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I wish for BRP Essentials to be ...


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I wish for BRP Essentials to be ...  

146 members have voted

  1. 1. What system would you like Chaosium's proposed BRP Essentials to be based on?

    • The Big Gold Book
      78
    • Call of Cthulhu 7
      11
    • Chaosium RuneQuest
      24
    • Magic World
      19
    • Worlds of Wonder
      11
    • HeroQuest
      3


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53 minutes ago, Simlasa said:

There is loads of great stuff for not-Chaosium BRP coming out.

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?

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1 hour ago, Gollum said:

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 ...

1.  64-96pp, as of the most-recent "official word" that I have seen (basicroleplaying.org/topic/ 4861-brp-essentials-status/ )

2.  Where do you read that Mythic Iceland won't be a "BRPE" title?  It was pretty clear that it would be "BRPE"-based, and I haven't seen anything contrary...  http://www.chaosium.com/blog/mythic-iceland-2nd-edition-manuscript-completed/

BRPE & new-ed RQ are the foundational rulesets; I expect that the new BRP will be related to the new RQ very much in a similar way that original BRP was related to original RQ2 .  "BRPE" will have no setting/campaign/etc content, but Mythic Iceland obviously does... and thus needs some extra content/rules beyond BRPE (probably based on a mix of RQNew + the author's own work).

I presume that, in general, ANY "complete" game, including setting, will need rules beyond the BRPE core:  magic, tech, magitech, psioncs, wierd science, whatever...  Mythic Iceland, as best I can tell from what I've seen, is just an example of this.

===

Overall direction of BRPE?

Well, it's an iteration of BRP.  Roll-low / d100, skills-centric, classless.  I mean, it's a BRP game!

From the elements above the "===" break, we can clearly see that it's NOT going to be based on CoC7's core engine (although it may import some snippets of those rules), so speculation that direction is pointless (unless you ardently wish it to use the CoC7 core, and feel the need to gnash teeth & rend garments, of course... then, gnash and rend away!) .

And it's clearly not a "new BGB" -- no matter how strictly edited, that massive tome's toolkit-approach could never be shoehorned into the sub-100-page format!  BUT, as the BGB was the largest collection of BRP options/variants, it seems overwhelmingly-likely that we WILL see pieces of BGB-content in the new "BRP Essentials".

This is actually quite a bit to know about BRPE.

RQ is the product most-tied to BRP, and the new edition is coming out after a LOT of work & playtest; it seems the most-obvious candidate as the core ruleset for BRPE, but that is my own conjecture... but I expect they will be making most of the same choices for the core skills/mechanics.

 

 

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57 minutes ago, g33k said:

2.  Where do you read that Mythic Iceland won't be a "BRPE" title?  It was pretty clear that it would be "BRPE"-based, and I haven't seen anything contrary...  http://www.chaosium.com/blog/mythic-iceland-2nd-edition-manuscript-completed/

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.

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58 minutes ago, g33k said:

Overall direction of BRPE?

Well, it's an iteration of BRP.  Roll-low / d100, skills-centric, classless.  I mean, it's a BRP game!

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

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59 minutes ago, g33k said:

From the elements above the "===" break, we can clearly see that it's NOT going to be based on CoC7's core engine (although it may import some snippets of those rules), so speculation that direction is pointless (unless you ardently wish it to use the CoC7 core, and feel the need to gnash teeth & rend garments, of course... then, gnash and rend away!) .

Nothing in the link you gave clearly show that BRP Essentials will not be based on Call of Cthulhu 7. It just shows that Mythic Island won't. But since Mythic Island is based on RuneQuest as well as on BRP Essentials rules, we can't be sure. What comes from RuneQuest? What comes from BRP Essentials? We do'nt know ...

Note that you still may be perfectly right! The problem is precisely that, until an official author or publisher tells it clearly, all we have for the moment are just conjectures ... And that is what makes me grumbling a bit. More than one year of conjectures begins to be very long.

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1 hour ago, Gollum said:

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.

Well, but -- as I noted above -- BRPE is expected/presumed to be largely free of setting/campaign material.  By definition, then, Mythic Iceland needs to be substantially-more than BRPE .

