I wish for BRP Essentials to be ...

[Gollum]

3 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

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.  

As ColinBrett, just above, I'm a bit surprised and disappointed to read that ... The official announce about the 32 pages BRP Essentials sounded to tell the contrary ... But no matter. what you wrote here has the merit to be clear. So, since BRP Essentials is mainly a working base for authors, it is not worth waiting for it anymore.

Thank you very much for that important precision.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Gollum

[Gollum]

3 hours ago, Baragei said:

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. 

I fully do agree with Baragei. Please, don't drop the big golden book! Some people like truly universal games (where the rules remain the same even when you change the game world).

[Rick Meints]

Because we do the softcover BGB as a POD title we have no plans to do anything other than keep printing and selling it as is.

[Zit]

I'm wondering if the BRP essentials are not going to be what they have been at the very begining : a basic, setting-neutral version of Runequest.

[Mankcam]

Well I think the fact that BRPE will be more of a guideline for authors than a public release is fair enough, and I would like to thank Rick for taking the time to clarify this in this thread.

It's certainly not the End Of All Things, however it still is a little disappointing to me.

I quite like the idea of having a product which is small core ruleset that I can add bits and pieces that I can tinker with to make the setting I prefer. I like the approach taken with GURPS, FATE, Savage Worlds, Insight, etc although I would prefer to use BRP as a core engine. I often watch a film or television show and consider how to run that as a rpg, and BRP is usually the first framework that springs to mind.

The BGB was initially very attractive in this regard, however I do agree with Rick's view that it is a vast collection of rules that don't necessarily work with each other, and as such, it really is a bit cumbersome as a core book.

I think a much slimmer version would of been nice, something bigger than a quickstart, but much smaller than the BGB. I've always wanted it to be a nice little slim hardcover book, something about the size of RQ2 Classic Edition would have been great, especially with Chaosium's current production standards. But that's just my personal preference.

From a practical point of view, having the RQ Quickstart and CoC Quickstart will probably suffice most purposes, depending on whether a GM tinkerer wants to run a fantasy or a modern game. It does make sense to have a slightly different emphasis with these rulesets depending upon the genre. 

RuneQuest is great with it's Hit Locations, Strike Ranks, Weapon Effects and such; whereas Call Of Cthulhu has always felt smooth and streamlined. I am happy with both of these BRP engines, and historically I have just run with whichever one has felt better for the genre that I have been home brewing.

As I've said before, if you have the CoC 7E Quickstart and Cthulhu Thru The Ages booklets, then you already have a BRPE using this engine. However it may have been nice for the content from these publications to be joined under one cover, with all Cthulhu elements stripped out, and that could have easily sufficed as a BRPE.

In fact I still am puzzled why this isn't the plan, it doesn't feel like a big undertaking, and it ticks alot of the boxes in regards to having a contemporary toolkit.

However all this is only of concern for people who really want to stick to the BRP engine that Chaosium is currently producing.

There is Mythras as a big contender for a core BRP system which appeals to many GMs. Mythras Imperative is pretty generic, and ticks alot of boxes if referred to as a generic toolkit. I have not seen the expanded version of Mythras yet, although I suspect it may be more fantasy-centric, given the RQ6 legacy. However the rules exist in the system to cover Sci-Fi (Luther Arkwright, M-Space, etc) so Mythras is certainly an attractive option to GM tinkerers who prefer more simulationist rules.

There is also OpenQuest, Renaissance, and soon to be released Revolution D100, so GMs can find a BRP toolkit if they look for them. However I still would prefer Chaosium to also have one in current existence, in addition to their separate product lines.

Well at least we know what the goals for BRPE are now. It seems it's primarily viewed as a reference document, which may be aimed more at authors or licencees, rather than a public release toolkit rules for GMs.  Vile kicked this thread off in October 2015 and here we are in October 2016 with some direction on it now. Whether it's the answers we wanted is unclear, but I guess it's kinda a conclusion to all the speculation 

 

 

 

Edited October 21, 2016 by Mankcam

[SDLeary]

13 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

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.

