seneschal

It was a good review. Ashes to Ashes also got reviewed. BRP monographs are getting attention, so mono on, all you percentile authors! BTW, Val du Loup is generating some buzz on the RPG.net discussion boards as well. They're wanting more details.

What if Runequest had won out? - RPGnet Forums

The Arthurian saga is another high fantasy example that doesn't include lots of demi-human races. There are sorcerers like Morgan Le Fay ("the Fairy" in French) and a ruthless giant or three. But most of Arthur's opponents are unscrupulous humans. I know the Pendragon game threw in lots of medieval folklore critters, but they aren't there in Le Morte de Arthur. Evil knights and sexy enchantresses were the villains de jour. The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis) and The Chronicles of Prydain (Lloyd Alexander) both include a variety of mythological and folklorish creatures, but non-humans rarely take center stage, and the bad guys, as in Arthur, are usually selfish humans. I don't recall an orc or a high elf in the lot, although Lewis included dwarves and Alexander fairies (who acted more like dwarves than Tolkien-style elves). As someone else has mentioned, running a campaign with critters based on actual folklore rather than popular fantasy literature would have quite a different feel. Folklore doesn't make clean separations among fairies, elves, goblins, dwarves and the like. All of them are generally hostile towards man; the difference between a "good" fairy and a "bad" one is that the "good" fairy won't go out of his way to harm you and will allow himself to be bribed with suitable offerings of grain or milk. Many are child-sized or smaller, but since they usually can shape-shift, turn invisible, or conceal their true appearances with "glamour" how can you tell? The little guys are likely to kidnap your wife and children. Larger fairies such as ogres, trolls, and giants tend to eat your wife and children. People were genuinely scared of fairies; this fear determined where and how they built their homes, what they planted, how they dressed, where they were willing to travel and when. Being accused of trafficking (conducting business) with the fairies is as dangerous as being accused of witchcraft. It is dangerous even if you aren't caught; fairies are notably capricious, easily offended, and inclined to double-cross their human customers. Human-fairy relations generally resemble an elaborate protection racket. Courtney Cumrin and the Night Things captures this aspect of fairies quite well.

Ah, sort of like Los Angeles, then?

See, you keep making them thirsty with all those desert worlds, which is why they want another water world afterward. Give 'em a planet with a nice, varied climate and not too much garlic salt and they'll be OK.

Others have suggested "historical" fantasy ... but what about running fantasy in the modern day? Lewis himself sort of did this in "Out of the Silent Planet" and "That Hideous Strength." "Courtney Cumrin and the Night Things" does it from a different perspective. Maybe Sauron, et. al., didn't just go away at the end of the Fourth, Fifth, or Eleventy-Hundreth Age. Maybe there are elves, dwarves, goblins, and ring-wraiths among us now, keeping a low profile and trying to blend in. Or maybe they're trying to get elected to high office or running major corporations. Maybe something like the short-lived "Neverwhere" TV series. You'd have to set your tone and fantasy elements just right to prevent it from becoming a Delta Green, Shadowrun, or X-Files campaign. One scenario I always wanted to throw at my pulp or modern adventurers was "Angmar and Co." The PCs stumble across a ring (box of Crackerjacks? second hand shop?) and suddenly they're pursued by Men In Black types whose broad-brimmed hats conceal their features. And there's no helpful Gandalf or Library of Gondor to explain things for them. I image the modern-day Gollum as a sort of Peter Lorrie type a la "The Maltese Falcon." "You will please put your hands above your head, my preciousssss, while we search you."

Kinkos tends not to cooperate but Office Depot is much more reasonable.

The hopper was a sort of racing car. A solar system wide fad that came and went.

FYI, the opening posts of this discussion reminded me of the following link. You may have already seen it, but it seems to fit the bill. The Mystery Machine

Read some airship books for my own pulp games. Dirigibles are cool, but the Hindenburg tragedy wasn't the only reason they lost out to heavier than air liners. As balloons they are extremely vulnerable to strong winds. The historical photos in my books showed moored dirigibles literally standing on end in a stiff breeze. They are also greatly affected by fluctuations in temperature and humidity. When its warm they have to release gas to keep from floating too high. But when the weather cools down, suddenly they may no longer have enough hydrogen to stay above the waves. Moisture in the air weighs them down as well. And the gas they're filled with has weight, too. Those impressive German trans-Atlantic flights were minutely calculated risks, with the captains keeping tabs on every ounce of payload, every cubic inch of gas. If they miscalculated or were slowed down by bad weather they might not make it. Another thing I didn't realize is that the dirigible was largely a German baby. Even many of the U.S. Navy's airships were actually recommissioned German craft. Other folks tried to build 'em but the Germans started first and innovated most. Throughout the whole airship era there was no such thing as a standardized model like we're used to with modern passenger airplanes. Each dirigible was a one of a kind experimental craft building on the hard-learned lessons from earlier successes and failures. Making airships was as much art as science.

Plus, characters have to be able to sleep to HAVE nightmares. Dreaming, even bad dreaming, is essential to proper brain function. The lack of sleep would begin to wear down the victim in a number of ways other than physical exhaustion. What about going into a deep sleep, having horrible dreams, and not being able to wake up? You could treat it like another dimension. The character could use his abilities normally in the dream world. Victory against opponents means he gets a night's rest and any dream damage received is healed when he wakes. Failure means he wakes up exhausted and weak. Any wounds received appear on his waking body. And if he dies in the dream? Well, a REALLY evil curse wouldn't have him die in real life. At least not immediately. He'd gradually waste away, losing a little CON or SAN or whatever at each loss. Maybe there's a way for the victim's pals to enter the dream world with him to help him out. Or maybe it just seems that way, and the "pals" are really dream creatures out to misdirect and waylay him. You could have the other players portray the friends in the dream world either way.

