Gollum

I fully do agree. Some advantages and disadvantages may perfectly correspond to a gritty setting because they are realistic (alcoholism, knack for languages, shyness, fear of height, musical talent, arachnophobia, unusual flexibility...). We all know people who have such traits and novel or movie heroes also have some of them (which even makes them more "real"). But there is no need to have a balanced and complete system to play these traits. It can often be reduced to a mere description of characteristics and skills. Example Lord Medwing has Anthropology 75%, Mathematics 68%, Astronomy 86%, Philosophy 72% but Intelligence 8. How to explain that? Simple. He became alcoholic and lost a lot of his judgement abilities. And for traits that cannot be reduced to a simple description of characteristics and skills, house ruling can solve the problem very easily. Example You really want to be ambidextrous? Fine. It will cost you one point in Dexterity.

It has been done. In Cthulhu by Gaslight. Advantages and disadvantages are "Traits" that give bonuses or penalties during the character generation or during the game. Examples: ~ Born Leader: +1D2 POW, +INTx5 points to Communication skills. ~ Alcoholic (D): -1 CON; -1 from STR, DEX, POW or APP; roll Sanity to avoid getting intoxicated if given the opportunity; insanity may lead to seek intoxication. The player roll dice to know which advantage or disadvantage his character has, exactly as he rolls dice to know his characteristics, but it is easy to house rule something like... Choose one disadvantage for each advantage you take. Or each advantage cost one point to a characteristic while each disadvantage allows you to add one point to a characteristic. Or anything like that.

I looked at Fate and PDQ and, indeed, they sounds to be very well designed. Heroquest sounds very fine too but I still prefer the BRP system as written in the big golden book. There is no logical reason to that. Just the fact that it is more close from the Basic version I played the most: Call of Cthulhu. I'm neither a fan of superheroic adventures. Having said that, I like fantasy and SF. And in theses genres, "advantages" are very common. Some may have drawbacks, as the infravision of your example, of course. But some others don't. A hulking four-armed insect won't look strange in the center of a Star Wars town with many other strange extraterrestrial everywhere around... And being ambidextrous, for an ordinary human, doesn't have any logical drawback... That is where powers are fine. The difference between BRP and game systems with advantages/disadvantages is that nobody is enforced to take Powers. Of course, in a game system with advantages and disadvantages, this is also true: once can for instance create a GURPS character without taking any advantage, disadvantage, quirk or perk... But these ones usually cover so many things, including very mundane and little ones (like being afraid of darkness or insisting to be paid in cash) that it is hard to really avoid them. In BRP, being afraid of darkness or insisting to be paid in cash is just a description of the character, with no point value and no other requirement than being played from time to time. In GURPS, these are true disadvantages or quirks, with a fixed character point value and, then playing them become a mandatory (and the GM must even make some problems occur from them to justify their value). This is the main difference, in my humble opinion. Game systems with advantages and disadvantages are much more precise, but they have rule for every little think that can describe a character, while BRP is much more vague, but it gives the players more freedom: they can focus on things that are really important in their opinion and drop the rest... Example: With BRP, you can just have: ~ Hide skill: 95% (my character can change color, like a chameleon), ~ or have: Hide skill: 55% + Camouflage power (+40%). With GURPS (and Hero, I suppose), the first version is technically possible but the rules are not designed for it. The second solution (advantage and skill) is the only good one. Then, when generating a character systems with advantages and disadvantages enforce the player to think in terms of advantage and skill combinations, which is necessarily longer than thinking in terms of skills only. I can't say for Hero, but in GURPS, a warrior who doesn't have any warrior advantages (combat reflexes, toughness, enhanced defense, weapon master, etc.), is not well designed while, in BRP, all these advantages are just supposed to be taken into account in his Weapon skills, his Dodge skill and his Dexterity score. Powers are a plus that you can add if you really want these characteristics as something specific and distinct, but they are not a mandatory. Which really make things much easier and quicker.

