Chaosium appoints Jason Durall as new line editor of RuneQuest RPG line

[MOB]

Welcome Jason!

[Chaot]

Put this man to work!

Dude's a genius.

 

[Conrad]

26 minutes ago, Chaot said:

Put this man to work!

Dude's a genius.

 

Someone else is too, for appointing him to Chaosium. Mind you, he has done some stuff for 'em before. https://www.amazon.com/Slaves-Fate-Adventure-Melnibone-Stormbringer/dp/1568821549

Edited March 26, 2017 by Conrad

[smiorgan]

Congrats Jason! I really look forward to the new RQ line!

56 minutes ago, Conrad said:

Someone else is too, for appointing him to Chaosium. Mind you, he has done some stuff for 'em before. https://www.amazon.com/Slaves-Fate-Adventure-Melnibone-Stormbringer/dp/1568821549

And yes, the Slaves of Fate adventure is a little known gem of a scenario. 

 

[Chaot]

There's that other little thing he did. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had we play testers gone with JD's unified BRP power system instead of reprinting old rules...  

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Chaot said:

There's that other little thing he did. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had we play testers gone with JD's unified BRP power system instead of reprinting old rules...  

Can you share a little info on that?

[Chaot]

Nope. Both because I agreed to a nondisclosure and because I sadly no longer have the files to remind myself of the details due to a hard drive crash.

Jason might say something about it if you ask nicely though!

Edit: The point is, Jason has an incredibly solid handle on BRP design.  Smart move bringing him in.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Chaot

[NickMiddleton]

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Can you share a little info on that?

As Chaot says, we are under NDA's,  morally if not legally. It was Jason's work and is Chaosium's IP so even if we did have the files, it is theirs not ours.

From what I can recall it built forward from the work Ben Monroe had done in Stormbringer Fourth edition to make a "schematic" power system from the Demons of SB 1/-.3 and synthesized it with Steve Perrin's work on Super-powers in Worlds of Wonder and Superworld.

My memory is It was very flexible - but it was ALSO NOT "immediate use / off the shelf" user friendly and was far more in the Hero system / GURPs / "Gear head" design space. We talked a lot about the new BRP being the book you could pull off the shelf after seeing a film, play, TV show or talking about a book or comic and kit bash together a game that evening. The more limited but explicitly defined "off the shelf" power systems Jason went with gave that, and I still think it was the right choice.

I wish him well in his new role.

Cheers,

Nick

 

 

[Jason D]

20 hours ago, Chaot said:

Put this man to work!

Dude's a genius.

 

Thanks! 

Ultimately, this is mostly a formalization of an existing relationship. I've been hard at work on editing and helping develop the new version of RuneQuest for almost half a year now.

[Jason D]

20 hours ago, Conrad said:

Someone else is too, for appointing him to Chaosium. Mind you, he has done some stuff for 'em before. https://www.amazon.com/Slaves-Fate-Adventure-Melnibone-Stormbringer/dp/1568821549

My involvement with Chaosium goes way, way back. I was involved on the Elric! playtest (and wrote a tiny bit of the book), there's that that other little thing I did, and I worked for no small amount of time on Interplanetary and an Eternal Champion sourcebook. Both of which I'd like to complete some day, but some things need to come into alignment for both to happen... and RuneQuest needs to get done! 

 

19 hours ago, smiorgan said:

Congrats Jason! I really look forward to the new RQ line!

And yes, the Slaves of Fate adventure is a little known gem of a scenario. 

 

Thanks! That was a blast to write. I don't think that the system was the proper fit, but I had hoped that the line would flourish. Ah well... 

 

12 hours ago, Chaot said:

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had we play testers gone with JD's unified BRP power system instead of reprinting old rules...  

Well... the reason it got put aside was that it was just too complicated. Too crunchy. I think we made the right decision going more a la carte superpowers (and even those were highly configurable) but I think the real tragedy with the BRP line was that it just didn't get the support it needed in the form of a coherent strategy and core expansions. As the release schedule of Chaosium of old was almost entirely driven by the ability of freelancers to complete and hand in publishable manuscripts, it limited the options for BRP. 

 

9 hours ago, Chaot said:

Nope. Both because I agreed to a nondisclosure and because I sadly no longer have the files to remind myself of the details due to a hard drive crash.

Jason might say something about it if you ask nicely though!

Edit: The point is, Jason has an incredibly solid handle on BRP design.  Smart move bringing him in.

The files are archived somewhere, but ultimately they just involved basic superpowers that allowed all aspects to be tweaked and purchased, so they were ridiculously configurable. It was the quintessential opposite of a "basic" system, and hence it was sidelined in favor of ready-to-play powers. 

And thanks for the kind words... again! 

 

3 minutes ago, NickMiddleton said:

As Chaot says, we are under NDA's,  morally if not legally. It was Jason's work and is Chaosium's IP so even if we did have the files, it is theirs not ours.

From what I can recall it built forward from the work Ben Monroe had done in Stormbringer Fourth edition to make a "schematic" power system from the Demons of SB 1/-.3 and synthesized it with Steve Perrin's work on Super-powers in Worlds of Wonder and Superworld.

My memory is It was very flexible - but it was ALSO NOT "immediate use / off the shelf" user friendly and was far more in the Hero system / GURPs / "Gear head" design space. We talked a lot about the new BRP being the book you could pull off the shelf after seeing a film, play, TV show or talking about a book or comic and kit bash together a game that evening. The more limited but explicitly defined "off the shelf" power systems Jason went with gave that, and I still think it was the right choice.

I wish him well in his new role.

Cheers,

Nick

 

 

Kinda sorta. 

It was initially built exclusively on the superpowers system from the boxed release of Superworld.

Ben's excellent work on the Stormbringer 4th edition demon powers system was in fact derived from the very same source, IIRC. However, I didn't refer to Stormbringer at all for those rules... just SW. I referred to Champions, DC Heroes, Marvel Super Hero Adventure Game, Psi-World, Villians & Vigilantes, and probably half a dozen other supers games for inspiration, but I didn't look at SB for those rules. 

In the end, we went with a cleaned up and expanded version of the superpowers system from the Worlds of Wonder boxed set, which was much simpler. 

 

 

 

[NickMiddleton]

15 minutes ago, Jason Durall said:

Kinda sorta. 

It was initially built exclusively on the superpowers system from the boxed release of Superworld.

Ben's excellent work on the Stormbringer 4th edition demon powers system was in fact derived from the very same source, IIRC. However, I didn't refer to Stormbringer at all for those rules... just SW. I referred to Champions, DC Heroes, Marvel Super Hero Adventure Game, Psi-World, Villians & Vigilantes, and probably half a dozen other supers games for inspiration, but I didn't look at SB for those rules. 

In the end, we went with a cleaned up and expanded version of the superpowers system from the Worlds of Wonder boxed set, which was much simpler. 

D'Oh! Apologies for mis-remembering that!

I think I first learnt about the Superworld connection to SB4 from Ben around the time of the BGB playtest, which is probably why I conflated the two.

Cheers,

Nick