In fact, there's a huge list of stuff Mythic Iceland has (at that link) that in fact I'd be kind of dismayed to find in a trim BRPE volume!  Hence, another source-volume... RQ.  Presumably many of the mechanical things in RQ (beyond what's in BRPE) can be tweaked / re-fluff'ed to the Iceland setting.

While not clearly/unambiguously stated, this seems like an obvious conclusion to draw, and worrying about it being otherwise seems ... well ... rather needless.  Like worrying about what happens when WotC buys out Chaosium...  Not impossible, nobody has clearly/unambiguously stated it WON'T happen, after all ...  But the evidence of it happening (or not) seems pretty clear.

 

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Mythic Iceland is a setting that it makes sense to have hit locations, magic, an emphasis on hand-to-hand combat, so it is logical that the version of BRP it uses should be similar to RQ, which has a major focus on these features.

However for BRPE it makes sense to have a simplier system with less nuts and bolts, so I guess this is why the game engine build of CoC has often  been suggested for a generic rules base.

So perhaps the answer is that BRPE may be best served by the CoC engine, yet some settings may be best portrayed with the RQ mechanics.

To throw a spanner in the works, Mythic Iceland has already been presented as an alternative setting for CoC 7E in the Cthulhu Thru The Ages book. This includes how to handle things like Shields etc so it is genre specific.

Given that MagicWorld was shelved then I guess the classic BGB engine has gone with it. So now it's 50/50 whether they run with  CoC 7E or CRQ4 as the BRP house system. You never know, the best thing may to cherry pick elements from both :)

 

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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1 hour ago, Gollum said:

Nothing in the link you gave clearly show that BRP Essentials will not be based on Call of Cthulhu 7. It just shows that Mythic Island won't. But since Mythic Island is based on RuneQuest as well as on BRP Essentials rules, we can't be sure. What comes from RuneQuest? What comes from BRP Essentials? We do'nt know ...

Note that you still may be perfectly right! The problem is precisely that, until an official author or publisher tells it clearly, all we have for the moment are just conjectures ... And that is what makes me grumbling a bit. More than one year of conjectures begins to be very long.

Well, but... nothing in that link clearly shows that it won't be based on Amber Diceless Roleplaying, or GURPS, either !

The complete lack of any mention of CoC7 as a core/foundational material for BRPE (from any official source (that I have seen), as opposed to outsiders like you and I (and most of the rest of us) speculating (OTOH, maybe we in the peanut gallery are a source of amusement, betting-pools, and what-have-you, in the MD/C Virtual Office)), and repeated mention by Official Folk of prior "BRP" titles and RQ, gives us a pretty-definitive idea of the "rough" space where BRPE will sit.

I really don't see the wide-open "it might be anything" that you do...

===

Mind you... I too would be thrilled if Somebody Official were to drop into this thread and give us Official Word as to thinks such as

  • hit locations vs. bag-o-hp vs Major Wounds vs Combat Effects -- or some/all of these as options?
  • rolled v. point-buy characteristics?
  • characters built via culture/profession/etc backgrounds, or pure player-chosen skills?
  • skills-improvement by "ticks" or by "points"?  Fixed 5% improvements or rolled?
  • "Talents" or other "special" differentiators?
  • Will there be an exemplar magic-system?
  • What tech's / gear will be provided for renaissance-and-later (all the way to sci-fi) games?

Etc ...

 

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2 hours ago, Gollum said:

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

Yep.

They're all part of the BRP "family" of largely-interchangable parts.

Scroll up to the banner at the verrrry top of the page:  "BRP Central"

 

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5 hours ago, Gollum said:

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.

NOBODY can buy the BGB, it's out of print.  Well, I guess they can buy the PDF...  I for one hope the BGB gets re-printed!  I expect that it's toolkit will still be largely-usable with the upcoming BRPE !

The lack of clear info at this point in time does kind of hint about release timeframe:  certainly not this month, or next !  Almost certainly not this year.

