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Yeah, once or twice. It was a very simple game. Stats were rolled on %dice but adapted to a 30-70 stat range. Tasks were accomplished by rolling against an attribute, for instace shooting something would require a roll against DEX with a modfiers for range. .Skill were optional, being in the advanced rules and changed some things and added new things. In fact I think most of the rules were in the advanced rules book. At the time, TSR was trying to branch out from D&D into other RPG genres and most of these attempts followed the paten of being very simple (simplistic would be more accurate) rules that almost required that you use the advanced rules to have a playable game. Indiana Jones (probably the worst RPG TSR even released) and the Marvel Super Hero RPG (FASERIP) being other examples, although the Marvel RPG got a decent overhaul with a advanced rules addition (I believe Gigi D'Arn wrote that they were turning int into an actual RPG). Most of the games failed although some had some merits and attracted a few fans. Not so much. Skills were an advanced rule and so not anyone could learn them, it depending on which rules the GM was using. Skills ranged up to level 6, andwere learned by spending experience points.There were 13 skills ground into three skill areas (Military, Technological, and Biosocial). Military skills cost 3 XP per level, Technical skills 4 XP per level, and Biosocial 5 XP per level. During the start of game you pick a primary skill area for each character. When buying a skill the cost is doubled if the skill is not in the character's primary area. There were multiple ways to lean a skill, but these were optional and affected the cost to lean a skill and the time required, but didn't alter the XP cost. Similar to the often neglected training times to level up in AD&D. Functionally the skills were iffy. In many cases adding skills made characters less capable. For example someone with a 60 DEX had a base to hit of 50%(-range penalty), in the basic rules, but but if you used skills it would be reduced to 30%+ 10%Skill Level. Yup, and IMO it's a somewhat batter game system too. Nope the game just used a simple success/fail roll. No, it barely had a chagen system, let alone a life path.. Basic chargen was: Roll for you eight stats, which were grouped into pairs (STR/STA, DEX/RS, INT/LOG, PER/LEA) pick a race and apply racial mods determine initiative modifier (Reaction Speed/10) name your character. That was it. Advanced rules added special abilities for each alien race, handedness, sex and starting money. OVerall we are talking chargen and character rules than make Tunnels & Trolls look complex. The only sexception was the Knight Hawks starship COmbat rules as they were essentially a stand alone tactical boardgame that came with a role playing expansion so you could use it with Star Frontiers. But you can tell where TSR spent their time. RQ+Traveller it was not. But there was FASA Trek.

Or you could adpat the supplment to an older version of CoC. Exactly my point. Yes, a lot of GMs do that. A lot of GMs also use CoC's game mechanics for other 1920s, 1890s and modern day campaigns. Since it has been the only BRP game to remain in print over the years it was kinda the only option anyway. Out of the box 1920s CoC is pretty easily adapted for something like a Indiana Jones type of game, and there is even Pulp Cthulhu. But that isn't what CoC was designed for. Yeah basically games that aren't as deadly as CoC and which make skill a bit more useful than in CoC. Which was exactly my point. . Bot as far as I can tell., not that I've kept up with every CoC campaign book. Yeah you got the Mi-Go swapping brains and the Great Race swapping consciousness but the nature of it is disjointed for a PC, by design. Pendragon wasn't/isn't tied exclusively to Mallory. Greg Stafford used multiplier versions of the tale to flesh out the campaign, such as Georrfy Mommoth's work and the Vulgate. Why not? I'm not so sure. In practice most players probably don't want a bunch of NPCs setting in a stealing their thunder. Even if the PCs get to roll for the NPCs. Certinaly not for every PC in every adventure. As an occasional benefit, or as a special trait for a single character maybe. I think FAte's Spirirt of the century had some social stunts like that where a PC could run into a contact or old freind for some help. Yeah, but does that matter if you aren't doing a specific CoC thing? Pendragon's character history tables is probably the closest I've seen to that, since PK roll up the life histroy of thier grandfather and father before play begins. So you get to find out how/if/when/where they died. And retirement is a option in some tables. No, but then I don't think there is a game that covers the residents of a ward outside of some sort of insane asylum. But imagine a game where there heroes of previous generations were all retired and are living in something like an Oddfellows home. Imagine a game set in the 1960s or 1970s where the pulp heroes of the 1930s were the retirees. The older heroes could either serve as patrons, mentors and advisors to the PCs or even be the PCs, sneaking out past the desk nurse at night to go out and save the world "one more time". The idea has a lot of possibilities. I kinda like the idea of taking some team from the 80s and having them mentoring/monitoring their replacements, and occasionally stepping it to fix things when the young whippersnappers botch things. The senior characters could have very high skills too. I'm getting Batman Beyond vibes You have to ask someone how has about that. Personally I think a BRP supplment would be a better idea and would certainly be easier to licence, as CoC is not under UGE. So it more like you are using CoC for game mechanics and setting, but using it for stuff other than/addition to Lovecraftian horror? Well then yeah, the more you stay away from the Mythos the more useful such a guide should be. The OP was about a lifepath system for BRP, so the COC lifepath supplement was on topic, as was the KAP lifepath/history. I think the idea of one (or more) lifepath books ala Heinrich's might be a nice addition for BRP. It would help give PCs a backstory and make character more interesting. Right now character is just sort of bland. You get a big pool of skill points to spend and a rough framework as to where. Something like early life, choosing a college, etc. could be nice for modern games.

