The BRP Renaissance

The ‘Old School Renaissance’, at least with respect to D&D and AD&D, is a well known and (by now) a well-established phenomenon within our strange little hobby.

However, it seems that the gaming community is in the midst of another renaissance, namely, a renaissance of ‘Basic Role-playing’ (‘BRP’) or ‘d100’ games and settings.

BRP-based games never ceased being published altogether by (at least one) professional RPG company, unlike ‘classic’ D&D and AD&D (0e, Basic, and 1e). And even though Chaosium, like many other RPG companies, had a ‘near death’ experience during the 1990s, it never actually went under.

Impressively, Chaosium’s role-playing games always have been ‘powered’ by BRP, the essentials of which have remained largely unchanged for three decades now.

Things looked pretty grim for Chaosium and BRP early in the twenty-first century. As far as I know, the only BRP-based role-playing games still being published were Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer (5^th edition). (Although I believe that Pendragon also saw sporadic support.) Stormbringer was barely supported. Only one supplement was produced for it during the 0s, namely, the superb Corum book from Darcsyde Productions. (Although Elric! supplements were fully compatible with Stormbringer 5e, those all had been produced during the 1990s.)

These days, though, things look dramatically improved for BRP!

Chaosium published a complete ‘core book’ for BRP in 2008. It includes the core BRP rules, as well as most of the optional rules found in various BRP games and supplements published by Chaosium over its long history.

Call of Cthulhu, of course, continues to be supported by Chaosium, as well as some other companies, such as Goodman Games.

Alphetar Games has published a number of books for BRP, including what I believe must be the best single RPG book on ‘Rome’ ever published.

Cubicle Seven has just come out with The Laundry RPG (as well as a few CoC books). I recently purchased The Laundry PDF, and my first impression of it is very favourable indeed. I’ve only read Charlie Stross’s first Laundry book, but I liked it very much, and plan to read the rest in the series. It strikes me as a great setting for a (not-fully-serious) CoC-flavoured game. (Alas, Yog-Sothoth only knows when I’ll be able to give the Laundry RPG a proper read…)

And although out of print, most of Chaosium’s back catalogue of Stormbringer (first and fourth editions), Elric!, and Hawkmoon materials are now available in PDF (thanks to an arrangement with Mongoose Games).

Then we have Mongoose Games’ RuneQuest II. My impression is that Mongoose’s first attempt to resurrect RuneQuest was something less than a ringing success. I know that I decided against purchasing anything for MRQ when I skimmed through the initial book. Subsequent reviews confirmed my early negative judgement. Moreover, Mongoose’s long record of poor editing and spotty quality control in their books made me decide against giving MRQ a shot.

However, based on some favourable initial reports, I decided to give Mongoose’s second effort at RuneQuest a shot. I’m very glad that I did, as the core book avoided the usual Mongoose missteps. Moreover, the system looks very, very well designed. I think that Lawrence Whitaker and Pete Nash did an excellent job! (Sadly, I suspect that MRQII is too ‘rules heavy’ for my regular players. But perhaps I might eventually convince them to give it a shot…)

Probably my favourite new BRP setting produced in recent years is Clockwork & Chivalry – a MRQII campaign book published by Cubicle 7 that describes an ‘alternative history’ version of 17^th Century England. I drooled in anticipation over this setting in this post. Now that I’ve received the book and looked through it, I believe that my earlier enthusiasm has been entirely vindicated.

Last – but certainly not least! – there is RuneQuest’s ‘lighter’ and ‘simpler’ cousin OpenQuest, written and supported by a friend of this blog, Newt Newport. I’ve raved about OQ in past posts here, so I shall refrain from doing so again now. However, interested readers may want to look at my comparison of MRQII and OQ.

So, lots of cool things are available for BRP these days! Among them:

· The glorious golden BRP corebook from Chaosium

· The usual wide range of Call of Cthulhu material

· The brand new Laundry RPG

· Mongoose’s RuneQuest II

· The Clockwork & Chivalry Setting for MRQII

· OpenQuest

For such an old system, BRP looks to be in surprisingly good health! J

9th Hottest?

According to this ranking of the 'hottest old school blogs' over at the Cyclopeatron, this modest little blog is tied for #9, having added 9 followers between September 11th and September 30th.

I'm regularly astonished and honoured to know that there are a few folks out there who seem to enjoy occasionally visiting this blog, given how sporadic and idiosyncratic my posts tend to be. And some folks even take the time to comment!

Thanks so much, gentle readers. I appreciate the conversations!