 

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11 minutes ago, Mankcam said:

To throw a spanner in the works, Mythic Iceland has already been presented as an alternative setting for CoC 7E in the Cthulhu Thru The Ages book. This includes how to handle things like Shields etc so it is genre specific.

Given that MagicWorld was shelved then I guess the classic BGB engine has gone with it. So now it's 50/50 whether they run with  CoC 7E or CRQ4 as the BRP house system. You never know, the best thing may to cherry pick elements from both :)

I haven't seen the CoC7 rules.  Let me ask you this;  how hard would it be -- how much extra pagecount -- to present barebones versions of RQ/CoC7 as parallel/variant mechanics within the BRPE cover?

 

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I think RQ may be be a little harder than CoC 7E to make a generic ruleset in regards to things like char gen. It regards to combat , RQ may not be the best fit either, although melee combat certainly does shine. 

On the other hand, the CoC 7E engine probably has wider applications. Its practically all there already.

In regards to nuts n bolts, the CoC 7E engine is as simple as the BGB rules were, except with one extra success level.

Pity about the stat block disparity with expressing Characteristics as %, but the rest is pretty reasonable I think.

As far as char gen goes, the skill pts are calculated using different Characteristics for each Profession. Between the Professions listed in CoC 7E and Cthuhlu Thru The Ages you have covered Professions from Jazz Era, Victorian Era, Dark Ages , Vikings, Ancient Rome, and Post Apoclytic Future. It would be simple to either cherry pick those or make generic era versions.

Hit Locations are not default, but are presented as an option in CoC 7E. 

As far as weapons go, CoC 7E covers firearms and Cthulhu Thru The Ages covers Ancient/ Medieval weaponry and rules associated with such. 

Skill mods are Bonus/Penalty dice as opposed to numerical modifiers, and that's about all that would need to port over. Stuff like Push rules, Luck rules, Mythos Magic etc would probably not be in BRPE.

But looking at this, its plain to see that Chaosium ALREADY has a freshened-up generic engine based on the CoC 7E mechanics. 

They are obiviously just trying to work out whether to run with this, or go with CRQ4 as the core BRPE.

I suspect that if they hadn't chosen Mythic Iceland to be the first BRPE release then they would have automatically gone with the CoC 7E engine.

Personally I love RQ so I'm happy either way, and if BRPE is cherry picked between the two then I can live with that.

However its logical that BRPE could easily use the CoC 7E engine, considering the profile and popularity of CoC 7E. All the game mechanics are already in place. 

Trimming down the core mechanics chapters from CoC7E and adding it to material from Cthulhu Thru The Ages would be a Sunday drive compared to what Jeff is doing with updating the new RQ rules. 

The path of least resistance is usually the one that wins out...

 

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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11 hours ago, g33k said:

The complete lack of any mention of CoC7 as a core/foundational material for BRPE (from any official source (that I have seen), as opposed to outsiders like you and I (and most of the rest of us) speculating (OTOH, maybe we in the peanut gallery are a source of amusement, betting-pools, and what-have-you, in the MD/C Virtual Office)), and repeated mention by Official Folk of prior "BRP" titles and RQ, gives us a pretty-definitive idea of the "rough" space where BRPE will sit.

This argument is a very good one.

To be clear, I'm not at all claiming that I am right when I say that BRP Essentials should be based on Call of Cthulhu 7. I absolutely don't know. It's not even a speculation. It's just what would, to my humble point of view, be the better idea. For several reasons.

  1. First, because it is the simplest version of the BRP system.
  2. Second, because it is a very good one, with a lot of new interesting rules.
  3. Third, because "RuneQuest Essentials" already exist. They are even several versions of it, published by other publisher. So, doing one more would not be the best idea.
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11 hours ago, g33k said:

NOBODY can buy the BGB, it's out of print.

If you go on Chaosium website and click on "Basic Roleplaying" (in the left margin), you immediately go on this page.

http://www.chaosium.com/basic-roleplaying/

Nothing says that a new version is coming or that this one is not anymore supported. To the contrary, the big golden book (or its PDF edition) is presented as the latest version. You can buy it. And once you clicked on "Add to card", Several other products for this "old" version suddenly appear as "You may also like ..." They are good and they will surely be compatible with the new version. But it adds some confusion to the mystery of the future BRP Essentials ...

