[Review] Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine

While the OGL-Gate scandal earlier this year might not have toppled the 800-pound gorilla of the tabletop industry, some publishers still benefited greatly from it. Chaosium was one of them. They held kickass sales, quickly made a bunch of out of print books available again, jumped early on the ORC bandwagon, and churned out a new edition of Basic Roleplaying in under three or four months¹. Yes, we are talking about the same Chaosium, that told us last year that there are no plans for BRP in the near future, released a lackluster OGL/SRD² a few years ago, and has books in the pipeline that have been delayed for years³. But I digress...

Past and present.

History

Back in the day when OD&D was released there was much rejoice, but of course it didn't satisfy everyone. There were people who thought it was a complicated mess. Enter Tunnels & Trolls. There were others who preferred sci-fi over fantasy. Thus Traveller was born. And then there were those who thought D&D is too unrealistic, including SCA founder Steve Perrin and his friends. They created RuneQuest, a percentile skill-based system with revolutionary features like freeform character creation, abilities improving by usage, realistic combat with opposed attack and parry rolls, point-based magic system, per hit location damage, and so on. Later they realized that their system works well for other genres too, including eldritch horror (Call of Cthulhu), dark fantasy (Stormbringer), superheroes (Superworld), science-fiction (Ringworld).

First released in 1980, the original BRP (pronounced as "burp", at least by me) condensed the core of the Chaosium system into a 16 pages long booklet. It was handed out with other games as a tutorial, packed into the Worlds of Wonder boxed set along with four genre books, released on its own, and got expanded by a stream of supplements. Fourth edition, also known as the Big Gold Book after its chunky size and iconic cover, is different beast: it is a compilation of all kinds of mechanics and content Chaosium found worthy to include in a single volume generic multi-genre rpg.

The brand new Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine is the revised edition of the BGB. If you are familiar with the BGB, you can skip the Mechanics and Content sections and jump right to What's New.

Style

As expected from Chaosium, the production values are top notch. The Vitruvian Person montage on the front cover is both a great piece of art that emphasizes the generic nature of the ruleset and a cool homage to the BGB's cover. The interior illustrations showcase a good variety without becoming a cacophony of inconsistent art styles. With a subtle but background, a clean layout, and warm brown headers and headings the rulebook is pleasing to look at. It is also printed on a thick matte paper, has a proper sewn binding, comes with a neat ribbon bookmark, and smells good. I love it!

There is one thing that slightly bothers me, which might be a dealbreaker for some. BRP:UGE has roughly the same amount of content squeezed into its 264 pages as the BGB had on 404 pages⁴. This is only partly because of better editing and layout, and has more to do with tiny fonts and dense text. The charts are the worst offenders here, with their small condensed font that's straining to read even for my youthful eyes. Feels like a step back after the immensely readable Call of Cthulhu 7e Keeper Rulebook or RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

Mechanics

Nice loot. I hope your GM doesn't
use the encumbrance rules.

BRP describes characters using seven or eight characteristics (Strength, Constitution, Size, Intelligence, Power, Dexterity, Charisma, and optionally Education) ranging from 3-18 for humans⁵, a bunch of derived characteristics (Damage Modifier, Hit points, Power points, Fatigue, Sanity, etc.), a few dozen percentile skills, powers, and personal details. How complicated, lengthy, and random the character creation process is largely depends on what checkboxes the Game Master ticks for their campaign from the many available options. By default you roll for characteristics, choose a profession, and distribute a number of skill points based on your age among your profession's skills. Professions are not like D&D's classes: they are just premade skill collections, something you can easily make on your own.

To resolve a test you have to roll less than or equal to a percentile success chance on d100. This is 90%+ times one of your skills. There are two edge cases though, artifacts from days of yore. If there is no proper skill for a task you might need to make a characteristic roll, where your success chance is a characteristic multiplied by an integer. If you have to compare two opposing integer values (like two characteristics), you have to check the Resistance Table to get the success chance⁶.

BRP differentiates five degrees of success. Besides the self-explanatory success and failure you can have a critical success when rolling under 5% of your success chance, a special success when rolling under 20% of your success chance, and a fumble when rolling in the upper 5% of your failure range. These can be a nuisance to calculate or look up on the fly, and the very rare criticals usually do the same things as special successes, but better. Stormbringer 1e-4e and Mythras has a more elegant solution, with criticals being at the 10% of the skill and fumbles happening on 99-00. You can ignore degrees for most mundane tests, but they become important for opposed tests, where the antagonist's degree of success lowers the protagonist's degree of success.

Combat is divided into 12 second rounds consisting four phases: statement of intent, activating powers, taking actions, and resolving their results. Phases are part of the game's old-school heritage (or baggage, depending on your taste). I'm curious how many actually still use these as written. Combatants act at their DEX rank, going from highest to lowest. If you move during a round your DEX rank gets reduced. If you can perform multiple actions, you can do the follow up actions at 5 DEX rank lower than the previous one. RuneQuest's fiddly strike ranks were left out.

Attacking someone requires a weapon skill test versus their weapon or dodge skill. The results are a bit more nuanced than for the usual opposed tests, but thankfully the Attack and Defense Matrix neatly sums up all the possible outcomes. If you hit someone you roll damage, subtract their armour from it, and subtract the result from their hit points. Parrying may also result in the defending or attacking weapon taking damage depending on who wins. It is completely possible to hurt someone and breaking your weapon while doing so, or to take damage while parrying because your weapon was shattered. Depending on your weapon a special success may cause a bleeding, crushing, entangling, impaling, or knockback effect⁷.