Yeah, in our RQ/Stormbringer, etc. groups we always had two or three players who could do the math in their heads so it wasn't a big deal. Especially since most (75%) of the time you could just roll the dice and not worry about success level unless you rolled under 21% or over 95%. Pretty much the same experience. It often comes down to how much trouble or time it takes to look something up or how much it slows play. If the group can do it quickly then it's normally not a problem at all. If they have to constantly pull open the rulebook, flip through the book to find the success table and read across for the result, then people get bored and annoyed. But, I find that most groups that do have a slowdown usually are looking up lots of rolls that they don't have to. In general you should only need to check the success level on one roll out of four. Shortcut for those who don't want to do use a table or do (much) math: Unless someone has a skill over 100% any roll from 21-95 will be a simple success (or failure). Critical: 01 is always a crtical. If skill is 30+ then 02 is a critical, if 50+ then 03, if 70+ then 04, and 90+ then 05. Special: Most of us could do divide by 5 in our heads, but a faster method was to divide by 10 and then double it. Thus 47% skill would be 4.7x2= 9.4 or 9% Fumble: 00 is always a fumble. If skill is 51+ then 99 is a critical, if 31+ then 98, if 11+ then 97, and 90+ then 96.

No one says that, but I can't recall a single adventure or campaign pack that has done so. It would be great if there was such a supplement. Both Pendragon and RQG have rules for passing things down to an heir and I honestly think CoC would benefit immensely from such. It's just that it hasn't been implemented. It could really open up the possibility for some long term campaigns with adventures spaces years, decades or even centuries apart. Imagine introducing a Mythos McGuffin to the players in ancient Rome, and then track it's effects down to the present day, with the players playing ancestors of their original characters. Great idea, but it has nothing to do with my previous statement. Keep in mind that I'm not saying that extended chargen in CoC is a bad thing, I was only trying to explain why more people don’t talk about Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation. Unfortunately the nature of CoC makes it the worst BRP game for that sort of thing. I would thing something along the lines of playing a family line or chose heirs would be the way to go. Like you mentioned, the uncle (a PC) dies and his nephew and heir (same player) continues on. He does if you have the GPC. Yeah he dies in year one but his loss affects the land for decades. Yeah, although there are opportunities in La Morte as well. It really comes down to what a GM does to flesh out a NPC and make the players care about them/hate them/etc. The scenarios presented were usually just a framework and GMs were expected to build upon it. This is true for nearly every NPK/NPC if the GM doesn't do something more with it. Even King Arthur is just "a useless king who never appointed or sired a heir, letting the realm fall apart" if they GM doesn't weave him into the PKs adventures in some way. Yeah he's large and in charge but that just isolates him from the PKs. The main characters in Game of Thrones were mostly family members or rival nobles to Ned Stark , allowing for a more personal connection and more frequent interaction. Indeed. That's why Greg put in a plague to help trim some family trees. Back in KAP1 , the opposite was more likely. Household knight PKs would die off and a player would have to start over from scratch. Over time this became like bringing a first level PC into a high level AD&D campaign. It became hard to live long enough to get to the point where a PK could sire an heir. Sure it could, but up to now it hasn't. And that helps to explain why why more people don’t talk about Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation. So you'd have a bunch of helping NPCs every session? Again, nothing in chargen gives you that. If you are making suggestions for new ways to do things, great, but it doesn't counter my guess as to the lack of popularity of Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation. Yup. but again, my post was a response about the lack of talk about Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation, and should be viewed in that light. THat are infinite number of ways we could play CoC, and a infinite number of things a GM could do to enhance a game. And yes, a CoC Keeper or player might find Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation very useful. But none of that explains why Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation is not talked about more on the forum.