Of course you didn't. And, as everyone above, I don't think we took what you said as an outrage. We only react about the fact that GURPS/Hero character generation could be as fast as BRP. I just think the probem is just as clear as math. Generating a character by choosing attributes + advantages + disadvantages + skills is necessarily longer than generating a character by choosing only attributes + Skills. Yes and this is precisely why I added that some players and GM know everything by heart and can go very fast with GURPS or Hero, then. But it will change as soon as you will also know everything in BRP by heart (like the default skills, for instance). And there is much less to know in the BRP system. You're right here. Comparing Hero and Call of Cthulhu is not really fair, since Cthulhu is precisely designed to make character generation as fast as possible: Cthulhu characters die or become insane very quickly, so, players don't want to spend much time on their generation. To make the comparison more serious, we have to take the BRP system and, possibly, to use some optional rules like characteristic influence on skills and personality types. But even then, there are absolutely no advantage, disadvantage, perks, quirks etc., to choose in the BRP system. So, it necessarily goes a faster. And if the player create an ordinary human, BRP goes even faster since there is no kind of power. Just the characteristics and the skills. Hey, there are also skills in GURPS! I don't know Hero enough (I just glance at it several time) but I suppose that there are many skills too. And the problem here remains exactly the same: GURPS skills, for instance, have a default level and you have to take them into account when spending your points on skills... BRP has an optional point base system to choose your characteristics that is very simple. The random rolling stat rules have to be used when you want to go fast (Call of Cthulu investigators), or when you want to let the dice decide for you. But if you have a precise idea of which kind of hero you want to play, the point system is a much better idea than rolling dice: it makes you save even more time.

I think it all depends on how well you know GURPS/Hero. When you know all the advantages/disadvantages and their cost by heart, as some players or GM do, it can go very fast... Likewise, if you really want to fine-tune your BRP character, to choose a profession and skills that really fit to his characteristics, it can take much more time than 10-15 minutes... Having said that, I do agree with the fact that BRP character generation is usually faster than GURPS' or Hero's one. Precisely because you don't have to choose any advantage or disadvantage. Doing it necessarily takes time.

Advantages and disadvantages are fine when you want to balance characters that are quite different from each other. Especially fantasy creatures and extraterrestrials. If one player wants his character to be ambidextrous (a very well trained lizard warrior), for instance, another one wants his to see well in the dark (he is a dwarf and used to work in caves) and another one wants her to be able to flight (she is a fairy), the GM will begin to have problem... As long as each player only want one very precise advantage, it can be handled simply: "That's OK, each one of you has the advantage he wants." But if a player wants more advantages than the others ("Why couldn't my little fairy also be able to see well in the darkness?"), things become more difficult. How to answer such questions? Only arbitrary fiat? "No, because I am the GM!" Advantages/disadvantages systems allow to handle that simply: this advantages costs X points; if you can afford it, you can have it; and if you don't take any advantage, you will have more points for your basic attributes or skills. Brief, all the characters remain balanced, no matter how many advantages and disadvantages the players want... Having said that, the problem of advantages/disadvantages systems is that everything ends to become an advantage or a disadvantage... My character is alcoholic... Disadvantage. He smoke cigarettes... Disadvantage. He has an honest face... Advantage. He doesn't like carrots... Disadvantage (a little one, of course, but just imagine that the character is invited at the King's table and that there are carrots to eat...). And another problem of advantages/disadvantages systems is that they have to be carefully designed by the authors of the game. Wings can make you fly, of course, but they can also be crippled by your foe and then make you fall down during a fight... While being able to flight without wings, like superman, is more advantageous... Then, all games with advantages/disadvantages systems usually ends with huge lists which are not easy to handle and which makes the characters' generation longer and longer... That's what I finally abandoned GURPS. Just try to create a cat in such a game. It has a long list of advantages and disadvantages (perfect balance, cat fall, flexibility, night vision...). In BRP, it is much more simple. Most advantages and disadvantages are just taken into account in the characteristic scores and the skill percentages. After all, a character can have a high climbing skill because he is very flexible and balanced, because he can cling on walls like a spider, or because he is just very well trained... The result remains the same: he climbs very well. And for specific abilities like flying or being able to see in the dark, powers are just fine...

Coming from GURPS, I can say that BRP still allows to generate characters very quickly. I think that the problem you emphasize here comes from the fact that BRP is universal. As for every universal role playing games, there are a lot of options, skills, powers... for every possible game world! And, so, there are a lot of different pages to turn for the players. This is why character generation is longer than for non-universal role playing games, where the selection is already done and everything already put at a judicious place. One solution is to make lists of skills, powers and other options available for your game world, dropping all those that are pointless in that setting. For GURPS, it is a mandatory, because the rules are so huge that creating a character with the whole basic set can last several hours. For BRP, it is not so vital, but it will speed up a lot the character generation.