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13 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I think RQ may be be a little harder than CoC 7E to make a generic ruleset in regards to things like char gen. It regards to combat , RQ may not be the best fit either, although melee combat certainly does shine. 

On the other hand, the CoC 7E engine probably has wider applications. Its practically all there already.

In regards to nuts n bolts, the CoC 7E engine is as simple as the BGB rules were, except with one extra success level.

Pity about the stat block disparity with expressing Characteristics as %, but the rest is pretty reasonable I think.

As far as char gen goes, the skill pts are calculated using different Characteristics for each Profession. Between the Professions listed in CoC 7E and Cthuhlu Thru The Ages you have covered Professions from Jazz Era, Victorian Era, Dark Ages , Vikings, Ancient Rome, and Post Apoclytic Future. It would be simple to either cherry pick those or make generic era versions.

Hit Locations are not default, but are presented as an option in CoC 7E. 

As far as weapons go, CoC 7E covers firearms and Cthulhu Thru The Ages covers Ancient/ Medieval weaponry and rules associated with such. 

Skill mods are Bonus/Penalty dice as opposed to numerical modifiers, and that's about all that would need to port over. Stuff like Push rules, Luck rules, Mythos Magic etc would probably not be in BRPE.

But looking at this, its plain to see that Chaosium ALREADY has a freshened-up generic engine based on the CoC 7E mechanics. 

They are obiviously just trying to work out whether to run with this, or go with CRQ4 as the core BRPE.

I suspect that if they hadn't chosen Mythic Iceland to be the first BRPE release then they would have automatically gone with the CoC 7E engine.

Personally I love RQ so I'm happy either way, and if BRPE is cherry picked between the two then I can live with that.

However its logical that BRPE could easily use the CoC 7E engine, considering the profile and popularity of CoC 7E. All the game mechanics are already in place. 

Trimming down the core mechanics chapters from CoC7E and adding it to material from Cthulhu Thru The Ages would be a Sunday drive compared to what Jeff is doing with updating the new RQ rules. 

The path of least resistance is usually the one that wins out...

 

I agree. I think you and @Gollum have made enough arguments for me to change my vote. I reread the CoC7 quick start this  past weekend and was leaning that way to begin with - to the point that I am changing my house system to incorporate more CoC elements.

Would love to see something new be put out from an official source on the topic of BRPE...

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16 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I think RQ may be be a little harder than CoC 7E to make a generic ruleset in regards to things like char gen. It regards to combat , RQ may not be the best fit either, although melee combat certainly does shine. 

On the other hand, the CoC 7E engine probably has wider applications. Its practically all there already.

In regards to nuts n bolts, the CoC 7E engine is as simple as the BGB rules were, except with one extra success level.

Pity about the stat block disparity with expressing Characteristics as %, but the rest is pretty reasonable I think.

As far as char gen goes, the skill pts are calculated using different Characteristics for each Profession. Between the Professions listed in CoC 7E and Cthuhlu Thru The Ages you have covered Professions from Jazz Era, Victorian Era, Dark Ages , Vikings, Ancient Rome, and Post Apoclytic Future. It would be simple to either cherry pick those or make generic era versions.

Hit Locations are not default, but are presented as an option in CoC 7E. 

As far as weapons go, CoC 7E covers firearms and Cthulhu Thru The Ages covers Ancient/ Medieval weaponry and rules associated with such. 

Skill mods are Bonus/Penalty dice as opposed to numerical modifiers, and that's about all that would need to port over. Stuff like Push rules, Luck rules, Mythos Magic etc would probably not be in BRPE.

But looking at this, its plain to see that Chaosium ALREADY has a freshened-up generic engine based on the CoC 7E mechanics. 

They are obiviously just trying to work out whether to run with this, or go with CRQ4 as the core BRPE.

I suspect that if they hadn't chosen Mythic Iceland to be the first BRPE release then they would have automatically gone with the CoC 7E engine.

