Gollum

With this definition, Mythras, OpenQuest, D100 Revolution and many others are all BRP games.

Direct quotation of your link above: "Complete rules included, based on new RuneQuest and BRP Essentials rules." It was first presented as a BRP Essentials first iteration. It is now clear and official that it is also based on Runequest and so, that it is a mixed rather than a BRP book.

This is exactly what I wanted to mean. Why waiting indefinitely for something that nobody sounds to know while there are so many very well known and good other games around?

Sorry, but we don't know anything. I followed all the threads about this topic very attentively and all we have are conjectures. We have read only two official announces: 1) BRP Essentials will be a 32 pages book. It sounds to be wrong now. Some talk about something much more important ... 2) The first incarnation of BRP Essentials will be the new edition of Mythic Island. Which also sounds to be wrong now. Mythic Island will eventually be a blend of BRP and RuneQuest (as far as I understood things). We don't even know what direction will take BRP Essentials. A revision of the big golden book? Runequest? Call of Cthulhu 7? Something new? Authors and Chaosium remain silent. Brief, we don't have the least clue. No publication date, no number of pages, and not the least hint about what it will be. After more than one year of waiting ... It's not really a good thing, because most BRP buyers surely wait before going on buying BRP products. At least, I do. When you know that a revised edition will come, you wait before buying supplements because they will surely be revised too. At least, you hope it ... Once the new edition will be published ... One day ... Maybe ...

Not really. At least, I know that creating a new game or even a revised edition of a previous one take time. A lot of time. No problem with that. But, usually, announcements are done once a lot of things are already decided. At minimum when the publisher know what he will do enough to tell it to his future buyers. And publishers rarely make buyers wait one year without the least hint, especially when the previous edition is still sold. Who will buy the old version, the big golden book, knowing that a new one will appear ... Sooner or later? - We don't even have the least hint about the launch. It can be tomorrow, next month, or next year. Perhaps even later.

To be frank, mine tend toward erosion with time. Waiting for a new version of the game which will change things without knowing how nor how much ... for months and months ... make me consider more and more what other publishers offer. This thread began more than one year ago. And we still don't know anything about the future BRP Essentials.

I fully do agree with you. And I believe that it even heightens what I am meaning ... Since almost every BRP user will actually buy books from different game companies, trying to design BRP Essentials by "copying" (more or less) one of the other existing product would be a pure lost of time. Indeed, since D100 Revolution, Mythras, OpenQuest and even BRP already do exist and can already be bought, the only remaining solution is to do something else, something that will give new options to game masters who will eventually take ideas from several set of rules to build their own original mixing. And since the most innovative rules published by Chaosium are now in Call of Cthulhu 7, basing the new BRP Essentials on Call of Cthulhu 7 sounds to be the best choice. Note: Liking Call of Cthulhu 7 required a lot of time for me. I even preferred the big golden book to earlier Call of Cthulhu editions, even to play Call of Cthulhu adventures! But now that I understand those rules better, I like them more and more.

In my humble opinion ... D100 Revolution is good, yes. But it is already designed and published by another publisher. So, unless Chaosium and Alephtar Games suddenly decided to work together, we won't see that happening. RuneQuest 7 is good too. But there is already an Essential version very close from that version of the game, designed and published here again by another Publisher: Mythras, from Design Mechanism. So, what can do Chaosium? Trying a very simplified and synthetic version of the different versions of the game. It also already exists: OpenQuest, from D101 Games. The only possible solutions are: Call of Cthulhu 7, which brings new mechanism and is a best seller of Chaosium? A totally new version of the game? But why one more? the risk to disappoint everyone is high ... Changing for changing is not necessarily the best idea ... The already existing BRP version of the system? But then, why doing a new edition rather than going on developing it? Thanks to its various optional rules, it already allows everyone to play as he wants ... Brief, the better choice sound to be something like Call of Cthulhu 7. Those who prefer D100 Revolution already have it. Those who prefer RuneQuest 7 already have it. Those who want something more easy to play already have it ... A Call of Cthulhu 7 version of the BRP system is the only thing that has not been published yet - and which corresponds to a strongly implanted product from Chaosium.