Only in terms of telling a narrative with lots of side/minor characters. It's not so effective in a RPG, where events must be focused around the same players. And he could have easily been treated as a NPC. In Pendragon you get the death of Uther Pendragon very early in the game, and his loss has a great impact on the early peroids of the game, before the appearance of Arthur. And Uther was an NPC. Remember Game of Thrones is a book series, designed to be read. So killing off major characters doesn't alter the way readers can read the book. But COC is an RPG and killing off the PCs on a regular basis does alter the way players can play. Dead PCs usually don't get to do much other than grab a blank character sheet. Yes and the Gloranthan timeline is an epic tale that covers well over a thousand years. But CoC is a game about Lovecraftian horror. The future, according to Lovecraft, was bleak. Sooner or later the stars will be right and Cthulhu will awaken and wipe out humanity. Not an if, but a when. In that light long chargen might not be worth the effort. I mean imagine doing the same in Glorantha for a campaaign set during the Dragonkill War. Yes having Cthulhu-fodder is always nice, no chargen doesn't give them to you. Unless someone is in active service and adventuring as part of some miliytary assignment, there is little or no reason for them to just happen to have a squad of men under their command. Just because someone worked as a gunner in the navy doesn't mean they get to bring along the USS Texas on an adventure.

Oh, sorry. I was referring to the OP's proposal and disputing the claims that the chances of crits and specials were the same as in the RAW, and what the possible permutations of that rule would be in play. I'll have to go read your earlier post to see how your idea works mechanically.

Sorry, I couldn't think of a better example off the top of my head. Yup, that's part of it. When you spend more time generating the character than you do playing the character, you wonder "What's the point?". A second reason though is that the extra abilities gained won't matter much in play. Higher skills often don't matter all that much compared o ther BRP games. It's like with the excellent Investigator Weapons supplements. When you are facing any of the Big Mythos Nasties ©, It doesn't matter if you are toting a .25 Beretta pocket pistol or a .50 Browning heavy machinegun. Either way you are outclassed. IMO, Such supplements become much more useful and appreciated outside of CoC. But that's probably why you don't hear much about the supplement.

It's a bit more BRP adjacent but FASA's Star Trek game had such a lifepath system (probably the second one after Traveller). During chargen you would get some early life skills followed by branch skills corresponding to the characters duties (helm, communications, engineering, sciences, etc.). After that they would go though one or more tours of duty, each of which gave them a few more skill points. They had similar rules for generating non-starfleet PCs, and game was percentage based too. Other than the differences in skills (you need to add in a lot of new Skills like Starship Engineering and Communcations), it is pretty much swipable for BRP.

Probably because a more in depth and detailed chargen for CoC is like adding a more colorful and detailed paint scheme for a MXY-7 Ohka.