Miscellaneous Items

Here are some random things that I thought might be of some interest to the folks that visit this rather sporadic and insignificant blog.

1.

As some readers may recall from posts like this one or this one, I’m a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, and ICE’s (now out-of-print) RPG Middle-earth Role-playing (a.k.a. ‘MERP’). There is a very interesting thread over at the RPGsite on running RPG campaigns in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth. Here it is. Lots of great ideas!

And here is one of Angus McBride’s many inspiring Middle-earth pictures:

2.

‘Paladin in Citadel’ recommended (in a comment on my last post) that I post the actual ‘Street of Knights’ in Rhodes that serves as the basis for Dave Trampier’s amazing ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’ picture in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. Here it is, courtesy of the Bat in the Attic:

3.

Author of OpenQuest, and generalissimo of ‘d101 Games’, Newt Newport, has a new blog. It’s called ‘Sorcerer Under Mountain’. Check it out!

4.

Newt’s post on The Warlock of Firetop Mountain reminded of the amazing artwork of Russ Nicholson. As many readers no doubt already know, Nicholson is responsible for many of the excellent illustrations in the AD&D Fiend Folio. Nicholson has a blog, which includes many, many wonderful pictures. Below is his picture of the Warlock of Firetop Mountain himself (courtesy of ‘Sorcerer Under Mountain’):

5.

Finally, I’m a huge fan of – and occasional contributor to – Fight On!, the premier fanzine of the ‘Old School Renaissance’. Right now the PDF version of issue 9 of FO! is available for only 4 USD. A great deal!

Cheers!

On the Trail of Emirikol the Chaotic

This picture -- Emirikol the Chaotic, by the incomparable Dave Trampier -- is perhaps my favourite picture from any AD&D book. It made an incredible impression on me as a young lad, one that has stayed with me for nearly thirty years now.

Over at Bat in the Attic, Robert Conley has tracked down the real world cityscape depicted in this picture (the Street of Knights in Rhodes). He also has traced the likely route of Emirikol.

Very cool!

Clockwork & Chivalry: 17th Century Fantasy Anyone?

This new setting, ‘Clockwork & Chivalry’, from Cubicle 7 (for Mongoose’s RuneQuest II) looks cool. This thread at RPG.net is discussing the setting. Especially noteworthy is this comment from Newtus:

I'm brewing a longer review, but quite simply in my opinion Clockwork and Chivalry is the best British Fantasy setting since WHFRP 1st ed.

Its more fantastic than fantasy, there are no orcs, using the superstitions of the time as a basis for the magic in the game. It uses the MRQ2 framework to good effect, without being constrained by it. I could quite happily use this book with another game system. Looking forward to the campaign adventures popping up in print, since the introductory adventure adequately whets the appetite for more.

A must buy if you like historical games or are looking for a fantasy game that is different from your run of the mill orcs and dungeons fare.

Wow – that is high praise!

The website ‘Clockwork and Chivalry’ is devoted to the setting, in case you are curious to learn more.

I’ve always found the seventeenth century to be a fascinating era, and especially the events in England. The English Civil War(s), the Exclusion Crisis, the Glorious Revolution, and so forth, all had an enormous impact on the development of liberalism, especially in (what would become) Britain and her dominions (including the colonies that eventually would become the United States, as evidenced by the extent to which the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution draw upon – indeed, even plagiarise in places – John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government).

In addition to the political and religious conflicts that wracked England throughout the century, there also is the rise of modern science (Bacon, Boyle, Newton) and modern philosophy (Descartes, Hobbes, Locke). My fondness for this era should be evident from my choice of avatar: Thomas Hobbes, arguably the greatest English philosopher of all time.

The addition of alchemy and clockwork machinery to the era is intriguing. And even if I don’t eventually get to run a Clockwork & Chivalry game (though I hope to), merely reading the core book should be fun!

Order placed.

This Looks Cool

Here is how author Newt Newport describes this forthcoming product:

What is OpenQuest Classic?

In a nutshell OQ Classic is a version of OQ that is focused for Old Skool dungeon bashing and wilderness adventures. It is a shorter version of OQ about 100 pages long, rules + setting adventure. As well as cheerfully rubbing the nostalgia button for existing D100 players, the book is a short cheap focused introduction to fantasy roleplaying.

For owners of the existing OQ book it acts as a supplement with extra spells, magic items, monsters and adventures, which will take up roughly half the book.

Final book will be trade paper back sized (6”x9”), feature all new art, and be priced around £10-£12 print / £5-6 Pdf.