Wow! I just skimmed it but it sounds to be a very interesting work. Thank you very much!

Yes, they have plenty of other projects to worry about. The BRPS Essentials, which was first announced for the Gen Con, has been postponed to... a later unknown date. But that's not a problem for me. I prefer a book which come late but which has been refined that something which is published when announced but not really finished.

Will the big golden book go on being corrected and published (despite the BRP Essentials project)?

It is quite different from GURPS Martial Arts because, in your version, each technique is a new skill while, in GURPS Martial Arts, each technique is a bonus or penalty applied to a given skill. Karate is a skill, for instance, and Aggressive Parry is a technique which will be equal to Karate-1 if you didn't specifically learn it or Karate+0, Karate+1, Karate+2, etc., if you learned it*. No matter. You made a very good work and it is a new approach of martial arts which sounds to perfectly fit to the BRP system**. _____ * For those who don't know GURPS, characteristics and skills are rated on 20, not on 100. So a +1 would roughly correspond to +5%. Roughly, because GURPS is played with 3D6 and not 1D20, which changes things a lot. ** As far as I can tell with my modest knowledge of the BRP system.

Things may appear like that, indeed. But... First, the guy with 80% parry totally forfeit his attack, which is a huge cost! All what he can do is trying to parry. If he does that several times in a raw, it means that he is not fighting anymore, but just doing a desperate attempt to avoid being hit (maybe because he has already been severely wounded and he is waiting for some friends backup)... So, would an expert doing that become almost unbeatable? It's not absolutely sure, but it still make sense (at least in a storytelling point of view). Likewise, is a neophyte in such a situation able to parry one blow in two? It also makes sense, in my humble opinion. Second, this option is designed to work with the other options, not as a stand alone. If the guy with 120% attack strikes again and again and notice that the one with 80% parry always parries his blows successfully, he will try to fight offensively and deceptively at the same time (+30% -30% = no modifier; and the defender still gets a -30% to his parry). The attacker doesn't risk anything: the other one doesn't strike back. Ditto for the 60% vs 20%. Also note that, despite of the fact that GURPS characteristics are rated on 20 rather than on 100, the problem (and the solution) is exactly the same. Deceptive attack is very useful to allow a skilled character to lower his foe's defenses. It also help solving the universal problem of combat between two guys with skill above 100%.

Now, let's go back to the game... Here is what I wanted to mean about generic maneuvers which can be applied to any martial art (with or without weapon). The big golden book has got two. Fight defensively (page 191): forfeit any offensive action; you get a second dodge without the -30% penalty. Knock out attack (page 226): make a difficult attack to try to knock out the target ... Some others could be added (strongly inspired by GURPS). Fight offensively: forfeit any defensive action; you get a second attack. Fight defensively, second option: forfeit any offensive action; you get only one defense, but with a +30% bonus. Fight offensively, second option: forfeit any defensive action; you get only one attack, but with a +30% bonus. Fight offensively, third option: forfeit any defensive action; you get only one attack, without bonus, but you're damage bonus is increased by one level (you strike as strongly and heavily as you can). Fight deceptively (feints and any other kind of deceptive attack): choose a penalty to your attack; the defender will have the same penalty to his defense roll. These optional maneuvers allow to vary attacks and defenses without adding to much complication to the game. And they are quite easy to use with any combat skill or style.

As a martial artist, I fully do agree. No martial art is better than another. What is important is the number of hours of training (the skill percentage, in BRP's terms). This is what really makes a difference. Some martial arts are strongly oriented toward sport competition or art, though. They may be less effective than other ones, oriented toward fighting. Because a combat is different from a sport competition (no technique is forbidden, especially the most treacherous ones) and from an artistic demonstration (where the goal is to make beautiful moves while a combat technique is quickest and hardest to see). Having said that, as long as the goal is the same (combat), the style doesn't matter.

