seneschal

So, you're saying that the Asor wouldn't appreciate double-numbered football jerseys?

"Zombie minions are pretty pulp." Yep. An excellent example is L. Ron Hubbard's novel (also available on CD) Dead Men Kill. Several episodes of The Shadow radio show visited the theme as well. These weren't Romero-style brain eaters but Haitian inspired shambling automatons. Protagonists could easily outrun them out of doors but couldn't stop them or successfully fight them. They just kept coming and coming despite shots and blows.

The Ghostbusters vs. ... The Nazgul! In this case, Our Heroes have nine ghosts to deal with, the leader of whom is also a powerful sorcerer. How would you stat up the baddies? Do they drive black SUVs instead of riding horses in the 21st century? Trench coats, broad-brimmed hats and dark glasses instead of cloaks? Do they carry some sort of gun instead of glowing swords? Maybe those Men In Black aren't UFO-related, after all. Why are they here? The ring, of course. It was dug out of a lava bed by miners several years ago and has since made its way to a local pawn shop, where one of the player-characters' significant others has purchased it, not knowing what it is. Now there are creepy pug-uglies combing this side of town, not all of them supernatural. A mobster boss has noticed the hubbub and decided that if something valuable enough to cause a ruckus is floating around town, he and his boys should get their grubby paws on it. Another pursuer is a short, withered, homeless-looking old fellow with a lisp. It's Fellowship of the Ring meets The Maltese Falcon, the the adventurers are caught in the middle.

That's a viewpoint I see a lot of at rpg.net: "Who cares about the industry? The hobby will be around as long as I want to play." Using the poster's decades-old copy of whatever game he prefers. But it ain't necessarily so. Physical copies of games wear out, get lost or destroyed or lost in a move. Existing gaming groups drift apart, move away, or die off. The Internet, business websites, and downloadable PDFs are all very recent things. The OGL exists only because Hasbro thought it could make more money with Dungeons & Dragons that way. Dungeons & Dragons exists only because a handful of hobbyists decided they could make money by publishing and selling it. That they did a good job of marketing it is demonstrated by successive companies being willing to buy it. The hobby exists because publishers produce, promote, and sell exciting new product that draws in new fans -- games, supplements, maps, monster books, miniatures. The availability of old, out-of-print games in PDF format exists only because folks like DriveThruRPG figured they could make money doing it. Without new product and new players, table-top role-playing games would go away. And the demand for PDFs of existing and aging games would go away, too. That's why makers of board games keep putting out new editions of Candy Land, Clue, Scrabble, etc., with new art and revised rules and nifty new counters -- to draw in new players and keep the game fresh and alive. Sure, if its publication had ceased years ago you could still play Candy Land with a vintage 1949 set you found in an attic. But you and your friends would be the only ones enjoying it, and eventually it would wear out and that would be that. There aren't too many folks playing the "Lost in Space" board game I loved as a child. The TV show went off the air, the game company stopped making and promoting the game, it is tough to find extant copies, and my little sister destroyed my set long ago. You see the analogy.

The Big Gold Book, useful to established gamers, isn't a good entry point for new players. I was going to suggest a series of inexpensive genre books based on the Quick-Start edition. But Chaosium and the third-party companies are already covering multiple genres with their product. We've got horror (Call of Cthulhu, The Laundry), fantasy (RuneQuest, Legend, Magic World, Chronicles of Future Earth, OpenQuest), martial arts (Dragon Lines), ancient Rome (BRP Rome), ancient China (The Celestial Empire), Vikings (Mythic Iceland), Westerns (Aces High, Devil's Gulch), Cold War espionage (Berlin '61), 17th century intrigue (Clockwork and Chivalry, Renaissance). We've got pulp adventure (Astounding Adventures) and sword-and-planet (Interplanetary) in the pipeline. Most of these are license-free content, and many of them include a full version of the rules needed to play, no core rulebook required. So which books to promote isn't a problem (the answer is: all of them). But those books need to make their way to the public. The D100 community needs to become as fanatical about getting its stuff to market as it is about producing it in the first place. Saying "It can't be done" is a non-starter. It can be done. It must be done. Internet sales, print-on-demand, and PDF downloads are part of the mix. But there is simply no substitute for tangible, touchable, browsable product on store shelves -- game stores, Toys R Us, Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, McDonalds if we can swing it. Anyone up for a Cthulhu or RuneQuest ducks McDonalds toy series? Historia Rodentia cries out for one.