NONE OF THE NEW CONTENT WILL BE OGL.
THIS IS NOT INTENDED AS AN RQ2 RETRO CLONE, you will not find Hit Locations, Strike Ranks within its pages. The system is OQ, the only change of which is that it now uses a single magic system (based off Battle Magic)

More information available here.

I'm really looking forward to this!

My Gamer ADD

These days, typically in snippets of 5-10 minutes, I find myself reading the following RPG materials:

· Various Call of Cthulhu materials (parts of the core book, various adventures, bits from the Dreamlands).

· The OpenQuest core book and OQ’s Savage North adventure pack.

· Various RuneQuest items (parts of the MRQII corebook, parts of MRQII Monster Coliseum, RQ3 Griffin Island).

· Various Rolemaster things (parts of the RM Classic corebooks, Rolemaster Express, some of my old Middle-earth and Jaiman campaign modules, etc.).

· Various Stormbringer and Elric! (Chaosium’s ‘BRP’ version) items (parts of the core books, the amazing Corum supplement, various adventures); etc.

· Recent issues of Fight On! and Knockspell.

Ever since my last S&W campaign wrapped up I’ve been somewhat ‘at sea’. I’m not sure what to focus on next. Most likely I’ll be running Call of Cthulhu for my Toronto group when I return in late December, so that has provided some structure to my procrastination sessions. But I also cannot help thinking about how to tweak and improve my Ilmahal fantasy setting, including thinking about running something set in Ilmahal using a different system (say, OpenQuest, Elric!, MRQII, or RMC).

At least I have a few months to ‘read around’ before making a decision…

Swords & Wizardry Big News

From here:

August 24, 2010 - Poulsbo WA

Frog God Games, the successor to Necromancer Games, is pleased to announce that effective immediately, Mythmere Games, headed by award-winning author Matt Finch, will be joining up with the Frog God Publishing team to produce even more of the true old-school gaming resources that Necromancer Games and Frog God Games have always been known for.

Matt explained one of the reasons for the agreement as “"There is a large and active community of gamers playing various out-of-print editions of fantasy role-playing games. This alliance is going to be a big leap forward in terms of providing new resources and adventures to those of us who prefer an older-school type of game. It doesn't matter if you're an old-school grognard, a brand-new player, or an experienced gamer trying out this whole 'old-school' thing the internet keeps talking about. You're going to like this".

As a result of this merger, Frog God Games will be publishing the Complete version of the old school, ENnie Award-winning Swords & Wizardry™ fantasy role-playing game, which will be released in November.

“This merger is very much in line with my philosophy on game design, I play an old school game at my table, and have always written and produced books of that genre”, said Bill Webb, CEO of Frog God Games. Frog God Games and its predecessor, Necromancer Games both are known for producing d20 and Pathfinder adventures and sourcebooks with a distinctive “old school” feel. Necromancer, where Bill was partnered with Clark Peterson, produced over 50 books between 1999 and 2007, including Wilderlands of High Fantasy™ (under license to Judges Guild), Gary Gygax’s Necropolis™ and Rappan Athuk, Dungeon of Graves™.

Frog God Games is currently producing adventures to support the Pathfinder™ role-playing system. According to Bill, “This brings together the best of both worlds for me; our material is distinctly old school feel, regardless of the game system. By supporting both formats, I see an opportunity to provide high quality and exciting material to a larger audience. It’s a win for the gaming community.”

Frog God Games will now produce game supplements for both the Swords and Wizardry™ game and for the Pathfinder Game™ (published by Paizo Publishing of Bellevue WA).Swords & Wizardry builds and supports free-form role-playing games.That is to say, games where “light” rules create a framework instead of trying to cover every detail, every rule, and every situation. Over 30 books are currently in production for release in 2010 and 2011.

Matt explained , “There are a lot of gamers out there who are using out-of-print rules quite happily, or who have a vague feeling that they lost some of the game's spirit over the years and don't know how it happened. And then there's the thriving community of old-school gamers on the internet, who have been powering forward for years. I think this new development is going to take us to critical mass. With an old-school game like Swords & Wizardry breaking into the mainstream, with all the power of Frog God Games behind it, I believe that all these three gamer-communities are about to connect. This is when the thunder starts to roll.”.

The Swords & Wizardry game “clones” the original rules of the fantasy role-playing game that started it all back in 1974, when it was published by Gary Gygax and DaveArneson. Part of the reason for the merger was to expand distribution and enhance production quality by involvement of a larger company. Matt described this as, “a step that has been developing for years, as the old-school community has grown larger and larger, supported by more and more gamers, and, increasingly, even by publishers. And this is the point where it all reaches critical mass, I think. Frog God Games has the resources and the high profile to introduce this particular style of gaming back into the mainstream."