The OP was crtits on odd doubles,

Why could it restore the first 4 and not the second? I mean he didn't have the arm for them either. Also, if the PC took 8 points od damage, then But it's not general damage, is an obious injury to a specic location. There is a bloody bit of shoulder or pelvis right there to target with a healing spell. Imagine if a PC had his and chopped off. By the rules that would be the same situation as you are describing. The character would be perfectly alright right down to the spot where thier arm ends. The bloody stump of their forearm could certainly be cauterized, bandaged and such, so why couldn't it be targeted with a heal spell. Plus remember a location at 0 HP isn't destroyed, just disabled. About the only way your player's argument makes sense to me if if he is talking about bloodloss. BTW, I don't think there is any healing that restores general hit point specially, because that is not how RQ/BRP has ever treated injury, or healing spells. I think it is something very important, and something that will need to sort out for you game before you end up in some oddball situation where one or morea PCs die because the other PCs were not allowed to heal them due to this rule. Yeah ruleset here is critical. While the various battle/sprirt magic spells between BRP games are similar there are some differences between them that chance how this works out and what spells are required. No necessarily. If there is healing magic that can reattach the limb (Healing 6 in RQ2, and possibly and Healing spell in RQ3 depending on what page you are looking at) then the maximum would still be the same. And even if the limb can't be reattached then you have to ask where are the other 4 point of damage located that need to be healed. It's definitely not general body damage, but a bloody stump at the shoulder or pelvis, and I can't see why such an oviparous injury couldn't be targeted with a spell.

The problem is that by the new method the numbers do not overlap but increase independently of each other, leading to a lot more specials, making implaing weapons more powerful. For example, someone at 90% would then have a 5% (01,11,33,55,77) of a crtical, plus a 18% (05,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55,60,65,70,75,80,80,90) chance of a special, which is a 5% higher special chance than normal. Except it might alter the game in other ways that you didn't intend or desire, such as increasing the effectiveness of impaling weapons. Do the math, it's not worth it. If someone had a 100% skill and halved thier skill to double thier crit and special chance they would pretty much be right back where they started, but with a lower success chance. For example: 100% skill RAW, Crit: 5%, Special: 20% (with 01-05 being crticals) Alternate, Crit: 6%(01,11,33,55,77,99), Special: 20% Halved 50% RAW, Crit: 03% doubled to 6%, Special: 10% doubled to 20% Altenrnate: Crit 3%(01,11,33) doubled to 6%, Special: 10% doubled to 20% So basically a zero sum game. No it doesn't. Since crit and special chances are a pecenratage of the success chance that any change to the success chance will affect them proportionally. It's like it I gave you a choice between having 50% of $20 or 100% of $10.

First off it's been mentioned before. The Fives and 10s rule is used in HARN. Not to say that either of these ideas are bad per say. So Odds Above, so Odds Below I believe this alters the critical/fumble chances slightly in some cases, and the specials chances significantly . Example #1: Someone with a 33% skill would have a 2% chance (01,02) of a critical by RAW, but a 3% chance by the doubles method (01,11,33). Examples #2: Someone with a 5% skill would have a 0% chance of a special by RAW, as their only possible special roll, 01, is not only a special success but also a critical success. Buy using the alternate method the character could get a critical with a 01, AND a special with a 05. At 50% by RAW it would be Critical: 3% (01-03), Special: 7%(04-10) but with the alternate method it would be Critical: 3% (01,11,33), Special: 10% (05,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50). Mechanically, the biggest issue I see with this rule would be with impales and similar effects. By RAW any critical is also a special success and thus an impale, but with the alternate method criticals and specials are independent of each other (except for when you roll a 55). This will reduce the effect of critical its with impaling weapons but is somewhat offset by the increased chance of a special success. BTW, If you don't like the new percentage then you can get something closer to RAW by replacing doubles with even results than end in 5. That way the crits and specials will overlap again.