This is true, but if I want Fantasy, but don't want Glorantha, then the only real option is the BGB. If I want SciFi, but I don't want... well there isn't anything, is there, and hasn't been for some time. Again the BGB is the only option. If I want Supers, there are PDFs based on the 30+ year old Superworld, but I would bet that supers with the BGB is slightly less prone to minmaxing.

So the BGB is here now, and it can be configured to scratch all these itches that Chaosium currently doesn't cover, with our favorite system. The thing is, that the BGB is getting hard to find (yes I saw that you have it, some feel better buying at their FLGS), it hasn't been cleared up as to if it will be reprinted once the current stock is depleted, and now it appears as if the new "core system product" might be as well.

So honestly here Rick, if we want to use BRP (or continue to use) outside of the core of Chaosium (Glorantha and Lovecraftian Horror), how is the Company going to assist its fans?

SDLeary

P.S. -- Personally I wouldn't use BRP for supers anymore (perhaps low level Batman types but otherwise HeroQuest or FATE), but I know of people who do and love it.

[SDLeary]

4 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

Because we do the softcover BGB as a POD title we have no plans to do anything other than keep printing and selling it as is.

OK! New information! A bit contrary to what I remember coming before, but OK.

Now, my question still stands. If we want to use BRP outside of the core of Chaosium (Glorantha and Lovecraftian Horror), how is the Company going to assist its fans?

SDLeary

[g33k]

17 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

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

<blinkblink>  My bad!  I had thought all copies were gone (and maybe at one point they were, but... POD).  Apologies for the misinformation!

 

Edited October 21, 2016 by g33k
update reflecting later info

[colinabrett]

4 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Now, my question still stands. If we want to use BRP outside of the core of Chaosium (Glorantha and Lovecraftian Horror), how is the Company going to assist its fans?

SDLeary

This is exactly the point I was trying to make up-thread but you've put it much more succinctly. 

Colin

[NickMiddleton]

11 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

Because we do the softcover BGB as a POD title we have no plans to do anything other than keep printing and selling it as is.

Whilst in terms of the wider market I can see why this wasn't made more of, but I confess to some degree of surprise that the community here was not aware that the BGB was available via POD - was there any sort of announcement?

Also, are other "legacy" titles, such as Magic World, available via POD?

Regards,

Nick

[Gollum]

14 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

Because we do the softcover BGB as a POD title we have no plans to do anything other than keep printing and selling it as is.

Thank you very much for that answer. This is a comforting news.

[Rick Meints]

3 hours ago, NickMiddleton said:

Whilst in terms of the wider market I can see why this wasn't made more of, but I confess to some degree of surprise that the community here was not aware that the BGB was available via POD - was there any sort of announcement?

Also, are other "legacy" titles, such as Magic World, available via POD?

We didn't announce we had started selling the BGB again because we never really stopped selling it, although it has been out of stock for short periods of time. It's been available on the Chaosium website for years. As for Magic World and Advanced Sorcery, they are also still for sale on our website. If there is any other title that you are looking for, please feel free to ask. As long as we have the rights to publish it we can make the title available one way or another.

While some of you would love to buy the BGB or similar BRP products from your FLGS, that is relatively unlikely to happen. They were never carried by that many game stores even when they were first published. That said, a game store can special order a number of titles from us, if they choose to contact us and do so. It's sad to say, but most BRP titles, with all respect to the authors, artists, etc. that created them, never sold that well. Even when they were made fully available to distributors they were not purchased by them in large quantities. Of course if distributors buy few copies then the stores buy even less. As a side note, many of the BRP titles Chaosium sold to Amazon have been slowly returned to us after languishing in their warehouses for who knows how long.

[Rick Meints]

10 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Now, my question still stands. If we want to use BRP outside of the core of Chaosium (Glorantha and Lovecraftian Horror), how is the Company going to assist its fans?

