F o r g o t t e n F u t u r e s ---------------------------------- Rules changes, errata, questions, survey responses, etc. By Marcus L Rowland Copyright 1994 Rules Changes ------------- The rules are mostly those of Forgotten Futures I (FF1), with trivial modifications to reflect the nature of the world portrayed in the Astronef stories, minor amendments and error corrections, and some more useful sources. There is one important change: 21 points are available for skills and characteristics; experience has shown that 25 points can be a little too generous. Don't make players revise existing characters if you adopt this change. One skill has been added; Morse Code (base value: M) is knowledge of Morse and basic telegraphic techniques, including maintenance and adjustment of equipment. If you have already printed out the rules from the first collection there is no need to print the new version, but you may want copies of the brief version, SUMMARY.TXT Forgotten Futures I Errata -------------------------- Stupid Mistakes: FFI mistakenly referred to William Hope Hodgson's psychic detective as "Karnacki"; the name should be "Carnacki". The wholesale prices for the toy depicted in 13_FLICK.GIF should read 1 @ 2s 11d 5 @ 12s 6d 10 @ #1 2s 6d (where # replaces the UK pound currency sign) This means that you would pay less per toy for several toys, not more. Omissions: Section 7.2 of the worldbook includes a passage describing use of the Medium skill to determine the details of a haunting. Somehow it lost the next paragraph: Use of skill rolls is optional; to preserve the eerie atmosphere of a haunting it may be preferable to omit them completely and concentrate on describing the physical and mental sensations experienced by the medium. In this case a sensation of cold, misery, a woman sobbing, and so forth. Section 8.0 of the worldbook mentions that the Coca Cola sold in this world is made with real coca (cocaine) leaves; it gives a price for mate (Argentine herbal "tea") but fails to mention that it is also made from coca leaves. I am reliably informed that the "filk" of McDonough's Song has been recorded by Leslie Fish; no further details are currently available. Since writing the worldbook I have learned that Xylonite (mentioned in the advertisements accompanying With The Night Mail) was a trade name for cellulose sheet. Presumably this, like some other materials mentioned in the worldbook, has been replaced by a stronger synthetic of the same name in the 21st century. Finally, the skill Morse Code, described above, should replace the specialised skill International if you want to use characters developed for the A.B.C. world in any other setting. Commonly Asked Questions ------------------------ Q: Can I write a Forgotten Futures adventure or worldbook? A: Yes, provided you don't charge for it, but please read the copyright terms in README.TOO and take the following steps: 1: Let me know what you are doing - I'll try to find out if there are legal problems, or conflicts with work other people are doing. Copyright is VERY complicated, and EC laws are about to change and extend the copyright period to 70 years. Translations add more difficulties, since the translation may be covered long after copyright in the original work has lapsed. 2: Let me see your work before it goes out onto the net etc.; I'll tell you if I have any problems with it. For example, I will object to anything which libels anyone, rips off another RPG, scenario, book, TV series, etc., or is unreadably bad. 3: Allow me to include a couple of paragraphs which explain how to obtain the game, and make it clear that I am not responsible for your work. If you are unable to comply with these conditions please DO NOT release Forgotten Futures material. Write something generic, or develop your own system. Q: Can I write a translation? A: Yes, but you can't charge for it, and I won't be able to support it. See README.TOO Q: Why can't I charge for my work in the above cases. A: By allowing you to charge, I would be relinquishing a portion of my copyright in this system. This could cause serious legal problems if I wanted to sell or licence rights to the game. Q: Will there be magic rules? Superheroes? A: Some of the collections will be set in worlds in which psychic phenomena occur, and there will be some very simple magic rules in the collection based on the Carnacki stories; if you want to use magic before that appears, I recommend basing the ability on SOUL/2 and insisting that magicians spend points for SOUL 6 or 7. SOUL should also be used to resist the effects of magic. Any superhero stories that are even remotely useful for RPG purposes are covered by copyright, either of the original story or subsequent material such as comics or films. For example, the first Superman story appeared nearly sixty years ago, but if DC stopped publishing Superman tomorrow the copyright would continue until at least 2064! If you know of an exception, please tell me about it. Q: Why isn't this collection in hypertext format? A: Because hypertext documents are almost always huge, usually require a lot of extra software, and are rarely usable on more than one type of system. Q: Why such big text files? A: The size used is the best compromise between assembling all the text as one large document, and dividing it into a lot of small chunks which don't necessarily make sense on their own. Each of the files is a complete document, and is part of the larger "document" that is the complete collection. Think of it as a book with several sections and illustrations. Some word processors (mostly very old types which are limited to 64k files or to the size of memory) will run into