Did Some Gaming

I got a chance to play Call of Cthulhu over this last holiday weekend with family and friends. Man… I can’t even remember that last time I had a chance to play… Overdroid was in town and so he had the Gamemaster responsibilities. This one-off session was alotta’ fun especially because we had some newbies. I own most of the Lovecraft County books that Chaosium has put out, so Overdroid opted for an adventure out of Secrets of Los Angeles. I went temporarily insane but survived so it was all-good.

My Wife is so cool, because she looked after our son while the rest of played...


-Swinebread

I got it finally!

The copy I ordered through my local comics shop never showed up. So, I called a game-store from across town and luckily they still had a copy of the long awaited Basic Roleplaying System.

I love the BRP rules set as it is very intuitive and easy to learn. I'm still quite miffed that it took almost two decades for Chaosiun to put this project together but irregardless, all the various games from Call of Cthulhu and Runequest to Pendaragon and Stormbringer have finally been brought together and reconciled in one great game at last. Whatever genre you want, it's now here using the best engine around.

In a nice bit of simpatico Kurt Wiegel of Game Geeks just reviewed Basic Roleplaying.



Now with all the oodles of time I have after caring for Swinebread jr. I can game a lot!

....oh wait....


-Swinebread


P.S. this is my 300th post for the year... whoa!

New Adventures in Roleplaying

Well, the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons is out and the majority of reviews have been very positive. Wired Magazine’s take is quite good, here’ s a section:

In D&D 4th Edition, dungeon masters, or DMs, are freed from a good deal of the bookkeeping associated with the hobby in previous editions of the game, as the designers have streamlined the process for preparing adventures. Boxes of statistical information and extensive charts were once the norm, but now DMs can almost throw together an adventure on the fly. This philosophy has also lead to some radical changes in monster design. Just as players now have a fun trick or two up their sleeves, monsters now wield fantastic abilities that are wholly unique.

The possibilities these mechanical changes unlock are exciting in and of themselves. Nerds love to debate game mechanics, but what all this ultimately means for the player and the DM is more time focusing on more important things.

Combat moves so fluidly now, and the DM has so much less prep time to worry about, that the art of role-playing itself finally moves into the foreground of Dungeons & Dragons. Telling a compelling story, and having a ton of fun doing it, is ultimately the reason players sit down to game in the first place. What D&D 4th Edition represents is the chance to have fun with your friends without a ton of hassle, to immerse yourself in a fantasy world without working at it.

In fact, many of the mechanics are so easy to use that they remind players of what it feels like to play a massively multiplayer game. Wizards' Slavicsek has absolutely no problem with those comparisons, as all good games build on what has come before.

It seems that D&D has finally, finally shed most of its clunky rules but for me, it comes too late. The lawyering, number crunching, and game preparation were way out of hand. I've always stressed that Roleplaying games should just be that, about roleplaying and sadly the D&D folks never quite understood this until now. Most people don’t enjoy nor have the time to endlessly scourer the rules just to do the most basic tasks. Versatility and ease of story creation is the way to go and so it sounds like 4th edition would now finally provid that. It might actually attract new, non-geeky types… well probably not, but Wizards of the Coast can dream can’t they? It seems like 4th edition would be right up my alley.

The problem is I’m way too invested in 3.5 to upgrade. I bought tons of D&D and D20 books, looking for ideas and hoping the next volume would be the one to unlock the secret of easy and fun gameplay. Now I’ve got no one to blame but myself, but why would I do this? Well, I was sublimating my desire for a universal roleplaying game into the D20 system. It was the most prevalent RPG and I thought that it would provide more opportunities to actually sit down with somebody and game. I was wrong about that.

What I really wanted was a universal gamming system from Chaosium. I've always loved how their mechanics work in a simple but appropriate manner for their various games like Call of Cthulhu, and Stormbringer. Their core mechanic has a name, it’s called Basic Roleplaying or BRP but Chaosium hadn’t really pushed it as a universal gamming platform before except for a halfhearted attempt with Worlds of Wonder. So in my desire to fill the void, that Chaosium seemed unwilling to satisfy, I self medicated with 3.5 and D20.

It’s ironic that D&D 4th edition is being released at about the same time as Chaosium’s new Basic Roleplaying game. Finally, I’m getting the game I really want, and it’s not from Wizards of the Coast. Of course, Chaosium should have done this years ago but at least it’s happening at a time when I’m feeling particularly left out of the next big jump in RPG industry.

Basic Roleplaying the Chaosium System is rolling out to a store near you as I type this. But if you’re more of a PDF type of person, downloads are now available for purchase on the website. Dungeons & Dragons and Chaosuim have changed with the times even if both were very late to do so.

See basicroleplaying.net and basicroleplaying.com for info on BRP outside of Chaosium’s website.

-Swinbread

Randomness

An interesting and slightly clueless (did this guy read any comics made before the 1990s?) article titled "how superhero movies made comic books cooler if not better on io9 caught my attention. Most of these changes I don't consider making comics any better but yes maybe cooler for a little while at least.

