BRP: Classic Fantasy (Was Sword & Spell)

[threedeesix]

One thing I really like is that there are gods of myths that clerics can worship. It is so much better IMO to have priest of Odin or Thor than some made up god like Glorn the Good. Also, having Cthulhu active in a fantasy world is awesome. I hope many of the Elder Things are in the Realm too along with their sanity stealing magic.

This was something I bounced back and fourth around during the creation of the book. Trying to makeup a pantheon, or just include deities from mythology. In the end I went with the mythological deities as it was more reminiscent of my early AD&D days, when the cleric would flip through his copy of Deities and Demigods and pick a deity from Norse, Babylonian, or Greek myth, for example.

Including the great Cthulhu was just my way of saying, "hey TSR, remember when you had to pull the Cthulhu Mythos from Deity and Demigods? Well I can use him."

So yeah, while Cthulhu is a part of The Realm, he is just one of many deities and will only play as much of a part as the individual game master wishes.

It should be noted that in addition to the classic deities of mythology, a few from classic fantasy gaming have crossed over as well, such as an evil demonic spider queen called Loth, and a female multi-headed dragon by the name of Tiamat, just to name a few.

Rod

[threedeesix]

Those that downloaded the Classic Fantasy 3-Page character sheet from the Chaosium website should go back and re-download it. The one they posted was a low rez version missing the skill Traps. Our thief was miffed. This one is much higher quality.

It can be found at...

Classic Fantasy Chaosium Inc.

Just scroll down and grab it. You have to sign in first so I can't get you right there.

Rod

[b-dog]

Including the great Cthulhu was just my way of saying, "hey TSR, remember when you had to pull the Cthulhu Mythos from Deity and Demigods? Well I can use him."

So yeah, while Cthulhu is a part of The Realm, he is just one of many deities and will only play as much of a part as the individual game master wishes.

It should be noted that in addition to the classic deities of mythology, a few from classic fantasy gaming have crossed over as well, such as an evil demonic spider queen called Loth, and a female multi-headed dragon by the name of Tiamat, just to name a few.

Rod

But Nyarlathotep was part of D&D in the name of Tharizdun. The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun was one of the strangest and most unique adventures I've ever played. Also, the Elder Eye in the Hall of the Fire Giant King and the Vault of the Drow was a sort of avatar of Tharizdun so Lovecraft was alive and well in the early D&D.

[Puck]

I am really excited about getting my mitts on this. :thumb:Everything discussed here makes my hands more itchy. Nostalgia over the old Deities and Demigods just flooded my mind. I have to hold off on downloading the PDF though as I just ordered the dead tree version.

[b-dog]

I do want to say one more thing I like about the book. I really enjoy the descriptions of the humanoid races and also the clerics with real world gods. This is the most useful stuff for me. I want to have a lot of information on how to incorporate many different deities into one game world and also how to have Cthulhu style horror in my dungeons. Chaosium makes the best adventures and I would love to have some for Classic Fantasy. Stormbringer was one of my favorites along with Pendragon. In Search of the Trollslayer was a very interesting adventure too. I hope there will be a lot of adventures for Classic Fantasy.

[threedeesix]

I do want to say one more thing I like about the book. I really enjoy the descriptions of the humanoid races and also the clerics with real world gods. This is the most useful stuff for me. I want to have a lot of information on how to incorporate many different deities into one game world and also how to have Cthulhu style horror in my dungeons. Chaosium makes the best adventures and I would love to have some for Classic Fantasy. Stormbringer was one of my favorites along with Pendragon. In Search of the Trollslayer was a very interesting adventure too. I hope there will be a lot of adventures for Classic Fantasy.

Right now I'm too involved in the second book to think about adventures. For the time being I have just been dusting off my old AD&D stuff and using those adventurers. My home group is about to be run through the "Against the Giants" series. Their characters are found throughout the numerous examples.