Following Chaosium traditions BRP has an entire chapter for various spot rules. BRP has more than 60 entries that covers a wide array of situations, from environmental hazards to combat manoeuvres. Learning all of them is pointless, looking them up on the fly can grind the game to a halt, so the best a neophyte BRP GM can do is collect the few they want to use, and make judgement calls for the rest.

Content

Probably not an adult constrictor
snake, those roll STR with 3d6+12.

BRP doesn't joke about being a skill-based system. Those used to the modern trend of tight skill lists will be shocked to see the whopping 57 skills the game has to offer, many of which have specialties. Some of them are very setting specific though, so it is unlikely you will ever play a campaign that requires all of them. Each skill has its own base chance, and there are two optional rules that allow characteristics to influence skills - one simplified, and one more complicated borrowed from RQ3e. For some reason there is no option for root skills like RingWorld⁸.

BRP offers five power sets right out of the gate: magic from the Worlds of Wonder boxed set, mutations from Hawkmoon, psychic abilities from ElfQuest, sorcery from Elric!, superpowers from Superworld. It only covers the essentials for them, so if you want to expand the tools you have to either homebrew new powers or borrow more from other books.

Equipment covers all tech levels from stone to space age. Prices are given in abstract value categories, which can be compared to your Wealth level and Status skill to see if you can buy something. If you want an exact system for currency, you have to borrow one from other sources - ...and a 10-Foot Pole is a good candidate, if you can get your hands on it. The equipment list is exhaustive when it comes to weapons and armour, but it is a bit lacklustre for other objects. The chapter also covers important topics like crafting, powered items, and how much damage it takes to tear down a wall.

Creatures chapter offers a small selection of animals, monsters, NPCs for various genres, along with guidelines for customizing them and using them as players. We only get one typical adult as an example for each creature, and no way to reverse engineer what their base chances were. I would have been happier with having a separate template for some races, like in RQ:RiG Bestiary. The list itself is overall decent, and because creatures work exactly the same way as player characters, it is easy to come up with stat blocks and compare them to PCs to figure out their relative strength.

Tackling such a smorgasbord of rules and content can be intimidating even for experienced GMs. BRP tries its best to help even the neophyte GM in getting a campaign started, handling players, preparing adventures, using various tools to enhance the game, et cetera. I found the Optional Rule Checklist and the premade campaign packages with recommended character types, powers, technology, adventures, and rules options especially useful. It would have been even better if they marked which rules they deem basic or advanced. Way too many campaigns recommend hit locations among its options, which can be  an overwhelming option for newbies. Speaking of campaign options, there are rules for allegiances (your alignment with cosmic powers), passions (personality traits that can alter your behaviour and influence your rolls), reputation (helps others in identifying you, helps you in influencing others), and of course sanity (psychological injuries) too.

Kudos, for including a conversion guide and a bibliography of what sources were consulted while writing BRP. All that's missing is an Appendix N for various genres, but that would ramp up the page count quite a bit.

What's New

All female Highlander campaign?
Say no more fam, I'm in.

The new BRP is a revision, not a complete overhaul. The goal⁹ was to keep it compatible with the large family of previous Chaosium games, which comes with the cost of ignoring the mechanics of some newer games. Those who expected novelties from Call of Cthulhu 7e and Rivers of London like pushing, advantage and disadvantage dice, hard and extreme successes, Luck characteristic, or damage categories, will be disappointed. Except for pushing, I don't miss any of them. Some of them I consider pointless additions to the system¹⁰ and some already have equivalent mechanics.

That doesn't mean though that BRP is stuck in the past. The new edition cuts down a lot of fat, streamlines some systems, fixes tons of errors, and of course introduces new ones. The biggest change is that weapon skills are no longer split into a separate attack and parry skill. The former insanity mechanics have been swapped out with a more generic system. There are rules for reputation and passions á la Pendragon, Mythras, and RQ:RiG.

Skill descriptions is where the book lost most of its weight. In BGB every skill had the exact results for each degree of success spelled out in a paragraph. These were most of the time pointless, but at least those with an OCD had an urge to crack the book open for every test to see if there is anything special to account for. Only a few medical and combat skills have kept these, the rest at best have an ambiguous example about how the degree may alter the result.

If you already own the BGB, you don't miss much if you don't get BRP:UGE. Your book isn't getting replaced by a shiny new editions and future BRP products will be still compatible with it. So buy it only if you want a second copy or you want to support the publisher.

Warts

It's probably not surprising after the introduction, but the book feels a bit rushed here and there. Despite the community actively contributing in rooting them out, there are still inconsistencies, issues, mistakes. One of the new features is using the weapon skill for both attack and defence, yet there is still a Parry skill. Weapon skills now use weapon categories for specialization, but base chances are per individual weapon. While having a separate Knowledge and Science skill makes sense, there are edge cases which are not clear where they belong - in case of Natural History even the authors could not decide, because on the profession list it is a Knowledge specialization, while in the skill chapter it belongs to Science. And the list goes on...