Personally I love RQ so I'm happy either way, and if BRPE is cherry picked between the two then I can live with that.

However its logical that BRPE could easily use the CoC 7E engine, considering the profile and popularity of CoC 7E. All the game mechanics are already in place. 

Trimming down the core mechanics chapters from CoC7E and adding it to material from Cthulhu Thru The Ages would be a Sunday drive compared to what Jeff is doing with updating the new RQ rules. 

The path of least resistance is usually the one that wins out...

 

All this, as well as giving support to the sadly neglected C:DA, is why Mythic Iceland V2 should be released for CoC instead of RQ or whatever BRP will be.  And, there is already is a campaign that they could apply to it, Oscar Rios' The Ravenar Sagas monograph. So it could be a triple threat right out of the gate, a new rulebook, a new setting, and an upgraded campaign, instead of things spread across different competing Chaosium systems.. 

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21 hours ago, Gollum said:

Why waiting indefinitely for something that nobody sounds to know while there are so many very well known and good other games around?

Does any gamer actually do this? Sit and fidget, wring their hands, and wait impatiently for the authoritative release that'll take them to the BRP promised land? Does this year-long 'delay' really impact anyone's present gaming, or prevent them from running the campaign that they desire to run now?

Now, random speculation, and personal preferences stated for what system would be the best fit for BRP Essentials? Yeah, that happens on a cyclical basis here in multiple threads, every few months. Or at least every time I return from a BRP Central hiatus and see the same conversation and the same preferences stated over and over again. :)

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4 hours ago, K Peterson said:

Does any gamer actually do this? Sit and fidget, wring their hands, and wait impatiently for the authoritative release that'll take them to the BRP promised land? Does this year-long 'delay' really impact anyone's present gaming, or prevent them from running the campaign that they desire to run now?

 

Personally, I am working on getting my RQClassic campaign running as soon as I can (a couple of my players are Too Busy to Think right now...  So it's delayed for THAT reason) in the confident expectation that I will be easily able to update things to Chaosium's new edition of RQ, when it comes (and presuming we want to move, when we see the actual rules reviewed by independent reviewers).  So the expectation of "RQ:Next" isn't delaying my "RQ:Classic" campaign.

That said... while I don't think anyone ever "doesn't game" because they're waiting on an edition, they might decide not to buy a product because a newer edition is expected RealSoonNow... and such a purchase-hold MIGHT just delay some groups' campaign-launch.  "A new, upcoming version" -- in many contexts -- does often cause a delay-of-purchase.  It's a real, well-known phenomenon.  In some markets, companies will announce a "new version" long before they otherwise might, in an effort to delay/disrupt competitors' sales; in the BRP space, however, the only disruption is likely to be to Chaosium (q.v. the BRP-to-Mythras migrations of the well-regarded (and well-selling!) M-Space and Classic Fantasy titles!).

I'm confident that Chaosium WILL produce this, eventually.  But my (outsider's) perspective is that the uncertainty at this stage is probably more-damaging to Chaosium interests than is the loss of whatever man-hours on whatever project it would take, to get some Official Statement out to the fans, draft rules available to game-dev's, etc...  And I say this as someone whose chief interests/wants from Chaosium are RQ-centric (fulfilling on RQClassic-KS stretch goals, & producing RQ:Next), so I expect any lost man-hours would come from projects nearer&dearer to my heart than BRPE ...

 

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12 hours ago, K Peterson said:

Does any gamer actually do this? Sit and fidget, wring their hands, and wait impatiently for the authoritative release that'll take them to the BRP promised land? Does this year-long 'delay' really impact anyone's present gaming, or prevent them from running the campaign that they desire to run now?

No. And that is precisely the problem!

BRP Essentials will have to be very good once it will be published out, because most players will already be playing another version of the game. Making them come back to Chaosium BRP rules will very be hard. An extremely difficult roll, to speak in Call of Cthulhu 7 terms.

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7 hours ago, g33k said:

That said... while I don't think anyone ever "doesn't game" because they're waiting on an edition, they might decide not to buy a product because a newer edition is expected RealSoonNow...

