seneschal

I'm annoyed that zomben devoted his considerable talents to create Yet Another BRP Fantasy Setting instead of a desperately needed science fiction masterpiece. As they say in the taco commercial, "Think outside the wand, er, bun." We've had Rune Quest, The Book of Quests, assorted Cthulhu Quests. We need a Galaxy Quest. Oh, wait, can we use that? Next: GURPS: Glorantha

Egitto v. Dinosauri! Because why settle for horses or elephants when you can have your chariots drawn by thunder lizards? There's a practical reason why the Nile Empire lasted so long.

I've heard a lot of commentary about Derleth and his influence but haven't actually read one of his stories. Most Mythos critters are so huge, they wouldn't see a warding symbol frantically waved by their human snacks, at least not until it was too late. Oh, the indigestion!

Now, Watson. Careful observation of Atgxtg's typewritten statement indicates clearly that he is age 32, weighs 189 lbs, is of mixed Bosnian-Italian ancestry on his maternal great-aunt's side, owned a pot-belied pig named Alfie while in third grade, and worked as a doughnut frier during his second year at Berkeley, from which he graduated with a dual degree in radio astronomy and theater production. No need to be so amazed, Mr. Atgxtg. Based on your word usage and typing patterns the conclusions were quite elementary, really. By the by, have you read my monograph of the 4,927 types of polyhedral dice commonly used in the greater London area? It is sure to be of great benefit to future law enforcement officers -- and Cthulhu by Gaslight Keepers.

Wasn't something like this addressed in-depth in a book a few years ago: The Seven Percent Solution?

"And knowing is half the battle. Yo, Joe!" Thanks for that fun tidbit.

No last-chance Save roll for try No. 5?

We've survived the reign of the Nazgul. We've survived prehistoric megafauna (and ate them up!). We've survived multiple worldwide plagues and wars. We've survived multiple alien invasions since the 1890s and thumbed our collective noses at Ming the Merciless. We've survived the Brides, Sons, Daughters and assorted household pets of Frankenstein and Dracula as well as the rise of the Planet of the Apes. We've survived the Eugenics Wars and Godzilla and Company. What does old Squid Face think he's gonna do? Personally, I wasn't aware there was any controversy about Lovecraft's Elder Sign. It's mentioned briefly in a story or two but never described (that I can remember). I figured the star thing was something Chaosium came up with for marketing purposes.

Still out of order at 8:05 a.m. CST

The Beast Things Source: Andre Norton, Daybreak 2250 A.D aka Star Man’s Son, Harcourt, Brace and Sons, 1952 Some post-apocalyptic settings have a mutant under every bush (and sometimes including the bush). Andre Norton’s Daybreak 2250 A.D. is much more modest but it does include several eerie radiation-spawned creatures. The Beast Things are the novel’s primary threat to a re-emerging human civilization, feral inhabitants of American cities abandoned or destroyed some 200 years before. Apparently descended from rats, Beast Things are wiry gray humanoids of skeletal, exaggeratedly elongated thinness and foul smell. Their spidery hands possess sharp claws, and their muzzles are equipped with fangs more canine than rodent-like. Well-organized nocturnal pack hunters, they possess human or near-human intelligence and are able to build fires, pit traps with which to slay unwary human explorers – and darts, which they can hurl with deadly accuracy. They have domesticated large rats, which they use as hunting animals. They eat anything or anyone they can catch, regardless of sentience. They speak a growling, guttural language unrelated to any known human speech. They are cruel captors and tend to spoil or destroy any human possessions they don’t understand (that is, pretty much anything except hand-to-hand weapons). They dwell in the lower levels and basements of moldering skyscrapers, and presumably in tunnels beneath. Traditionally they tended to keep to their ruined cities, but they are growing bolder – exploring and stalking prey far from their usual urban haunts. They always travel in groups of at least four to six individuals. If an adventurer glimpses one, there is a squad of others nearby that he hasn’t seen. STR 3D6 (10-11) CON 3D6+4 (14-15) SIZ 1D6+6 (9-10) INT 3D6 (10-11) POW 3D6 (10-11) DEX 3D6+6 (16-17) Move: 10 Hit Points: 12 Damage Bonus: +1D4 Armor: 2 (leathery skin) Attacks: Bite 30%, 1D8+1/2db; Claws 40%, 1D6+db; Dart 55%, 1D6+1/2db Skills: Climb 50%, Jump 45%, Hide 60%, Knowledge (Pack Tactics) 35%, Listen 30%, Sense 70%, Spot 3%, Stealth 60%, Throw 55%, Track 45%

But those ad-inifinitim rules books are what make them $$$$$. We want Pete and Loz to make $$$$$ so they will keep on writing RQ goodness.