There are also some legacy issues of the engine that are here to stay. Skill base chances are all over the place, skewed heavily toward physical skills. Social and knowledge skills have such low starting values that they become skill point sinks if they aren't your focus but you want to be at least half decent in them.

Because the main way of improving your skills is by using them, the way your character improves depends largely on what kind of adventure the GM prepared. At the end of the session there is still an improvement roll for each skill, which in case of failure means your skill does not improve jackshit. The higher your skills are, the more checkmarks you will have, and the lower chance to actually improve at anything. You can end a session with no skill improvement at all.¹¹

Increasing characteristics is even more tedious: with the exception of POW, which is increased by POW vs POW tests and is meant to fluctuate during a campaign, your only option is rigorous training¹².

And then there is a good old whiff factor. I don't think it is as bad as many make you think¹³, but the ways to bypass it do feel lacking compared to the huge range of options Mythras has to offer.

It is worth noting, that because of the original system was written with realism in mind, BRP works better on a human scale. Epic heroes and street level supers are fine, but if you throw in late season shonen-level shit, it will break the game.

"Hans, ze Flammenwerfer is useless!"

Summa Summarum

BRP is a system that stood the test of time. Its flexibility in rules complexity and power levels was proven by the large family of games using it, and thanks to the lack of major shakeups to its core the old content is still relevant and easy to use with its modern iterations. It is both an awesome toolbox to create your own game and a great supplement to enhance other members of the family. Its age shows in some of its clunkier parts. It lacks artsy, flashy, trendy mechanisms you can bedazzle players with. But it is a system that gets shit done, and will remain, even when the current Kickstarter sweetheart is long forgotten.

Rules system: BRP Publisher: Chaosium Publication date: 2023 Format: print, pdf Size: letter-size Pages: 266 Available from: •  Chaosium (print, pdf) •  DriveThruRPG (pdf)

88% A timely facelift for one of the best rpg toolboxes, though some of the wrinkles still show.

¹ And it went to printers with a still unfinished ORC license. Yes, they were that keen on keeping the momentum.

² On the other hand, their community content platforms are exceptionally lively. So much so, that Call of Cthulhu 7e is basically on autopilot nowadays.

³ It has become a running gag between me and my CoC7e Keeper, that whenever he complains about a CoC7e product being delayed, I complain about Mythic Iceland 2e.

⁴ Despite its relatively humble page count the book is as thick as the BGB.

⁵ At least for humans, who roll INT and SIZ by 2d6+6, and everything else by 3d6.

⁶ You can do the calculations even on the fly though, if you aren't mathematically inept. The success chance is 50% plus/minus 5% for each point of difference between the two values.

⁷ These specials and some of the combat manoeuvres explained among the spot rules are the forefathers of the special effects seen in Mythras.

⁸ Root skills in Ringworld have specializations with their own values and a root maximum, which is the sum of two characteristics. This root maximum represents your generic knowledge of the field - anything above is handled by the individual specialization's value.

⁹ Besides putting it on the shelves as soon as possible.

¹⁰ I like pushing, which is a fun risk vs reward mechanic. I find advantage and disadvantage dice to be unnecessary additions. The game already has modifiers and multiplication/division to handle difficulty levels, why add another mechanic for it that is less transparent than the already existing ones? Yeah, I know, rolling dice makes people feel a tingle in their tummy...

¹¹ Training and research are also an option, but the former is limited to 75% and an awful Teach roll from your tutor may result in losing valuable percentiles from your skill, while research improves skills in a snail's pace.

¹² SIZ and INT by default aren't even meant to be trained, although BRP has a more lenient wording than RuneQuest in this regard.

¹³ You can choose whether your high level combat becomes tedious because the large number of HP you have to chip down over time to kill something, or because of your blows getting parried and absorbed by armour.

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2023 - The Year of D100?

Hey kids, today we are going to learn
about the resistance matrix!

Happy New Year Everyone!

It has become a meme with my group that the next year will be the Year of D100, because two of us kept saying it for several years. We were hellbent on running something d100-based in the near future¹;, but alas none of that come to fruition so far. Maybe this year...²; Still, nothing holds you back from turning 2023 the year of d100. If WotC being busy killing third party publishers and shooting themselves in the foot at once, large number of people migrating from D&D to other games, and the general excellence of percentile systems wasn't enough to get the ball rolling, here are some more things to turn the tide:

OpenQuest drops the OGL and moves on to Creative Commons license. There's your publishing platform for d100! I mean Chaosium has its own OGL too, but it was deemed so hazy, only a few bothered to use it instead of Legend or OpenQuest.

Speaking of Chaosium, Basic Roleplaying is $1 on DriveThruRPG at the moment. It is one of the best generic rpgs out there: it is flexible as hell, easy to grasp, and not as intimidating as GURPS or Hero System. You can get a print copy too from Chaosium, but alas it's available from the US warehouse only, which for poor European chaps like me means a horrible $55 shipping fee. Come on Chaosium, make it available print on demand!

Mythras is also on sale for $5 on DriveThruRPG. Even better, there is a print on demand option too both there and on Lulu alike. Mythras is a crunchy gem that packs a lot of punch on 300 pages, though that page count is partly achieved through the use of tiny fonts. They also have the Mythras Gateway license by the way, which you must apply for to use, but hey, many already did so with success.

