[BRP] Basic Roleplaying now shipping

[fmitchell]

According to Chaosium (http://www.chaosium.com/article.php?story_id=246), Basic Roleplaying is now shipping.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's the "generic" version of rules which underlie Call of Cthulhu, pre-Mongoose Runequest and Stormbringer/Elric, Nephilim, Superworld, Ringworld, Elfquest ... pretty much every game Chaosium ever released. It's a fairly light-weight skill-based system, and as such it's easy to layer on rules for magic, psionics, high technology, or whatever. From the "advance copy" I saw, the book itself is a little light on Science Fiction, but otherwise you can take a stab at any other genre using just the one book.

I think this news is more important than bickering about Dungeons and Whatsits, don't you?

So, has anyone seen the finished book yet? Anyone tried out the new rules (Advance Copy or Final)?

[Thoth-Amon]

I agree with you about the bickering. I'm also going to take a closer look the book being shipped.

Thoth-Amon

[gdmcbride]

Basic roleplaying is an elegant, simple, adaptable, skill-based system. Even people who have never roleplayed before take about a minute to teach the basics of the system. Anytime I'm trying to model "just people" I turn to good old reliable BRP.

I especially enjoy the organic skill growth (you only get better at skills you actually use).

I am greatly looking forward to this book.

Gary

[boulet]

I'm all for the simplicity in rules systems. I haven't used BRP in many years (the most recent must be a Hawkmoon game, more than ten years ago). I'm curious about what they have tweaked with, if at all. I remember the system being excellent in the way that we never needed to decrypt complicated rules in the middle of an action scene. On the other hand I remember it felt awkward when one compared mundane characters and heroic/major ones. But I can't demonstrate this : after all these years it is a bit fuzzy why I came to think that.

[Skunkape]

I've got a copy of the Zero edition, or advanced rules if that's what you want to call them. I think they're a good update/compilation of the Chaosium system. They are simple enough to make for a fast playing game, yet easily adaptable to allow for adding optional rules/house rules.

There are quite a few optional rules included with the system, and they add on fairly easily. We played a few sessions of the game, converting our current DnD characters to the BRP system and while they converted fairly well, we decided to finish out the campaign using DnD, that's 3.5 edition of DnD.

But the rest of the members of our group are looking forward to a full campaign using BRP, so at the very least, I'll be switching to that once I complete this current campaign. I'm looking forward to purchasing the final set of rules, mostly because I want to have at least 2 copies of the rules, but also I want to get the final edited version as well.

The big things I like about BRP is the way you can advance skills and the fact that there are no levels or classes in the system. With skill advancement, if you use a skill successfully at least once per session, that's in a situation where the chance for failure can have bad consequences, you put a check by that skill. Then at the end of the session or sometime before the next session, there is a chance that the skill will increase. That way, you see steady character improvement, instead of the skill jumps that happen with level based systems.

If that's the kind of rules system your interested in, then by all means, check it out. Also, there's a pretty useful community for the BRP system here (http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/), not that I want to detract from Pen & Paper games, but I figure it's important to list it from a good BRP resource standpoint.

[Webhead]

I have no experience with BRP outside of Call of Cthulhu, but the basic system was a nicely simplistic one. If I should come across a copy of the new BRP book, I'll definately give it a browse. I'm very picky about "generic system" games though and have yet to find one that has really sold me on it...with the sole exception of Unisystem, but that hasn't quite become a truly generic system yet...just an easily adaptable one.

[fmitchell]

(Unisystem) hasn't quite become a truly generic system yet...just an easily adaptable one.

BRP is pretty much in the same category: a basic set of stats and a combat/conflict resolution system, but very amenable to additions and amendments. Primarily you would add skills to fit a genre, but the recent BRP book adds five different systems for supernatural Powers (skill-based Magic, "spell"-based Sorcery, Mutations, Psychic Powers, and Superpowers), and plenty of optional rules for Fatigue, Sanity, varying levels of combat realism, etc.

If you really want to, you can do more extreme surgery on the system. One GM I know has added basic stats and a few other rules systems for one campaign he's running. Pendragon, conversely, removed stats and put percentile skills on a 0-19 scale, plus other simplifications and changes, until its BRP roots are hard to see. Mongoose's RuneQuest is essentially a "reverse engineered" BRP to circumvent copyright, so you can pick and choose rules from there; I like their handling of Fatigue, for example (even if it's lifted from the d20 SRD).

But, Basic Roleplaying is pretty solid as is, as far as I can tell ... which is one advantage over modifying an existing system to suit your needs.

[MortonStromgal]

can't wait to get mine :)

[Stormcrow77]

I love how deadly combat is in this system it really makes you "think" before you leap.