Original BRP

[ORtrail]

1 hour ago, SDLeary said:

Sadly it was NOT in Ringworld, nor my old boxed Stormbringer. Not sure of Elfquest (never a fan) and Hawkmoon (died and discarded long ago).

SDLeary

I just checked my Worlds of Wonder boxed set and it was included as standard (I also noticed the map of a small portion of Wonder, which I really need to include in an adventure someday).  It was not included in the Superworld boxed set or the Hawkmoon boxed set.  

[SDLeary]

1 hour ago, ORtrail said:

I just checked my Worlds of Wonder boxed set and it was included as standard (I also noticed the map of a small portion of Wonder, which I really need to include in an adventure someday).  It was not included in the Superworld boxed set or the Hawkmoon boxed set.  

Correct. Because it formed the basis for the other WoW books, it was included as standard. Not in my Superworld box either. 

SDLeary

[Sigtrygg]

The true value of the BRP booklet to me was it was easy to convert it to run other games.

I can't be the only one who hacked a 'BRP/Traveller mash up' to use the language of the kids today  

How much effort would it take to scan and create a high quality pdf version of the original booklet? I'll bet there are people out there who would do this for free and then send it to Chaosium to save them the distraction.

[g33k]

7 hours ago, Sigtrygg said:

The true value of the BRP booklet to me was it was easy to convert it to run other games.

I can't be the only one who hacked a 'BRP/Traveller mash up' to use the language of the kids today  

How much effort would it take to scan and create a high quality pdf version of the original booklet? I'll bet there are people out there who would do this for free and then send it to Chaosium to save them the distraction.

You probably want to get the current BRP Quickstart booklet for this.  Rules are nice & short. The rest of the book is a suite of mini-adventures & pregen PCs in a range of genres.

The PDF is a freebie; the print version is like $10-$15 from Chaosium.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

8 hours ago, Sigtrygg said:

How much effort would it take to scan and create a high quality pdf version of the original booklet? I'll bet there are people out there who would do this for free and then send it to Chaosium to save them the distraction.

It's been done (for the entire WoW set), and Chaosium have the text and image files. It might be a while before they get around to doing anything with it, though.

 

[Shenron]

After reading all of the replies I was inspired to dig out my BRP stuff. 

I do have the BRP gold book (hardback), quickstart, Rubble and Ruin, Enlightened Magic, and Blood Tides. 

I have checked Chaoisum's website and they do not have a lot of BRP stuff anymore which is sad. I really need to get my hands on Astonsishing Tales. 

What is the difference between the BRP hardback book and softback book besides the covers?

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Shenron said:

What is the difference between the BRP hardback book and softback book besides the covers?

It depends on which BRP softback, but possibly a couple of hundred pages, maybe just some errata, or nothing.

 

Back in the early days of RQ, Greg Stafford and Lynn Willis wrote a 16 page introductory RPG, called Basic Role Playing. Culled from the RuneQuest rules, it was very basic and explained characteristics, skills and success levels. The book was given away with some early boxed sets of the time, such as RuneQuest 2, and Call of Cthulhu. It was also expanded upon in the Worlds of Wonder boxed set into three slightly more detailed RPGs. That's the first BRP.

 

Then, about 15-20 years ago, Chaosium took the RQ3 rules, cut out all the setting specific stuff, and re-released them as the Basic Roleplaying monograph. While the game mechanics used were still the same, the monograph was a lot bigger and more detailed than the original BRP booklet. That's the second BRP. 

 

Then, about tens years ago or so (wow, really that long?), Jason Durall authored a book that collected various sections and rules used in the various Chaoiums games over the years, and put them together in one book. That;s the Big Gold Book, the BRP that you probably have, and which has had various supplements and expansions. That's the third BRP. 

 

So depending on which version you are comparing, the differences could be minor or quite significant.

 

 

 

 

[Shenron]

My BRP Hardback gold book says;

Revised by Jason Durall and Sam Johnson

Published January 2011

[BigJackBrass]

There was a book called The Adventurer's Handbook by Bob Albrecht, published around 1984, that contained the text of the BRP pamphlet; I believe it was the complete thing, but unfortunately my copy is currently in storage so I can't check. The book was an introduction to RPGs, one of several such titles produced between roughly 1980 and 1985 when D&D was hitting the mainstream, and particularly focused on Chaosium's rules.