And while we are at it, here is a quick shoutout to a few neat blogs about d100 gaming that I enjoyed recently:

Samwise Seven posted a good deal about their BRP Skyrealms of Jorune campaign. The skill list on his character sheet is impressive.

Tomb of Tedankhamen's Stormbringer redux is an intriguing experiment. I would be happy to see it in practice.

Chris Brann's Diadochi Warlords campaign is an excellent read.

Those fed up with my recent gushing about d100 games shouldn't worry, I will post about OSR and D&D too. I have to face some critical encounters and must embrace my love for hacking first.

Update: The Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest starter sets are also on sale for a buck.

¹ This includes my now dead project Hecatomb, Mythras, WFRP, and Stormbringer. I did play Call of Cthulhu 7e though, which is nice.

² I am tying up loose ends, so the first thing will be finishing Zweihänder, but undre something lighter. Dragonbane is a good contender too. And I will keep kicking my dear friend's ass till he runs at least one session of Kopparhavets Hjältar.

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[Preview] Dragonbane / Drakar och Demoner Beta

At the end of november Dragonbane's beta version dropped, which I started devouring with gusto. Three days later Free League announced that they are going to heed the wishes of the swedish Drakar och Demoner community, and overhaul the skill list to be more in line with previous editions. I did not expect to see the forthcoming changes before the final version, so I continued reading the rulebook, and took some time to digest the current version. Literally a few minutes after I opened Blogger's editor to write this preview a mail arrived about a major update to the beta rules. Oh well, here I go reading Dragonbone again, cover to cover...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

So, the current beta contains the complete Rulebook, the half-finished Adventure book, initiative cards, improvised weapon cards for inns, caves, forests, a map of Misty Vale, and a map for the town of Outskirt. Each one of them is pleasing to the eye with a predominantly brown and green colour scheme, breezy layout, and stunning illustrations. I would have loved to see some Paul Bonner art too, but I guess his mythic tone would not fit the "mirth & mayhem" motto¹.

The Rulebook is 116 pages long and covers both how to play and run the game. The short page count is largely the result of terse, effective, no-bullshit writing. The latter still needs some refinement: some abilities would benefit from more clarification, some skills should have more telling names, and sometimes the text feels awkward - probably the result of English being the second language of the writer.

Character creation is swift and straightforward. There are six kin (human, halfling, dwarf, elf, mallard, wolfkin), each with one or two unique abilities and a table of six names. There ten professions (artisan, bard, fighter, hunter, knight, mage, mariner, merchant, scholar, thief), each with a recommended key attribute, skills, heroic abilities², three equipment packages, and six names³. Age category is a surprising artifact: the older your character is, the shittier the attributes are, but the more skills they start with. Once you have your kin, profession, and age, you can roll up your six attributes (Strength, Constitution, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, Charisma) using the 4d6k3 method. After each roll you must assign it to an ability score, and can swap two scores in the end⁴. Now you can calculate your derived ratings (Movement, Strength Damage Bonus, Agility Damage Bonus, Hit Points, and the mouthful Willpower Points), choose your trained skills, and you are good to go. The base chance for skills is based on their relevant attributes, which is doubled for trained skills. Other than these you must also define motivation, gear, memento, appearance. Every step offers you to choose or roll on a table - whatever floats your boat.

Yes, you can play as a wolfkin
with a catfolk fursona.

Encumbrance and experience are also explained here. They follow BRP traditions with some changes. You can carry STR/2 items, but worn armour and weapons at hand don't count. Heavy objects count as multiple items, while others are so small, that you need multiple pieces to count as one item. Skills gain advancement mark for critical and fumble rolls, plus by answering a post-session questionnaire about your achievements. Once you have all your advancement marks set, you roll for each skill. If you exceed their current score, the skill improves by one point - up to 18. You can also train skills with a teacher, though there is nothing about how much they would ask for their services⁵.

The mechanics use a d20 roll under method for attribute and skill tests alike. There is no resistance matrix like in older BRP games, they are handled by opposed tests. Instead of bonuses and penalties there are boons and banes, which are akin to D&D's advantage and disadvantage: roll twice, take the better roll if you have a boon, or the worse if you have a bane. Fumbles happen on 20 and are called demons, criticals happen on 1 and are called dragons. Failures can be pushed, meaning you can reroll at the cost of gaining a condition. There is one condition for each attribute, and while they are in effect you roll every test affected by it with a bane.

The current skill list offers 20 general skills, 10 weapon skills, and 3 magic skills. That's around twice as much as the quickstart and first beta had, and probably the most controversial change. Fans of Free League systems argued, that having more than 16 skills is too much and adds a considerable amount of crunch to the game. I disagree with them, for several reasons.

First, a few more skills don't add more mechanics to the game, but they do help on defining and differentiating the common tasks one can encounter during an adventure. The previous list was uneven in this regard. Social interactions, physical activities, and education alike had only one skill (Persuasion, Athletics, Lore in this order), which made them a cheap and trivial choice for characters who want to focus on either. For other activities it was hazy, which skill one should use. Then there were tasks like performance and crafting, that got no skills, but were tied to professional heroic abilities, which is all fine and dandy for a class-based system - but Dragonbane ain't one of those.

