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Awesome, thanks! I see a couple versions of Elric over at Drivethrurpg. The ones you mention wouldn't happen to be these would it? Michael Moorcock's Elric! - Mongoose | Classic Moorcock | DriveThruRPG.com The Bronze Grimoire - Mongoose | Classic Moorcock | DriveThruRPG.com I've been doing a lot of review reading and searching but all the threads I've read assumed a bit of familiarity with stormbringer/elric or runequest. Since I currently have zero experience with either you guys have been a great help.

Man you guys are really making me want Magic World out yesterday. The supplement alone has me giddy as a school girl. SORCERY SUMMONING EXPANSION?!? WHAAAAAAAT? /mindblown I agree completely with the CoC -> BRP transition. It's how I got into BRP, and how I've introduced everyone to the BRP system. Plus it forces players to evaluate the system outside of D&D, Shadowrun, and the other more popular RPG settings since the setting, storytelling, and character development (or degeneration as the case may be) is completely different from anything they would have ever seen. It shows how well the system can stand on it's own without the "awww, it's fantasy but it doesn't play like X feature in D&D" mentality.

Awesome! Thanks guys. I kept seeing The Green was highly recommended but I had no idea what contents it had. Another take on the magic system is certainly not a bad thing in my eyes! Edit: Nice illusion magic adjustments. I was thinking of the size adjustments for an illusion specialist myself. Illusionist rogues / bards are absolutely my favorite class. I'll be picking it up shortly to contribute to your work.

I would love to hear any thoughts you have on any supplements that would be worthwhile. Even if I don't use the entire setting / world rules the magic supplements and some odd rules here and there are always useful for inspiration at the very least. Every little bit helps. The Magic Book was semi-worth what I paid for it, but I just can't believe how bad it was. While BRP's magic system is rather simplistic it's rather elegant at the same time. The Magic Book just takes a hammer to the whole thing for very little benefit. I would have been much happier with just a big book of new spells and rituals for the styles presented in BRP and maybe the addition of spirit and divine spells without all the junk they threw in with it. But for ~$6 I can't be too upset. Current books I'm considering: Runequest 6th ed., Stormbringer 4th ed., Mythic Iceland, and Elric!. I keep seeing references to the Bronze Grimoire. Is this part of the Elric! supplements and would it be useful by itself or should I purchase both it and Elric!?

So I picked up all the supplements and have spent some time going through them. Witchcraft is AMAZING. Talisman rules (not exactly anything exceptional, but still cool), potion rules (again, pretty intuitive but nice to have a guideline), and hermetical magic with an alignment system? Awesome. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to spice up magic items, potions, or the casting system from BRP. Classic Fantasy seems to unbalance casters a bit, but I can always pick and choose what I let my PC's have access to. I had crafted several spells (notably animate dead) myself that are pretty spot on with Classic Fantasy did and I like some of the class specific small abilities it gives. Plenty of monsters as well. It's just overall a great book to buy for people looking for a fantasy campaign. Basic Creatures does what it's supposed to. It's a pretty solid book of bad guys for your romps in the fantasy world. Good buy. The Magic Book was actually INCREDIBLY disappointing as I expected the most mileage out of it. The magic "classes" seem clunky and Classic Fantasy seems to handle magic classes much better. Some of the spells just seem terrible or borderline unusable. The restrictions on the magical classes are just horrid and really unjustified, although they could easily be ignored. However, the Ritual magic is really cool. I like the idea of group ritual magic as that's something that I feel a lot of mainstream RPG's don't touch but they seem useful, thematic, and fun to RP. Since I got the PDF so cheap the book was almost worth it for that section alone and the few other spells I'll use for inspiration / tweaking. I haven't actually purchased RQ yet, but is the magic section similar to The Magic Book or did they tweak it significantly? I've read a few reviews and it seems they did some decent changes from the RQ3 The Magic Book is based off of but I'm not sure if it works similarly or not. What edition of stormbringer would you suggest I pick up? I really like the sorcery system from BRP and any expansion of that would be great.

Thanks guys. The PDF's are so cheap right now I think I'm going to go ahead and pick up The Magic Book, Basic Magic, Basic Creatures, Witchcraft, and Classic Fantasy. At the very least they could give me ideas for how to add to / tweak the current system in the big gold book. Plus I saw that Magic World was coming early 2013 and the supplements not until some time in 2013. As I don't want to wait that long I can always adapt my campaign after they come out or scrap it and start a new one. Thanks again for the advice guys. Edit: I will also be picking up Runequest 6th Edition as it is only $25 at drivethrurpg.com at the moment. Hard to pass that up! Even if I don't add any of the systems the ideas always help. Has anyone ever tried to run a fantasy campaign with just the magic from the big gold book, and if so how did it work out?