I should have seen that coming. But in this case, quite literally true. To give credit where credit is due, Steve Long did save Hero System from obscurity and put out a line of fine products. And his examples were helpful. But by the time 6th came out it had become too much of a good thing. Now, since RuneQuest 6 already rivals the Big Gold Book and Hero System 5th edition in size, and that in softback, I'm not sure how much of an expansion we can handle. On the other hand, it'd give the volume's possessor +30% to all Block and Parry rolls.

And everyone knows that lasers make a "peeeew, peeeew" sound when fired.

Plus, all those examples can easily lead to rulebook bloat. It's why Hero System quadrupelled in size between 4th and 5th editions and exploded into two volumes in 6th edition. (It didn't help that the author was an attorney. )

Soooo ... giant, death-dealing machines, teenage pilots. What kind of insurance premiums are we looking at here? Or is that why most government agencies opt for girls?

It's ... engine vibration inside the pilot's pressurized cabin. Yeah, that's it!

Is there such a thing as fake softcore sci-fi? Wooo, "softcore sci-fi." Sounds ... kinky!

Eclipse Phase certainly has its adherents at www.rpg.net but I've never actually seen a copy. The blurb's description of Pandora Gates reminds me of the Gate Warden universe in Outpost 19. Apparently ditching your rocketship for doorway interplanetary travel is the in thing. The in-flight meals aren't much to speak of, though. In Traveller, merely getting from one place to another was often an adventure in itself.

Cthulhu Rising is a deep space setting in which the PC astronauts encounter creatures of the Mythos, since deep space is where the baddies came from in the first place. Cthulhu Tech is more of an Earth-based setting of monsters vs. giant robots. Think Toho's Godzilla task force, only they're fighting Mythos critters instead of Japanese kaiju. If the existing BRP sci-fi material doesn't suit, you can't go wrong with Traveller. It was "the" science fiction game in the same way Call of Cthulhu was "the" horror game. Also take a look at Rocket Rangers!, a free pulp sci-fi setting I wrote for Mini Six, available for download at www.antipaladingames.com. Compared to BRP and even Traveller, Mini Six is pretty quick and dirty, and it uses regular six-sided dice. You can be up and playing in a few minutes. Also consider Legends of Time and Space, another freebie for download at www.darkcitygames.com. It is based on the old The Fantasy Trip, only four pages long, and the free adventure provides basic spaceship combat rules. Another easy to learn and play rule set.

Um, is the merc's player the same guy who blew up the space station last time? I sense a pattern here ... I had one player who always had to start a bar fight, no matter what the game or genre, no matter what the odds, and whether a bar was handy or not.

Favorite moments ... Classic Traveller. My players had their characters chase villains fleeing in an air raft with their scout ship. The starship pulled in low overhead, and one of the characters made an Indiana Jones style leap from the open hatch into the open-topped hover vehicle. He missed and landed in the road (but he survived with injuries). Justice, Inc. The player-characters, investigating an apparently haunted house, discover a scouting team of interdimensional robots bent on conquest. Confronting the robot commander, they try everything from bullets to buckets of kerosene to stop it. Their efforts eventually result in an incendiary combination that destroys the mechanical leader (and much of the mansion). One surviving robot, stuck in the mud after it toppled off the mansion's rear porch, is carted away by "top men." Later in the same campaign, the adventurers tangled with Dr. Fu Manchu (never named) and the Si-Fan. My description of the sinister Chinese man with glowing green eyes apparently gave one player's young son nightmares. I must have been doing something right.

But ... being hit point-blank by a nuke worked out for The Amazing Colossal Man and The Incredible Hulk ... well, maybe. Man, as a GM (and fan of Fifties sci-fi movies) I could have soooo run with that scenario instead of just writing off the afflicted player-character.

To get into the historical setting, you need the Investigator's Companion (or Cthulhu by Gaslight, depending on your preferred era). The core book mentions that you can play Cthulhu in several time periods ... but that's the case with a lot of role-playing games, from d20 to Mutants and Masterminds. The supplements give you the tools to actually do it. Also, in the core book, I'd have been willing to greatly reduce the exhaustive chapter on mental illness and ditch entirely the lengthy "mood" article on the linguistic origins of Mythos names. I mean, come on, can padding be any more obvious? The endless lists of Mythos tomes and their various editions was a bit wearing, too, especially since most of them aren't that useful to investigators when you look at the summary of what they actually contain. And why the lengthy section on magic when the game states up front that attempting to learn and use Mythos "spells" is an incredibly bad idea, sure to bring player-characters to grief? Call of Cthulhu rivals Basic Role-Playing (the "Big Gold Book") in size even though the actual game mechanics take up only a fraction of its length. Including the "Call of Cthulhu" short story is a useful introduction to the genre, but as I've said previously, sometimes less is more.

I take it that ended the scenario rather quickly.

You're "booked up" through 2014. But a BRP science fiction campaign book would take time to research and write. How long do you usually give an author to produce a ready-to-edit manuscript? Between now and the completion of your current publishing schedule ... gives him or her about a year to crank it out for you.