Second, this is a skill-based game (duh). Your characters are differentiated by what skills their had. Their mix and match is what gives these games the flexibility we love these games for. Too few skills, and your game is no better than a class-based game. Heck, some games reduce their skill lists to a point where they should just drop the idea of separate skills and ability scores, and just merge them⁶. Why write a skill-based system at all if you don't want a proper skill list?

Third, this is a game with 40 years of legacy. You have to keep some degree of similarity and compatbility with older content and appeal to fans of earlier editions. People who know Drakar och Demoner want to play Drakar och Demoner, not "Forbidden Lands D20 Roll Under Edition". Dragonbane already gets way too much crap for having too many D&D-isms and Forbidden Lands-like mechanisms.

Speaking of D&D-isms, we have feats too, called Heroic Abilities. They include passive bonuses (like improving HP and WP) and active abilities (which cost of WP) alike. You get one Heroic Ability in the beginning, and a new one after reaching 18 in a skill or performing a grand heroic deed.⁷ It is a diverse list that has both some characterful options and some musthaves - like those that allow multiple attacks or parries, dodges.

Onward to battle! The biggest difference from BRP-based games is the lack of strike ranks or DEX/INT ranks. Initiative is determined by drawing from a deck of cards marked one to ten. You can delay action by swapping cards with those coming later down the line, and there are Heroic Abilities that allow you to manipulate initiative. Your character can move and perform a single action. Parries and dodges use up your action too. Because of this brutal limitatation you must take into account the initiative order to make smart decisions. A wasted action can be the difference between life and death. If you are familiar with BRP, the rest of combat will be nothing new: attack rolls are contested by parry or dodge rolls, on a success you roll damage, subtract Armor Rating. There are rules for critical hits, fumbles, severe injuries, weapon vs armour type, and of course a bunch of spot rules for all kinds of hazards. Fear is surprisingly elaborate with is table of random effects.

That's some cool art. It would be a shame
if the chapter didn't have rules for demonology
and necromancy...

Spellcasting requires WP and a successful skill test. Your character can memorize INT spells, but can also cast from a grimoire at a slower speed. Some spells have multiple power levels, which increases their effectiveness and WP cost. Once out of WP, your character can sacrifice HP for more, but it is an unpredectible process. There are bonuses for criticals, and d20 table of mishaps for fumbles. Similar to RuneQuest, iron hinders spellcasting, so you don't dress your mage in plate armour. Besides generic tricks and spells that everyone can learn there are three schools: Animism (nature and healing), Elementalism (elemental attacks and summoning), and Mentalism (psychic powers and chi). The spell lists are solid but short. Some spells even feel redundant, because they are basically the upgraded versions of other spells. There is a hidden spell tree too: advanced spells require another spell as prerequisite before you can learn them. Overall what you get is a generic spell point-based magic system. There is nothing new under the sun, but it gets shit down. Necromancy ASAP, pls!

Gear is usually the most boring chapter of every rpg. I was pleasantly surprised, that even the blandest item got a meaningful effect neatly summed up in a single sentence. Clothes can protect you from environmental hazards, tools can assist you in tests, wearing an extravagant hat can help with persuading others, etc. Sure, there is a short armour and an exhaustive weapon list too, but here it is the rest of the equipment chapter I fell in love with.

The monster list is barebones with its 15 entries and short chart of 11 common animals. You won't find imaginative weird abominations here, just tired and tested classics. Dragonbane introduces the monster mechanics from Forbidden Lands, which lead to a lot of confusion, partly because the unfortnately chosen name. There are "monsters", who act like environmental hazards with HP, and include supernatural creatures, colossal monstrosities, and swarms. They have a crapton of HP, a chart for attacks, they always hit, but some attacks can be parried, dodged, or resisted. Then there are "not-monsters", which includes NPCs, humanoids, and animals, who work just like your player character. While the monster mechanics are interesting, I would have preferred a more consistent system⁸. On the other hand, the attack charts have some fun moves, not just Fifty Shades of Damage, and I also dig the Ferocity value, which means how many times a monster can draw initiative⁹.

The final chapter about running the game is a mixed bag. The rules for handling journeys, foraging, hunting are concise, yet comprehensive - I adore them. The stat blocks of typical NPCs and the random NPC generation table is servicable, though I would move them to the bestiary. There is some generic GM advice and a short guideline for writing adventures supplemented by three random tables, but beyond that you are left to your own devices. Like most modern games, the rulebook doesn't teach you how to properly design an adventure¹⁰. I don't expect an entire Tome of Adventure Design in the back of the book, but some more advice accompanied with exact examples would be welcome.

Kudos to Free League for listening to the community and including a printer friendly character sheet in the back.

All this map needs is a hex layer.

The current version of the Adventure Book is 54 pages long and introduces the town of Outskirt, its points of interests, its important personalities, regional random encounter tables, and three adventures: Riddermound (the one from the quickstart), Bothild's Lode, and Temple of the Purple Flame. All three adventures are shorter affairs with simple layouts, but they all have some cool encounters, interesting NPCs, and memorable gimmicks. The presentation is top-notch, with terse writing, clear layout, and effective use of highlighting, colours, and bullet points. I won't take a deeper look into the book for now though, because it's far from complete. Rest assured when the final version drops, I will return to the topic.

