seneschal

As I said in my comparison review of BRP Quick-Start Edition and GORE, GORE is aimed at a different audience. It assumes that the reader is a veteran role-player and an old d100 hand and presents the retro-cloned rules as a tool for would-be publishers and developers. It could definitely use some polishing but overall isn't too bad for a one-man effort, no worse than some of the official Chaosium monograph material (even Bill Shakespeare needed an editor, dang it!). Goblinoid Games has stopped actively supporting GORE mainly because the small company needs all its resources to promote Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future, but also because the subsequent publications of BRP and BRP Quick-Start have made it less necessary. There are more open doors (and -Quests) for d100 products than when it was first conceived.

It was available before Zero Edition. I discovered GORE around October/November 2007, and discussions on the Goblinoid Games site led me here, where Zero Edition was being hyped but had not yet been released.

I've been trying to help generate marketing campaign ideas, but not getting much support. I mean, if we can't get you d100 die-hards and experts excited about BRP, how will we attract newbies?

That's why I don't understand the disdain for GORE. It was made available before BRP, before Quick-Start Edition, before Chaosium gave any indication of wanting to do anything other than publish occasional Cthulhu monographs. I have BRP (and Quick-Start) on my shelf today because of GORE; it was my quick start edition, my gateway to BRP. It was published, not to rip off Chaosium, but to enable would-be authors and publishers to make available d100-based material Chaosium seemed uninterested in producing. I see that as a boon to authors, players, and fans, not a vile sin. The retro-clone itself is about the same page length as Quick-Start Edition. It's less newbie-friendly and less well-written and organized but a more complete rules set, without any settings info that would violate anyone's IP. And despite the lurid clip art, it is truly generic. Publishing with it is as simple as including the "compatible with GORE" and OGL blurbs with your product. I don't see why that would be more objectionable than publishing with OpenQuest if the material in question didn't appeal to Chaosium or didn't fit its publishing schedule. :confused:

Traveller and Champions here. Fantasy games were eeevil in the '80s, so I never played 'em to avoid trouble with my parents. TOON rounded out the major systems I played.

Don't forget about GORE! It's still in print and viable.

Hmmm ... (cue title theme to Fiddler on the Roof) "Has stood the test of time." Naw, we're trying to appeal to 11-16 year olds here. Anything before about 1994 doesn't exist for them. "If you're gaming with me, gotta BRP." "Basic Roleplaying: Old-school, before it was cool." Several of you have mentioned the percentile skills thing ... "The original what-you-see-is-what-you-get skill system." "Ditch the calculator and GAME!" On an unrelated note, has BRP Rome done well enough to encourage supplements: Byzantine, Persia/Parthia, and the like? Or a book of Roman-ish adventures?

Of course you do. Otherwise you'd be having this discussion on the HERO Games or Fusion web site. It boils down to marketing. Many brands of soap can clean your laundry. But some of you may prefer certain brands to others. In the same way, there are a number of competent, enjoyable generic RPG systems out there, some of them free. HERO, GURPS, ORE, Action!, Tri-Stat dx, and at least a dozen others are also toolkit game sets that can support gritty play in multiple genres. So what are the things you like about BRP that cause you to choose it above the rest? I'm talking to all you BRP grognards, not just to rust. What makes BRP "the fairest in the land?" You've gotta be able to answer that question to draw and convert newbies like myself and other potential customers. You're not trying to persuade us that Brand X is bad. You're sharing the love about what makes BRP so wonderful.

As we're considering these options, another question to ask ourselves is "What is BRP's sweet spot?" In other words, what does it do better than other generic RPGs out there? HERO System's draw is its flexibility. GURPS' is its multiplicity of support material. Savage Worlds' is that it is "fast, furious and fun." Tri-Stat dx's is that it is more flexible than GURPS but less intimidating than HERO. So what does BRP have going for it? And what can we do to promote that advantage to potential new players?

Assuming my own, much disagreed-with POV is true ... what settings/genre niches do we still need to fill for BRP to have the product spread such a venerable and well-tested generic RPG system should have to appeal to a broader spectrum of the gaming public?

Hmmm. Martian flier looks OK, in a Star Wars rip-off kinda way. What I presume to be Tharks and their thoats aren't Burroughs-standard but may be good enough for casual movie-goers who haven't read the books (hard to tell). Traci Lords wouldn't have been my first pick for Deja Thoris; she surely isn't known for her acting ability. Whatzisname looks manly enough to be an ERB action hero but we don't know if he can act (or speak English). The badlands might work as a stand-in for Barsoom with appropriate matte paintings in the background. But the fact that it is a straight-to-video release doesn't raise my expectations. It might have been "good enough" had it been released in the '70s or early '80s, a double-feature with Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. Let's hope Princess of Mars is at least a watchable B movie (and that the best isn't what we've already seen in the trailer). Sigh. Three more years for the Disney/Pixar version. While a live-action version would be neat, I'd be happy with a well-written, reasonably faithful animated version of the Mars novels. We've seen what Disney can do with Atlantis and what Pixar can do with The Incredibles. Why not just avoid all the CGI and casting pitfalls and do what they do best?

