in the black hats also have fur, and parts of the Painted Desert are radioactive. Ride 'em, cowboy, and please pass the bananas.

If funky post-apocalyptic is your meat, Goblinoid Games is playtesting "Mutant Future," a retro-clone amalgam of first edition "Gamma World" and "Labrynth Lord." FYI. Goblinoid Games

I've enjoyed both the Mars and the Venus novels of Burroughs. But I think I like Carson Napier a little more than John Carter. He's a more human, fallible hero rather than a miniature god of war. Napier is more fun because he has to break a sweat to beat the bad guys and save the princess.

I also did a search for Call of Cthulhu NPCs. Found lots of fan sites, minatures, character generators and character sheets, but no pregenerated NPCs of the type you were seeking. Perhaps the reason is that Call of Cthulhu adventurers never call the police or the army for help (although they should) and are laughed at when they consult scientists. Of course, many CoC investigators are librarians themselves so they don't need to consult an expert in that regard.

So far, I've found some Runequest NPCs but no modern characters.

Might be just as easy to use that C of C character generation program we found a couple weeks ago. It's the Edu-Web link in the "Links" section.

We look forward to your review.

Don't rule out spaceships entirely. ERB's own Carson of Venus series (Pirates of Venus, 1932) had the hero launching himself heavanward in a bona fide rocketship. In the later John Carter of Mars novels (Skeleton Men of Jupiter), Martian airships became capable of interplanetary travel. And ERB's The Moon Maid features antigravity ships capable of reaching the moon. And while Burroughs' focus is on nubile alien princesses rather than gee-whiz gadgetry, his series do introduce some nifty hardware: radium guns, antigravity ships, battleship-mounted disintegrator cannon, longevity serums, flying harnesses. The Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon newspaper strips (especially the latter) inhabited the same niche in popular culture. Once he crashed on Mongo, Gordon was more concerned with rescuing Dale Arden, avoiding the unwanted affections of various unscrupulous nubile alien princesses, and swashbuckling adventure against an encyclopedia's worth of [fill-in-the-blank]-men than he was understanding the wonders of the galaxy.

About the same time Western Hero came out, ICE also published the Rolemaster version, Outlaws. Gunslingers was a comparatively recent Action! System product; unfortunately Gold Rush Games ran into difficulties soon after it was published and hasn't been able to follow up. Don't forget FJ Gaming's Gunslingers and Gamblers. I downloaded it during Drive Thru RPG's Thanksgiving promo but haven't had a chance to review it yet. I agree that the Western doesn't need to be tainted with horror to be enjoyable. Western Hero did a good job of reviewing the various cowboy sub-genres, including horror. But there's enough action-adventure in a pure Western setting to run a long campaign. Unfortunately, Deadlands is the only Western themed game in memory that has received any sort of product support. Most of the others have pretty much been one-shots (pun intended). On the supernatural side of things, I'd prefer a game that captured the flavor of American folklore and tall tales. Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink, and Pecos Bill didn't tangle with European-style menaces such as vampires. They wrestled alligators and grizzly bears, battled swarms of giant mosquitoes, sought to tame rivers and cyclones that seemed to have human intelligence and orneriness. There were supernatural elements in folklore, but they took the form of demonic horses or sometimes the Devil himself in disguise.

The heart, soul, and tentacles of Call of Cthulhu is Lovecraft, and all that nifty historical 1920s stuff. That's why it can be successfully ported to d20, or even Risus (another free RPG system, but not a retro-clone). In the same way, Runquest IS Glorantha. One thing I have to say about GORE is that it truly is generic in spite of (to my superhero and sci-fi gaming eyes) an overemphasis on magic. It could just as easily be used to run a espionage or science fiction game as horror or fantasy. If Daniel Proctor hadn't illustrated it with eldritch monsters, I wouldn't have known any better. 4C is so spare, dry and generic that once I'd helped my kids roll up some characters I didn't know what to do with them. Without all the Marvel art and gameplay examples, I couldn't see what set my friends' hearts atwitter a couple decades ago. These days, there are hundreds of competing RPG systems, many of them free. But the system itself is not the game. What breathes life into dull, dry, confusing rules is the setting, the characters, the sort of genre information that the writers of GURPS and Hero System are so good at providing. And that's what the gaming industry needs more of: creative, well-written, fleshed out role-playing settings to use with all those rules. It seems to me that GORE could well give Chaosium a well-needed shot in the arm and kick in the pants by providing more material and attracting new players.

OK. After seven thread pages of sound and fury I just want to know one thing. Which of you RQ/CoC/Superworld mavens is going to write the NEXT great BRP superhero product? With the advent of GORE, you don't have to wait to put your decades of experience to good use.

Hey, oozing cosmic horrors are a dime a dozen, but a detailed campaign setting is hard to find.