Free League has no easy job with balancing between their in-house design principles and the legacy of Drakar och Demoner, especially with both sides having fervent advocates among the fans¹¹. Rewriting the skill list and professions was a big decision that will get a lot of praise and booing alike on the forums. As for me, I am happy with which way then went, and how quickly they applied the changes. Dragonbane promises to be a fun game. The boxed set will be perfect for one shots and short to medium length campaigns, and with proper support I can easily imagine Dragonbane as one's primary game for years long campaigns too.

Until next time!

¹ Boy, do I hate this slogan... The game isn't as light, goofy, and heroic as the motto suggests, thanks to its nigh-BRP level of lethality. I guess they had to justify ducks somehow...

² In the previous version the beginning Heroic Abilities were set in stone for each profession. Opening them up is a welcome change.

³ While I dig the profession-based nicknames, the racial names table feels pretty low effort and useless. Those charts should be at least twice as big. Heck, the Creating NPCs table later has 60 names on it!

⁴ This method feels awkward. It makes more sense to me to roll first, swap two scores, and then decide about kin, profession, and age.

⁵ Baffling considering it took a half sentence to do so for the original Magic World back in the day.

⁶ RuinMasters is a good example: with four attributes and six skills based on them, what's the point of having both? That game also suffers from badly defined attributes and skills, which is partly the result of the excessive minimalization.

⁷ Originally they were awarded every fifth session. I prefer this approach.

⁸ Consistency is a key feature of BRP-based games for me. That's why BRP works well as a generic system and why it was big deal compared to D&D back in the day: everything worked the same way. Separate mechanics for monsters feels like a step back, no matter how mechanically intriguing they are.

⁹ This way monsters can have multiple attacks spread out over the combat round, instead of fucking someone up with one long attack routine once it's their turn.

¹⁰ While it's absolutely not my cup of tea, WFRP3e still deserves some praise for having a GM's book that actually tells you how to design adventures and build up a campaign.

¹¹ And then there are the OneD&D refugees too!

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[Kickstarter] ...of Dragons and Demons

The cover has once again Elric
and a dragon on it, but on less
amicable terms.

A while back I had an urge to homebrew a d100 game based on Basic Roleplaying called Hecatomb. - which I eventually abandoned due to work and my offspring eating up my free time. Back then I mentioned that my sweetspot would be something akin to Drakar och Demoner, the legendary swedish rpg, which RiotMinds failed to deliver to their non-viking audience¹. Times have changed since then: Free League grasped the rights from RiotMinds, teased us with posts about a new edition for months², until finally announcing that a new edition of DoD is coming to Kickstarter on the 30th of August. Oh, and it will be available in English under the title Dragonbane.

It seems people got a raging dragonboner for Dragonbane, because the campaign funded in four minutes, and it keeps chewing through stretch goals like there is no tomorrow. It's no wonder though, Free League has a solid reputation, the cool art is already enough to whet one's appetite for the game, and they even included a 44 pages long quickstart so you don't have to buy into the game blindly. That's how you do a fucking Kickstarter.

Based on the quickstart Dragonbane looks like a lightweight and lighthearted mix of old-school BRP mechanics and Free League's signature game design elements. On one hand you have six characteristics and sixteen skills (plus a few more for magic) that you have to roll under with d20 to succeed³, attack rolls versus parry rolls, criticals that can pierce through armour, simple rules for weapon breakage, spells fueled by magic points, and so on. On the other hand you have the utterly simple and brilliant condition system seen in other Free League games, drawing cards for initiative, advantage and disadvantage, pushing failed tests, and monstrous monsters that act like a natural hazard with hit points and a random table for attacks rather than as a creature. And instead of becoming a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas, the whole blend feels smooth and natural, like they always belonged together. And whenever I find something I miss or dislike, my mind immediately goes "oh I can borrow that from RuneQuest/Stormbringer/OpenQuest" or "there is a rule for that from Forbidden Lands I can convert".

My expectations were high, and I was still surprised and amazed. I don't even want to criticize those design decisions I don't fully agree with, because they don't bother me, they aren't bad at all. I only have two issues with the quickstart: some of the weapon qualities from the character sheets are not explained anywhere, and the module is pretty meh and overuses the monster system (though the constantly reviving undead lady and lord are a pretty damn good idea).

Dragonbane is a promising rpg and the only one in the near future I am genuinely excited about⁴. It has tons of potential, especially if third party support can gain some momentum at release. The d100 game I wanted is here, ironically using a d20 for resolution. Now it's time for Kopperhavets Hjältar to follow suite.

¹ We got the overcomplicated mess of Trudvang Chronicles and the half-assed RuinMasters instead.

² Usually in swedish, so I had to get it translated to learn, that it contained no meaningful information about the game.

³ Originally DoD used d100 roll under for tests like traditional BRP games, but the DoD: Expert expansion for 3rd edition moved on to using a d20 roll under system like Pendragon. It works the same way, it's simply just less granular. Considering how a lot of people have problems with reading d100, that might not be a bad idea at all.

⁴ Except for HackMaster 5.5, but that has yet to be announced officially, and if it finally reaches the Kickstarter I will be drunk for days and won't shut the fuck about how awesome bears are in the game.

[Content] Single Page OpenQuest 3e Character Sheet

This is what the platonic
OpenQuest campaign looks like.