Here is the Frog God Games website. More information on the 'Swords & Wizardry Complete Rulebook' can be found here.

Exciting news! The cover of the 'Complete' rulebook (above) looks great. Here is what Matt Finch had to say about this version of S&W:

It includes the ranger from SR, the paladin, thief, druid, assassin - character classes from the supplements. Still no illusionist, though, which was disappointing, but the SR illusionist just couldn't legally be duplicated. The game still runs on the 0e rules, not 1e. It includes two optional alternative order of combat systems in addition to the standard one from the WhiteBox era: the one from the Holmes Blue Book and one that's based on the EW system. Those are the main differences, although there are little things like adding strength modifiers to the amount of weight that can be carried, ala Supplement 1, etc. Virtually all of the additions are in the player section, not the referee section. It's compatible with the Core Rules, and the Core Rules will stay in place as the archetypal "three class" system.

...

One especially nice thing is that our Druid class description is written by Dennis Sustare (the original author who invented the druid character class - think, "Chariot of").

It looks like both the Core Rules (hopefully with the excellent Pete Mullen cover unchanged) and Brave Halfling's 'White Box' rules will continue to be available.

I'll probably have more thoughts on this in a few days. Right now, I have to move...

Lovecraft’s Philosophy

Today is the birthday of H. P. Lovecraft (20 August 1890).

To commemorate this day, I thought that I would quote a passage from S. T. Joshi’s “Introduction” to one of the many collections of Lovecraft stories that he has edited (The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, Penguin Classics, 1999). The passage describes Lovecraft’s metaphysical views (“mechanistic materialism”), and their connection to his fiction.

Lovecraft’s fiction must be understood in the context of the philosophical thought that he evolved over a lifetime of study and observation. The core of that thought – derived from readings of such ancient Geek philosophers as Democritus and Epicurus as well as from absorption of the discoveries of nineteenth-century physics, chemistry, and biology – is mechanistic materialism. This is the belief that the universe is a “mechanism” operating according to fixed laws (although these may not all be known to human beings), and that there can be no immaterial substance such as a soul or spirit. Such a view necessarily necessitates agnosticism or actual atheism, and Lovecraft was not slow in expressing his adherence to the latter:

“I certainly can’t see any sensible position to assume aside from that of complete scepticism tempered by a leaning toward that which existing evidence makes most probable. All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don’t regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. The chances of theism’s truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pendant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.” (SL IV.57)

In the mid-1920s Lovecraft was momentarily disturbed by the implications of Einstein’s relativity theory and Planck’s quantum theory, both of which were hailed by many as spelling the downfall of mechanistic materialism; but his later adherence to the materialism of Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, and others allowed him to reconcile the findings of modern astrophysics with his fundamental views.

However, does not Lovecraft’s philosophy contradict his stated motives for writing weird fiction, as enunciated in his essay “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” (1933)?

“I choose weird stories because they suit my inclinations best – one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which for ever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis.” (MW 113)

It is important not to be led astray here. Lovecraft is not renouncing his materialism by seeking an imaginative escape from it; indeed, it is precisely because he believes that “time, space, and natural law” are uniform, and that the human mind cannot defeat or confound them, that he seeks an imaginative escape from them.

Lovecraft’s philosophical position virtually necessitated the central conception in his aesthetic of the weird – the notion of cosmicism, or the suggestion of the vast gulfs of space and time and the resultant inconsequence of the human species.

(S.T. Joshi, “Introduction,” pp. xiv-xv)

I am not surprised at all that Lovecraft was influenced by Epicurean philosophy. The Epicureans thought that the universe was composed ultimately only of ‘atoms’. The gods were made of atoms like everything else (thus essentially ‘super aliens’, and not ‘supernatural’ creatures at all). Neither willing nor able to prevent evil or suffering, the gods dwelt in the vast empty spaces between worlds. Sounds rather Lovecraftian, no?

Of course, there are some important differences between the Epicureans’ conception of the gods and Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones. The gods lived in a perfect state of complete tranquillity and happiness (ataraxiai) according to the Epicureans, a state that they thought that humans should strive to emulate. Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones and Outer Gods … do not (or rather, whatever state they exist in is completely incomprehensible to us). And striving to emulate them invariably would render one mad, not tranquil!

Review of The Majestic Wilderlands & LotFP: Weird FRPG

At The Escapist here. (Very positive overall.)