Yes. That's exactly what happens with me!

I'm not buying anymore any BRP product, waiting to see what BRP Essentials will be like. The only Chaosium book I have bought since BRP Essentials announce is Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook, because most of my campaigns are Cthulhu games. Until now, I played them with the big golden book rules (I know, it's a bit weird; but, actually, I like to use the same rules for all my games instead of having rule alterations that confuse players each time we move from one game world to the other). And, now, I am seriously looking at other publishers' products ...

I would like to be the only one to think like that. If I was, Chaosium would keep all his BRP fans. But, sadly, I would strongly argue the opposite.

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On 10/18/2016 at 8:12 PM, g33k said:

NOBODY can buy the BGB, it's out of print.  Well, I guess they can buy the PDF...  I for one hope the BGB gets re-printed!  I expect that it's toolkit will still be largely-usable with the upcoming BRPE !

The lack of clear info at this point in time does kind of hint about release timeframe:  certainly not this month, or next !  Almost certainly not this year.

 

You can buy the softcover version of the BGB for $39.95 on our website:  http://www.chaosium.com/basic-roleplaying/

Edited by Rick Meints
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As of now, you still can. And I assume the pdf will be available or the foreseeable future. But the question being raised here is not if whether the BGB is available for the general public or not, but what is going to happen with it. Will it get a reprint? Are you going to pare it down into an "essential" BGB? Are you going to scrap it and put out a new one based on the latest CoC/RQ? Are you not going to do anything, and just keep the basic framework and put out separate games? I realize that these are questions that you may not have answers to yet, but that's the discussion here.

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Chaosium's current quandary with the BGB is that it is not so much a rulebook as it is a vast collection of various ideas and guidelines for various genres. Using "BRP" for a Hi-tech Space game is very different in many aspects to what rules are needed for running a Fantasy based game. Thus, we have mainly focused on working with authors, like Pedro and his Mythic Iceland series of books, to make sure the "BRP" rules work with his setting and are included in his books. This is basically what happened in the Golden Age of Chaosium back in the 1980s. There was no Big BRP rulebook you had to buy. If you wanted to play a game, you bought that specific game, be it RuneQuest, Pendragon, Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, Ringworld, Thieves World, ElfQuest, Worlds of Wonder, or Superworld. None of those required you own a separate rulebook along with that boxed game. They were complete in and of themselves. Yes, of course, there was a "Basic Roleplaying" book published by Chaosium in the 1980s. It was about 16 pages and was specifically targeted at people brand new to roleplaying who wanted to know what it was all about. It was absolutely not intended to become a rulebook used for running other games.

Thus, Chaosium has spent its time developing games with authors so their game is a complete stand-alone package, and not reliant on owning a big book of info that contains a lot of rules, options, and such that are probably not applicable to, or important for, that specific game. We have looked at a very distilled down version of "core" BRP rules applicable to any genre, and have referred to it as "BRP Essentials", but we currently see that material as something that may just get provided to authors as opposed to being a published product. We MIGHT publish BRP Essentials some day, but we're not 100% sure how much of a priority or a necessity it will be. In some ways, the Call of Cthulhu QuickStart already does a lot of what a BRP essentials would do, plus we WILL be publishing a RuneQuest Quickstart in the first half of 2017 and it will do likewise.  

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Fair enough. For what it's worth, I agree with your stance here. Your resources will probably be better spent focusing on self-contained games. Still, I don't want to see the BGB go the way of the dodo, because it is an excellent core book. So I hope you keep it around. 

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2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

We MIGHT publish BRP Essentials some day, but we're not 100% sure how much of a priority or a necessity it will be. 

Now this is something of a disappointment for me. I was really looking forward to an Essentials book so I could unify the Cyberpunk and 40K conversions I've worked on (and others that are in the pipeline). BRP Quickstart doesn't cover everything I need: there are a few bits missing (EDU and skill categories for instance) that I consider "essential" BRP components (IMHO). I'll can remain with the BGB for some time to come and/or adapt features from Magic World, of course, but neither solution is as satisfactory as an official BRP Essentials to use as a base.

Regards,

Colin

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