seneschal

X-COM: UFO Defense, the RPG! (Wonder what the license fees for an abandoned '90s computer strategy title would be? The IP is still in play with a new game announced last month -- by a company several sales removed from the original owner.) X-COM, based in part on UFO, was certainly grim enough for BRP. Even the entry-level aliens were bad news. I never did manage to win since my "successful" missions consisted of a lone survivor limping back to base with a dead critter or a little alien tech. Expensive equipment carried by the non-survivors was inevitably lost. "Veterans" were folks who'd survived one mission, and they rarely survived their second. Shoggoth-hunting in Antarctica would be light-hearted fun in comparison. Back on topic ... one of my local stores stocked a few copies of the Big Gold Book when it first appeared -- but it vanished as soon as the new wore off and I haven't seen it since. They even put one copy on 25% discount during Christmas to reduce stock. On the other hand, the same store regularly carries a (tiny) selection of Call of Cthulhu materials, usually the core book and one or two of the most recent supplements. Since all Chaosium's supplements for BRP are "us-only" monographs, they never appear on the shelf for the casual gamer to inspect. The other game stores in town are virulently D&D-centric, maybe carrying a small number of other games (the newest versions of HERO, GURPS, Dark Heresy, Warhammer miniatures, whatever is new and shiny or old and unsold).

Or mind-wiped and handed over to the aliens.

Historically "housewife" was 50 professions in one. They were, first and foremost, business managers supervising staffs of servants that sometimes numbered in the hundreds. They oversaw the gathering of foodstuffs, raw materials, and tools necessary to house, feed and clothe that many people, not just their immediate families. No running to Wal-Mart for a loaf of bread. You had to grow the grain, harvest, grind and bake it yourself. Winter clothing? Had to grow and harvest flax or cotton; shear the sheep; clean, comb and spin the fibers into thread, then weave the cloth before you could cut and sew a new robe, tunic or dress. All from-scratch, labor-intensive stuff -- and wifey was in charge of making it all happen on an annual schedule while hubby-dear was out hunting, gambling, wenching, or making war. The man of the house may have claimed to be the boss (when he was actually around), but it was his wife who handled the budget and daily operations and ensured that the homestead/manor house/castle wasn't a smoking ruin when he finally came home.

During my web explorations I've downloaded a set of BRP Flash Gordon write-ups that a fellow did. They're fun to read, but BRP's grim, realistic play style doesn't seem a good fit for Flash's cinematic, hairbreadth-escape type adventures (no PC-level character dies or gets seriously injured, ever, regardless of the odds against him). On the other hand, if George Lucas could summon fire from heaven with a faux-Flash space epic, why not an intrepid BRP author?

Plus, UFO is the sort of thing BRP does well: normal-human heroes solving mysteries and dodging the unknown. Sure, there are some fancy vehicles in UFO, but most episodes I remember focused on people, not the gear. Many times the key characters even had to confront the enemy unarmed rather than being packed to the gills with weaponry (since the Interceptor pilots tended to be NPCs in game terms). My only complaint was that everyone was so stolid, stiff and serious that it was hard to feel for them when the aliens caught them and stuffed them into a transport capsule. No Tom Cruise-style hot-shot jet jockeys here, despite the spacecraft. The Moon maidens in their flimsy web uniforms were lovely but they were as cold as the dark side of that satellite. The heroes seemed as remote and inhuman as the critters they battled. Of course, they were British. An American team would have been cracking jokes, chasing skirts, and cutting up to relieve the stress once the members got off duty (re: Buck Rogers and the original Battlestar Galactica's Starbuck).

What I'm seeing at my local game shops is limited Call of Cthulhu and Mongoose RuneQuest material but no BRP since the initial release. So if you wanted to, you could hunt down CoC and something called RuneQuest. But you'd be hard pressed to find the big gold book unless you special ordered it (assuming you realized it existed). That's a problem if you're trying to appeal to new gamers. I don't think BRP's age is the issue. Traveller, HERO System, the various D&D iterations, and GURPS are all venerable game systems and seem to be hanging in there. The trick is to attract new players, to let them realize there are more options than just CoC (especially in light of the other Lovecraftian RPGs currently available).