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engaging Watchmen costume design video



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Chaosium is running a new pole on their webpage's sidebar called: Which Genre would you most like to see as a Chaosium BRP setting? (See here) The choices are Fantasy, Historical Horror, Post Apocalypse, Pulp, & Science Fiction. Of course I chose Post Apocalypse. head over and make your vote count.


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Black Cat on Spectacular Spiderman this Saturday (may 17th) at 10AM on The CW. I've always liked her, so I'm glad she's getting her TV due. Black Cat takes me back to a time when I first read comics and reminds me of what I used to enjoy about the Spiderman stories. Oh and the Black costume symbiote shows up as well. What, No Secret Wars?


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Ron Perlman talks Hellboy

In all of Guillermo’s movies, the monsters are the ones who are the most human and the humans are the ones who are the most monstrous. He’s been playing in that world ever since he made his first film and that’s a theme that fascinates him for all the right reasons. And even if you don’t see it necessarily on the surface of the entertainment he is giving you, it’s there and this is why you are so stirred when watching his films for reasons that you can’t even really articulate. There’s so much there that he’s grappling with.

See full article here


-Swinebread

The Chaosium d100 system is at the Printer

cover art

That's right folks, the BASIC ROLEPLAYING SYSTEM is finally going to be a reality. I've been waiting for real multi-genre game from Chaosium for years. They have finally wised up and are providing a game system that's user friendly, like Call of Cthulhu, and is easy to apply to any type of adventure you want to run from sci-fi to fantasy. I've got a ton of ideas that BRP would be perfect for and now I’ll get to make them a reality.

The truth is I love roleplaying, but I hate rules. Rules get in the way of having a good gamming experience, imo, mostly because they are too complicated and so I spend most of my time with my nose buried in the rulebooks rather than focused on the players. The weird need by most game designers to create RPGs with overly complicated rules sets which must be memorized has always astonished me. I think this is the main reason most folks aren’t interested in playing RPGs. If you like legalistic stuff that doesn’t represent any kind of reality then by all means keep playing that way but I certainly don’t have the time relearn an overly complicated rules set, like D&D, every time I want to add something to an adventure or a new addition comes out. Have you looked at the Stat blocks for creatures nowadays? I don't understand half of that crap. Plus, all the rules about levels, experience points and etc, etc just get in the way actually rolepaying, being the character and that’s what I find fun. Roleplaying, for me, is about being in the moment and BASIC ROLEPLAYING will allow that now that it’s not tied to a specific genre. Can you tell I’ve been waiting for this?

This book represents a first for BASIC ROLEPLAYING—a system complete in one book, without a defined setting. Previously, BASIC ROLEPLAYING has been an integral part of standalone games, usually with rich and deep world settings. Due to differences in these settings, BASIC ROLEPLAYING has had many different incarnations. Variant and sometimes contradictory rules have emerged between versions, to better support one particular setting over another.

Chaosium’s BASIC ROLEPLAYING system reconciles these different flavors of the system and brings many variant rules together into the covers of one book, something that has never been done before. Some of these rules are provided as optional extensions, some as alternate systems, and others have been integrated into the core system. By design this work is not a reinvention of Basic Roleplaying or a significant evolution of the system, but instead a collected and complete version, without setting, provided as a guide to players and gamemasters everywhere and compatible with most Basic Roleplaying games. It also allows the gamemaster the ability to create his or her own game world (or worlds), to adapt others from fiction, films, or even translate settings from other roleplaying games into Basic Roleplaying.

Take peak at the character sheet here.


-Swinebread

Basic Roleplaying Almost Here... Finally

This December we should see the publication of Basic Roleplaying (BRP). It’s a universal RPG system that uses the same rules set as the original Runequest, Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu games. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Chaosium really has the best rules system but they haven’t capitalized on it by publishing a generic set of rules until now. Finally, all those worlds I’ve dreamed of will much easier to bring to life. The only caveat: will they get it out in time…? Meeting public deadlines is not something they’re famous for.

From Chaosium’s web site here:

This book represents a first for BASIC ROLEPLAYING—a system complete in one book, without a defined setting. Previously, BASIC ROLEPLAYING has been an integral part of standalone games, usually with rich and deep world settings. Due to differences in these settings, BASIC ROLEPLAYING has had many different incarnations. Variant and sometimes contradictory rules have emerged between versions, to better support one particular setting over another. 



Chaosium’s BASIC ROLEPLAYING system reconciles these different flavors of the system and brings many variant rules together into the covers of one book, something that has never been done before. Some of these rules are provided as optional extensions, some as alternate systems, and others have been integrated into the core system. By design this work is not a reinvention of Basic Roleplaying or a significant evolution of the system, but instead a collected and complete version, without setting, provided as a guide to players and gamemasters everywhere and compatible with most Basic Roleplaying games. It also allows the gamemaster the ability to create his or her own game world (or worlds), to adapt others from fiction, films, or even translate settings from other roleplaying games into Basic Roleplaying.

