If not Stormbringer, what then?

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, seneschal said:

Obviously we need to think outside the box on this one.  Since role-playing itself and many of our favorite properties are 1970s things, a logical license is ... General Hospital.  Luke and Laura!  Larceny and lechery!  Streetwalker nurses!  Gangsters, assasins and Bond villains!  Betrothal and betrayal!  Dastardly deeds at the disco!

 

After all, if someone can turn "Dallas" into a rpg why limit ourselves to nighttime soap operas?  😁

 

Dark Shadows the Roleplaying Game? And yes, I'm never in the box. 

Edited July 25, 2018 by Atgxtg

[seneschal]

Heh, Dark Shadows was part Jane Eyre, part Turn of the Screw for 200 or so episodes BEFORE everyone's favorite vampire -- Barnabas Collins -- made his debut.  If you're renovating a building and stumble upon a hidden sealed room, don't remove the heavy chains from the coffin you find within.

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, seneschal said:

Heh, Dark Shadows was part Jane Eyre, part Turn of the Screw for 200 or so episodes BEFORE everyone's favorite vampire -- Barnabas Collins -- made his debut.  If you're renovating a building and stumble upon a hidden sealed room, don't remove the heavy chains from the coffin you find within.

The vampire wasn't the real baddie, though (although that changed on and off as the serious went on). Watch out for the witch!

But if you look at the series seriously for a few moments (giggle), it actually has a lot of elements that would make for a wild RPG setting. Depending on what bits you want to use, you got everything from a spooky, but somewhat tame soap opera (nobody was sleeping around!) to a full blown CoC campaign, right down to non-human species and the New England coast. You could even go "Creature Feature" with in and have the PCs play monsters. It would probably be trash, but it would be entertaining trash.

 

But from a marketing standpoint, I don't think anything's gonna top Streetwalker Nurses.

Edited July 26, 2018 by Atgxtg

[Jason D]

13 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Does that mean there is some sort of "Bible" that tells them what they can and cannot alter?

No hope for Amber then?

There is no setting bible at this time, but Jeff and I are about 100% in agreement about what a RQ Fantasy Earth core book would look like. 

Having seen multiple runs at the license, knowing the difficulties there, and knowing the extent of the entrenched Amber community and their commitment to the diceless RPG, I can say two things: 

1. I would love to do it

2. It would be a struggle, unless some external factor (TV series, movie, etc.) made the license more visible outside the existing community 

 

13 hours ago, g33k said:

re: RQ/FantasyEarth...

I just wanted to clarify... is this planned as a single volume (presumably titled "Fantasy Earth")?  Or as a series of interlocking / mutually-playable (but each also fully standalone) individual RPGs (of which, presumably, Mythic Iceland would be the first iteration)?  Or something else/undecided/etc ... ?

The realities of schedules being what they are, the goal was always to have a RQ Fantasy Earth core book and game line. The existence of Mythic Iceland in a nearly-ready state meant that Pedro's book will have its own rules set and will be the foundation for a line of associated books in the umbrella of the Fantasy Earth line. Now that the RQG core book is in print, the Bestiary available in .pdf, and the GM Screen Pack well into layout, we can start shifting our attention to getting more trains out of the station, so to speak. 

 

11 hours ago, seneschal said:

Obviously we need to think outside the box on this one.  Since role-playing itself and many of our favorite properties are 1970s things, a logical license is ... General Hospital.  Luke and Laura!  Larceny and lechery!  Streetwalker nurses!  Gangsters, assasins and Bond villains!  Betrothal and betrayal!  Dastardly deeds at the disco!

After all, if someone can turn "Dallas" into a rpg why limit ourselves to nighttime soap operas?  😁

 

If someone wants to pitch us a soap opera/romance/melodrama RPG using a streamlined RQ/BRP engine, we will be ALL OVER THAT. 

 

11 hours ago, SDLeary said:

But, I'm all down for a proper hard Sci-Fi treatment. Something along the lines of The Expanse or Traveller 2300/2300AD. Space Opera/Space Fantasy is nice, but somewhat overdone in my estimation. And I'm not really into the transhumanism (ala Eclipse Phase) thing  outside of minor things you might find in a Cyberpunk setting. 

Well, we do have Mr. Spivey under contract to do an original sci-fi setting for us... 

 

Edited July 26, 2018 by Jason Durall

[simonh]

2 hours ago, Jason Durall said:

There is no setting bible at this time, but Jeff and I are about 100% in agreement about what a RQ Fantasy Earth core book would look like. 