g33k has it right. You don't re-figure hit points for several very good reasons: First off general hit points are hit points per location are not the same. Character will have over twice as many location hit points than general hit points. So if you reduced general hit points permanently you'd inflict a disproportionate loss to general hit points and possible even a forced permanent unconsciousness or death. In fact,due to the rate at which hit points progress and the effects of rounding, if you permanently reducing hit points with limb loss would exacerbate a known bug of the game system by penalize characters with a higher CON, becuse the higher your CON the harder is is to survive the loss of two limbs. For example: let's say you have an unfortunate PC with 10 General Hit Points who looses a leg to a shark. Now the leg had 4 hit points so the severed leg resulted in 8 points of damage. If the PC lost those points permanently he'd permanently be below the unconsciousness threshold. BTW, if you add up the hit points per location then 10 General Hit Points would mean 3 HP in each arm, and 4 in the head, chest, abdomen and each leg, for a total of 26 hit points. Secondly, the body does heal, so the PC must be getting back hit points, and the body must be adapting to function without those parts. For example: THe shark victim above lost a lot of blood along with the leg, some of which his body won't replace, but it will be blood that he no longer needs due to having one less leg to circulate blood through. Thirdly, as g33K has pointed out, just because one part of the body has been damage, the other parts aren't necessarily any weaker. In fact the opposite tends to happen. If someone loses the use of their primary arm, their secondary arm tends to become more muscular, and so forth.

There was an official rule for RQ3, and it was similar to option 2, and was part of the Regrow Limb spell. The reason why I remember it was that we had a PC lose a limb and then roll 01 to see how much was severed, so I rules that he only lost a finger, and I took 1% off of his Manipulation category modifier. It's not the current BRP, but I can get the old spell description if desired. Oh, and the old rules used to make a distinction between severed (taken off in one hit) and maimed (disabled through multiple hits). The difference being that maimed limbs were still attached but non-functional. This meant that maimed and partial severed limbs skill had hit points and such. This would be unchanged from before as it should not be any easier to chop off whatever was remaining in future fights. If you get your hand chopped off your shouldler doesn't become and narrower. When a limb was compositely gone, sometimes hits to it might simply become misses with weapons passing through the space where the limb shoyuld have been (again the % roll could be used here), but that was never formalized into a rule.

Yeah, basically like hero points/character points/etc. but geared towards particular skill sets. The idea could even be expanded to use the eight Characteristic x 5% scores as the pools. The pools could get refreshed periodically (per session, or adventure) or via skill rolls (get a skill check get points back on the corresponding pool). Anyway, it's a bit late now.

SAVE tends to get extreme reactions. People either love the idea of hate it. Personally I think it's a decent way to explain how and why PCs repeatedly confront creature of the unknown, avoiding the "Kolchak problem". I think you're right. EXACT conversions aren't necessary. It's more about capturing the capabilities of the characters, especially relative to each other and to the monsters. You want things to play out about the same regardless of the game system. But exact conversions are much easier to automate with a program or spreadsheet, making it much faster and easier to get a scenario converted into a acceptable set of stats that are usable with little to no adjustment.

I don't know if that sort of thing work work well in BRP due to the lethality of the game system, where big monsters can usually one-hit drop a PC. Something that might be an epic battle in Frostgrave would probably be very anti-climatic in BRP.Either the PCs drop the big baddie in the first round, or it wipes out the PCs. Yeah, something like a BRP to D20 conversion. THere were some old RQ to AD&D conversions back in the day, but supplements that could work for either system could help to promote the game. Backin the 80s magazines such as as White Dwarf, and Different Worlds would cover games from different companies, and would sometimes print adventures with stats for more than one game system. I think that sort of thing could help to expose new players to BRP the way the magazines did in the old days. If BRP had a standardized conversion to d20 or, better yet, Pathfinder, like many other games now do, it could generate sales to the d20 market and maybe bring some of those d20 players into the fold. Especialy since WoTC seems so intent on driving away their customers.

Why do I get the feeling we are going to end up with a blank piece of paper? P.S. "Species" would probably be more accurate than "Race", unless all the sentient beings are all part of the same species, as race is a subset of a given species.

