Recent content by J. L. Brown

I could define Traveller as 'Published by Marc Miller and GDW', but that seems unhelpful. I will point out that, despite wildly different die-rolling conventions, CT, MT, TNE, and T4 were all skill-centered -- none used class & level. But the folks at GDW knew about 'Chainmail' and BECMI; and...

You are quite welcome, but I cannot take credit -- those ideas are mostly things I have encountered in various 'after action' discussions.

It sounds a bit like you are running something quite close (and probably superior) to 'Flatlined'. I would love to hear all about it, if you would care to post it!

And you keep coming back to 'Here is a platform which is completely designed around d20 as a measure for how popular a non-d20 game is'. I have never contested that D&D 5e is the most popular TTRPG in the USA, and probably the English-speaking world. I do contest the 'D&D is the vast majority...

Your Google-fu may be misleading you. 'Widely estimated to be over 50%' is hardly definitive; and sales dollars is potentially deeply flawed. A keeper for CoC can get by with just the core rulebook, and have a full player group. D&D tries to sell a Players Handbook to each player -- plus a...

Like I said, I haven't checked it. But CoC is apparently crazy popular in Japan; but all the sales go to the licensee who did the translation work. German-language TTRPG games seem to be lead by 'Dark Eye' and 'Vassen', in Spain a big part of the market is 'Aquelarre'. In English...

I haven't checked this claim, so maybe it is true -- but I thought the most popular RPG around the world was 'Call of Cthulhu' by Chaosium. They already have a non-CoC version of their ruleset called 'Basic Role Playing'. Having no classes or levels, and being entirely skill-based, it seems...

The official stance at Mongoose seems to be that, like the 'rebellion era', 'virus' is one of several possible futures -- and that they have zero interest in advancing the timeline. I have not flipped through Act Three yet, but I do not expect any hints of the Empress Wave -- we'll see. That...

Sure, it is impossible to know the future. So far, Mongoose has claimed that the future timeline (if it even happens) of MgT 2e is NOT going to be bound by prior material. But -- Mongoose has also hinted that the 'rebellion era' is certainly possible; the first Act of Singularity is dedicated...

Please be aware that Pirates of Drinax is not perfectly written; there are holes and such which you will need to fill. Prep takes more work than just a single read-through; and you might want to adjust several things -- the deadliness (and/or sneakiness) of the Harrier, when the Players first...

Which is especially weird, because Burst Lasers (JTAS #1) are printed earlier than laser Barbettes and Bays (JTAS #7); so the authors who wrote the rules for laser Barbettes and Bays should certainly have been aware of them. And, once again, no known source about Burst Lasers specifies whether...

Exactly like a bureaucracy, then. Or any group of humans; above a certain number of people a group forms who exist solely to 'defend' the group. A phenomena called 'diffusion of responsibility' also settles in.

And Sabmiqys, at TL-17 in Antares 2117. It is red-zoned, possibly (pure speculation here) because the original native organic populations all died out and left their (still thriving) system in the care of their true-conscious Artificial Intelligences. It would make quite an interesting stop...

This is firmly in 'My House Rules' territory, but I run Deconstruction Chambers exactly like Fabrication Chambers -- Basic, Enhanced, Advanced, etc. A Deconstruction Chamber produces blueprints and materials of (permitted) items up to it's own TL minus two (external Deconstruction Chambers work...

Yup, the data is not free. Probably the Emperor includes data on low-level stuff in licenses for more desirable high-end products and processes. Similarly, a license can include (for a fee) the ability to sub-license; so Mega-Corps just non-exclusively sub-license a bunch of the stuff they do...