I fully do agree with that. I'm coming from GURPS. Unlike you, StanTheMan, the one second scale didn't bother me. I'm a karateka, and the possibility of choosing every single combat technique made me very happy. GURPS will ever remain an amazingly great game in my mind. I love games where the rules fit to the reality, where you can almost feel what your character feels, when game results correspond to what you could expect if you really were there... And I love the bell curve of 3D6 too: everything in reality sounds to follow a bell curve (there are more average results than extreme ones). But GURPS is complex. And not a just bit. So, during the game, players and especially the GM think more in terms of rule than it terms of story. And that bothered me more and more... So, what? The Basic Role Playing system is the answer! Because it is between the two. Between very realistic and detailed rules, and pure storytelling systems. And, thanks to its amazing optional rules that you can add or remove as you want, things are even more flexible. I'm sure you will love it very soon. As Thalaba said it, the BRP system doesn't really make the results linear. Of course, a D100 is linear, contrary to 3D6 which give a beautiful bell curve. But in the BRP system, the D100 linearity is corrected by the difficulty modifiers: an easy task double your chances of success while a hard task halves them. If you really use that, the results are not anymore linear: they depend on what the player exactly do. Example The player character is searching a hidden message in a closet... ~ If the player content himself of telling: "I'm searching the closet.", he just make an ordinary roll. His Spot skill will determine his chances of success. ~ If the player tells: "I search this closet very carefully, taking all my time. I remove everything inside, one thing after the other, and search it before putting it on the bed. When everything will be on the bed, I'll even knock everywhere inside the closet to find a possible secret hidden box..." Then finding the hidden message becomes easy. Chances are doubled. ~ Finally, if the player says: "I search this closet as quickly as possible, while looking at the door to see if someone suddenly comes in...", the task becomes hard and the chances are halved. As you can see with this example, the game is not as aleatory as it may first appear. Chances of success depends more on what the player exactly do than on dice rolls... Like in reality! And everything remains very simple to handle. There is neither very specific rule for each eventuality nor complex calculation. So, the GM can focus on storytelling, and the players can focus on playing the role of their character. The BRP system really fall in between storytelling and realistic role playing games. This may explain why so many people come back to it after trying other systems. And this is surely why you will love it: a game system that will offer you both "story" and "concrete"! Welcome on board!

According to the adventure Bordering on the Darkness of the fifth Call of Cthulhu edition (sorry if it is not the good title: I just translated it from my French book), the only manner to cast out a Dimensional Shambler is to reverse it's summoning spell (that is to make as if you wanted to summon the monster but to read the spell back to the beginning). So there is no generic exorcism spell. Each summoning spell may also become an exorcism spell.

Hello Marc! Welcome on board. You made a very good choice. The BRP is, as you wrote it, elegant. Simple, universal and with enough optional rules to satisfy everyone... There is no official SF BRP background, yet, but you can still find a SF BRP adventure: Operation Ulysse. Operation Ulysses PDF Chaosium Inc. Mixing BRP and Eclipse Phase is a good idea. This is moreover one of the great features of the BRP system: you can adapt any other role playing game to the BRP rules very easily, because everything in BRP is rated with percentages; so, it is really easy to guess the stats of any character as soon as you have his description. A skilled amateur? 40%. A quite good professional? 60%. A good expert? 80%. A master? 90%. An incredible champion? 120%. Have a lot of fun with the BRP, as we all do.

Yes. This is exactly why I wrote "I still have to admit that, in reality, the situations sometimes give you some opportunities... So, it is more a matter of preference than a matter of realism. " in the previous post. Thank you for this very clear explanation.

Yes. Another good rule! Very easy to use... What I prefer, though, is letting my player tell what they want to try and roll the dice only after this decision (rather than letting the dice results say what they can or cannot try). I find that more close to what we feel in reality. In our life, we want to do something, we try to do it, and, then, we succeed or fail. * Which may explain my house rule above. ;-) This is precisely what is amazing with BRP. There are always several possibilities to handle a situation. The GM and the players can choose the one they prefer! ____ * I still have to admit that, in reality, the situations sometimes give you some opportunities... So, it is more a matter of preference than a matter of realism.

The sanity rules, of course. There must be some others, but the main goal of Call of Cthulhu is to remain as rule-light as possible. Having said that, you can play it exactly as you want. You can for instance use the hit location rules (which first appeared in a Call of Cthulhu adventure, if I'm not wrong about that). Choosing the options that best fit to what you exactly want is what is what makes the BRP amazing! Personnaly, I run Cthulhu adventures with BRP rules. Just note that some things are a bit different in Call of Cthulhu rules. Damage, for instance, are 1D3 for punch, 1D4 for head butt and 1D6 for kick, why all of them are 1D3 in the BRP system. Likewise, there is no generic Brawling skill in Call of Cthulhu but three different skills: Punch, Head butt and Kick...