So where would our sci fi hopper fit in?

It's a niche marketing dilemma. PDF allows projects to be published electronically that would have been rejected outright by major game companies in the days of mass market print-only RPG-ing. On the other hand, publishers, realizing they're unlikely to sell mountains of copies of these items, are unwilling to risk the funds needed to create a physical product. Office Depot's lenient printing policies enable me to create a coil-bound book of reasonable quality (another innovation) from my PDFs. Ironically, that means Office Depot gets my $30-$40 instead of the cautious game publisher. Meanwhile, its harder and harder to catch my favorite FLGS when its actually open, and its selection of RPGs is thinning. But if it weren't for the small press/PDF revolution I'd never gotten to enjoy Monster Island, Mazes & Minotaurs, or Mutant Future. Or BRP QuickStart.

Which begs the question, how DO your undersea motorists change a flat 3 miles down?

For Rust's underwater game, mightn't the colonists have some sort of seabed crawler for collecting minerals, or clams, or whatever else useful may be half-buried in the muck? A Seaview-style flying sub might be nice, too, but that's getting away from "cars." In Isaac Asimov's "Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus" the hero had to use an unusual sporting vehicle to get from one end of the undersea dome to the other: a monopod "hopper" originally intended for racing. It consisted of an egg-shaped cockpit atop a powerful atomic motor perched on a thick mechanical leg. It was agile as a jackrabbit and traveled in 30-foot leaps, fast but not for drivers subject to motion sickness.

Sure. And I'm not putting down anyone's efforts here. I'm just drawing on my own GM-ing memories. I ran a pulp campaign using HERO Games' Justice, Inc., but most of the scenarios I ran were well-written for Fantasy Games Unlimited's Daredevils. I didn't try to recreate the "FGU experience" for my players (the FGU house system is incomprehensible anyway). I just figured out what each NPC was generally supposed to be able to do, statted out a HERO equivalent, and ran it. How Daredevils handled vehicles, weapons, pulp powers, or gadgetry didn't matter since HERO had its own rules for such things. In the same vein, if I were to attempt a Roaring '20s campaign I might look to Gangbusters! for inspiration but I wouldn't try to emulate its game mechanics.

I guess I never considered D&D its own genre but a generic fantasy RPG like GURPS Fantasy or Fantasy HERO. If it is the setting you're after, why not just grab your Greyhawk modules, plug in some BRP NPC stats, and run with it? Why is it necessary to try to recreate D&D game mechanics to do this? When Decipher did their Lord of the Rings game, they didn't try to recreate MERP. Ditto the multiple Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Conan, etc., games running around. The rules are not the setting.

For a Berlin '61 type spy game you'd definitely want some vehicle stats for those dramatic James Bond-ian car chases. Ditto for a 1920s/'30s gangster or pulp type game. Throw in a little Runquest, and you could have a Duck Tracy campaign!

This whole thread has me scratching my head. Since I've been on these boards, BRP enthusiasts have persistently proclaimed that they enjoy Runequest, et. al., because "it's NOT Brand X." So why would you want to make your beloved game system more like the one you ditched when you saw the light and abandoned d20s for d10s? :shocked:

The monograph Berlin '61 also has weird gadgetry rules, at least it did in its GORE incarnation.

Oops! Wrong thread. I thought you guys were planning a game based on late-night network television. Late Night with Conan O'Brien TV Show, Series - Video Clips, Watch Full Episodes, Photos & Exclusives – NBC Official Site

Remember that Tolkien was an ENGLISH English professor. I actually read the trilogy first and then The Hobbit. I lived in San Diego at the time, home of Shamu, the killer whale or orca. When Tolkien starting talking about orcs, I envisioned whales running around in helmets and plate armor. Others may have mentioned these, but for me Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time was poorly written, suffering from "triology-itis," as did Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksinarion trilogy. While I finished Wheel and all three of Moon's books, they contained a lot of pointless incidents that seemed to be in there just to pad out the book into a series, that didn't have anything to do with the overall story. There were entertaining elements in each that kept me reading, but Jordan introduced a lot of characters and plot lines that he didn't resolve. Moon's series would have made a good single book had an editor had the guts to take a chainsaw to it and keep it focused on the story arc that eventually became apparent in the final novel. Don't get me started on Sword of Shannara, the book that broke every writing class rule about "show, don't tell." I could have dealt with a shamelessly derivative plot if only it had been written well. Thomas Covenant ... waaaaay too depressing. Didn't finish the one novel I sampled. Mercedes Lackey's Knight of Ghosts and Shadows had some good ideas marred by her obvious pro-lesbian/witchcraft agenda (does that make her the anti-Lewis?). Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series starts decently but quickly gets weaker as you go along.

Green Ronin's "Testament" is still available, d20 for biblical role-playing. Iron Crown Enterprises put "Mythic Greece" and "Mythic Egypt" supplements for Rolemaster. And GURPS has a ton of historical stuff. Don't forget "Mazes and Minotaurs," the semi-historical Greece game.

The resurgence of Basic Roleplaying, and especially the publication of a free set of quick-start rules, seems to have stolen GORE's thunder. (On the other hand, if GORE's existence prodded Chaosium to get busy, it may have achieved its purpose.) I've got a hard copy of GORE (55 pages) and PDFs of BRP Quick-Start Edition (48 pages) and the Call of Cthulhu introductory rules (22 pages). I'm working on perusing them all, but I wondered if anyone else had had a chance to compare and contrast 'em. One difference I notice is that despite its slightly shorter length (three of those 55 GORE pages are legal notices, and the primary font size is larger, meaning less material per page), BRP Quick-Start managed to squeeze in mini-adventures, a character sheet, and some critter stats, making it a more immediately playable product for newbies like me.