Quote from: Akrasia;858601Revolution d100?  *sigh*

I still think that name is fucking bland... but whatever. Alephtar makes good stuff... though I'm not sure what to make of the description on the Kickstarter... seems a bit 'all things for all tastes' to me.

Fragmentation of the brand is something that gets bandied about a lot, but there's no evidence such a thing exists. D&D seems to be doing okay, how many versions of that are there in the wake of the OGL?

In the commercial world that sort of thing is called competition, it's supposed to lead to better products all 'round.

The brand fragmented as soon as we had RuneQuest and BRP, although arguably before then with each different incarnation of the BRP ruleset.

Further fragmenting has happened since, but I don;t think it's a particularly bad problem.

Chaosium have not produced that many BRP supplements really, most supplements have been produced by third parties. Similarly The Design Mechanism have not produced many supplements for RuneQuest.

Ideally, we would have many people publishing many supplements that can all be used across all the systems. Do I really care that a supplement was produced for RQ6, Legend, BRP, OpenQuest, Renaissance or Revolution? Not at all, I can use these supplements with any of the rules systems with a little but of on-the-fly work.

Why restrict ourselves to one company which has a fixed and rigid publishing schedule? Far better to have many companies publishing their own supplements at their own rate.

Quote from: soltakss;858615Ideally, we would have many people publishing many supplements that can all be used across all the systems. Do I really care that a supplement was produced for RQ6, Legend, BRP, OpenQuest, Renaissance or Revolution? Not at all, I can use these supplements with any of the rules systems with a little but of on-the-fly work.

Which is why I'd particularly like a proper breakdown of how Revolution differs from the others, because frankly I already have the other games on that list and I don't fancy putting my money down for a fifth minor riff on the Chaosium system unless it's offering me something the others don't already deliver.

Quote from: Warthur;858619Which is why I'd particularly like a proper breakdown of how Revolution differs from the others, because frankly I already have the other games on that list and I don't fancy putting my money down for a fifth minor riff on the Chaosium system unless it's offering me something the others don't already deliver.

Well, here is one tidbit he's dropped over on BRPCentral. I'm not quite sure what to make of it but it appears to be one of their 'innovations' for the game:

"Revolution has a clear procedure for determining the result of any interaction with the world (with interactions not being limited to one single die roll in most cases). There is no "the GM is the final arbiter of what a die roll means": The rules say who describes the outcome of an action, and how nasty the Narrator may be when it is his or her turn to adjudicate consequences. And yes, the Narrator still has the power to be nasty."

Quote from: Simlasa;858620Well, here is one tidbit he's dropped over on BRPCentral. I'm not quite sure what to make of it but it appears to be one of their 'innovations' for the game:

"Revolution has a clear procedure for determining the result of any interaction with the world (with interactions not being limited to one single die roll in most cases). There is no "the GM is the final arbiter of what a die roll means": The rules say who describes the outcome of an action, and how nasty the Narrator may be when it is his or her turn to adjudicate consequences. And yes, the Narrator still has the power to be nasty."

That could mean a lot of different things but on the sound if it I'm not sure it's a direction I'm keen on.

Quote from: Warthur;858623That could mean a lot of different things but on the sound if it I'm not sure it's a direction I'm keen on.

I can say the whole bit about Narrator (as opposed to GM) has turned me off of RD100--especially without more details. I know (or at least it appears) that a lot of people like that mechanic. I don't care for that mechanic (where the players make up the story themselves)--neither do my players. They like figuring out or playing through the story I (or whatever module writer) came up with. If we want to make up stories, we write books.

I'm also not sure of any benefit to interactions "requiring" more than one roll.

Quote from: Simlasa;858620"There is no "the GM is the final arbiter of what a die roll means": The rules say who describes the outcome of an action, and how nasty the Narrator may be when it is his or her turn to adjudicate consequences. And yes, the Narrator still has the power to be nasty."

Not appealing at all.

I wasn't too inclined to participate in Revolution d100's crowdfunding anyway, but this 'innovation' would turn me off from checking out a pdf down the road.

Quote from: Tod13;858625I can say the whole bit about Narrator (as opposed to GM) has turned me off of RD100--especially without more details. I know (or at least it appears) that a lot of people like that mechanic. I don't care for that mechanic (where the players make up the story themselves)--neither do my players. They like figuring out or playing through the story I (or whatever module writer) came up with. If we want to make up stories, we write books.

I'm also not sure of any benefit to interactions "requiring" more than one roll.