Just to give this excellent thread additional inspiration ... Who ya gonna call?

"As for Chaosium, sure times are tough. Especially in the RPG field. But Chasoium has been in limbo-land for decades. Other RPG companies produce product, and there are other methods of getting stuff out to the public (print on demand for one), and for attracting new players. Other companies actually have people in house who create new things, and products that go in new directions. But what innovation there is with D100 has come from third parties. Okay, so CoC carried Chasoium for the last couple of decades. So what? If Chasoium had gone under twenty years ago, what real difference would it have made to the D100 players? As has been said before, the gold book is a nice toolkit, but all the tools in it already existed. Okay. Hope that ends this. If not, please rebutt in a new thread." Despite his dislike of all things Lovecraft, Atgxtg has a point. Despite the D100 renaissance, the advent of the Big Gold Book, the wonderful award-winning product put out by hard-working third-party publishers, the birth of POD, PDF, and Internet downloads there is a dearth of readily available D100 product. Sure, if you're an established gamer, you can find all these things online (but we've all read the sob stories about international shipping). But if you're a potential gamer, someone we'd like to recruit, you probably don't know that Chaosium, Mongoose, et.al., exist. Rpg.net has hosted numerous "this is the Golden Age of gaming" threads, but if we don't get new people playing, the delightful abundance of well-crafted games to play is ultimately for naught. While it is great that Call of Cthulhu is barn-burner in France (Paris, overrun by Deep Ones? Who knew?) I live in the southwestern United States. In my Oklahoma community, one game store carries no D100 product, the other merely a stray CoC third-party supplement or two (but not the core rulebook). Trail of Cthulhu and its supplements occasionally show up briefly. I recently traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, on vacation -- another southern college town with two gaming stores. One -- a general hobby store -- had three thin hardbound volumes for Mongoose RuneQuest II Deluxe (including the main game). The other -- a comic book shop -- had three softbound copies of CoC 6th edition but nothing else. Since I'm looking with the eyes of non-gamers, who aren't likely to hunt down a game store or a RPG publisher's website anyway, what about Barnes & Noble, ubiquitous purveyor of all things publishable? Well, at my local store, I see add-on modules for the board game Arkham Horror (but not the core game). And I see Pathfinder, Gama World, D&D, and Rogue Trader. So if I'm a tweener or teenager of the type to be attracted to role-playing, those are the options available to me. No Call of Cthulhu. No RuneQuest of any numeric value. No Legend. No Big Gold Book or The Laundry or BRP Rome. No D100 product of any stripe. It doesn't exist as far as I know, as a potential new gamer. So, Cthulhu or not, Gloranthan or not, Melbournean or not, Open or not, we must get D100 product on shelves -- non-specialty shelves -- so that potential customers know it exists, so they'll say, "Gee, that looks kinda neat," so they'll buy it and take it home and play it and get their friends interested in it.

One of my favorite comic book scenes involves a shift in SIZ (in Atgxtg's terms), from the climax of a DC mini-series. The bad guys were menacing the city in mecha, presumably made of steel or other tough metal. A good-gal sorceress transformed the robot vehicles into chocolate -- and they promptly crumbled under their own weight to the chagrin of their operators (and the delight of any nearby children).

Yeah, SIZ was one of the things that threw me as a newbie. It is wonky. The SIZ chart in the character creation section is OK for humans (and humanoids) shorter than Bigfoot or the latest NBA draft pick. Once you get any bigger or heavier, the progression isn't consistent (e.g., SIZ chart in the equipment section). So if you're statting out Commander Worf, you're in good shape. If you want to stat out Shrek, you'll have to base your SIZ on a close approximation entry from the creatures chapter. If you want to write up King Kong or (save us) Godzilla, you're going to be winging it big time (pun intended). (BTW, Cthulhu's stats in CoC indicate that he's much smaller than Godzilla. The confrontation many of us have dreamed of might be no contest.) Atgxtg has devised an alternate chart where the progression is consistent.

The real question is, "Do you want to date my avatar?"

I wasn't mocking you. Your description just sounded like the scene in The Lurking Fear where the protagonist discovers an underground tunnel beneath an ancient garden grave. The "party" he ran into doesn't sound as much fun as the one you're proposing.

The Lurking Birthday Bash!