problems, but most programs read in chunks of text from disk as needed and have no difficulty coping with these files. Almost all text viewers work this way. Q: Why won't Windows Draw load the character record sheet in Forgotten Futures I? A: There are several different programs called Draw or Windows Draw. I used Micrografx Draw, part of Micrografx Works. Other programs may be able to convert these files to their own formats; look for an "import file" or "translate file" menu. This program won't be used for future collections; it's extremely good, but has caused a few problems. Survey Results -------------- The registration form in FF1 asked a few questions about your preferences and use of the game and worldbook. Here's a brief non-statistical breakdown of the answers; complete accuracy is NOT guaranteed. Naturally all personal details remain confidential. Computer System Not part of the survey, but still interesting. About 95% PC-compatible machines, almost all of them with 1.44 mb floppy drives. Most of the rest were Atari ST, with a couple of Amiga owners. Surprisingly, there were no registrations from Unix, Mac, or Acorn Archimedes users. These statistics probably mean that most BBS's etc. have this listed as a PC-only item, if they know that it exists at all. PLEASE help spread the word more widely. Where did you obtain the collection? About a quarter of registered users got it directly from the author, usually at a games convention or as a result of previously registering World Generator, or were play-testers and liked it enough to register. Roughly half of the rest saw a brief review of the game in Role Player Independent, and ordered it sight-unseen, the remainder seem to have obtained it from friends, through shareware channels, or found it on Nimbus's AneCDote CD-Rom volume 1 no 4. A very large majority of registered users are based in Britain and Europe. One obvious conclusion is that the game needs a LOT more publicity; if it was getting the attention given to more commercial games, and was reviewed more widely, it might be doing much better. I've sent review copies to every games magazine I know, but only one has even mentioned it in Britain, none in America. I'm not spending money on advertising. Draw your own conclusions, and PLEASE tell people about the game. Rules complexity Most people thought I had things about right, a small minority thought they were much too simple; most of this minority used the worldbook as a background for other systems. See Other Games Played, below. Worldbook complexity Again, most people thought I had things about right. Two users run games based on backgrounds suggested in the rulebook, one uses the rules to run adventures published for another RPG. Graphics Preferences With the exception of a small minority who requested viewers, everyone was equipped to use .GIF files. By far the most common request was for monochrome GIF files saved as such. Due to the use of scanned images it was impossible to avoid grey scale graphics this time (the only alternative would have been extremely large mono files, scanned at a resolution high enough to take in every line of a steel engraving). I'll try to use true monochrome in future. GIF will be used, because files are small and it is compatible with a wide range of machines. Very few people wanted anything else, but there were a couple of votes each for larger files (eg 800 x 600), PCX mono, and JPEG. Other Games Played No real surprises here; the overwhelming winners were Call of Cthulhu and Space 1889, both of which appeal to similar interests. There were also a few GURPS and Hero System players, who mostly preferred to use their own rules. Almost everyone who was using the worldbook as source material for another game preferred one of these four systems. There were one to three users each for AD&D, Albedo, Amazing Engine, Bushido, Cyberpunk, Earthdawn, Ghostbusters, Harn World, Lost Souls, Marvel Super Heroes, Midgard, Paranoia, Pendragon, Primal Order, Rolemaster/Middle Earth, Runequest, Shadow World, Shadowrun, Shatterzone, Space Master, Star Wars, Storyteller (Mage & Vampire), Time Lord, Toon, and Traveller, and one for a German game whose name I couldn't decipher. One of the nine games mentioned in the original survey received no votes at all; see if you can guess which it was before checking back! Sources for future collections By far the most common requests were for H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Neither is likely. Due to my lack of linguistic ability, I have to work with English- language sources. Most of the older Verne translations are awful and very long-winded; the readable ones are usually covered by copyright (remember, the translator has rights in a translated work). All of Wells' work is covered by copyright; while everyone thinks of him as a 19th century author, he actually died in 1946, and (with the legal changes mentioned above) will not go out of EC copyright until 2016. I forgot this when I was using Wells backgrounds to illustrate some of the rules. Two or three replies suggested Frankenstein; an interesting idea, but not really ideal as a background for a role playing game. Dracula also got some votes, but there are already several horror RPGs, including the excellent 'Vampire: The Masquerade' (White Wolf, also published with GURPS rules by Steve Jackson games) and a Dracula RPG (Leading Edge) based on Coppola's film. Most of the remaining ideas were impractical, usually for copyright reasons. If you register or re-register, please take the trouble to fill in the survey form again; some of the questions are different. Please TYPE your answers into a copy of REGISTER.TXT if possible!