I that that would depend on the way magic worked. If like D&D where it lets you bypass most defenses then yeah, it don't make much sense. But a lower powered/higher cost magic system might not invalidate fortification. For example in Pendragon 4th edition magicians have to pay for their spells with lots of prep time, weeks of magical sleep, or multiple rolls on the aging table, so a spell that bypasses the fortifications is usually prohibitively expensive- at least at a scale large enough to be useful in battle. Oh, btw, they still built city walls and other fortifications long after the advent of cannon, they just changed the fortification to reflect the new technology. Actually taking a wall down with a cannon requires that they have a cannon, cannonballs, powder, etc. and can transport it to the site and man it long enough for it to actually take down that wall.

I depends on what you are going for. if you want something feudal then Pendragon (or Harn) is worth a look. On the other hand, if you just want to add soem fortications to your BRP game, then the download covers most of it. But it really does depend on just what you want. For instance, Pendragon (and Harn) has a farily sound ecomonic model compared to most FRPGs, which gives players a fell for how expensive some of these things are. Depending on which edition of PEndragon you pay, a knight might have an annual income of £2, £6 or £10, most of which goes to maintaining the knight, his family, and so on. So a a stone tower that cost £30 is a significant expense that ususally requires the knight to hold multiple manors or have acqyuired a lot of treasure in war or adventures. Also, it's probably worth mentioning that quite a few of us already own these games (and others) and so we have every reason to use them as references and guidelines for other games when doing what you want to do now. If we didn't have all of them already, we'd probably only use what we already have or just one source. Harn is a feudal fantasy world that goes into a lot more detail than most other medieval style RPGs. Pendragon, by contrast, focuses more on Arthurian legend, and doesn't go into the same level of detail as Harn, but it still has enough of the feudal economics in it so that player knights will feel the probllems that go with maintaining a knight and holding land. I'm not familiar with Pillars, but Pendragon does give player characters bonuses from buildings, just not for fortifications. For instance if you build a Jousting Area you get a yearly check to lance. There was a cheat sheet for all this on the Pendragon forums. Maybe I can dig it up. But Pendragon focuses on character traits and glory, with most benefits impacting one or both.

No , the link is busted, which is strange, since the pdf still pops up when I googled "Pendragon Fortifcations". Maybe I should try to upload the PDF to the downloads section of this board? Like so: https://basicroleplaying.org/files/file/884-pendragon-fortication-castle-pieces/

Lordly Domains is pretty much the same Fortification rules from the Pendragon Noble's Book combined with some hunting stuff an adventure or two and all updated for 4th edition.. There is also the Book of the Manor for Pendragon 5th edtion which is nice but requires a lot of bookkeeping and has some major flaws, as you can pretty much build infinite improvements and break the game. The Book of the Estate addresses most of that, but it is geared towards major landholders, and land rules and confrontations are only a small part of it, and it doesn't go into the same detail as the eariler books. There was supposed to be a new book of castles for KAP5,but it hasn't been released yet, and it is still DV based. Oh, and come to think of it, Greg Stafford had https://gspendragon.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/pendragon_fortifications.pdf on his website.

