[RQ-Rules] India

[Nick.Middleton at invensys.com]

>I wish Chaosium would offer up the BRP rules as "open source" like the
>d20 core rules, that would open up for a lot of additional materials for
>BRP based games and would likely help Chaosium in the long run, IMO.
>
>This is more or less what's the case in Europe with the BaSIC derivative
>of BRP.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of the last quarter century of RPG history is
the fact that Chaosium chose to keep such a tight leash on the BRP system.
Whilst keeping core IP (such as Elric/Stormbringer etc and Call of Cthulhu)
largely in house (although there is Darcsyde's excellent Corum and over the
years various non-Chaosium Cthulhu, PP not the least!) has always made a
certain amount of commercial sense, why they have not sorted out some easy
licensing mechanism to encourage the use of the BRP system I don't know. In
particular, a BRP System trademark license a la the d20 STL, that allowed
free access to the BRP rules provided ones book name checked a core
Chaosium BRP game (Elric or CoC) and otherwise ddin't use anyone else's IP
without permission has been a blindingly obvious move ever since the whole
OGL/d20 thing started. It would probably serve Chaosium better as a small
company - it's easier to police what they do own and (assuming their
margins are typically slender) any boost will be significant...

I'd love to hear an official Chaosium statement re licensing the BRP
systemas used in Stormbringer / CoC actually.

As for India/ Alternate Earth I love the suggestion but I would suggest a)
a Yahoo group (somewhere convenient for file storage etc) b) don't limit it
solely to India - there are many cultures and times to examine here b) as
an initially fan-based project for our own benefit I doubt we are likely to
be pursued for copyright infringement (if we do something damaging to some
ones rights or try to make money it's a different matter, but initially I
would suspect we'd fall in the "technically illegal but tolerated" zone.

Cheers,

Nick Middleton