Thank you very much for that link! The problem of this rule, though, is that it requires a very high level of skill. I don't like very much these kinds of prerequisites. An expert with 75%, a Professional with 60% or even a good amateur with 40% should be able to try a riposte. To try, but not necessarily to succeed, of course. They would have lower chance of succeeding. Every character should be able to try what is easy to understand. The difference must be in the chance of succeeding, not an all or nothing affair. When there is a skill level prerequisite, like 90%, a question immediately occurs: why 90% and not 89%? Does the character suddenly (and magically) gain a new power when he reaches 90%?

Or you can simplify things even more just by ruling that if a player wants to make a riposte just after his parry, he must declare it before parrying; then, the parry becomes difficult but allows a free difficult attack. Rather than a parry at 100% of his skill, the player has a parry at 50% of his skill and a free attack at 50% of his skill (which still makes 100% of his skill).

It sounds to be very interesting. Unfortunately, I don't have time to take part in another role playing game. That is another reason why I abandoned GURPS. It requires a lot of preparation time and, so, I was looking for a game where characters, monsters, robots, etc., are much easier to design... Thus, even if GURPS remains an amazing role playing system, it just doesn't correspond anymore to what I need... The life of a player who has got a job, a family, who learns karate at a quite high level which requires many hours of training and, so, who can only play once in a while...

OK. I don't know at all Dead Reign and Nightbane and just played a bit of WoD... But since you know CoC, you know the main qualities of the BRP system. And since you mainly focus on storytelling, there will be no problem for you: the BRP big golden book will let you enjoy the same qualities in any horror genre you can imagine. One of the greatest features of BRP is its modularity: optional rules can be added or removed, depending on what you exactly want... – Sanity rules can be removed in comical horror stories (Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness). – Hit locations can be added for a gore horror story where dismemberment may become important. – Disease rules can or cannot be useful (the Walking Dead) – Combat options can be added or removed depending on how much precision you want for your combats (John Carpenter's Vampire). – Etc. Furthermore, the big golden book give you equipment for almost every world, past, present or future... What about SF horror for instance (Alien, Event Horizon...)? And if you want something else than horror stories, the BRP golden book also make it possible! ;-)

Saying what you say is not at all bashing CoC. It's a matter of fact! The BRP golden book is more developed than CoC in terms of rules. But CoC is more developed for what it is designed to do: lovecraftian horror. So, both are great even if BRP contains all the rules of CoC... Plus many others! It explains why I use Call of Cthulhu adventures with the big golden books. Since I've got a lot of CoC books, I store up the advantages of both! What game system did you use before? Personally, I come from GURPS and have switched to BRP mainly for its simplicity.

The main horror adventures I ran (and still run) are Call of Cthulhu ones. But I use the rules of the Big Golden Book rather than those of Call of Cthulhu. So, this book contains everything you need to run any horror style. Sanity rules are very good, for instance... As soon as you interpret the results: a failed roll which doesn't lead to insanity (a loss of less than 5 sanity points) still has to be described. The victim can for instance scream, tremble, sweat a lot, flee away, vomit, etc., depending on what he exactly sees and your willing, as GM. Actually, GM descriptions are what makes a good horror game. Rules are exactly as special effects in a movie. They can add something, but the suspense doesn't depend on them. A movie horror can be an abysmal failure despite of good special effects (Herbert West, Reanimator, which eventually make me laugh), while another can really frighten you without special effect (Psychose). The BRP system, because it is very rule light, is precisely one of the best games for horror genre. The GM doesn't have a lot of rules to think about and so, his mind is free to think to the most important: descriptions, atmosphere and suspense.

Puking on your boots, screaming, etc., is exactly how I interpret a failed sanity roll which doesn't make the character loose enough sanity point to become crazy... It is what happen most of the time with corpses (they rarely make loose 5 sanity points or more). Now, for disgusting things which are not frightening at all (like a lot of vomit on the floor, for instance), I would ask the player to make a POW x 5 roll without any relation to sanity points. Maybe even a CON x 5 roll. Dead bodies are always frightening, though, because they inevitably make you think to danger and to your own death.

I do agree. It is either my favourite version of the game. But be careful, though! Call of Cthulhu is also one of the deadliest version of BRP! In Call of Cthulhu, kicks do 1d6 damage for instance. Which means that a martial artist with a the littlest damage bonus (+1d4) will always kill a man in only two kicks: 1d6+1d6+1d4 gives an average of 9.5 points of damage, that is 19 points of damage for two kicks.

In my humble opinion, it is not really much simpler: the standard resolution described in the big golden book is very easy too. Both players roll against their skill. If one scores a better success, he wins. Otherwise, the highest number on the dice win. Having said that, the important is not having the easiest solution. It is having the one which best fit to what you are exactly looking for. And that is just a matter of preference... Some like adding numbers because they like when rolling higher is better, some others prefer to have a solution as close as possible to ordinary success rolls, some want detailed results (with pins, partial successes or failures), some others prefer knowing who win without any detail about how, etc.