Jet pack? Radiation? Telekinesis? Naw, a ramp, a high-powered motorcycle, and a chance to be on TV are all your player-characters need ... Besides, in a modern real-world U.S.A. campaign the Grand Canyon, Fort Knox, and the Empire State Building exist whether I want them to or not. In a fantasy game, I get to pick and choose which elements are in my setting. So if there are dragons, trolls, etc., they are there for a reason. If my PCs are all local tradesmen in a campaign where their goal is to outsmart the sheriff and the local tax collector while milking the Duke for all he is worth, such creatures wouldn't be necessary ... unless they occasionally show up at customers.

But, but ... if you include the Dragon Mountains in your setting, complete with said caves and large lizards that belch hot gasses, presumably it is because you wanted your players to confront them at some point. The PCs just need to know whether they're in Dragonslayer, The Hobbit, or Farmer Giles of Ham.

Sheesh, I would like that level of detail on the Seaview and the Flying Sub so I could actually run a campaign! I don't want to derail the thread. Atgxtg's reply to my quip was thoughtful, well-reasoned, the proper sort of answer a game designer and sci-fi buff should give. (Thank you, BTW.) On the other hand, I know my players. They'd figure that since the Super Defense Fortress (a capital ship) can (apparently) morph into a semi-humanoid form that they'd take full advantage of it even if the transformation does play heck with Macross City. They'd attempt to use its giant appendages to grab the Death Star and hurl it through the cosmos like a bowling ball. (What? Yes, as a matter of fact, they do also play TOON. Why do you ask?)

But if capital ships don't have STR, how do you determine how much damage a punch or kick does when Our Heroes' craft goes all Robotech on an enemy vessel? Or what happens when we grab the enemy ship in our massive lion-ish paws just as it attempts to warp away?

Eaten by the Golden Carp during a poetry contest? Boy, those Gloranthans really take their literature seriously, don't they?

I was using Hero System as an example of a more cinematic set of rules compared to BRP/RuneQuest. Based on the discussion, Hero Quest is similarly cinematic, encouraging antics that would be unthinkable in RQ. I'm still ready my head-to-head character sheet comparison, Mr. DeMille.

Perhaps it is a matter of degree. Very few of my Hero System characters have died, although they could have; the cinematic mechanics make that less likely while allowing my characters to pull crazy action movie stunts. If I tried the same stuff with corresponding Traveller or Call of Cthulhu characters, things would get messy and tragic very quickly. It's why Larry, Moe, and Curly can poke and prod each other but you probably shouldn't emulate their moves on your little brother (especially if Dad's at home).

Also, it might help those unfamiliar with HeroQuest to see the same character (Luke Skywalker; Magnum P.I.; Bugs Bunny, if you want a truly heroic character) written up in both systems.

I've got the HeroQuest Heroes Book as a PDF, not sure which version. Call me an unadaptable old fart, but it seems a bit abstract for my tastes after a brief skim-through. If you're going that route, it would almost be easier to skip the skill lists and equipment and all and go with PDQ, Plain-English Role-Playing, or Risus. At least the rules are shorter. But then I'd hate to be up against a Rancor in Risus. One loss of my Southern-Style Sushi Chef 4 vs. its Monster 6, and it'd be all over. Unless I could pull one off with my Stunt Double 2.

But how do you reach that door and those caves when they're under 100-400 feet of water? If there's another entrance, how watertight is the joint? Seems opening the wrong door or cupboard could flood the place, not necessarily something the tunnelers intended.

Mysterious Louisiana Sinkhole Raises Concerns of Explosions and Radiation - Yahoo! News Another scenario challenge based on real current events. What could you all do with this? I find it interesting to note that area residents refuse to leave despite a "mandatory" evacuation order. Reminds me of the folks in New Orleans who should have gotten out to avoid hurricanes when they could have. If folks refuse to go when warned, why should we blame the government if they get hurt or killed? Oh, and despite the lurid Yahoo News headline, there is no radiation.

The book contains four adventures. Presumably Skull of the Sleepers is included. So now we know three of the scenarios -- A Nation Ransomed (modern military technothriller); Skull of the Sleepers (dark tropical fantasy); and Endless Summer (light-hearted mystery). Wonder what No. 4 is and who its author is?

It was published August 3 as "A Nation Ransomed," containing four winning adventures. Congratulations! Go to this thread http://basicroleplaying.com/basic-roleplaying/nation-ransomed-other-basic-roleplaying-adventures-2980/ and tell us the name of your adventure and what it was all about.