The game system really does affect the "feel" of your campaign. That's why I enjoy Hero System for superheroing (although I realize not everyone here is a fan). Especially with 3rd edition, it was hard for your character to get killed, encouraging cinematic brawls and outrageous stunts. And the system really does allow you to create nearly any character you've seen in comics or can imagine. Villians & Vigilantes was also fun but you were limited to the predefined (and randomly selected) powers. Also, since you were playing yourself with powers, that's how the game system felt: "normals with powers." You might have awesome cosmic energies at your command, but you'd still huff and puff climbing the stairs -- and a kid with a pea shooter might be able to take you out. Palladium's superhero game, Heroes Unlimited, had a feel similar to V&V. Combat was surprisingly lethal to a Champions player. Unless you had the power Invulnerability you'd better have ducked when the bad guys started shooting. And the random power assignment could lead to some kooky character concepts. That's OK as long as you didn't have a particular character type in mind, but if you'd wanted to play an homage to your favorite scarlet speedster it could be disconcerting to roll up a Robocop clone with pink horns and a prehensile tail. One thing I did like was the scads of skills every Heroes Unlimited character was required to pick. Before 5th edtion, a Hero System character practically had to choose between having powers or having skills. It was nice, in Palladium, to be able to do something other than melt brick walls with your breath. By the same token, the game system affected the campaign's "feel" when my friends and I played Traveller. We were inspired by the likes of Flash Gordon, Captain Kirk and Luke Skywalker but because combat was so lethal and earning credits so essential, our characters tended to sneak around like scheming Harry Mudds. We still had loads of fun, but the rules didn't encourage brash heroics. Based on the discussion so far, it sounds like a BRP supers system would have a "feel" similar to Palladium or V&V. That's fine if you're portraying costumed crimefighters or pulp heroes armed with weird science gadgets. It might not work quite so well if you're wanting to play Superman or the Fantastic Four. I've personally never been fond of "grim and gritty" comics. If I want realism I'll read the newspaper. Superhero stories are supposed to help you escape reality.

"Berlin '61" is a 163-page campaign book for GORE by PK Games. It is self-contained, including the complete GORE rules, then adding a Cold War Berlin setting, a pantheon of nasties to battle, and nifty weird science rules. Haven't yet had a chance to play, and I'm a newbie so I can't tell you how its mechanics compare to previous BRP offerings, but it is a complete game. They've just released the player's companion at Lulu.com - Self Publishing - Free.

Chaosium BRP Character Generator 3.00 - The Chaosium Basic Role Playing® (BRP) Character Generator is an ideal tool for roleplaying gamemasters: You enter species, weapons, armor, spells, qualification, experience and prehistory - The Chaosium BRP It's a freeware character generator for Runequest, although which version I couldn't tell. It said 3.0, but I wasn't sure if that was the Runequest version or the software version. Looks handy, but definitely not generic.

My name is Kevin Scrivner. Like several other posters here, I began role-playing circa 1979 with Megagaming's Melee and Wizard tactical board games. I avoided controversy with my parents over fantasy role-playing by playing Traveller and 3rd edition Champions, adapting to Justice, Inc., and Danger International when those Hero System games came out. The only other game I played with regularity was Steve Jackson's Toon, although the group I played with dabbled with TSR's Top Secret and FASA's Star Trek and Doctor Who games. When shopping for Traveller material, I saw Runequest and Call of Cthulhu at my local game shop but never played. I might have been drawn to Superworld but Chaosium's lack of marketing skill came into play. Around 1983 I'd written Hero Games, the publishers of Villians & Vigilantes, and Chaosium saying I wanted to find a good superhero game and to tell me about theirs. Chaosium sent me a Superworld flier and a terse note, "Play whatever your friends play." Hero Games, on the other hand, sent me a friendly personal letter and a thick packet of promotional material about their products. My friends and I weren't playing any superhero game at that point, so guess whose system I chose? Since Hero System material is still being published and Superworld is dust, I suppose I made the right decision. I published several short articles in Game Designer's Workshop's Challenge magazine, contributed to Iron Crown Enterprises' "Pirates!" campaign supplement, and wrote its Rolemaster 2.0 swashbuckling campaign book "At Sword's Point." I wanted to do a British colonial setting for them but the company was going through bankruptcy by then and couldn't pay authors. Much later, I worked on swashbuckling material for Gold Rush Games and Wild West material for Torchlight Games, both of whom also ran into financial difficulties before my stuff could get published (Torchlight suddenly vanished off the face of the earth and the web without notice). I've been collecting free RPG systems from the web for the past two years, seeking an easy-to-play game to enjoy with my kids that won't freak out my wife. (She tolerates HeroClix and Monster Island but nixed Faery's Tale.) Recently, I stumbled across a mention of GORE at RPGnet : Roleplaying Games & More and downloaded it from Goblinoid Games. The publisher of "Berlin '61" was seeking volunteers to help compile a GORE monster manual. So here I am.