My opinion about this topic is about the same, despite of the fact that I played GURPS for a very long time (in GURPS, attributes have a huge impact on skills). Attributes do influence skills. There is no doubt about that. Someone clever will learn to play chess much faster than someone stupid and absent minded, and someone strong and agile will learn boxing much faster than someone feeble and clumsy. It is impossible to become a champion in a skill for which once is handicapped and world class champions are not only trained, they are also outstandingly talented for what they do: in game terms, they have characteristics which make them unbeatable. Champion boxers are for instance always very strong strong and healthy while world class scientists are always amazingly bright... Having said that, learning and training is still more important than innate abilities. You can be as bright as you want, if you barely know chess rules, someone less intelligent than you but with a lot of training will always win, and very easily. So, in my humble opinion, attributes have a high influence at the beginning. Between two neophytes or amateur, they will make a lot of difference. But once both of them will become expert, it will be hard to know what makes them so good: talents or training? Mozart and Einstein were certainly incredibly talented, but they also spent an incredible amount of time practicing their skill. Finally, learning a skill is not just learning how to practice it. When you learn boxing, for instance, you also make a lot of muscle training exercises which make you become more and strong and healthy. Likewise, learning a science doesn't only make you good for that one science, it also changes your point of view on the world and even your general manner of thinking... Brief, it changes your intelligence. Then the true question would be: do attributes influence skills or do skills influence attributes? And my personal answer is: both. That is why, in my humble opinion, the Basic Role Playing system do a very good job in this topic. With the optional rule, attributes have a little influence on skills. About -10% to +10%. This little influence is important at the beginning, when skills are low, but has much less influence when they become higher. Furthermore, the responsibility to create characters with skill corresponding to their attributes is left to GM and players. If someone wants an Acrobatics 95% character with a Dexterity of 3, the GM can content himself with saying: “Sorry but your character can't do acrobatics at all.” Common sense is often the best rule.

OK. Then, as said by KjetilKverndokken, the best way to do it would be to design each template as a set of bonuses and penalties the character's characteristic... I don't have Eclipse Phase, but to best explain what I want to mean, something like STR-5, DEX+2, CON+3 could for instance correspond to a Hobbit. Such bonuses and penalties automatically give the characteristic maximum: STR 13 (18-5), DEX 20 (18+2) and CON 21 (18+3). Furthermore, it is easy to apply them to any character. If my STR 14, DX 12, CON 14 human warrior suddenly changes morph to become a Hobbit, his characteristic become STR 9, DEX 14 and CON 17...

Hi! First, I really think that BRP should be a good choice for what you are looking for. Indeed, this game has a huge edge: it is very flexible. Very. You can add or remove optional rules as you want to get exactly the kind of game that you want. Do you want hit location rules? You've got them. You don't like hit locations and prefere describing injuries depending on the amount of damage inflicted by the attack? No problem! The hit location rules are just optional. And everything is like that. So, the game is very friendly because there is no official way to play it. Just use the rules that best fit to the genre of game and the atmosphere you desire for your games. Furthermore, no matter how many optional rules you use. They are all designed to be as intuitive and easy to play as possible. No complex calculation in BRP. Everything is made to let the GM describe things as he wants and to let the players play their role as they imagine it, without hindering them with complex game mechanics. I come from GURPS, that I played during more than 20 years now, and I am very happy to have switched for BRP. GURPS is a very good game but BRP is much more intuitive and, as GM, decisions are very easy to take without having to look through the books. Almost everything you need to know is written down on the character sheet and the rest is very quick to memorize. Now, to answer to your precise question, BRP uses a percentil system. Almost everything is rated in percentage and, so, it is easy to convert adventures or rules from another game... As long as it is easy to know the chance of success in this other game (which is not always the case, unfortunately, especially when several dice are rolled and added together). But there is something even more simple. This "chart" which is the "spirit" of BRP: 05% or less : novice 06%-25%: neophyte 26%-50%: amateur 51%-75%: professional 76%-90%: expert 91% and more: master You want an expert in karate? Brawling 80%, Martial Arts 80%, and you are fine. You want a good Professional school teacher? Teaching 70% fits. Refering to this table is much more useful than complicated calculations and, eventually, much more precise: the character will best fit to what he is supposed to be in his original game system. As you can see, BRP is one of the games (if not THE game) who best fit to the saying: less is more. But if you still want more, you still have a lot of interesting optional rules...