But that said, I may include a small adventure or two in volume II. If that isn't possible due to space limits, I still hope to support my Classic Fantasy line with some old style adventures as well.

For the time being I may also "leak" a monster or two every month just to give those interested something to play with other than those in the BRP core book.

Rod

[Trifletraxor]

Congrats threedeesix!

Classic Fantasy now has its own thread in the Supplements & Monographs subforum. Please continue further discussion of Classic Fantasy there.

For those who have bought it, please consider helping your fellow members by writing a review for our review section.

Cheers!

Triff.

[RosenMcStern]

Apparently, Classic Fantasy is attracting "Old School" D&D fans:

Akratic Wizardry: Chaosium's 'Classic Fantasy'

[frogspawner]

Well, that's good.

Let's hope not too many potential converts from xD&Dx to BRP are put off by Krank & Co's incompetence as publishers...

(I mean, missing off the Table of Contents and Index! How could they!? What the heck do they do??)

Seriously, Chaosium once again appear to be BRP's worst enemy. Budding authors would be best advised NOT to trust their lovingly-crafted masterpieces to those clowns.

[RosenMcStern]

I do not think this kind of comment is fair, nor useful. Seeing a better graphic package (and editing) for both Classic Fantasy and Fractured Hopes would have made us happier, this is undeniable. But at least the supplements are there, and players can use them. :happy:

We all know what happened to Chaosium lately. They can no longer count on one of their oldest employees, who had been involved in anything that had to do with Glorantha, Cthulhu, Stormbringer and such for more than two decades (maybe three?). Chaosium isn't a big corporation, so this sort of things can hamper their production capabilities. We all wish that they could put the same effort into BRP that they put into the CoC line, but no one except those who have the responsibility of paying the bills (and the salaries) can judge whether they did "all they could do" for these products.

For my part, I am happy that I can help writers and contributors to publish their wares with a graphic format that gamers seem to appreciate. Bashing Charlie and his employees - whether they deserve it or not is uninfluent - will lead us nowhere.

[frogspawner]

It's useful to tell other potential buyers what they'd be getting. (We shouldn't only give universally good reviews, should we?) It's also useful to be able to vent spleen sometimes. At least it shows this forum isn't a mindlessly pro-Chaosium 'House Organ', like White Dwarf magazine degenerated into for GW at the end of the Good Old Days of roleplaying...

Yes, it's sad that the Great Old Ones of RP are now leaving us. So let's try to be positive, and do the best we can for gaming.

Chaosium could fix the problem by adding a ToC & Index into the PDF version, and put them up as a Free Download (like they have with the 'Beyond the Mountains of Madness' ToC). Has anyone who's in touch with them asked for that? If so, what did they say?

(If they won't do it, maybe Rod/threedeesix could? I see from the sub-forum Tedopon is working on some-such.)

[Natural Twenty Games]

From a constructive criticism standpoint I'd love to put together a primer section on the Monograph side for active fans who have a great idea but may not have the technical wherewithal to put it together (I'm just a dabbler and not a professional by any stretch of the imagination).

Some basic layout templates including use of Styles (Title, heading 1, heading 2, normal) and stat blocks could work wonders.

After emailing Rodney some tips* that I would have used I'd really like to see some minimum standard set for monographs regarding layout that wouldn't require alot of oversite but would produce usable documents.

* see my re-edit of the Dwarf entry from the Classic Fantasy pdf - I performed it in about 5 minutes so it's not optimized for anything really (size, web viewing, publication, etc)

http://www.naturaltwenty.com/downloads/basic_page_layout.pdf

[kaddawang]

The monographs have always been about content before beauty. And so far, the BRP-mono's have been generally good.

That being said, Chaosium will soon find that they have dug themselves a hole they won't be able to climb out of unless the get some quality control in place.

After all, they sell these products. And not very cheaply either. The monograph idea is very good, but they need to exercise a minimum of editorial control on them.