As far as I understand, the project is still a go... http://www.chaosium.com/blog/ Indeed, that piece of news sounds to consider the BRP system as a matter of fact: " Complete rules included, based on new RuneQuest and BRP Essentials rules."

It will probably be more than a simple introduction, though the number of pages - from what I read until now - will be about 64-96 pages (rather than 200). http://basicroleplaying.org/topic/4861-brp-essentials-status/

The problem is precisely here: these OGL games are close to BRP ... but still quite different from each other. And there are number of them. A BRP Essentials would at last bring an official "generic and universal" version of the of the Chaosium's system ... At least, if it succeeded to bring back Cthulhu and Runequest rules together. The big golden book succeeded to do it, thanks to its abundant optional rules. But, now, Cthulhu and Runequest both evolved in a new direction. So, the BRP universal system needs an updating. The challenge will be to do that in fewer pages than the big golden book ...

Oh. I forgot to tell. Another very important thing for a universal system is stability. What makes GURPS very well known despite of its very little audience is that its rules are stable. The third edition lasted 12 years. The fourth one just celebrated its 12th birthday (and there is no 5th edition project; the game goes one being developed as it is). When you buy a GURPS Basic Set, you know that you won't have to buy it again before a decade. At minimum! When you buy D&D, to the contrary, you know that you will have to buy again all your books in a couple of years. Or to play with old rules while most players around (and in forums) use the newest one ... A game with D&D community can afford changing rapidly. A game with a more little audience cannot, because it is another reason of split (there are those who use the newest version while other ones use the previous version and still other ones use the even previous one ...

I don't think an OGL would be a good solution. It is what they have done with D&D 3.5. And the result is that D&D has a lot of D20 rivals: True D20, 13th Age, Dungeon World ... And, above all, Pathfinder, who cleared out so many D&D customers! An OGL doesn't prevent the split. To the contrary, it encourages it. Now, it may be true that something like Savage World's OGL (for fans only) is better thought out. Sure, BRP doesn't have such a fan base. But they still have a good fan base. At least, not the big golden book, of course. But Call of Cthulhu. It is a best seller. In France, it is almost as sold as D&D. Even today. A new publisher, Sans Détour, sells books that costs more than $100 (with a lot of goodies), does it regularly, and it is always rapidly out of stock. So, through Call of Cthulhu and Runequest, the BRP system is very well known. The problem is that all those fans don't know that the Chaosium system is also a very effective universal system. While fans of Fate or Savage Worlds immediately know that their game can handle every world they can imagine. I think part of the solution is to emphasize the universal aspect of the game in the very first page of the website of the publisher. Every GM and players like to try another game world from time to time. And if they immediately knew that they can do it with the rules they already love, they would do it. But, of course, to do that, every game published has to use the same basic rules. Exactly like Fate or Savage World (1). There may be some changes in the detail, to best fit the game world - no problem with that. But not in the basic rules! And the problem of Chaosium is precisely that even the basic rules are not really compatible. As it has been said above in this thread (or in another one), if you take your Call of Cthulhu investigator and want to throw him in Runequest game world, you have quite a lot of adaptations to do. Including in the character sheet! The number of attributes is not the same, basic skills have not the same names and don't cover exactly the same things. They are not calculated the same way. And so on. That is what reduces the attractiveness of BRP as a universal system. Much more than its name! Someone who plays both Call of Cthulhu and Runequest immediately understands that it is not really based on the same set of rules and so, that the BRP universal system will be either one or the other of these two sets of rules. Or, worse: a third one ... Of course, all those rules are still based on the same bases ... But D&D and Pathfinder are also based on the same D20 bases. Players of D&D still don't buy Pathfinder books and vice versa. So, in my humble opinion, the very first step to make BRP Essentials more attractive would be to make Call of Cthulhu and Runequest closer so that it would be obvious for everyone that it is the same game - which is less and less true, sadly. Another solution would be that BRP Essentials become a game full of optional rules which would send back either to Call of Cthulhu or to Runequest, letting every GM choose what he prefers (or even make a mixing if he wishes to). But that solution is probably the hardest one. A true challenge! _____ (1) I don't mention GURPS here because it is specific. It was designed and published as a universal system from the start and, only then, developed with some game worlds.

