Gerall’s Blog

Succinctly put, the Grognard’s First Lesson is: “Once I know the system, you cannot take it away from me.”

Maths, no matter how complex, are not subject to copyright. Ergo, gaming systems (which are, at their core, extended maths which ride random number generators) cannot be placed under a copyright. This has been the way of things for a long while.

This is also why Wizards of the Coast placed all their d20 rules into a handy System Reference Document (hereafter referred to as an ‘SRD’).  They knew people were going to use their rules to settle other worlds than theirs, and they did us the courtesy of providing the basic rules in a handy, easy to pirate download format.

Settings are another matter entirely! [Read more →]

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Blame the guys at Yog-Sothoth.com. If they hadn’t done a sterling review of CthulhuTech, I wouldn’t own it now. Ergo, my bank account is now a little lighter and my ideas for Cthulhu Mythos gaming are broader. The interview with the creators they did was quite nice, and I learned a lot about the motivations of producing a non-BRP implementation of a Mythos-inspired setting.

However, it was Neil’s description of the history and placement of the current “setting” within its own fatally doomed milieu that drew me to make the purchase. It’s the end of the world, folks! And it’s not going to be a pleasant slide into the heat-death of the planet, a jaunty collision with an asteroid the size of Montana, nor even a soothing bout of hyper-infectious viroid packing enough toxic DNA under its hood to wipe out all carbon-based life down to the geothermal vents of the Mariana Trench… [Read more →]

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