Having seen multiple runs at the license, knowing the difficulties there, and knowing the extent of the entrenched Amber community and their commitment to the diceless RPG, I can say two things: 

1. I would love to do it

Again - kind of. For those who don't know Jason wrote Lord of Gossamer & Shadow, an RPG adapting the ADRPG diceless engine to an original setting.

As I understand it the ADRPG community couldn't produce supplements for Amber because they didn't have a license for the setting. Jason to the rescue!

[simonh]

One whole category of options we haven't discussed is computer game licenses. I'd have thought a lot of those would translate very well to pencil-n-paper, but it seems to be a rare occurrence. Doom, Borderlands, Castle Wolfenstein, Half  Life, Elite, then actual RPG-s like Zelda or Skyrim. I think there are a few tabletop RPGs of computer games out there but they're fairly marginal.

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Jason Durall said:

There is no setting bible at this time, but Jeff and I are about 100% in agreement about what a RQ Fantasy Earth core book would look like. 

Having seen multiple runs at the license, knowing the difficulties there, and knowing the extent of the entrenched Amber community and their commitment to the diceless RPG, I can say two things: 

1. I would love to do it

2. It would be a struggle, unless some external factor (TV series, movie, etc.) made the license more visible outside the existing community 

Last I read, the creator of "Walking Dead" was adapting Amber to a TV series. Now we are talking Hollywood, and projects start, stop, and get lost in development hell, but maybe it's worth keeping an eye on in case it actually happens?

[Toadmaster]

1 hour ago, simonh said:

One whole category of options we haven't discussed is computer game licenses. I'd have thought a lot of those would translate very well to pencil-n-paper, but it seems to be a rare occurrence. Doom, Borderlands, Castle Wolfenstein, Half  Life, Elite, then actual RPG-s like Zelda or Skyrim. I think there are a few tabletop RPGs of computer games out there but they're fairly marginal.

There may be some I've missed, but the only computer games I can recall seeing made into RPGs were Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft. All d20 and from what I saw just cheap splat books, not much depth to them. I think all three actually have the potential to be made into decent RPG settings and at least at the time were pretty popular games that probably moved some books based on name alone. While I still occasionally enjoy them, I'm not sure the fan base is nearly what it once was to draw on.

The Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Half-life, Halo, Alien vs Predator series (movies, books, video games), Assassin's Creed and Dead Space could potentially be made into decent RPG settings. The games have fairly solid back stories, so there would be something for the writers to work with. Of course most of these are getting a little dated, so a bit past due to hit while they are hot. Still they seem to have some staying power, and still seem to have some popularity in the online community.

I'm probably at least 5 years out of touch with the most recent games, so not sure what the cool kids are playing these days. 😊

Edited July 26, 2018 by Toadmaster

[RosenMcStern]

Starcraft would probably be one of the best options for a rpg adaptation (a real one) - it includes a lot of hand to hand combat techniques and weird monsters along with an acceptable dose of fancy spaceships, And the computer games already provide some very good guidelines about giving your characters some depth. "What happens when your character is infected by the Zerg" could fill, alone, a 200 page supplement. And ghosts would make extremely interesting player characters, too*. 

* Kerrigan is her own league, of course, as she is both a ghost and altered by the Zerg.

[Richard S.]

While there hasn't been much effort to make official TTRPGs out of video games, the homebrew scene has a thriving video game adaptation crowd who've made some excellent material (UESRPG is my personal favorite). Though, with the new Witcher TTRPG getting some press, maybe some other companies will try and do something like it if it's successful. I could definitely see BRP being used for something like Warcraft, Starcraft, or the Elder Scrolls series (heck BRP's what they ES games were based on to begin with).

[Joerg]

Looking at SF games, here are a few suggestions of mine:

Egosoft's original X universe would make for a slightly goofy rpg background, too. The five species and their adversaries (terraforming fleet gone rogue and genocidal arthropodic hive drones) and their internal politics are hinted at in the game, but the sub-factions get only minor traction in the game.

Another such "space pilot" series which has enough background for roleplaying would be the Wing Commander setting with the Kilrathi conflict and the internal problems that drove some iterations of the game and its "Privateer" offshoot.

Microsoft's Freelancer was more or less the successor of the Wing Commander games, but used a different, humans-only background. Usable for roleplaying, too.