Those who have follow this blog probably know that I like tinkering with character sheets. If you like fancy and decorative sheets, then these aren't the ones you are looking for - I prefer a minimalistic and printer friendly design and cramming as much useful information needed on the sheet as possible. For a long time I have been using Inkscape to make character sheets, but its a vector graphics editor first and foremost, and its limitations slowly started to become annoying.

Last year I bought the desktop publishing application Affinity Publisher on a sale, and never looked back.  Its dirt cheap compared to InDesign and other professional applications, it is far user friendlier than Scribus, and you have to buy it only once. I learned its basics while tinkering with Hecatomb's layout, so even if that projects remains abandoned, at least the time spent on it didn't go to waste.

While re-reading OpenQuest 3e recently I felt an urge to fuck around a bit again with Affinity Publisher, and I ended up retooling one of my character sheets for the game. Newt gave his blessing, so here you are, download and have fun! C&C welcome. Stay tuned for more, as form-fillable versions are coming soon.

Update #1: I added the Affinity Publisher templates to the links.

Single Page OpenQuest 3e Character Sheet (A4)
Single Page OpenQuest 3e Character Sheet (US Letter)

Single Page OpenQuest 3e Character Sheet Affinity Publisher template (A4)
Single Page OpenQuest 3e Character Sheet Affinity Publisher template (US Letter)

[Loot] Opening Call of Cthulhu Classic

"That thing was too big to be called
a box. Too big, too thick, too heavy,
and too rough. It was more like a
large hunk of paper."

I have been in the mood of rolling some percentile dice for a few years now. Unfortunately I did not have any chance to run any game from my small but vicious collection of Chaosium games and their relatives, and Hecatomb¹ had to be put on hold due to lack of time and brain capacity. At least I was lucky enough to play a few one shots of Call of Cthulhu 7e as a fat and fast-talking archeologist professor Jacob Smith.²

Just like Dungeons & Dragons, Chaosium's games are also having a renaissance. Unlike Wizards of the Coast, Chaosium has been putting some serious effort in keeping even their classics alive. Their RuneQuest Classic is one of the most cherished books on my shelf, so it was a no-brainer for me when their Call of Cthulhu Classic boxed set's Kickstarter was announced, that I will dish out some serious cash on that. Originally I wanted to get the classic one inch box, considering my firstborn was on the way, but then I changed my mind when I imagined him looking in my eyes a decade or two later and calling me an idiot for not buying the majestic $100 set that will probably worth a small fortune when I perish.

It was a long and slightly bumpy ride, my patience growing thin as the boxed set kept getting delayed due to various global crises. Today though the wait has come to an end when I found a thick and heavy box from Poland lying on my office desk. With eyes gleaming from excitement I borrowed my collegue's kampfmesser to tear it open. When I finally shoved away some of the packaging material I hesitated, but in the end gave up on sacrificing said collegue to the Old Ones - though the urge was hard to resist.

The two inch boxed set contains enough material to play Call of Cthulhu for a lifetime. Its contents include:

• A paper detailing the contents of the box. Yay!
• The second edition Call of Cthulhu rulebook, with errata included.
• A Sourcebook for the 1920s, which has some additional trivia and content for the era.
• A few character sheets that you will likely never use in the age of pdfs and cheap printing.
• A poster map featuring the 1920s world map on one side, and a map of Arkham on the other.
• A size comparison poster featuring the various lovecraftian monstrosities from the rulebook.
• Silhouttes featuring characters, monsters, and monsters not included in the original set. Naturally you will never cut them out, afraid of ruining the integrity of your boxed set. Still, they are neat, and since you get a pdf with the package, you can print them out yourself on sturdier paper.
• Shadows of Yog-Sothot, "a global campaign to save mankind" according to Chaosium. We know though, that unless the Keeper is fudging or light hearted, that will never happen.
• Trail of Tsathogguah, another world spanning campaign. I have a hunch Chaosium is either not familiar with their games or trolling us.
• The Asylum & Other tales, a collection of seven scenarios, including one from the late Dave Hargrave of Arduin fame.
• Cthulhu Companion, a sourcebook containing four more scenarios and some additional rules.
• Fragments of Fear, another companion with a bunch of stuff and a scenario.
• A Keeper's Screen, which has some handy tables, but is not cardstock.
• A crapton of handouts on thin paper.
• A set of dice.

I would have been happier if some of the handouts and the GM screen were printed on sturdier paper, but I'm also pretty fucking satisfied with the quality of the poster maps. It's a pity though, that the 1981 Chaosium Games Catalog and the original Basic Role-Playing rulebook were only included as pdfs. The rulebooks and modules are softcover, saddle-stitched, just like in days of yore, though they probably have more hit points than the originals. Overall I'm very satisfied with the contents. All it is missing is Masks of Nyarlathotep, and it would be perfect. Dear Chaosium, please do an expanded QuestWorld boxed set next!

To finish this blogpost off, some shitty pictures of the contents hastily made on my desk follow... If you need more pictures of anything specific, feel free to ask, and I will do my best to take a photo of it.

¹ By the end of summer I had a pretty neat player's rulebook of some 30 pages, but endless rules revisions, my firstborn, and work interfered and I lost my will to continue with it. Plus there are a crapton of percentile games out there already, so I might end up just house ruling one of them and using the setting when I finally rise from my ashes as a Referee.

