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I wanted to start a discussion for those of us in the hobby using a BRP system as to how you feel the current state of BRP systems are as a whole, and how we as a community can solve some of the percieved issues surrounding BRP to bring more people into the system. Personally I'm unhappy with the state of BRP as a system and although it's the only system I run I'm frankly worried about the future of the products surrounding the system. Although open license systems will always exist having a big, officially branded system is always great to attract new players. I feel the biggest issue facing BRP is fragmentation. For fantasy alone you have two major systems under Chaosium (Runequest / Heroquest). Runequest is further split into Runequest Gorlantha and Runequest Classic. To make matters worse both Heroquest and Runequest have Gorlantha labeling. While it's easy for those of us inside the hobby to understand the differences for those looking to explore BRP this extremely confusing. Throw Runequest 6 / Mythras into the mix, and you have 3 very similar sounding systems all currently in publication. Then you also have discontinued products like Magic World that also occupy some space in the BRP fantasy universe. To make matters worse BRP doesn't really have a currently in print Sci-Fi system. You have M-Space which is a sort of official Mythras Sci-Fi spin off, Fractured Hope and Swords of Cydoria, two great settings and frameworks but they require the BGB, and... Uh... Yeah. That's about it. I still feel the BGB is the best incarnation of BRP to date, containing everything you need to run a variety of campaigns and then using supplements and monographs to delve into more specific topics. However, big BRP developers would rather spin off into their own completely self contained books (IE Mythras) than create supplements under the big unifying Gold Bible. Plus, the BGB is now officially dead as well. So we have no unifying product currently in print, a bunch of fractured, splintered spinoffs of spinoffs for currently in print Fantasy products, and no hard official Sci-Fi setting. The saving grace of BRP for my group is I own just about every supplement created in the last few years and everything my players need to play is on only a few sheets of paper. If this was not the case BRP would basically be a dead system for my group and we'd simply rely on open D100 systems. How can we grow the BRP system as a community with the current state of products available and combat the confusing, splintered, and half out of print landscape of BRP offerings? We've been hearing rumblings about a fix from Chaosium for years and there's still none in sight. How can we grow this community and introduce others to the hobby when even after a player enjoys a session with me I can't really point them to a easy to understand, in print system they can buy and enjoy for themselves?

Magic World is the most recent supplement from Chaosium that is the Elric RPG stripped of Moorcockisms. Some people find it dull, but I find it streamlined and I feel it gets out of the way of the storytelling. So with that said, you might have more luck finding a play by Skype or one of those RPG playing sites for Magic World, but it could have a bolted on setting that doesn't appeal to you. That would be my first avenue of research. BRP is a relatively obscure RPG system in and of itself so trying to find a game under an older system would probably be next to impossible. Unfortunately I don't have any advice for you other than try looking for online tables of Magic World as I like the social aspect of roleplaying and don't play online. Hopefully someone else can swoop in with more pointed and useful advice. Best of luck.

I have no ties to the Elric property and it is still my preferred Fantasy system. Why? A combination of mechanical things. A lot of things are abstracted and not simulationist. I am well past the point of enjoying buying mountains of books and having to cross reference powers in half a dozen of them to figure out how they interact (D&D style) or even flip through several pages of rules on combat styles, combat maneuvers and those kinds of things. Magic World provides simple, cinematic combat. A couple of swings and misses until someone takes a big hit and then combat is over. Very dramatic and very deadly. I can reference everything I need about combat in a few charts which are pinned to my screen. Despite this simplicity it still scales well to heroic levels with skills over 100% and other rules that allow for PC expansion beyond traditional caps. This same thing extends to every day use of skills. They are all straightforward and relatively simple. This keeps the very large majority of gameplay rolling along at a brisk pace which is exactly what I want as a GM. Story first, mechanics second. However, due to the simplicity of the rules there is plenty of book space to handle the strange exceptions that happen without feeling bloated. Burning, asphyxiation, and little rules like that. Everything is self contained in an easily digestible book. Couple that with a very robust magic system that is only one extra book for a ton of content and I hate to repeat myself, but the whole system is simple and fluid, but gives enough framework to handle just about anything quickly and easily. The simplicity wins the day for me.

Swords of Cydoria and Fractured Hopes are my go to roleplaying settings. I often mash them up. In fact I ran the Swords mission in a Fractured Hopes world during the last campaign I ran. It went absolutely sideways and I loved it. Great settings both of them.