[Atgxtg]

By Bob Albrecht and Greg Stafford, according to the cover over at Amazon. And it sells for a much more reasonable price of $9.45: https://www.amazon.com/Adventurers-Handbook-Guide-Playing-Games/dp/083590167X

 

[ORtrail]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

By Bob Albrecht and Greg Stafford, according to the cover over at Amazon. And it sells for a much more reasonable price of $9.45: https://www.amazon.com/Adventurers-Handbook-Guide-Playing-Games/dp/083590167X

 

Oh man, I had forgotten I picked this up, a decade or so ago?  At some used book store I think.  It reads like a school workbook about RPGs.  Read about all those funny dice and then take an 11 question quiz on how to use them.  It is MUCH more in-depth than the 16 pg BRP booklet with a setting called Wundervale.  It was written to allow a group to learn how to play an RPG without anyone in the group ever having done so before. 

[Julian Lord]

The last published version of barebones BRP that I'm aware of is a French version published in a special issue of the Casus Belli magazine in 1997.

It's not the original rules, and most of the magazine was some settings and adventures write-ups BTW, but it's an updated version.

The rules themselves were OGL under licence from The Chaosium, and can be seen in French HERE : http://www.sden.org/IMG/pdf/basicregles.pdf

Edited July 17, 2018 by Julian Lord

[SDLeary]

30 minutes ago, Julian Lord said:

The last published version of barebones BRP that I'm aware of is a French version published in a special issue of the Casus Belli magazine in 1997.

It's not the original rules, and most of the magazine was some settings and adventures write-ups BTW, but it's an updated version.

The rules themselves were OGL under licence from The Chaosium, and can be seen in French HERE : http://www.sden.org/IMG/pdf/basicregles.pdf

To the best of my knowledge, you can't OGL rules that you are licensing from another company. Nor have I ever heard of Chaosium OGL-ing any of their old BRP rules. In fact, Chaosium pretty consistently re-released BRP over the years, in differing formats. I think it was mentioned above that RQ3, stripped of Gloranthan content, was the early 2000's entry in this category.

SDLeary

[Julian Lord]

15 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

To the best of my knowledge, you can't OGL rules that you are licensing from another company. Nor have I ever heard of Chaosium OGL-ing any of their old BRP rules. In fact, Chaosium pretty consistently re-released BRP over the years, in differing formats. I think it was mentioned above that RQ3, stripped of Gloranthan content, was the early 2000's entry in this category.

SDLeary

No, the original magazine made it clear that it was The Chaosium allowing people to use those rules and that write-up quite freely. (nobody really took them up on that possibility though -- there were a couple of extra articles, then it vanished)

This version is post-RQ3, and the 2000s version you mention is neither OGL nor a barebones BRP version similar to the old booklet.

Edited July 17, 2018 by Julian Lord

[Jeff]

A strange thing about OGL - any sublicense (and that is all an OGL is) cannot survive the expiration or termination of the underlying license. So if X licenses their IP to Y for a duration of 5 years, and Y (with X's permission) promulgates an OGL, said OGL typically expires when Y's license does. Which means if Z created something using Y's OGL, their license expires when Y's does.

[g33k]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

A strange thing about OGL - any sublicense (and that is all an OGL is) cannot survive the expiration or termination of the underlying license. So if X licenses their IP to Y for a duration of 5 years, and Y (with X's permission) promulgates an OGL, said OGL typically expires when Y's license does. Which means if Z created something using Y's OGL, their license expires when Y's does.

"OGL" is typically used informally & non-technically these days; and many (most?) people have gotten sloppy in how they think about intellectual property, and IP-rights.

 

[Richard S.]

8 hours ago, Jeff said:

A strange thing about OGL - any sublicense (and that is all an OGL is) cannot survive the expiration or termination of the underlying license. So if X licenses their IP to Y for a duration of 5 years, and Y (with X's permission) promulgates an OGL, said OGL typically expires when Y's license does. Which means if Z created something using Y's OGL, their license expires when Y's does.