² He looks basically like Jack Black's character from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. He kinda acts like that too until there is some action, when he kicks ass. Not the most original character, but I enjoy playing him.

[Homebrew] Project Hecatomb

Can you have a d100 game without ducks?

When fate realized the bat plague alone wasn't enough to keep me from GMing it threw deadlines and the usual holiday chaos at me. Their combined pressure was enough to make me falter and realize, it's time to ease my burden by letting some things go. The plan was to wrap up my short-lived X-Plorers and D&D5e Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor campaigns, and merge the two groups. I told my players early what options I have in mind, and after a poll and a roll of a dice to break a tie here I am hacking together something from Basic Role-Playing for a sword & sorcery sandbox...

Why would I do that when there are already a couple of games based on the Chaosium percentile system out there? For the same reason you see an endless stream of D&D retroclones: they don't hit my sweet spot. The various editions of RuneQuest and Mythras are too complicated. OpenQuest's skill list isn't what I'm looking for and it threw away skill improvement by usage (an issue I also have with Mythras). The closest to my ideal would be the early editions of Drakar och Demoner, a game I know and love thanks to a swedophile friend, but being only available in swedish makes it hard to use it at the table on the fly.¹ Thus I decided to follow the original DoD's example: take an early edition of Basic Role-Playing and the Magic World booklet from the Worlds of Wonder boxed set as the foundation, and start building from there.

Unlike the thick Gold Book currently sold by Chaosium, classic versions of Basic Role-Playing are 16 pages long pamphlets containing only the core mechanics of the game and meticulous gameplay examples that feel like entries from a Fighting Fantasy book. Magic World² is a 20 pages long supplement that adds some basic rules for the fantasy genre, including professions, more skills, encumbrance, damage bonus, major wounds, monsters, magic items, and a spell system that handles each spell as a separate skill. That's a solid core to build upon, but it's nothing more than that. Here is what I'm doing with it:

1) Expand the skill list. The base BRP+MW skill list is pretty good, but lacks some skills that frequently come up in my campaigns - including craftsmanship, playing instruments, and social skills. Communication checks are originally handled by the Persuasion/Charisma roll (which is based on the Charisma/Appearance characteristic), but I find having a single value for that too simple, and I dislike how they only change when the base characteristic does. Enter Oratory and Fast Talk from RuneQuest...

2) Throw out Idea, Luck, Dodge, and Persuasion roll. I find the percentile characteristic rolls redundant when you have a solid skill list and the resistance matrix already. I specifically hate the idea of the awkward Idea roll. It's a bullshit saving throw vs player knowledge and creativity. "Oh, you had a good idea? Well let's roll to see if your character can come up with it..."

3) Change how professions work. In MW the four professions (warrior, rogue, sage, wizard) have a list of skills that are raised to a certain value based on characteristics. Instead of that I'm borrowing some ideas from Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest 3e: a profession tells what skills are available, how many skill points can be initially distributed between them, and what starting equipment the character gets.

4) Expand the profession list. I want some more archetypes, but I want them to be flexible. The last is achieved by leaving two skills on the profession list open to the player - thus wizard can cover shaman, priest, necromancer, alchemist, whatever, depending on what skills the player chooses. And like CoC's dilettante, I have an adventurer profession for those who want a piecemeal approach.

5) Write up a proper equipment list. MW only has weapons and armour. My players usually buy everything but those. Pets, slaves, ships, property, prostitutes, you name it, they probably bought it - but weapons and armour are 99% of the time looted. While SIZ limits for armour and weapon breakage will likely change this habit this time, that won't keep my players from buying all kinds of other "goods". RQ2e, RQ3e, Mythras, ...And a Ten Foot Pole³ were very helpful in expanding the list and coming up with some rules of thumb for economy, currency, and prices.

6) Ceremonial magic! According to MW "Wizardry (binding demons), Necromancy (raising and otherwise controlling the undead), Enchantment (making magical items), and Alchemy (making magical substances)" belong here, but other than some simple and solid rules for creating potions and magic items the topic isn't covered. I want to do ceremonial magic justice by making it a desirable long-term goals for spellcasters, and expanding it with conjuring elementals, resurrection, and maybe some other options.

7) More GM-ing tools. Getting lost, encounter frequency, random encounters, random treasure, random ruins, etc. These are musthaves for me when running a sandbox campaign.

That's Hecatomb, my new year project in a nutshell. Of course there are other minor changes too and nothing is set in stone at the moment. I don't even know what are my long time plans with it... Should I leave it for private use, or share it with the community when it's done? We'll see. I intended to write this post earlier, but now that I think about it, as a new year resolution it's a fitting way to end this accursed year.

Have a wonderful New Year!

¹ Yeah, I know, there are some variants available in English. I know and loathe both of them. Trudvang Chronicles is a needlessly complicated mess, while RuinMasters is awfully designed pile of utter disappointment. Seriously RiotMinds, get your shit together, and release the iconic swedish rpg that matters...

² Not to be confused with Magic World, the setting neutral clone of Elric!, which fails to live up to the predecessor's awesomeness, is kind of a mess, but at least is available in print dirt cheap.

³ Yup, that's a RoleMaster supplement. A pretty damn good one, which is a high praise for a book that's basically a collection of price lists.