Personally I'm against anything that slows down combat. I want it cinematic and I want it quick. Doing a "price is right" style comparison would slow down combat for little benefit. It's simply a more granular "success matrix" that fluctuates based on skill values. Doing any sort of "effect" or comparison on the tens digit, or reducing each other's skill percent likewise slows things down. If my players complain about things like this, I remind them it is merely an abstraction. This is not meant to be a combat simulator or a video game. It's a quick and easy way to drive the narrative. Once you remind them to enjoy the ride and not try to game the system, the ruffled feathers usually subside. If you strive for realism or "fairer" mechanics with dice you'll end up with a system like D&D 3.5 - so rules top-heavy they have to put a rollover warning under the front cover. Remind your players to push the system to the back and bring the roleplay to the forefront. It's one of the things D100 is great at - enough framework to cover most situations, but abstract enough to stay out of the way of your story.

I'm firmly in the same boat as you. I like loose frameworks to follow, but come up with most hard rules through roleplay these days. My players call it "experience" but what they don't know is I'm just lazy.

Highly recommend it. I like its voidship rules better than Cydoria's, however Cydoria's ships are powered by tech while voidships in Hopes are powered by magic. Void Sorcery is a big thing in Hopes, however Earth was destroyed by a race of biomechanical aliens who experimented on humans so there's tons of mutations / cyborgs, bio weapons, human psionics, everything you'd basically expect. I love the weapons section of Hopes. It says everything in the BRP core book exists in some of the fragments of Earth. Basically it's not too long after the loss of earth, the defeat of the evil invading aliens, and the tech is still floating around but the knowledge to make most of it is lost. Everyone who can't get their hands on high tech weapons relies on sword / shield / spear. It's got cool concepts you could steal for a Cydoria campaign or similar rules with a different stylistic design you could plug and play if desired. I would 100% buy both and pick and choose what you like from each.

I run a magic world / mythras mash up and I've been running organizations similar to how classic fantasy / mythras does it. It's a simple rank system. It doesn't decay over time as the connections you have in the organization will always remember what you've done for them - unless they get deposed, but that's another story. To track fame / infamy I use the allegiance system in Magic World. It's not exactly infamy per say, but players are much more likely to be recognized for their alignment so to speak the higher it is. I keep a loose track of the organizations they are part of, the locations of the branches they've assisted and the higher the rank the more renown they are out from that location. I know it's not a hard and fast ruleset, but it's a great yard stick so to speak. Create a local organization, have player ranks in them, and make those deeds known to those familiar with their organization. Use allegiance for more like a light fame / infamy / alignment system. Works well for me with little overhead above what I'd already be keeping track of.

So I picked up Fractured Hopes and Chronicles of Future Earth. Not the biggest fan of Chronicles. It's a great setting, but doesn't really introduce any new concepts. However, if someone was looking for a future fantasy type of setting book I would absolutely recommend it. Personally I tend to run my own settings so there wasn't much I could "steal" from the framework it put forth. Fractured hopes is very solid. It's very kitchen sink science fantasy. It has a bit of everything. Tons of cool concepts and setting things that would be easy to lift from it. Great book. Has a different feel from Swords of Cydoria which is more fantasy - sci fi. I will certainly get mileage out of the both of them someday soon. Dying to play them.

So I got my copy of Swords of Cydoria - interesting stuff. The setting is very sci fantasy with a touch of Numenara (ala somewhat rare alien tech). I enjoy it. I might not run it straight up, but it has lots of cool concepts. Chronicles of Future Earth is still in transit so I'll report back when I get it.

I like the "fiction first" point a lot. That's how I prefer to run my narratives, but it drives gameplay very well in BRP. In 3.5 D&D I ended up doing this a lot of the time anyways since I didn't want to look up rules constantly for all the nonsense my PCs tried to do. If your players can get a grasp of that (not - I want to cast 3 levels of fireball at the person with the lowest resistance kind of thing) then they will enjoy BRP or any d100 based system really.

That's exactly how I prefer to run my campaigns - hence my unbridled love of MW. I build a setting, throw things occasionally at my PC's, but otherwise let them play in it.

I'm going to grab Fractured Hopes, Swords of Cydoria, Chronicles of Future Earth, M-Space, and River of Heaven for my initial needs. I'll probably tap Numenara and Shadowrun for concept stuff. If none of those scratch my itch I'll probably reach out for Eclipse Phase and Traveller. (Who am I kidding - I'll end up with them eventually...) Thanks again everyone.

Any good bits in particular to yank out? Spaceship creation (probably one of the main reasons I'll try to track down old Traveller), cybernetics, good hacking rules that don't make a separate game within a game the other players can't participate in, a good comprehensive weapon and armor set, anything of the like?