Same here; I'm more open to the occasional bit of storygaming but even so that's not what I go to this particular well for. To my mind, the RQ/BRP extended family's main virtues are that the game mechanics let you very quickly assess the odds of success at a task (which becomes trickier when multiple rolls come into play), the system gets out of the way when it isn't needed and it's quite adaptable to simulate a range of settings, making it quite good for the "come and explore my world" or "come and investigate this mystery I have posed for you" styles of play. These revisions sound like they undermine all those advantages, and if I wanted to run or play a game with lots of player control of the narrative I'd use a system built with those sensibilities from the ground up.

I backed it for now to see how Revolution d100 develops over the campaign.

I too would like more details. More meat, less sauce as it were. :-)

Quote from: Vile;858613In the commercial world that sort of thing is called competition, it's supposed to lead to better products all 'round.

Fragmentation isn't synonymous with competition. Competition typically results in better or cheaper products taking a larger share of the market. Fragmentation results in multiple minor brands each taking a fractional share of the previously unfragmented market. You may see some increase in market size overall or you may not.* Costs increase since the market share per minor brands is smaller so the economies of scale are less.

* For example, I haven't seen any data that shows that more people drink more soda now that there are fifty-gajillion flavors to choose from. The fragmentation is driven not by consumer request, but by attempts to create niche products with a higher profit margin and by defensive measures in response to other competitors creating niche products.

Quote from: soltakss;858615The brand fragmented as soon as we had RuneQuest and BRP, although arguably before then with each different incarnation of the BRP ruleset.

That's after not before. RQ preceded BRP. So the fragmentation occurred chronologicaly with the second edition or RQ or the first edition of BRP.

QuoteIdeally, we would have many people publishing many supplements that can all be used across all the systems. Do I really care that a supplement was produced for RQ6, Legend, BRP, OpenQuest, Renaissance or Revolution? Not at all, I can use these supplements with any of the rules systems with a little but of on-the-fly work.

I think it would take a bit more work for someone who is less familiar with the various iterations that are you. Personally, I’m familiar enough with the first three editions of RQ, the first couple of editions of BRP, the first couple of editions of Stormbringer, and the first five editions of CoC to switch between them pretty easily. The same is not true for the most recent editions of any of those games.

QuoteWhy restrict ourselves to one company which has a fixed and rigid publishing schedule? Far better to have many companies publishing their own supplements at their own rate.

In general, I agree with you that more supplements produced are better than fewer. However lack of quality and uneven quality might be reasons to prefer tighter control of products. Back in the day, the quality of a Chaosium product was well known. The more companies involved in producing products the more products we have to choose from, but the more caveat emptor one must include in the purchase.

Quote from: trechriron;858654I too would like more details.

Me too. Some elements sound interesting. Some really do not. I'd like a better sense of where this falls on a narrative scale between say, RQ3 and HeroQuest.

There are people that strongly prefer the RQ3 end, people that strongly prefer the HeroQuest end, and even a few folks who seem happy to run either system. But I am definitely not one of the either system is fine with me folks.

Wasn't BRP one of the original 'universal' systems?  I don't really get this talk about 'fragmentation'.

Not sure, but I would guess that "fragmentation" is here referring to the fact that Chaosium no longer controls many of the games they first designed.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;858683Wasn't BRP one of the original 'universal' systems?  I don't really get this talk about 'fragmentation'.

Well the Chaosium RPGs started with Runequest in 1978. BRP was a simplification of the rules from Runequest. Here's a short version of how this started out.

• 1978 RQ1
• 1980 RQ2 This version is so close to RQ1 that most people did not consider it significantly different. Thus not really a fragmentation of the RQ market.
• 1980 16-page BRP published as a simplification of the Runequest rules. This is first fragmentation of the Chaosium D100 type games. A number of other games, e.g. Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, Worlds of Wonder, Superworld, Ringworld, Elfquest, Hawkmoon, and Nephilim are published based on BRP but with various rules changes and additions to suit their settings and play styles. Thus increasing the number of flavors of D100 games available or in other words, further fragmenting the market. A good case could be made I think that these various flavors didn't just fragment the market, but actually grew the market. Certainly many people played CoC who never played or would have played RQ.

   

• 1981 Stormbringer (has a total of five editions, plus Elric!)
• 1981 Call of Cthulhu
• 1982 Worlds of Wonder,
• 1983 Superworld,

• 1984 RQ3 (Avalon Hill licensed version) This is enough of a change and it is not tied to the Glorantha setting so that it could be, and should be, argued that RQ3 fragments the Runequest market.
• More BRP based games i.e. more fragmentation

• 1984 Ringworld
• 1984 Elfquest
• 1986 Hawkmoon

Since that time, BRP has been significantly revised and expanded and Runequest went through some Mongoose versions e.g. RQI and RQII (Moongoose releases use roman numberals) and is due for another release as RQ6. So still more fragmentation.

So the RQ/BRP game market is somewhat fragmented between various games and versions of games. And now there is D100 Revolution. Which is another version. Hence another fragmentation.