The 17th Century was very much a time of transition. So big cities (London, Paris) tended to be much like their medieval/fantasy counterparts (palace keep, concentric walls, slums teeming with thieves and beggars, etc.) in many respects. Things were changing, however. You had the development of permanent theater buildings (The Globe, The Paris Opera House) as opposed to the on-the-fly performances of earlier times. The king's armory added an arsenal where gunpowder was manufactured and stored (no smoking, please!). Kings set up public hospitals, which was as much a measure to get the poor off the streets as to treat the sick. Seventeenth Century hospitals were a combination emergency room, end-of-life hospice, poor/work house, and mental ward. Sewers were slow in coming but gradually replaced the muck trench in the center of the street (although people still emptied their chamber pots into the street from overhead windows). The old guilds were still around but so were the offices of the new venture capitalists, eager to fund voyages to the Far East or the New World if you could persuade them there's profit to be had. The Dutch developed banking in the modern sense, where you could deposit and invest your money relatively safely and get letters of credit. Stately cathedrals still dominated the skyline, but assorted Protestant meeting houses were springing up everywhere, their loud song services designed to compete with the Mass. Another late development was the evolution of the palace guard into modern police and fire departments, although police science remained pretty rudimentary for another century or so.

Downloaded it today. Looks very well done, and free! The mystery is admittedly simplistic (it's a 10-page introductory adventure, after all) but easily expanded and fun in a Scooby Doo, Where Are You? sort of way. The NPCs are colorful and re-usable, the maps are equally colorful and atmospheric. It'd be an enjoyable warm up for a group of BRP newbies (like myself) and less off-putting to players who aren't horror buffs than The Haunting from the CoC quick-start rules. Not bad for a freebie. Thanks, Chaosium!

She slices the guy nearly in half and they remain friends? (Of course, she did stick around to patch him up.)

But he does wonders for one's vocabulary! (Just don't refer to your wife's nut-sprinkled brownies as a "squamous, tenebrous mass" even if it is accurate.)

I ran across a similar find several years back ... unfortunately I had no funds at the time. I've got the first two Venus novels and like them better in a way than the Mars series. Carson Napier is a more human hero (and brags less) than John Carter.

Hmmm, well, if you loathe Lovecraft, $12.95 is enough to get lunch for two at many Chinese restaurants, the Heroscape secret agents set (the figs that look like Charlie's Angels) at Wal-Mart, or your favorite Godzilla movie at Frye's Electronics.

I stumbled across a "complete works" hardback volume of H.P. Lovecraft the other day at Barnes & Noble, only $12.95. Sometimes, becoming public domain has its advantages. The hardback cost me less than a previous paperback with just a few stories in it. My only complaint is that it is too big and bulky to conveniently read in the bathroom. And the leaves are almost Bible-thin. You have to pause the mind-bending terror while you fumble to turn the page.

You could test it with RPG.net's favorite system: Exalted Spirit of the Savage, Hollow Diaspora!

What about a "useless" heirloom sword from the Baron's vaults ... except it is magic and has a mind and quest of its own.

The critter in the photo looks Bionicle-ish rather than Cthulhoid to me. Better seek out the Mask of Light before the Pirakah invade the Matorans. LEGO, an inter-dimensional conspiracy. Who'd have thunk?

I'm not even taking art into consideration here. I'm talking about consistency in font size, type, and style; general proofreading against repeats, typos, and other obvious goofs. I mean if you're going to put the company name on it as well as your shiny new BRP branding, getting it right should be a matter of professional pride. I'd hope the official folks would give submitted monographs a good twice-over on general principles. After all, it's hard for even the most diligent author to spot his own mistakes. I want Chaosium and BRP to succeed. Therefore, I want the company to put out the best product possible. Since monographs appear to be the main outlet for free-lance contributions, they really need a higher level of editorial care. No art or fancy layout? Fine. But catch and fix misspellings, correctly spelled but wrongly used words, incorrect punctuation. Smooth out awkward or incorrect phrasing. Fix run-on sentences. If a product gets published that reads like my 4th grader wrote it, customers are more likely to blame Chaosium than the author, even with the "minimal editing" disclaimer on the cover.

I'm glad I got Basic Creatures; it does give you a good starting menagerie. But I really wish Chaosium's editors put more effort into these monographs. With a little TLC, they could have put some professional sparkle into Basic Creatures. As it is, the book is clearly a dumping ground for critter stats somebody had handy. I think they even repeat some creatures. I'm not asking for color art by Steve Ditko or anything. Just some Basic Proofreading.

So, using original meanings, "scientific horror romance" = The Demon Seed?

Thanks, all. If you have any other horsey thoughts, feel free to contribute them.

No friendly advice yet? None of you enjoyed Black Beauty, My Friend Flika, or Saddle Club in your collective youth?

Is it just me, or isn't the Horse write-up in Basic Creatures (Page 27) considerably, um, brawnier than the one in the Basic Roleplaying Core Rulebook (Page 336)? I'm not sure which one to use as a baseline. Are RuneQuest equines necessarily more heroic in order to carry their manly, macho riders?

You mean Westerns and Twenties pulp adventures aren't historical?