Does this apply to something like MRQ1's SRD? 

[Jeff]

8 hours ago, g33k said:

"OGL" is typically used informally & non-technically these days; and many (most?) people have gotten sloppy in how they think about intellectual property, and IP-rights.

 

Yes.

Keep in mind that NONE of Moon Design/Chaosium’s underlying IP - RQ2, RQ3, BRP, COC, etc. - is currently allowed to be used in anyone’s SRD. The only authorised variants are TDM’s Mythras and Newt Newport’s OpenQuest (both approved directly), although we may issue other licenses in the future.

[Newt]

11 hours ago, g33k said:

"OGL" is typically used informally & non-technically these days; and many (most?) people have gotten sloppy in how they think about intellectual property, and IP-rights.

 

Could you give specific examples, otherwise you seem to be collectively accusing anyone who uses the OGL of breaking it?

[Mugen]

17 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

The last published version of barebones BRP that I'm aware of is a French version published in a special issue of the Casus Belli magazine in 1997.

It's not the original rules, and most of the magazine was some settings and adventures write-ups BTW, but it's an updated version.

The rules themselves were OGL under licence from The Chaosium, and can be seen in French HERE : http://www.sden.org/IMG/pdf/basicregles.pdf

The rules of BaSIC were not under OGL. By the time Casus Belli published the game, Open Gaming Licence simply didn't exist yet.

As I recall, the game was created after a talk between Editor in Chief of Casus Belli and Greg Stafford himself.

There are also some small differences between BaSIC and common BRP rules, which anyone can spot in the pdf you link even if he doesn't read french, such as the damage bonus, or the fact criticals always occur on a roll of 01 to 05. A funny error feature was that knocked out characters remained unconscious for CON minutes. In the pdf, it was changed into (21-CON), but doesn't explain how to handle characters with CON 22+.

BaSIC was quite popular among amateurs, though.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Mugen

[g33k]

5 hours ago, Newt said:

Could you give specific examples, otherwise you seem to be collectively accusing anyone who uses the OGL of breaking it?

I was speaking of many/most -- that is to say, we in (non-publishing) fandom, not the very few who DO publish (under OGL or otherwise) -- people who seem to sling around the term "OGL" freely, even when it doesn't apply, or may not apply.

I meant OGL as used on gaming forums, not as used by publishers.

As we have been saying on the internet (since before it was "the web"):  I am not a lawyer.  So I typically do not try to figure out which publishers "using" OGL are using it correctly.

[Julian Lord]

6 hours ago, Mugen said:

The rules of BaSIC were not under OGL. By the time Casus Belli published the game, Open Gaming Licence simply didn't exist yet.

It was functionally a limited OGL, though the magazine did establish in small print that the rules text was licensed ** to Casus Belli ** with permission given to 3rd parties to create extra materials using the game rather than being licensed to those 3rd parties a bit more indiscriminately as is typical in most OGL publications nowadays. A major difference is that no permission was granted to anyone to publish new BRP games expanded from those rules, but only that very specific and limited BaSIC design could be used exactly as provided.

Jeff's clarifications on the nitty-gritty of this are as useful from him as one is accustomed to. 😊

Still, it's a very interesting late version of the barebones BRP.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Julian Lord

[dawnrazor]

On 6/29/2018 at 6:18 PM, Toadmaster said:

 

 

 

My understanding is RQ came first and was followed with BRP. It with RQ in the boxed set along with Apple Lane. I don't know if early RQ was available as just a book. Somewhere I've got that original copy, which as I recall was all paper including the cover.

  

1

What Toadmaster said. RuneQuest was first, BRP came later. The early thin BRP rules were like today's Quick Start rules, presenting the basics of the d100 system. I have two copies, that was included in my RQ2 box. The examples are for fantasy gaming using the d100 rules.

[Rick Meints]

RuneQuest (1st edition in 1978) preceded BRP. When the 2nd edition of RuneQuest was released as a boxed set it included the "no cardstock cover" version of BRP. Even the first printing of the boxed set had it. The original BRP booklet had two main purposes: It was meant to introduce what RPGs were all about, and it provided the basics for Chaosium's D100 house system.