Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying
…BRP hits a precise point where it makes a clear and resonant kind of sense. It is grounded in the experience of being human and the underpinning logic of the imaginative worlds we create. It surges with brutal magic and the even more brutal harm people can inflict upon each other – and receive in turn. It finds ways to make risk easy to run yet pleasantly agonizing to choose. It has a lot to say about who the characters we play are, yet has the room to listen to our ideas as well. It is incredibly responsive to the ongoing events of play… It has a boldness about how it limits characters to a human mold, yet expects better of them. Anyone can be a hero, the pages of BRP whisper, they just have to act…
Behind the Lines: Implementation
Let’s suppose that you are running the Luther Arkwright setting for Mythras, the Design Mechanism’s masterful take on the D100 rules made famous by RuneQuest. Let’s further suppose that you have picked up the loose campaign framework for Arkwright, Parallel Lines. Let’s go even further out into speculative territory and imagine that you have also … Continue reading
Mythos Mythras: Tone and Tenor
There is a sense among gamers that for games played with Lovecraft and Company’s Cthulhu Mythos as the setting, that insanity, death, or both are a foregone conclusion. Play to Find Out takes on a slightly limited meaning, ‘play to find out how you meet your end.’ I think it is helpful to take a … Continue reading
Mythos Mythras: Methods of Madness
Mythras introduces rules for the mental effects of ‘unpleasantness’ and long-term abuse and vices in its Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels expansion which also broadens the social and technological base of the game beyond the bronze and iron ages into the industrial age and far, far beyond. This makes it a solid match for … Continue reading
Behind the Lines: Instigation
Not long after the initial scenario pitch requirements for Parallel Lines were given to us, I found myself latching on to a set which would put the Agents against a backdrop of what they might at first see as someone else’s war. I hoped that I could provide a framework for the GM to work … Continue reading
Casting Shadows 