Q: What is the theme of NUNA?
A: The theme of most other adventure RPGs is conquest. Fight the baddies, take their stuff.
I ain’t knocking that! It has worked for countless other games and arguably brought us this great hobby.
But NUNA is different.
The watchwords of NUNA are COOPERATION and COMMUNITY.
There are still baddies to fight. Fenris wolves, borged bears, Qallupilluks, land leviathans, etc etc. Still useful gear to pick up. But you can only survive these encounters by cooperating with your diverse group and with support from your community. If you read the histories of Labrador, it is all stories of people helping people, mixing and mingling and strengthening one another.
Then there are the communities, that come together in time of need, or else need saving .
Q: How will the rules compare to vanilla BRP?
A: It is past time to say a word about my plans for NUNA’s rules. I have three guiding principles.
CLASSIC - Take some of that old magic, atmospheric Chaosium stuff and update it. See my blog (Tomb of Tedankhamen) to see what I’ve done with Stormbringer.
MODERN - Take the best modern mechanics of the latest BRP iteration. CoC 7E I’m looking at you and some others.
UNIQUE - Add innovative rules that evoke setting and a style of play. The Community and Social mechanics and Cultural abilities fit in here.
It will also be MODULAR as not al players will have the time and interest to game regularly and build a community. For them, casual play options are a must.
All this must be playtested thoroughly. Very looking forward to this rigorous process!
HISTORY OF NUNA
Q: How long have you been working on NUNA?
A: Looking at my blog, where most of my ideas get worked out, my first reference to it is 2013. At the time, I envisaged an OSR retroclone style game. I started making notes in a Google doc, but as I grew disenchanted with retroclones and drifted back towards BRP, my ideas shifted towards using Chaosium’s engine.
Now I just have to whip all those ideas and scribblings into an appealing shape.