Additionally, Chaosium has announced their first officially licensed setting, Deadword. See here

The DEADWORLD RPG is based upon Gary Reed's DEADWORLD comic, previously published by Caliber Comics and Image Comics, and soon to be released through Desperado Publishing. One of the forerunners of the zombie comic, DEADWORLD was an early work of artist Vincent Locke who went on to work on DC/Vertigo's SANDMAN and A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, recently made into a major motion picture.
Seraphim Guard plans to release the DEADWORLD RPG in fall 2008, at the Wizard World Chicago comic convention.

Obviously that’s a ways off but it looks promising…

I really want this RPG, Chaosium don’t let me down!

-Swinebread

Random Stuff From Previews

I just thought I'd list a few things from September’s Previews that ticked me for some reason or another. Items to arrive in November.


Nurse Ogawa! Now your Star Trek: The Next Generation action figure set will be complete. Oh, and I guess they’re releasing an action figure for some character called Ensign Ro too. Page 444.

The Complete Terry and the Pirates Volume 2. This is one book series I really wish I could pick up but at 50 bucks a pop... I always wanted to read this classic strip due to the great art by Milton Caniff. Lots of strong Female characters, including the Dragon Lady. Page 314.


The Smurfs are coming to DVD! Season one is only $44.98. That’s 26 Smurftasitc episodes for chump change. Page 537.


Doctor Who’s Tardis, how cool is that? Pretty cool. If you’ve got the action figures you have to get the Tardis right? Page 488.


The Cthulhu Rainy-Day Activity Book. Mazes, drawing, coloring and Mad Libs (to name a few items) that will occupy your time and drive you totally crazy. Page 518.

It’s also worth noting that Chaosium is releasing their D100 RPG rulebook. Finally, a generic set of rules for any type of play using the Basic Roleplaying System. I’m looking foreword to this one. Page 518.

-Swinebread

Elric to Mongoose

There’s an unfulfilled yearning I’ve had for a long time. It was the hope that Chaosium (the guys that publish the Call of Cthulhu RPG) would really support their Michael Moorcock licensed game Stormbringer. It was the first non-TSR game I ever played that I honestly enjoyed and it was also my first introduction to Elric, the multiverse and the Eternal Champion. Well, that’s not entirely true as I had read the Oswald Bastable stories years before but at that time I hadn’t realized their connections to Moorcock’s other works. After playing the Stormbringer RPG, I immediately went out and scooped up and read all the Elric novels. This of course led me to Hawkmoon and Corum as well as the rest of the Eternal Champion titles. The battle between Law and Chaos both in the books and in the game was a fantastic backdrop for the adventures. Also the dimensional and time travel aspects fired me up as I greatly enjoy this type of fantasy.

Eventually, I bought all the Stormbinger game materials I could get my hands on, many from used bookstores. The product line went through many aborted restarts that included a name change to Elric for a while and even a poorly adapted version for D20. Many promised supplements never came out as the line was always thrown on the back burner in deference to Call of Cthulhu. We finally did see a Corum supplement and Chaosium finally put out some of their unpublished but promised books out as monographs (cheap photocopy tape bound books) but the fan base for their Moorcock inspired works seemed greatly reduced as was the enthusiasm for game itself.


Recently, I discovered that Mongoose Publishing acquired the RPG rights to the whole Eternal Champion line including Elric from Chaosium. See the link here. In the end it’s probably a good thing because Chaosium really wasn’t doing a whole lot with it (the biggest missed opportunity of the RPG world in my opinion), plus they had terribly damaged their relationship with Michael Moorcock. Still, it is a little sad as I thought we just might be on the verge of a Basic Role-Playing System Renaissance, Basic Role-Playing being Chaosium’s house system. Elric and Hawkmoon, which are coming out very soon, will be using Mongoose’s new Runequest rules (MRQ) to make them compatible with other game products they publish. This is good as the original Runequest formed the foundation for Basic Role-Playing (BRP) and Stormbringer, although the new Mongoose Runequest rules has been tweaked to make it appeal more to D20 fans.

I’m a little leery on dumping money on these new game products as I have spent a ton of cash on Mongoose’s Conan line only to see it revamped with an updated second addition. This is very much like how many fans were stuck when Wizards of the Coast decided to go from 3 to 3.5 on D&D. But if the past is any kind of prolog, Mongoose Publishing will be putting out a bunch of supplements for the Eternal Champion line, something Chaosium was unwilling or unable to do.

To sum it up, I guess it feels like I was in a relationship where I was never getting what I needed or wanted but still I stayed. Now, that bad relationship is over and I wonder if I should start a new one. I think I'll wait and see. I waited so long for Chaosium to step up to the plate, I guess I can wait a little longer to see if Mongoose’s game is any good before I buy.

-Swinebread