All settings use topological space maps with connections via fixed jump points and/or gates, keeping mapping the universe manageable. Anything that attracts readable fan-fiction can serve as rpg-background.

 

For a weirder, dark SF background, Stephen Donaldson's "The Real Story" and subsequent novels could make an interesting dystopian setting with an almighty mining corporation dictating humanity's space faring and a really alien external threat, the Amnion. No cosmic horror, but plenty of body horror.

I don't think C.J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union or Chanur universe ever received the rpg coverage the setting deserves, but by now that IP doesn't really warrant much of paying a license any more. The series has a limited amount of Unobtainium to put into rules - the space jump mechanisms make sense as story elements but might be hard to press into rules. It might be easier to provide game values for each possible jump route modified by ship capabilities.

 

 

[Jason D]

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Last I read, the creator of "Walking Dead" was adapting Amber to a TV series. Now we are talking Hollywood, and projects start, stop, and get lost in development hell, but maybe it's worth keeping an eye on in case it actually happens?

The last update was July 2016, so I'm going to guess " 'What is lost in development hell?' for $200, Alex." 

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Jason Durall said:

The last update was July 2016, so I'm going to guess " 'What is lost in development hell?' for $200, Alex." 

Quite likely. But July 2016 was also the first update, so it could still be alive and kicking in the pipeline. 

[DreadDomain]

10 hours ago, Jason Durall said:

There is no setting bible at this time, but Jeff and I are about 100% in agreement about what a RQ Fantasy Earth core book would look like. 

The realities of schedules being what they are, the goal was always to have a RQ Fantasy Earth core book and game line. The existence of Mythic Iceland in a nearly-ready state meant that Pedro's book will have its own rules set and will be the foundation for a line of associated books in the umbrella of the Fantasy Earth line.

 

So the goal was to produce a RQ FE core book, is it still the plan (understanding that the plan might change again)?

Would you mind to elaborate on what it would look like? In RQG the absolute stand out, I believe, is how the runes bring a character to life by defining his personality, his magical affinities, etc. Runes would not be adequate for RQ FE but I would be curious to see if something else would fill the void. Personality traits à la KA perhaps?

[Toadmaster]

How could I forget X-Com: UFO Defense from the 1990s. The game had a fairly well fleshed out world, that still leaves plenty of room to make additions or draw from similar fiction (X-files, MIB, UFO, Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds etc).

[SDLeary]

3 hours ago, Toadmaster said:

How could I forget X-Com: UFO Defense from the 1990s. The game had a fairly well fleshed out world, that still leaves plenty of room to make additions or draw from similar fiction (X-files, MIB, UFO, Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds etc).

Woo! Chaosium could do the whole kickstarter thing... Include a Captain Scarlet puppet, or Thunderbird 2 toy, or UFO Intercepter! 😉

SDLeary

[Sean_RDP]

4 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Woo! Chaosium could do the whole kickstarter thing... Include a Captain Scarlet puppet, or Thunderbird 2 toy, or UFO Intercepter! 😉

SDLeary

I was thinking "That's silly" then you mentioned the UFO Interceptor and suddenly I am 100% on board.  lol

[Toadmaster]

56 minutes ago, Sean_RDP said:

I was thinking "That's silly" then you mentioned the UFO Interceptor and suddenly I am 100% on board.  lol

 I the Dinky Toy Interceptor and Capt Scarlet 10 wheel pursuit vehicle when I was a kid.

 

Long gone now like so many other toys wasted on children. 😃

 

[Jason D]

14 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

So the goal was to produce a RQ FE core book, is it still the plan (understanding that the plan might change again)?

Would you mind to elaborate on what it would look like? In RQG the absolute stand out, I believe, is how the runes bring a character to life by defining his personality, his magical affinities, etc. Runes would not be adequate for RQ FE but I would be curious to see if something else would fill the void. Personality traits à la KA perhaps?

No Runes. 

The bodily humors would be the obvious alternative. 

[Atgxtg]

8 minutes ago, Jason Durall said:

No Runes. 

What about the Futhark? 

 

[Jason D]

2 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

What about the Futhark? 

They're in Mythic Iceland.

The RQFE core book would present the core rules, character generation and improvement, combat, equipment, the role of faith, alchemy, a bit of a historical overview and some gazetteer material, and a few magic systems that would cover the majority of the suggested starting locale. Depending on how ambitious we get, it'll either have some animals/monsters and GM advice or those will be separate books. 