Hmm, I got a few answers for this, but the internet ate my original post. So I'll give it a second try: Something Innovative First and foremost what I want to see is something new and innovative. The thing about BRP-UGE is that it's all stuff we''ve seen before. Heck it's mostly the BRP-BGB under a new license. Now that was great back when the BGB came out, as it helped to reprint rules and game mechanics that had dropped out of circulation when Chaosium stopped producing RQ and Stormbringer supplements. But the UGE is pretty much stuff we've all seen before. What I love about 80s Chasoium was how innovative they were. They didn't just come out with RQ, but they adapted the RQ rules into BRP and Pendragon to cover diverse setting such as the Eternal Champion series, Lovecraftian Horror, Larry Niven's RingWorld, Superheroes, and Arthurian Britain. They did things like the Thieves' World boxed set, Questworlds to open up RQ, and Worlds of Wonder to open up BRP. You never knew what they would come out with next (especially if you read thier catalogs 😉 ) What I would love to see is a book that covers somewhere we haven't seen from Chasoium in the past, with the rules adapted again to reflect the new setting. Just what setting? I don't know. Maybe something swashbuckling, or 1950 s atomic horror, or a full of space opera type setting. Just exactly what it is isn't quite as important as the fact that it would do something that Chaosium hasn't done before. Campaign Packs I love the old boxed set campaign packs for RQ, such as Pavis, Borderlands, and Griffin Mountain. I think they really were the epitome of setting and adventure supplements for RPGs. In each pack a GM not only got a setting, fleshed out with locations, major NPCs, encounter tables, etc. They also got several adventures, as well as lots and lots of stuff that they could get ideas from for futher adventures. The packs were a much better value for the money than say a AD&D letter series of related adventures. Something along those lines, would be ideal supplements. Something Universal Yes, we all love BRP but we're the choir. But what I think BRP needs is something that could get the attention of all those gamers who are only familar with class & level RPGs. TO do that, I think there needs to be one or more supplements that work for more than just the BRP game system. Kind of like how the Thieves' World boxed set was mostly system independent and had NPC stats for multiple game systems. Now I don't know just how open the ORC liscene is and how practical is is to mix 'n match game stats these days, but something that could work for another game system as well as BRP, especially D20 with game stats for both, could really help with crossover sales and marketshare. FOr instance someone could be drawn to a particular setting or adventure, see game stats they understand and can use, so they buy it, and are intrigued by the stats for this "other" RPG, BRP and look into it. Nick brought up GURPs and it's setting books, but ICE also doid something similar with tier setting books, only their books had rules to work in Rolemester, HERO system, and sometimes even D&D. It made them very useful for people who wanted to game in any of those settings, but it also helped to cross pollenate Rolemaster and HERO system. Something Basic The BRP book is a great toolkit for experienced GMs but it's got a steeper learning curve than is needed. The thing is all those options and alternate rules are nice to have when setting up your game world, but they can be confusing for new players and GMs, and require a GM to basically learn multiple ways do doing things. A new GM has to choose between sequencing methods (DEX ranks, Strike Ranks), fixed or variable armor, general hit points or hit locations, various powers systems, etc, etc before they can do anything witht he game. We've seen several threads from GMs trying to piece all this out and the hurdles they have depending on what game mechanic these choose to mix 'n match. Now all the BRP games in the past made all those choices up front,.making all those games more accessible. Someone playing RQ didn't need to know about variable armor or summoning. Someone playing Stormbringer didn't need to know about strike ranks, rune magic or impales. Neither had to know anything about the Cthulhu Mythos, Ringworld, or King Arthur. Each game came with a set of mechanics that decided all the game mechanics ahead of time. So GMs and players only had to learn one way of doing things. What I'd like to see is a smaller book, no bigger than RQ2 or Stormbringer, that gives a basic or even semi-generic setting and set of rules, without the all the various options, that new players and GMs could start with. Something along the lines of the mechanics from Stormbringer/Magic World wouldn't be too far off the mark. Simple and easy to learn and use, but with enough to run a campaign with. 400 page books can be intimidating and off-putting to new GMs and players. There were reasons why the old Worlds of WOnder boxed set put each setting into it's own booklet instead of doing one big book. Now once a GM has his sea legs and feels comfortable with those rules they can opt to expand into the wilder world of BRP, grab new rules from the BRP-UGE and so on. But lets give them something easier to start with, like what we had. Something Free One thing that D20 type games have in abundance that BRP lacks is all the third party sutff. Especially short free (or low price) stuff. Now obviously Chaosium can't give everything away, but in the age of digital documents why can't we have something along the lines of "one-page dungeons" but for BRP. We ot a lot of GMs around here, so why could we all put together a short little adventure or setting or rule or something and then someone collect it into a PDF that could be put up on line for free. That would really help to draw in new players and GMs since it wouldn't cost them anything to downlad and read the PDF, and maybe get interested in BRP. This could be something that we could do that Chasoium wouldn't have to. Something like a semi--regular fanzine wouldn't be a bad idea.