It would be great! But it sounds like a challenge, now.

You may be right about that. Now, some people still like to use they favorite game to try something new and different. This is where the BRP System has a true edge over usual roleplaying games. Once you discovered it with Cthulhu, Stormbringer, or any other very interesting game world, you can play a western, a SF or a cyberpunk adventure without having to learn a lot of new rules - and, above all, without having a huge amount of rule adaptations to do by yourself if the new game world you want doesn't exist. Want to try Harry Potter, Star Wars, James Bond , Wild Wild West or Matrix? No problem. The big golden book allows it. While no Chaosium game with a precise setting really gives you what you need ... Now, I fully do agree with one of your argument: a big problem of the BRP system is that it becomes more and more split. Runequest is less and less compatible with Cthulhu for instance. Not even to mention the new different D100 systems which, even if they share the same root, become more and more different ... While other universal system succeeded to maintain the same basic rules no matter the universe and the genre you like ... Realms of Cthulhu, for instance, allows you to play Cthulhu adventures with Savage World rules, with very few changes. I would like BRP Essentials to be something like that. Sadly, more new D100 games are published and less it sounds to be possible. BRP Essentials will probably coexist concurrently with Runequest Essentials, Mythras, Open D100, Revolution D100, etc., instead of gathering them. As a side note, I noticed that Chaosium put again the big golden book clearly in its Product lines list. http://www.chaosium.com/basic-roleplaying/ I hope it doesn't mean that they abandoned the BRP Essentials proposal ...

Yes. I better understand what you want now. And indeed, GURPS is not the best model to follow.

Not really. Of course, you're right, GURPS uses a lot of skills. One for each weapon. But almost as BRP does. GURPS also uses techniques which can be interpreted as sub-skills. - though they are not really a skill because they are linked to a skill; when this skill improves, the technique also improves. Now, GURPS martial art rules are much more rich than that. They also give a lot of advantages, disadvantages and perks (especially recently: perks have been developed outstandingly) that give fixed bonuses or penalties to the skill rolls. And, above all, maneuvers are not skills. They can be used with any combat skill. They just precise how exactly you attack or defend and give bonus or penalties to your skill roll or damage roll. All-out attack, strong, for instance, make you give up your defense to strike stronger and get a bonus to your damage. Deceptive attack make you choose a penalty to your skill roll, knowing that your opponent will have half this penalty to his defense roll. And so on. Having said that, I can understand that you don't like GURPS. There are so many options and possibilities that it makes the game very crunchy. And sometimes a bit hard to play ... And BRP players love simplicity!

You can use the three models at the same time. Indeed, this is what GURPS does. Generic maneuvers with their own modifications to the ordinary attack or defense (all-out attack, all-out defense, deceptive attack ...) and generic techniques which can be bought (as skills): arm lock, back kick, choke hold, disarming ... Different martial arts styles which describe their favorite maneuvers and techniques and give some more precisions and specific rules when required. And martial art spells (called advantages or perks, in GURPS), which allow to focus chi (or whatever else) and get cinematic super effects. But it is a huge work! And it supposes to know a lot of different martial arts and how they work ... Peter Del Orto and Sean Punch, the two authors of GURPS Martial Arts, did an amazing amount of research before writing that book. And the result is really outstanding. I'm learning two of the martial arts that they described and what I can read in their book is both true and accurate (as far as I can tell) ... So, the best thing to do, in my humble opinion, is to begin with the first step: generic maneuvers and techniques which are easy to understand, to describe and to use. Something like ... All-out attack: You give up your defense to focus on attack and get either a bonus to that attack (+30%) or to damage (increase your damage bonus by one step).