In-depth magic systems will be keyed to the appropriate sourcebooks. 

[simonh]

5 hours ago, Jason Durall said:

No Runes. 

The bodily humors would be the obvious alternative. 

I made a critical Phlegm roll!

I don't know, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

EDIT: Of course here are many alternatives. The Egyptian portions of the soul, the Kabalistic Sphirot, the Greek elements (as used in modified form in Glorantha and Nephilim), the signs of the Zodiac.

The planets might work well because they are universal and are associated with various deities in different cultures in the ancient world, for which we have fairly well established contemporarily accepted equivalencies. This makes them a standard universal key into a whole range of different cultural religious traditions.

Edited July 27, 2018 by simonh

[RosenMcStern]

1 hour ago, simonh said:

I made a critical Phegm roll!

I don't know, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

EDIT: Of course here are many alternatives. The Egyptian portions of the soul, the Kabalistic Sphirot, the Greek elements (as used in modified form in Glorantha and Nephilim), the signs of the Zodiac.

The planets might work well because they are universal and are associated with various deities in different cultures in the ancient world, for which we have fairly well established contemporarily accepted equivalencies. This makes them a standard universal key into a whole range of different cultural religious traditions.

This is all very interesting. But, you know, it all sounds suspiciously similar to the famous "Our ruleset works well, let us adapt the setting to the ruleset" principle. Which is not, IMO, a good design principle, as various adaptations to d20 "because d20" have shown.

I can think of several real pantheons which could be represented with the rules used for Glorantha. But not *all* of them would. And do not forget that not all religions are polytheistic, or express their polytheistic aspects in the same way. A spirit is not a god, and a saint is not a bodhisattva. Similarities exist only in how the masses - lay members in game terms - express their low level worship. Those initiate to the inner mysteries have a deeply different relationship with the divine beings they revere, depending on their religious tradition.

A good example of this problem is the representation of Buddhism and Shinto in the old "Land of Ninja". Kamis and Buddhas provide more or less the same benefits to initiates, and while this may be a consequence of the snchretism of the Japanese Middle Ages, it trivialises the difference between the two types of transcendent beings.

[simonh]

1 hour ago, RosenMcStern said:

This is all very interesting. But, you know, it all sounds suspiciously similar to the famous "Our ruleset works well, let us adapt the setting to the ruleset" principle. Which is not, IMO, a good design principle, as various adaptations to d20 "because d20" have shown.

That's not the same as looking at the strengths of an existing rules set, and then selecting a setting that suits those strengths.

I think I may have let my fingers run away from me. I'm not suggesting a single universal magic system based on the planets (including the moon) as the be all and end all, however the game will need at least one magic system in the core book. I think one based on the planets could be very flexible and adaptable to different cultures. Most ancient cultures had some form of astrology, had correspondences between the planets and various gods, and often these associations were similar in nature. It wouldn't have to work exactly like spirit magic, or rune magic or sorcery though and could be very much it's own thing.

A common basic default magic system is a very valuable thing though. If I want to play an Egyptian sorcerer, I'm fine with learning a custom system for that. Some people just want to play a soldier, thief, merchant, sailor, etc and it would be nice to be able to play one of those from a wide variety of cultures without having to learn a new magic system every time.

Beyond that, custom systems for Egyptian sorcerers, Kabbalists, Zoroastrian Magi, etc would be a must. The nice thing about BRP is that it has very flexible architectural underpinnings (POW, Magic Points, Skills, and now Passions, etc) that can be used to express a whole variety of magic systems.

Edited July 27, 2018 by simonh

[RosenMcStern]

2 hours ago, simonh said:

Most ancient cultures had some form of astrology, had correspondences between the planets and various gods, and often these associations were similar in nature. It wouldn't have to work exactly like spirit magic, or rune magic or sorcery though and could be very much it's own thing.

Indeed, that would work very well for EMEA cultures in the classic age (Germans, Celts, Balts, Assyrians, Egyptians...). Standard Divine Magic could be used in this case without the need to reinvent the wheel (unless you want to roleplay the invention of the wheel, an achievement of that age).

The problem is that it would NOT work for the Far East, for Central African cultures, and for Abrahamic religions (which originated several millennia BC and became predominant in the Middle Ages). Maybe you could still use "divine points" for these, but it is arguable that the "Runes as abilities" or "<oter principles> as abilities" model would represent all cultures correctly.