SDLeary

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what you are specifically asking. We have kept the BGB in print and for sale. If you are asking if there will be an updated edition of that book, the answer is "not any time soon". If you are asking "do we plan to publish anything for BRP?", the answer is yes. The first new titles will be related to Mythic Iceland, which has become a stand alone game using what it needs from the "BRP rules". If the question is "are you going to publish an updated, slimmed down version of the BGB?", the answer is maybe. If you want a more definitive answer, please let me know what kind of assistance you are looking for.

If the question is "what is the future of BRP?", the answer is still "we don't have a lot of specific plans". I know that is disappointing, and some of you may feel utterly abandoned and betrayed after many many years of valiantly supporting the "BRP" line. I stand by what the management team said in July of 2015. Chaosium has no choice but to focus on what will sell well. We don't have any money to invest in products that don't sell well, regardless of how awesome, wonderful, magnificent, and brilliant they are to a small audience of fans. If we spend time and resources on a book that won't sell at least a few thousand copies we are taking time and resources from projects that will sell a few thousand copies. 

[soltakss]

On 10/18/2016 at 10:42 PM, Gollum said:

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

Or they and BRP are all RuneQuest-like games. Many Systems, One Family!

[girtablilu]

I appreciate Rick Meints taking the time to answer and his candor with the situation.  It is true that the company would need to get back on its feet financially before focusing on less profitable projects.  Let's just hope that the new CoC7 and its supplements can help with this.  I know I truly like the new CoC and its changes.  Again, the only reason I came to BRP/Chaosium was because I was seeking a generic system using percentile mechanics.  The reason I wanted it to be generic was to have cross-over scenarios between genres.  The book itself is great in collecting everything rule-wise but it is a bit cumbersome to work with.  So I was looking forward to a simpler, more efficient version to use.  Hell, if I had the time and know-how, I'd write it for them for free.  But I'm no mathematician in regards to game mechanics.

What would I like to see?  A BRP Essentials core book (with CoC7 mechanics, basic and streamlined) followed by numerous source-books and scenarios, in the same way that GURPS does.  But I understand that may not come to pass anytime soon. So for now, at worst, I can use CoC7 for rules and Cthulhu Through the Ages for settings to do this (as Mankcam suggested), but there would be no supplemental material that was not Cthulhu Mythos based, including scenarios.  And at best, sometime in the undetermined future, Chaosium will be at the forefront of the tabletop RPG market , thus having the financial freedom to show the world what a quality generic RPG can be like:  releasing BRP-E and tons of bestselling source-books and scenarios.

In the meantime, I will enjoy the new CoC7, and buy as much as I can afford in that area.  Mainly because I love the products, but if it helps keep them in business, it's just icing on the cake.  I think the company has made some great changes in the last year, especially in its willingness to be honest with us, as much as possible, about things.  And also from an outside perspective, I believe that they are on the right track to not merely saving their company, but making it into something that will thrive.  I feel a lot of positive energy coming from them, a revitalized passion, well tempered with good business strategy.

[smiorgan]

8 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

If the question is "what is the future of BRP?", the answer is still "we don't have a lot of specific plans". 

Does it mean that, apart from Mythic Iceland, there are no other standalone games planned for the moment?

(which would be entirely understandable, by the way, given the amount of time and resources you are investing in CoC, RQ and other projects)

I confess I'd love to see Stormbringer resurrected in some way. And Pendragon back at Chaosium. both with the kind of production values that we are seeing for CoC! 

[Fenspar]

On 10/20/2016 at 5:50 AM, Rick Meints said:

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.

While I recognize the commercial necessity behind this, this is a disappointing update. As captured in the BGB, BRP in itself is an excellent system, and as a GM I want to be able to harness it for my own worlds. The BGB is and will continue to be my resource for this. But I would certainly have paid to have something concise, with the core rules accessible, in the form of a BRP Essentials book. This would be in preference to trying to extract the system I want from RuneQuest or CoC.

