seneschal

So, Rosen. If you do manage to get a dragon on the line, do you dare hang up on him?

My first thought was "Da'Vinci Code, the RPG." Hmmm, indeed. Or, they're trying to out-Cthulhu Cthulhu.

Ditto, here, although I think I started in '78. First full-fledged RPG I played regularly was Traveller, although my friends dabbled with Top Secret and Monsters! Monsters! I was interested in a superheroes game after college (circa '83) and actually wrote HERO Games (Champions), Chaosium (Superworld), and Fantasy Games Unlimited (Villains & Vigilantes) asking them to sell me on their product (this was waaaaay before the web or e-mail). I don't recall FGU's response but Chaosium sent me a Superworld flier with a terse note telling me to play whatever my friends played (at the time, that was nothing). HERO Games, on the other hand, sent me a personal letter and a thick sheaf of product information. I bought the Champions 3rd edition boxed set, ran it for my friends, and the rest is history. Didn't play RuneQuest (for you youngin's, fantasy was evil in the '80s), and Call of Cthulhu looked ten times more evil than people said D&D was (although my curiosity about it later led me to hunt down and read Lovecraft's stories). Read Elfquest, Mort d'Arthur and Ringworld but never played the D100 games based upon them. Heard friends talk about Elric but never read or played him. So I never played their games but I owe my pulp fiction literary awakening to Chaosium. See, RPGs can accomplish some good in the world!

But Alephtar Games is still interested in publishing BRP stuff, right? :shocked: Surely BRP Rome can't be the last of its kind.

The TOS episode that strikes me as particularly Lovecraftian is Miri, in which the away team finds a crumbling city filled with frightened, starving children. Seems a pandemic bio warfare agent turns people into mad monsters as soon as they reach puberty ... and the team is now infected.

Troi: Captain, I detect a disturbance in the Force, er, I mean a chaotic emotional presence of immense power and hostility. Worf: Blast it with full phasers and a photon torpedo barrage! Data: That would be highly illogical. Besides, we haven't said "Hi" yet. Geordi: We could route all auxiliary power through the main deflector array and zap it with accelerated nanoonites. Picard: Make it so!

But Howard's protagonists -- Kull, Conan, Bran Mac Morn -- battled and defeated what essentially were Mythos critters. The difference wasn't in the monsters themselves, it was in the virility, outlook and determination of the heroes. The Worms of the Earth were terrible enough to rob a tough Roman general of his SAN, but Bran Mac Morn held his stuff together after the initial shock and kept on going. How many gods did Conan slice in twain when he was unable to outrun them? Now, one can argue that the ornery barbarian wasn't exactly sane, but he didn't fall apart in the face of supernatural adversity and frequently fought back successfully. The pulp adventurer may not be as wise or educated as a Lovecraftian antiquarian but he's too stupid to realize that the creature can't be beat ... so he wins.

She has a very different feel than King Solomon's Mines, although it also involves a quest into the hinterland. Part romantic melodrama, part horror, and as I've said, its the origin of all the "white goddess of the jungle" plots you've seen in old movies and comics. There was also a sequel, Ayesha: The Return of She, which I started but unfortunately didn't get to finish. She was too good a character to give only one novel to. William Henry Hudson's Green Mansions (1904) isn't as action-packed but also involves an eerie white jungle goddess, Rima, the Bird-Girl. Set in Venezuela, it very much evokes the deep woods. Also check out Abraham G. Merritt, author of The Moon Pool, The Metal Monster, and The Face in the Abyss, among others. He wrote a lot of lost worlds type tales. Face in the Abyss is set in a hidden location in South America, not unlike The Lost World or Green Mansions.

No more so than Kipling, Burroughs, Stevenson or Howard or any of the jungle adventure movies of the 1930s-'60s. Alan Quartermain, despite his British colonial outlook, respects the African tribesmen he works with and tries to treat them justly. She (Who Must Be Obeyed) displays the ultimate in Grrrrl Power before it became a concept (and could give Narnia's White Witch a run for her money). If we're going to get all politically correct, we won't be able to read any adventure fiction written before Charles Saunders' Imaro series, which is also very much a "product of its time" (the 1970s, Angry Black Man Betrayed By His People, All White People Are Evil, etc.).

