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[Magic World] Let's talk about it!


BMonroe

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So, some folks are aware of the "Magic World" game I've been putting together for Chaosium. It's a BRP-based fantasy game, using the core of the old Elric! rules and supplements, but stripped of Moorcockisms.

As the game's winding through the production cycle (I'm proofing layouts as they come across my desk), I thought I'd open the floor to questions about the game.

To start with, some background:

Here are the official CHaosium postings about the first two books:

Magic World: Chaosium.com: News - Magic World

Advanced Sorcery: Chaosium.com: News - BRP Advanced Sorcery

Here are a few interviews I've done about the game:

http://basicroleplaying.com/basic-roleplaying/another-magic-world-interview-2861/3/#post46733

Stormbringer! » Interview with Ben Monroe

And forgive me if you see this thread pop up in different places. I'm going to post the same thing around a bit.

If you have any questions, let me know!

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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Yup!

As the game's getting closer to release, I thought it would be good to make myself available to answer questions and talk about it. I should also point out quickly, that I'm not an actual Chaosium employee. I'm working on the MW books as a freelance editor, but it's my baby, so I'm happy to talk about it.

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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So, a thought that occurs whilst I sit here eagerly awaiting the game and in light of Seneschal's comment:

What, besides what has been announced would people want to see in the way of support for Magic World? Not that I have any say whatsoever, nor any influence with Chaosium... But, having had some small input in MW and a couple of the planned supplements it's a game I really like and would love to see succeed.

So: the core book is coming, there's a couple of magic supplements and a Chronicler's pack under way, and a couple of others in development. But what ELSE would people really like to see?

Cheers,

Nick

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What, besides what has been announced would people want to see in the way of support for Magic World?

If MW is a strict subset of BRP (right?), then theoretically any BRP supplement is a MW supplement. (So is any CoC supplement with a little tweaking.)

As a practical matter, though, I'd love to see:

- Adventures for Magic World, hearkening back to old D&D and RuneQuest modules.

- Settings for Magic World beyond typical Medieval Times and Conansville: Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian, Arabian, African, Russian, Central and Eastern European, Greek, Egyptian, etc. Lost worlds and red planets might also fit, or even a *real* Dark Ages book, perhaps centered around Charlemagne.

- Alternate magic systems beyond the Gold Book, perhaps integrated with the settings above. For example, a Norse book might include rules for period-appropriate ritual witchcraft (seidhr) and runic magic.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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- Adventures for Magic World, hearkening back to old D&D and RuneQuest modules.

There's something like this in the works right now, but it's too early to spill the beans on it at the moment.

- Settings for Magic World beyond typical Medieval Times and Conansville: Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian, Arabian, African, Russian, Central and Eastern European, Greek, Egyptian, etc. Lost worlds and red planets might also fit, or even a *real* Dark Ages book, perhaps centered around Charlemagne.

I'd love to see stuff like this, too. Hopefully once MW comes out, people will start pitching more books to Chaosium to support it!

- Alternate magic systems beyond the Gold Book, perhaps integrated with the settings above. For example, a Norse book might include rules for period-appropriate ritual witchcraft (seidhr) and runic magic.

Advanced Sorcery has half a dozen or so magic systems in it, drawn from a variety of old Elric! books. None of these appear in the BGB.

Somewhat related, the Chronicler's Companion's going to have a thoroughly excellent set of rules by Charles Green about using the Allegiance System to create interesting religions/cults for your game. It ties Sorcery spells in to distinct spheres, lets you put those together and form the basis of a cult. Neat stuff.

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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But what ELSE would people really like to see?

Nick

Scenarios and simple setting material for the mini-setting. Maybe a short monster book tied to the setting (with adventure hooks). Maybe something more ambitious à la Griffin Mountain.

What I'm not very interested in is alternative fantasy settings. I'd prefer MW to stick to 1 setting and nominally set everything in it, even if it's rather generic and portable (think of Questworld). I also prefer short-medium scenarios to long adventures.

Finally, I'd like to see some cool themes from Sapkowski's witcher novels explored. A dark fantasy scenario pack based on twisted fairy tales. A monster hunters scenario pack full of irony and unexpected twists (complete with Latin names for monsters). A supplement of wizards, their colleges and their machinations. I have no idea if this fits with the setting.

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Scenarios and simple setting material for the mini-setting. Maybe a short monster book tied to the setting (with adventure hooks). Maybe something more ambitious à la Griffin Mountain.