[SDLeary]

12 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

We didn't announce we had started selling the BGB again because we never really stopped selling it, although it has been out of stock for short periods of time. It's been available on the Chaosium website for years. As for Magic World and Advanced Sorcery, they are also still for sale on our website. If there is any other title that you are looking for, please feel free to ask. As long as we have the rights to publish it we can make the title available one way or another.

I do believe there was something here (or perhaps it was G+) in the past that stated that once these titles sold through, that they would be done. The fact that they are available via POD is a refreshing bit of news.

SDLeary

 

[g33k]

7 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

I do believe there was something here (or perhaps it was G+) in the past that stated that once these titles sold through, that they would be done. The fact that they are available via POD is a refreshing bit of news.

SDLeary

I don't know if I saw some notice, or if I just hit an "out of stock" moment and presumed it was done-and-gone, but I too had (mis)understood this to be the case; and I too am VERY happy to be wrong!

Edited October 22, 2016 by g33k
deleted blank space

[g33k]

On 10/20/2016 at 2:29 PM, Rick Meints said:

Because we do the softcover BGB as a POD title we have no plans to do anything other than keep printing and selling it as is.

Could you please do a check on hardcover POD pricing?  And if it strikes you as excessive, revisit the question periodically?  I generally prefer my "refer to again and again" books in hardcover.  Adventures&campaigns and other "play once" books -- yeah, sure, paperpack is fine!

[g33k]

On 10/20/2016 at 5:50 AM, Rick Meints said:

Chaosium's current quandary with the BGB ...

... 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.  

@Rick Meints  -- THANK YOU!!! for this clarifying commentary.  I'll echo others, in saying that it's a disappointment, not the answer I had hoped for; but ANY clear&current answer is better than none!

And I completely understand your perspective that the sales-volume isn't sufficient to support the "BRPE" concept -- or at least, that it would be a very low-margin product that wouldn't justify the hours & budget taken away from other products that more people want to buy.

I will continue to hope that Chaosium finds a way to move forward with a published/public BRPE... but I won't look for it any time soon!  Once it's polished enough -- gone through enough authors, engine'd enough genre's -- it might be pretty easy to Kickstart, eh?

I must say, though, that I'm looking forward to both the new RQ, and the 2017 "RQ Quickstart"

 

[Guest Vile Traveller]

Hmmm ... disappointed at this change of plan. As someone who has always incorporated settings into a basic rule system (RQ2 and RQ3 for most of my gaming life), the chances of a published setting-incorporated rulebook coinciding with my interests are very small. Having no interest in Glorantha, RQ7 is already a step I will skip. I was looking forward to Mythic Iceland mainly as a precurser to BRP Essentials, but if the latter won't happen I don't see anything in the pipe that tickles my fancy (other than the remainder of the RQ2 Kickstarter books, hint, hint).

Better get on with this A:e thing, then.

[SDLeary]

20 hours ago, Vile said:

Hmmm ... disappointed at this change of plan. As someone who has always incorporated settings into a basic rule system (RQ2 and RQ3 for most of my gaming life), the chances of a published setting-incorporated rulebook coinciding with my interests are very small. Having no interest in Glorantha, RQ7 is already a step I will skip. I was looking forward to Mythic Iceland mainly as a precurser to BRP Essentials, but if the latter won't happen I don't see anything in the pipe that tickles my fancy (other than the remainder of the RQ2 Kickstarter books, hint, hint).

Better get on with this A:e thing, then.

I thought remembered something about an actual book, and there it is. 

SDLeary

[colinabrett]

On 22/10/2016 at 7:05 AM, Vile said:

Better get on with this A:e thing, then.

@Vile, please explain A:e. What have I missed?

Colin

[Guest Vile Traveller]

2 hours ago, ColinBrett said:

@Vile, please explain A:e. What have I missed?

Colin

It's in my sig. Don't want to derail the thread.