Just sayin..

And on the Classic Fantasy-mono..brilliant content:thumb:

And, naturaltwenty, color is not gonna happen;-). But very nice layout.

Edited November 10, 2009 by kaddawang

[Natural Twenty Games]

sigh - I know... I was just bored and testing out some new backgrounds and layouts for stuff I'm trying to produce (it's always been easier for me to work with somebody else's content than actually create my own:) )

And, naturaltwenty, color is not gonna happen;-). But very nice layout.

[threedeesix]

Chaosium could fix the problem by adding a ToC & Index into the PDF version, and put them up as a Free Download (like they have with the 'Beyond the Mountains of Madness' ToC). Has anyone who's in touch with them asked for that? If so, what did they say?

I have them sending me an editable copy of CF for just this reason. I also want to fix some of the less obvious errors. Unfortunately, it is in Adobe InDesign format, which I own but have never used so we'll see when I get it just what I will be able to do with it.

The next obvious question everyone will have is what does that mean for those that purchased the dead tree version? According to Charlie, those that purchased the book in any format will be able to download the revised PDF version.

I don't know how long this will take me but will update everyone when it is finished. It most definitely will not be a significant change to the style or layout and as much as I like what Greg did with the Dwarf example, I don't have the time to learn that. I just want to continue writing volume 2.

Rod

[RosenMcStern]

Yep, teaching is much better than whining about bad quality. Thanks for the enlightenment, Natural.

For those who did not know, the original Stupor Mundi and the first edition of The Hounds of Adranos (not the version which is in the download section here in BRP Central, the older one) were done entirely with OpenOffice and basic style formatting. The index was auto-generated. This means that monograph authors can, and should, do basic formatting themselves, just in case Chaosium has not enough time to embellish their work.

If you need more hints, just honk!

[NickMiddleton]

And, naturaltwenty, color is not gonna happen;-). But very nice layout.

Take all the colour out of the sample and it's STILL a nice piece of layout - and guidance and ideas for doing good layout for monographs is something we (as in those of us who write or contribute to the mono's) will all find useful and which everyone who buys monographs (there's some overlap there I think!) will appreciate.

<Begin Joke> if you are feeling cruel, mention the Gods of Chaos Stormbringer monograph to Charles Green - but bear in mind that it wasn't my suggestion... </End Joke> More seriously, take a look at the version here, which has a layout that does Charles' writing justice.

Cheers,

Nick

[SDLeary]

I have them sending me an editable copy of CF for just this reason. I also want to fix some of the less obvious errors. Unfortunately, it is in Adobe InDesign format, which I own but have never used so we'll see when I get it just what I will be able to do with it.

We could create templates for some of the more popular options for monograph layout? Word, InDesign... does Scribus do templates?

We could see how close we could get to creating the same thing in the different programs. That would enforce some type of uniformity, and we could build in the necessary style options to be able to do ToC and indices.

The next obvious question everyone will have is what does that mean for those that purchased the dead tree version? According to Charlie, those that purchased the book in any format will be able to download the revised PDF version.

Woo! Thats nice to know. I hadn't heard that before.

SDLeary

[threedeesix]

Woo! Thats nice to know. I hadn't heard that before.

SDLeary

I have been told things before that didn't happen, so if this doesn't as well, I will at least upload all of the relevent changes to the downloads section and link it in the errata section.

Rod

[frogspawner]

I have them sending me an editable copy of CF for just this reason. I also want to fix some of the less obvious errors.

That's great news! Someone actually cares enough to make things right!

[threedeesix]

Congrats threedeesix!

Classic Fantasy now has its own thread in the Supplements & Monographs subforum. Please continue further discussion of Classic Fantasy there.

For those who have bought it, please consider helping your fellow members by writing a review for our review section.

Cheers!

Triff.

Oops, I didn't realize someone dug up this thread again. Lets continue on the above mentioned thread. Thanks.