This is the sort of thing I'd like to see too. Chaosium has a history of making really excellent setting material, especially in the Stormbringer line. I'm think of Sea Kings of the Purple Towns, which was basically a whole campaign in a book. I've used it to good effect with several groups.

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I have a big old Stormbringer campaign that I've thought would be good for MW. Just change a few locations, add a bit of flavour and *pow* would be done. That said, it would be be more dark fatasy than high fantasy, and might not be a good product to produce in a line looking move away from its Elric roots.

And on top of that my real concern at the moment, with Chaosium flushed with the Kickstarter success from the Call of Cthulhu Horror on the Orient Express supplement, is that MW will be low priority for the next year or so...

Scenarios and simple setting material for the mini-setting. Maybe a short monster book tied to the setting (with adventure hooks). Maybe something more ambitious à la Griffin Mountain.

There is a lot of talented and (even better) reliable* RPG authors on these forums, perhaps we are the ones to hammer a project like a Griffin Mountain through, and more over take MW in a direction we'd like to see it go? Of course, there's no money in it :P

Marcus

* - I exclude myself from this, if not both catagories.

Stormbringer! - Exploring the worlds of the Eternal Champion at http://www.stormbringerrpg.com

Unbound Publishing - Bringing back the fear - http://www.unboundbook.org

DCtRPG.info - Supporting Dark Conspiracy across the decades - http://www.darkconspiracytherpg.com

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Hope this doesn't come out wrong but...

What if anything will set this apart from other BRP based fantasy games? Does it aim to fit a particular niche?

If it is taken from the game in the 80s as I recall it was RQ simplified, sort of a fantasy version of the CoC rules, is that the way MW has gone?

BTW the sorcery book sounds cool. ;t)

Edited by Toadmaster
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And on top of that my real concern at the moment, with Chaosium flushed with the Kickstarter success from the Call of Cthulhu Horror on the Orient Express supplement, is that MW will be low priority for the next year or so...

That's one of the reasons I wanted to front-load the game. As of this writing, I've submitted the core rules, and two supplements to Chaosium (Advanced Sorcery, and the Chronicler's Companion). There are two others about halfway done, and there's been mumblings about a couple of other ones. My hope is that there'll be enough to keep it going for a year or so until it gets some traction, and people start submitting new things for it.

What if anything will set this apart from other BRP based fantasy games? Does it aim to fit a particular niche?

If it is taken from the game in the 80s as I recall it was RQ simplified, sort of a fantasy version of the CoC rules, is that the way MW has gone?

As mentioned elsewhere, the core of Magic World is the Elric! rules. If you're comparing it to OpenQuest and RQ6, I'd say it fills a niche somewhere in the middle.

But, while OQ and RQ aim for more of a gritty, ancient world feel, Magic World is a bit more high fantasy, a bit more epic and heroic. They're all great games, of course. I love RQ6, and I've been running lots of OpenQuest over the last year or so. My hope is that there'll be a lot of cross-polination between the three.

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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I thought I would post here regarding what I intent to contribute to MW. I was approached and asked to modify an adventure I had written for one of the adventure contests, The Haunted Bridge, for inclusion in an up-coming “world book” monograph. I have done this, but the adventure was always intended as an “opening adventure” for beginning characters, so I am expanding it. I have re-drawing my ugly map and added several more and I have added a village with several adventure hooks and am adding another short adventure based from the village. Of course, no one has seen my work yet, so there is no guarantee that it will make the cut and be included in the monograph…

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Back in 2008, I remember seeing a poll on Chaosium.com asking fans what genre they wanted to see first as a BRP supplement. Surprisingly (as there is a lot of D100 competition out there for this genre) the most popular choice was Fantasy.

I think the Magic World line is the result of that poll. Charlie took the most beloved Fantasy BRP line after Glorantha, that is Elric!/Stormbringer, and had it repackaged without any Moorcock contents. Contrary to what many say and write around the Internet, people at Chaosium listen to what their customers say. It is just that it takes some time for them to get the books done :)

Proud member of the Evil CompetitionTM

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I thought I would post here regarding what I intent to contribute to MW. I was approached and asked to modify an adventure I had written for one of the adventure contests, The Haunted Bridge, for inclusion in an up-coming “world book” monograph.