He invented the "lost worlds" sub-genre of adventure fiction. King Solomon's Mines and She, both set in Africa, are his two best-known novels but he wrote others. Like Burroughs and Lovecraft, his novels haven't been adapted faithfully to the screen. While there are several movie versions of each tale, I'd read the books to really get the flavor. He did the whole lost city, white goddess thing before Burroughs or Howard.

There's always the Epic Game of Westward Exploration and Expansion: BooneQuest. Or desert treasure-hunting: DuneQuest.

I have never read Gore so I'm not posting this as either for or against the concept, just wanted to get my game out of the discussion. Rod Awww, no room here for false modesty. You really want us to discuss Classic Fantasy as much as possible, in every context possible, with as many people as possible, to generate as many sales as possible. After all, "no publicity is bad publicity. A chicken in every pot; a Classic Fantasy on every shelf!"

There's a new review of OpenQuest at RPG.net. Review of OpenQuest - RPGnet

New Age Commune is the only role-playing game where you kill your ties to the Establishment and the Family takes your stuff.

While I've supported GORE here, I think we can all agree that the ideal situation is to have Chaosium lovingly publish our works (paying us cash in the process) and put them on store shelves. :thumb: On the other hand, if Chaosium decides that my D100 Sixties hippie soap opera campaign, New Age Commune, the RPG, just doesn't fit in with the rest of it's product line ... well ...

That's what H. Rider Haggard's She is for!

What? No love for H. Rider Haggard? Lost tribes and jungle queens? (sob!) Much as I enjoy Burroughs, I don't think Conan Doyle gets the attention and respect he deserves. No Lost World, no Land That Time Forgot or Jurassic Park. It's not easy being Green!

Actual contents = actual words game product comprised of = no Mythos material I kid you not!

Actual contents = actual words game product comprised of = no Mythos material

Yeah, it was royalty free clip art, or some sort of one-use deal -- and somewhat off-putting for a casual viewer. My wife took one look and refused to play, ever. But the actual contents were truly generic.

Although one or two folks agree with me, the consensus of the board seems to be that GORE is (insert reverb here) EVIL or unnecessary, or both. ;-( Just for the record, GORE is 100% Mythos-free. No sanity rules (although a fan produced some later). No monsters (or rules for creating critters of any kind). No default setting. There are suggested skill sets for fantasy, modern, and science fiction campaigns and a rudimentary magic system but nothing remotely hinting of Glorantha or Lovecraft's 1920s era. "No shoggoths were harmed in the production of this retro-clone role-playing game."

Of course, something has to exist before you can retro-clone it. But as you've pointed out, for 15 years Call of Cthulhu was practically the only Chaosium d100 game in town. No RuneQuest. No science fiction. No cowboys. No superheroes. No hard-boiled detectives or secret agents. No intrepid pulp adventurers or scurvy pirates doing intrepid or scurvy stuff. GORE was created to enable interested parties to provide those options since Chaosium was apparently unable to.

But that's the whole point of this discussion. We're talking about how to draw new players and persuade the uninitiated that BRP is an enjoyable, viable system. We're exploring ways to produce new non-Call of Cthulhu, non-RuneQuest products that will appeal to a broader audience. Not to knock CoC or RQ at all, but a greater variety of quality options will encourage more players. If Chaosium is unable to publish and distribute those new products itself, maybe third-party publications like BRP Rome can fill the bill.

Could PDF or POD bridge the gap? Something published electronically doesn't require overhead or storage, just a means of purchase (and a local print shop willing to print and bind it). Granted this is easier for something relatively short like Quick-Start Edition than a 400-page tome. Would electronic product in the local lingo help?

Needed: one (or more) BRP Killer App ... RuneOffice, anyone?