BRP BGB Updates?

[NickMiddleton]

6 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Do they own the text? I though Avalon Hill (or it's successors) did. Remember Chaosium didn't own RQ3, Avalon Hill did. If they do own the text then I'm surprised they didn't make it avlaible as a PDF like most of Chasoiums other older products.

IIRC Chaosium created the text, Avalon Hill published it and licensed the RuneQuest trademark during the publishing tie up - as part of the dissolution of that relationship in the 1990's, AH got the RQ trademark. Chaosium then confirmed early 2000's that Hasbro (who by that point owned AH) regarded any claim AH / Hasbro had on the copyright text to have lapsed and rights to have reverted to Chaosium as the original authors: hence Chaosium republishing the text of RQ3 (sans Gloranthan content, which the company did not by that point have rights to) as the BRP monographs. My print copies of the monographs (black tape bound) all assert at least a 2004 copyright date; my PDF's all assert 2004 and 2009 dates.

[Atgxtg]

10 hours ago, SDLeary said:

If you played in the game of one of us Ol' Timers, and were seriously impressed, and wanted to get a set of the rules so you could run it for your crew, how would you go about doing it if you didn't have $100+ to blow on a falling apart book on eBay?

Well, if it has happened long ago I'd have gotten it back then. These days, I would probably ask said ol' timer how to get it, if they had a extra copy ( I gave away at least one RQ3 set, and three Bond rulebooks, plus dice, and I'n sure I'm not the only one) ,or have them list the significant changes to me so that I could adapt a ruleset that I had available. Or maybe, I'd just  assume that there would be a PDF available somewhere, as is the case with most old RPGs these days. Or I'd  run some other version of RQ/BRP.  We are talking about procuring a 40 year old game that been long out of print. Options are limited.This is assuming that I'm an honest person who is restricting myself to legal means of procurement. But then, not everybody has my scruples. 

The thing is,  your hypothetical situation requires that someone be taken with RQ3 enough to want to play it, and enough not to run something that is easily available such as  RQ2/RQG/BRP BGB instead. I'm not sure how many people there are like that. Sure, I'll run RQ3 over RQG or most other version of RQ, and I've got a couple of RQ3 boxed sets, but I suspect most people who just go buy the latest version fo RQ/BRP and make do. I really don't think there are that many people out there who like RQ3 enough to want it over RQG. If there were, then I think there'd be a lot more RQ3 activity around here. 

 

It's not that I'm unsympathetic to the plight of gamers who want to play long lost games. It's just that some games either won't come back or if they do they must do so on a modified form. Us 'ol timers are very lucky in that we had a chance to buy many great games where they were available. Some of us even had the foresight to buy an extra copy or two when we realized that said games were not going to be around much longer. But there isn't a lot we can do about it, at least not until 2073. 

 

 

[Atgxtg]

13 minutes ago, NickMiddleton said:

IIRC Chaosium created the text, Avalon Hill published it and licensed the RuneQuest trademark during the publishing tie up - as part of the dissolution of that relationship in the 1990's, AH got the RQ trademark. Chaosium then confirmed early 2000's that Hasbro (who by that point owned AH) regarded any claim AH / Hasbro had on the copyright text to have lapsed and rights to have reverted to Chaosium as the original authors: hence Chaosium republishing the text of RQ3 (sans Gloranthan content, which the company did not by that point have rights to) as the BRP monographs. My print copies of the monographs (black tape bound) all assert at least a 2004 copyright date; my PDF's all assert 2004 and 2009 dates.

Cool. In that case I certainly hope the do put the RQ3 stuff up as a PDF and or reprint it. I mean, why not? They have first edition Pendragon stuff available and nobody plays tha, and all the adventures were updated to KAP3/4 long ago.

[Rick Meints]

14 hours ago, SDLeary said:

This would really be all that was needed, though printed is always better. And, Chaosium owns the text, they own the Trademark. The only thing that might prove troublesome would be finding artists and getting them to agree.

The status of RQ3 ownership is pretty simple: Moon Design owns the RuneQuest Trademark. Moon Design owns all of the RQ3 material done before 1989, and all of the RQ3 Gloranthan supplements regardless of publication date. That includes the art too.

So why no RQ3 rulebook and supplements as classics? They don't sell as well as you might think. The RQ2 classic rulebook sold very well, but the supplements sold rather poorly. A few hundred sales just isn't worth it.

[g33k]

8 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

...

So why no RQ3 rulebook and supplements as classics? They don't sell as well as you might think. The RQ2 classic rulebook sold very well, but the supplements sold rather poorly. A few hundred sales just isn't worth it.

The clear implication (to me) is to do a "RQ3Classic" corebook... but then few/no supplements (notwithstanding the screams of agony from "deprived" fans).

Any reasonable chance of something like that happening.... "eventually?"

[Barak Shathur]

15 hours ago, SDLeary said:

This would really be all that was needed, though printed is always better. And, Chaosium owns the text, they own the Trademark. The only thing that might prove troublesome would be finding artists and getting them to agree.

SDLeary

I'd agree.

 https://nickalven.weebly.com/

[Rick Meints]

34 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

I'd agree.

While it's nice you agree, as I said, the art is already owned by Chaosium. The artwork was done as work for hire, or done in house. No additional "agreement" needed.

[Barak Shathur]

50 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

While it's nice you agree, as I said, the art is already owned by Chaosium. The artwork was done as work for hire, or done in house. No additional "agreement" needed.

So the sentence I replied to,

16 hours ago, SDLeary said:

The only thing that might prove troublesome would be finding artists and getting them to agree.

should have read "finding THE artists". Got it.

😉

[pansophy]

Maybe it would be worth (or an option) to scan a good copy of the RQ3 Core Rulebook and make it available as PDF. It still costs money to create it, but it would end some discussions 😆 - not trying to offend anybody, it is just a matter of fact that this topic comes up every now and then.

IMHO this would be a good compromise to please the fan base without throwing too much money at it. I've seen really good PDF scans of 1980ies products from PIGames.net, for example, and once printed out they look as good as the original (minus the binding, sure).