UPDATE: I've picked up a huge load of supplements for high fantasy, high magic settings and wanted to share my findings. My original inquiry saved at the bottom of this post with my findings being posted below with the most useful at the top. All inclusive means it's a complete overhaul to the BRB for a fantasy setting containing Character Generation, Magic, Combat, Equipment, Spot Rules, Creatures, and in some cases Settings: BRB: Well, you wouldn't be reading this if you weren't a BRP core book holder would you? For obvious reasons, It's a great idea to pick this up first! Classic Fantasy: (All inclusive) Pick this ASAP if you're running a fantasy campaign. It's got a magic expansion, some rules and spell adjustments, and great overall content. It also contains rules for turning BRP more like D&D without levels. It's a bit more broad with little setting help but that's also what makes it great. You can plug something from this book into any fantasy setting! Michael Moorcock's Elric!: (All inclusive) This book is fantastic. The BRB contains the sorcery system found in Elric! but Elric! expands everything about demons, binding elementals, and some great darker fantasy setting information as well as a great "good vs. evil" backbone that drives lots of high fantasy settings. If you don't like the sorcery rules or darker settings, put a bit lower on your buy list. Runequest 6th Ed: (All inclusive) I feel this is a really good book. Like Classic Fantasy it contains adjustments to all aspects of the game but unlike Classic Fantasy I find it less modular. The rules are meant to be used together. Great new magic options, combat styles, and includes some setting options Classic Fantasy intentionally ignores. The Green: (All inclusive) I have not purchased the main book yet but the Venturer's Guide supplements the existing BRB magic systems wonderfully. I can't imagine that The Green brings any less amazing adjustments / additions, plus it adds a highly regarded setting. I wouldn't pass on this one if you enjoy the magic presented in the BRB and Classic Fantasy. The Bronze Grimoire: This is an Elric! supplement that expands upon sorcery immensely. You don't need the Elric! main book to find it useful as the entire base sorcery system is included in the BRB. Elric! just provides more setting and summoning / binding information. Again, if you don't really enjoy the Sorcery system put this a bit lower on your to buy list. Unknown East: This is another Elric! supplement but this time the focus is on a more eastern setting. The main reason to buy this is the free form magic system. If none of the BRB power systems really inspire you this one should. If you're looking for something far from the BRP norm, put this very high on your to buy list. BRP Witchcraft: This is actually one of my favorite fantasy BRP additions, but I put it at the bottom as it's very narrow in scope. If you want hermetic magic, stereotypical witches, or divine aligned (white and black) magic then this is absolutely the book for you. It adds some great adjustments to casters that make them INCREDIBLY fun to role play and with many more options at the cost of less raw power. It gives different options for achieving your goals like killing targets slowly with diseases instead of fireballs and ways to pervert, subvert, and convert society to your whims even when playing a white aligned warlock or witch. It's just a great supplement, pick it up. The Magic Book: This is basically a copy of the RQ3 magic rules and you'd probably be better served finding a copy of the entire RQ3 ruleset. RQ6 does everything this book tries to do only slightly better but if RQ6 is too expensive for you then this could be useful. I find using them side by side to be useful as RQ3 magic was more restrictive but could be more powerful. Having a copy of both allows me to pick and choose parts of the systems I enjoy. Note: Magic World is coming out in 2013 as well as a supplement named Advanced Sorcery. These should cover most of Elric! and the Bronze Grimoire, but in a more colorful high fantasy setting instead of the dark setting of Elric!. It may be worth waiting for Magic World to come out and I'll update this post as I acquire Magic World and a few other books suggested in the thread.