Not a monograph. THis is for an actual print distribution book. However, it's not officially been announced yet.

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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What I'd definately like to see would support for the various options in the BGB, or at least the most popular options namely Strike Ranks ( hereafter SR's ) and hit locations. If you look at the supplements for BRP out so far ( both official and Monographs ) the vast majority of them have both these options, sugesting they appeal tp both writers and players. That being the case I'd want to see those options in Magic World.

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Strike Ranks and Hit Locations are not in the MW core rules, but could easily be pulled from the BGB and used in the game.

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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I did read your interviews and such from the first post, but I'm not really familiar with Elric! and google hasn't turned up anything particularly useful as far as the mechanics (Moorcock and BRP based which I know already). Based on the comment above it does sound very much like a fantasy version of CoC (as far as complexity) which is what I remember of the Stormbringer game from the 80s.

I hope this does well for Chaosium. A common theme I read online about generic games is there are too many options to choose from. This is exactly the kind of thing people have been saying they want from an introductory BRP product, so I hope it does well. It was pretty much a given that I'd be getting this, but now it is added to my must have list.

I assume with high fantasy as the intended setting this will be using some of the optional rules for tougher PCs?

I haven't seen an expected release date, do you think it will be available before Dundracon? It would be nice to see a few games running this year.

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I did read your interviews and such from the first post, but I'm not really familiar with Elric! and google hasn't turned up anything particularly useful as far as the mechanics (Moorcock and BRP based which I know already). Based on the comment above it does sound very much like a fantasy version of CoC (as far as complexity) which is what I remember of the Stormbringer game from the 80s.

Yeah, I'd say it's about as complex as the current version of CoC. It does use Skill Categories and Major Wounds.

I hope this does well for Chaosium. A common theme I read online about generic games is there are too many options to choose from. This is exactly the kind of thing people have been saying they want from an introductory BRP product, so I hope it does well. It was pretty much a given that I'd be getting this, but now it is added to my must have list.

My hope is that the price can be kept low enough that it's an attractive gateway game to the whole BRP line.

I assume with high fantasy as the intended setting this will be using some of the optional rules for tougher PCs?

Yes! I think I put in four tiers of 'toughness' for starting PCs, in addition to the base level.

I haven't seen an expected release date, do you think it will be available before Dundracon? It would be nice to see a few games running this year.

I'm hoping it's out before DDC. If you look at the DDC events list, you'll see I've already signed up to run a game there. I'm currently trying to talk friends of mine into running it, too.

See you there!

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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There's pretty much no relationship between the two. I mean, aside from them both being magic systems.

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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Well I was sold on this already when I heard about it being mentioned at first and will be the basis for all my fantasy campaigns in the future. The only competition for that at the moment is the the new upcoming Rolemaster but I have decided to go BRP since that is where my roots in roleplaying comes from. I know many have mentioned the Hit Location rules and as mentioned see no problem in pulling it from the BRP book and implementing it. I have also thought it might be a nice addition to an expansion set where you get a nice already prepared character sheet for you so you don't have to design and adapt your own.

Even though I do prefer the Hit Location rules I have no problems with the Major Wound rules. In fact have used it in a couple of sessions lately and even though you lost some of the details you instead gained in speed and more fluid combats so the pro's and con's weighed each other out. The plan is to go with the RAW as much as possible.

My wallet is just waiting for MW to be released.

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What if any relationship does the sorcery in Magic World share with RQ3? I see lots of comments about RQ3 sorcery, few complementry.

There's pretty much no relationship between the two. I mean, aside from them both being magic systems.

MW Sorcery is essentially the "Sorcery" system from the Big Gold Book, Elric!, and Stormbringer 4e/5e. If anything, this Sorcery system mechanically resembles Spirit Magic from RQ3, Battle Magic from RQ2, or Common Magic from MRQII/Legend.

RQ Sorcery, on the other hand, starts with the skill-based BRP Magic system from the Gold Book and adds rules to amplify or combine spells. Chaosium's Magic Book renamed it Wizardry to avoid confusion, but RQ and Glorantha material keeps the old name.

Frank

"Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG
 
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Will there be something similar to feats in 3.5?

I use the term feats reluctantly because it immediately put most people off, but I don't mean anything like the sheer amount of feats in 3.5, or necessarily the amoiunt of detail they go into.

I don't believe there is anything like Feats. Ki skills from the old LoN should drop in fine though.

SDLeary

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