Q&A with the new BRP Author

[Lord Twig]

Originally Posted by Jason Durall

* I've suggested before that the spirit, divine, and ritual magic from RQ; some de-Lovecraftized Call of Cthulhu magic; the Ki powers from Land of Ninja; more info on demon summoning from Stormbringer (4th edition); and some of the expanded magic from The Bronze Grimiore and The Unknown East would make a kick-ass BRP Magic.

I notice you didn't include RQ's sorcery rules in there. Personally I love the flexibility that they had, though there were a few fixes needed. Why would you not include those? To much magic already? To similar to other system? Some other reason?

[Jason Durall]

Originally Posted by Lord Twig

To much magic already? To similar to other system? Some other reason?

Adding more Elric/SB sorcery and then another system called "Sorcery" would be too confusing, at least in my opinion.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Jason Durall

Adding more Elric/SB sorcery and then another system called "Sorcery" would be too confusing, at least in my opinion.

RQ Sorcery is also pretty similar to a more complex version of MagicWorld magic (which was also called "sorcery" in the actual book...)

[NickMiddleton]

Originally Posted by Jason Durall

Adding more Elric/SB sorcery and then another system called "Sorcery" would be too confusing, at least in my opinion.

Just rename it? After all, the Elric! derived system only gets called "Sorcery" to distinguish it from "Magic" (have I mentioned that should have been "Wizardry"? ), so the RQIII Sorcery could become "Thaumaturgy" perhaps...

I wonder if Chaosium still have the rights to John Snead's Liber ka magic system for Nephilim?

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

[Jason Durall]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

RQ Sorcery is also pretty similar to a more complex version of MagicWorld magic (which was also called "sorcery" in the actual book...)

I must confess to wanting to keep Magic World magic simple and basic, leaving the door open for someone else to come along later and make a more advanced version called "Wizardry".

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

Just rename it? After all, the Elric! derived system only gets called "Sorcery" to distinguish it from "Magic" (have I mentioned that should have been "Wizardry"? ), so the RQIII Sorcery could become "Thaumaturgy" perhaps...

Good ideas all...

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

I wonder if Chaosium still have the rights to John Snead's Liber ka magic system for Nephilim?

I believe they do. As it isn't translated from any of the French material, I would be surprised if they don't own it.

There's probably ample material for two or three different BRP magic system books.

As I've noted upthread, the temptation to write a BRP Magic book is strong, but after a year of playtest, writing and/or editing 276,000 words, and over three years of development on a generic system, I want to get back to content, which I enjoy most.

[TRose]

For my 2 cents on which magic system for BRP. Although I plan on using The spirit /divine spells from Runequest and Sandy Petersen's sorcery system , I will look at other systems as they come out. I dont mind different sorcery systems as I have always felt there should be different schools of sorcery out there. I Just want to see a sorcery system that is balanced so the non magic specialist dont wind up as a cheering gallery for the finger waggers . If the System is such that a experienced Mage type can easy defeat 3 experienced non mage types and not work up a sweat I probably wont like it.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Trifletraxor

I'm quite a bit worried with the power here. 8d6 points of damage for 8 mp? What is a warrior supposed to do with that? It will fry everything...

SGL.

The scary thing was that in MW wizards got a staff that acted as a personal POW stroing device. I think it cost you 1 POW and got POW storage equal to the mage's POW, and regenerated POW, too.

WHen I ran MW mages were good for one or two high POW, nasty spells, before being brought down to reality.

Not quite as unbalanced as SB1 Sorcery, but much better on the fly.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

The scary thing was that in MW wizards got a staff that acted as a personal POW stroing device. I think it cost you 1 POW and got POW storage equal to the mage's POW, and regenerated POW, too.

WHen I ran MW mages were good for one or two high POW, nasty spells, before being brought down to reality.

Not quite as unbalanced as SB1 Sorcery, but much better on the fly.

Well, if you had a mage with a 12 Power (not exactly world-shakingly hard to do or end up with) then you could easily toss 5 4d6 attacks out, that by strict reading of the rules auto-hit if you made the casting check. Two of those would take down most human targets pretty reliably, maybe one in many cases.

[Jason Durall]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Well, if you had a mage with a 12 Power (not exactly world-shakingly hard to do or end up with) then you could easily toss 5 4d6 attacks out, that by strict reading of the rules auto-hit if you made the casting check. Two of those would take down most human targets pretty reliably, maybe one in many cases.

As I noted before, Blast (as well as the other Magic World damage spells) got nerfed. Still pretty deadly, but no longer guaranteed one-shot kills like before.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Jason Durall

As I noted before, Blast (as well as the other Magic World damage spells) got nerfed. Still pretty deadly, but no longer guaranteed one-shot kills like before.

In what way? is it a 2-3 POW per d6, or an increasing scale (like 1 POW=1d2, 2=1d4, 3=1d6, 4=1d8, 5=1d10, 6=1d10+1d2, etc.)?

It is somewhat ironic that Chaosium threw out all the magic systems from RQ and went with the ones from SB and MW. Both had the problem of making those with magic completely superior to those without. SB did get toned down over the years, so demon weapon were no longer had a half dozen d6 damage bonus, but MW was a quick and dirty magic system. I hope it got nerfed a LOT.