So there's a great discussion going on in this thread: http://basicroleplaying.com/basic-roleplaying/shelfjacked-dude-wheres-my-game-3026/11/#post47467 With some good views and information about promoting both shelf space and people in general to get into the hobby as well as the current state of how gamers purchase their source books. I highly recommend the read. However, that got me thinking on how to promote the system to GM's in particular. I think the best way is present the strengths and weaknesses of the system to them as well as showing them the system in play. I wanted to open up a separate discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the system in general to help people make an informed decision about if this system is right for them. The Skill and Stat System: The skill + stat system, like that of D&D and other RPG's, is a great way to flesh out what your character is good at. You've got a physical and mental description through that of stats and BRP gives a great way to make rolls based solely off stats. Does something obscure come up that doesn't warrant the use of a separate skill? Well, just use your stats! Need to get granular and really define what you're character is good at for combat, conversations, dungeon crawling, etc? You've got it! BRP fleshes out a large set of skills that cover both role playing and combat. You could lean towards a combat heavy scenario, or one that encourages sneaking, solving, talking, and deceiving your way around the hack and slash parts and your characters would still be heavily involved. Class-less and Level-less System: This blew my mind when I first considered it in a tabletop RPG. The best comparison I can give to video games is Skyrim or Runequest. Your character can do everything the second you sit down at the table. There's no waiting until level 14 when your Wizard gets that niche-defining spell that you actually get to play like you want, or level 8 until your rogue gets that ability you really need. So how do you improve? You get better at doing what you do. If you shoot a bow, you get better at shooting a bow. If you sneak, backstab, and deceive, you get better at each of those in turn. If you're a sharpshooter, you get better with your weapon of choice. Your stats rise very rarely so you don't have a power gap from being a weakling to having god-like powers at level 20. When you make your Orc Warrior, dumb as a rock but huge and strong, covered in armor and armed from head to toe, you have access to all the tools you need. Procurement of magical artifacts, completion of story elements, and wealth is what drives your character instead of XP and other abstract confines. Rules Heavy and Rules Light: The BRP book has a lot of rules in it. This is both good and bad as every time you stop to look up a rule you take away the tension and action of the moment. However, while BRP gives a wide berth of rules, very little is actually needed to play the game. The skills and stats of a player along with good old fashioned GM ingenuity can probably come up with a quick fix to what you want to do. The extra rules are there to allow you to adjust the rules to your setting, campaign, and play style. It's giving you ways to play the game how you want instead of strapping you to their complicated rules and mechanics. When it comes down to the table all the rules fade away and become another tool for you to weave an engaging story for your players to romp in. Complete System: Everything you need to ever play a BRP game is contained in one book. You don't need 10 $30+ books to have a wide range of wizards, warriors, wrongdoers, and creatures. The BRP core rulebook gives you everything you need to sculpt whatever your heart desires for your campaign. However, if you want to diversify or don't want to set up the specifics for your game there are optional supplements you can purchase. These give you everything from adjusting the game to different settings, giving you different takes on mechanics to even full scenarios you can pick up and run with your gamers. Nothing about the BRP system forces or even encourages you to purchase miniatures, tile sets, extra books, or anything else you may or may not need. These are all strengths but I really feel the downsides of BRP (generality and sometimes obscurity due to said generality) can be completely negated by supplements or just some good old fashioned work by the DM. Thoughts?