I would say that BRP QuickStart is the introductory document. We've just got to get it more widely distributed, available from places other than just the Chaosium web site. The broader the distribution the better.

Action! System is just one example of the point I'm trying to get across. It's a perfectly good rules set and one of several I've seen marketed as a stand-alone product. Such products, whatever their virtues, often don't catch on if there isn't a good series of genre/campaign/setting books (call 'em what you will, but please don't call Cthulhu! :eek:) to hang the system on. Action! had Western, fantasy, giant monster and modern combat supplements published but apparently not quickly enough to give would-be players a sense of what to do with it. West End's D6 system exists today solely because it was the engine for their popular Star Wars game. Without a flow of other popular games based upon it, D6 has struggled to remain a viable commercial product. Fantasy lovers don't inherently want to play D&D. They want to re-live Middle Earth or Narnia or classical mythology or the Hyperborean kingdoms. They'll scratch that itch with Rolemaster, or Labyrinth Lord, or Eldritch Roleplaying or whatever their peers play ... unless we point them to RuneQuest or BRP Classic Fantasy first. In the same way, I contend that people don't inherently yearn to play BRP, however wonderful and time-tested it may be. They're eager to play RuneQuest, Elric, Call of Cthulhu, etc., which happen to use those mechanics. Once they've discovered how useful BRP may be, it'll draw them back to other BRP-based games, but the rules system itself isn't the initial draw. We need plenty of BRP Romes and Val-du-Loups to demonstrate to potential players the wonderfulness of BRP (and to provide a variety of genres and/or settings to lure them in). I grew to love the flexibility that HERO System provided, but I started off merely wanting to play a superheroes game. I also flirted with Heroes Unlimited and Villains & Vigilantes but it was the flexibility of the evolving HERO System that drew me back to Champions and away from other possible choices. And at the time, Justice., Inc., was the only pulp adventure game available.

On the other hand, we have games like Traveller, Og, Deadlands as well as franchises such as Star Trek and Doctor Who which have migrated among various RPG systems, including BRP.

Take that!, Basil Rathbone, er, I mean Guy of Gisborne!

I agree. Games based on BRP have been popular. As we've discussed in previous threads, the key is not to get people to play BRP ("Try it, you'll like it!") but to produce fun, well-written games that use it. People don't play games because they love the rules; they play games because they love the setting or genre and learn to appreciate the rules afterward.

Personally, I don't have a problem with "toolkit" games. I started out playing Champions/HERO System and appreciated its flexibility (and have since learned to like Action! System). Much as I loved Classic Traveller, I gravitated toward Champions because as both a GM and as a player it let me do what I wanted to do. Like its contemporary HERO, BRP evolved into a toolkit by stretching to cover many settings and situations. That's a plus as long as the core rulebook gives good advice on how to tailor the rules to particular genres (which is also what well-written sourcebooks and campaign books are for).

Just curious. Did you ever decide on a system and run that mouse hero game? Inquiring cheese-nibblers want to know.

Interesting. But they capture that '50s/'60s "bug-eyed monster" vibe perfectly. Burton's aliens were such an exact copy that I thought the cards were retro art. :shocked:

Got my hard copy of River Terror today as promised.

I have to say that the cards are actually better than the Tim Burton movie that inspired them. Very 1950s.

I e-mailed Chaosium's customer service e-mail address yesterday and got notification today that it'd be shipping. So that was reasonably prompt.

I'll have to try that. My contest prize materials and PDF arrived promptly enough, but no physical copy of the book so far.

I dunno. The testosterone-pumped hero of The Hoofed Thing managed to chop an 11-foot-tall eldritch monstrosity in half with a broadsword (that just happened to be laying about), apparently without suffering SAN breakdown. And how many ancient, otherworldly, partially intangible nasties did Conan, Kull, and Bran Mac Morn elude or defeat? To be fair, Lovecraft's average protagonist is an 86-year-old scholar with a limp and a heart murmur while Howard's average protagonist is a 20- or 30-something varsity athlete with a credit account at the local Army surplus store. I also remember an episode of G.I. Joe ("Yo, Joe!") in which Our Heroes battled and defeated a very Lovecraftian critter dwelling in a well. (It is well-known that 1980s era energy weapons were incapable of killing men but were highly effective against supernatural and semi-supernatural entities.)

But those newfangled Frontier missiles can give him a bad time! (Don't worry. The Army always loses anyway.) Now, something like the Beast From 20,000 Fathoms or King Kong or Them! would be easier for BRP to handle.