Hey guys, I apologize if this thread is a bit old to be digging up but I'm an avid BRP player and I joined just so I could reply to this topic. You'll probably get me to hang around and add to the community more often though. First off, I think we're looking at the idea of promoting BRP in the wrong way. Let's take a look at how we got into RPG's in general and then how we stumbled upon BRP. We need to view the promotion from both a player and a keeper / dm / gm / whathaveyou prospective as well. I've always been the DM of my groups but I always promote open discussion about the scenarios, systems, and other concerns about the games we run. I want feedback to make the games better. I started with D&D. I was in early high school (10 years ago) and multiplayer video games were starting to become big for me with my family getting DSL and getting rid of dial up. The idea of playing games with friends was starting to take up a large portion of my hobby time. Since I've always been the driving factor of getting my friends to play I just naturally sacrificed my time and effort to be the GM. I got a small group and started to play D&D 3.0~3.5 around 8 years ago. . We enjoyed it quite a bit. We used a loose game board system (I had card stock gridded and lined then coated with very high quality laminate, making basically a modular portable system of white boards) which I could mark quickly. I had different colored markers so our game boards often looked like primitive Rogue-like games which worked great for us. As a DM I was poor so a friend and I pirated the PDF's from the intrawebz and DM'd from an old laptop I was given. A quick list of page referenced on my scene notes made sure most rules were quickly accessable. However, lots of times I found my group stalemated by rules issues which we would look up and could take forever. As a DM it actually didn't become apparent we could ignore the little rules and just make up spot rules ourselves at first. I was locked into following the rules. Eventually, as a DM, I became more and more frustrated with this and just started to fudge the rules. My players didn't mind the rules fudging and it kept up the action. As we started to get jobs and eventually graduated and broke up due to college I got the RPG itch again around 5 years ago. I gathered up my friends (all still from high school, but not from my original group) and we wanted to play RPG. I was big into the works of Lovecraft and had stumbled into CoC. We played one game after I made them abundantly sure they were probably going to die, go insane, or "quit" the scenario so they wouldn't be disappointed. It completely changed the roleplaying atmosphere for us. It wasn't about getting the next item, the XP just so we could use the powers we were promised, or any of that insubstantial junk. In fact the character sheets didn't mean much to us at all. We had characters, fleshed out in the mechanics of the game, and we were playing an interactive story. I had them play "The Haunting." While it was hardly amazing in terms of bad guys vs. the group like a fantasy battle and had very little Cthulhu mythos to it my players fell in love. The combination of supernatural horror and the way you build up suspense while always hiding the horrifying truth until the end had my players hooked. We were going to continue the investigators into delving deeper into the occult around their city but we fell off for a bit again. When we did get back together I wanted to load up a great scenario for them. I purchased the game master's pack and fired up the "Lost Temple of Yig" scenario. They loved it. It ended up devolving into side quests and them developing their investigators a bit more over a few gaming sessions. Again though, we stopped playing. I played a few one shot scenarios with friends here and there since then and I've always had players clamoring for more. Fast forward to a year ago. I'd had an RPG lull of about 2 years and I wanted to play gain. I had a few willing players and wanted to have a long, overarching fantasy campaign so we fired up D&D 4.0. I did a lot of talking to local RPG players and internet searching and it seemed D&D just became a supplement / miniature / tileset selling endeavor but everyone I talked to said it was OK to DM and OK to play. I played it with my group once and hated it. Combat was a boring "select your skill" system like a button mashing MMO. I felt I needed 10+ books to really run what I wanted to. Then I was having tilesets, miniature, and supplements jammed down my throat by the writing and style. It was miserable. The usual mishmash of looking up tables, rules, and blah blah blah came back up. By the way, I have 3 D&D books in mint condition I'm looking to get rid of. I started to look to more generic systems. I figured a system that just fleshed out the characters and then left the details to the GM was the best way to go. I looked at JAGS, GRUPS, Fudge, and Fate. I have the PDF's of about a dozen more free, generic systems sitting on my desktop right now. Somehow I either remembered or saw on a post somewhere about BRP being the generic Call of Cthulhu. I instantly downloaded the quick start rules, read them, and it just rekindled my love for the system. I bought the big golden book PDF and I'm in the process of crafting the world for my newest playgroup. It's a bit long winded, but I have some important points I want to make based on this: A) Players are introduced to games by other players. I got my friends to play after hearing so much about D&D nerd stereotypes and wanted to try it. I've since played tabletop RPG's with 12+ people and all of them would play again. DM's are looking for different things than players. My players were looking to sit around the table, enjoy some good roleplaying, and spend time together. I wasn't originally, but I currently am looking for specifics in a system. C) The game store was never really the way I got my books. I either new what I wanted (due to the internet) and purchased some 3.5 and 4.0 books from B&N, or I got the PDF's. We need to be advertising differently to players and GMs. If you want to get more players into the hobby, YOU have to introduce them. There's pretty much nowhere you can go online to advertise to non-tabletop rpg players to get them into tabletop games. The gamers need to be the one spreading the hobby. Booths at conventions where people can sit down and sling out a 1-2 hour game session is the best way to get more players into the hobby. However, they have to be in places where people who aren't naturally tabletop gamers would go. To get GMs into the system we have to point out the strengths and weaknesses of their current system and BRP. One of the best ways to do this I believe is 6th edition CoC. Why? The setting is SUPER different from D&D. This forces DM's to evaluate it based solely on the merits of the system instead of comparing every last thing to D&D. It also shows some of the best strengths of BRP: setting up your character in the realms of the playable system, then out of the way. No miniatures, grids, tilesets, supplements, or other clunky-yet-profit-making gimmicks that D&D is pushing down everyone's throats but is getting so much backlash about. I only got into CoC due to the setting and I wasn't particularly happy about learning another system but my love for Lovecraft beat my disdain for learning a whole different system. That has since blossomed into a love of the system and (subconsciously at first) is the benchmark for which I base all other system. Again, I think the best way to do this is playtests. Since the base CoC is so cheap compared to most other RPG's we could go on rpg forums and try to promote CoC and BRP to try to lure the DM's which will of course branch out to their players and beyond. I've never bought a system because it sat on the shelf, and I don't know anyone who has. I have however glanced through systems on the shelf but due to the rules heavy systems currently in print I've never really consumed the totality of the system in one sitting so I've never purchased them. If you're looking for shelf space for BRP I think the free PDF printed on a binder by the FLGS (or barring that a hard copy) and available for all to flip through with CoC and other complete systems is the best bet. I only see the most optimistic and proactive of DM's picking up BRP on it's own and getting them into the system could promote that. Good lord this is wordy and the formatting is probably terrible but editing on a 23 inch monitor makes it hard. If anyone wants a follow-up tl;dr post I can do that.