I’m confessing to a return to my roots with some Basic Roleplaying game building. This is something we did endlessly in my early years of the hobby in the 80s, using Stormbringer as the chasis, to play out great games with a solid design core with our own flavouring dolloped on top. The recent BRP ‘Universal Game Engine’ book is a great toolkit, from which you can select components and approaches to quickly build the game you want. I’m in the midst of a ‘design checklist’ that documents the decisions I have made when presented with options. Although you could be radical about those choices, my nostalgic brain mush is crafting a recognisable BRP core. I’m tailoring a Major Wound table and then moving onto approaches for magic. Chaosium’s Magic World game, based on their Elric!/Stormbringer 5 games, is also informing the build, which feels like a proper return to the old times.
Rather than endlessly tinkering, I’d like to get something ‘good enough’ to get into actual play. I’m even comfortable that the edges of the game can change and adapt informed by the play itself. The core is solid enough to take some maleable fringes. I had been designing my own KSR inspired D100 game called ‘Century’, but have found the BRP approach to be quick and enjoyable.
Now, of course, I have Dragonbane, Free Leagues silky smooth iteration of Sweden’s ‘D&D’ based on the original 1982 Magic World and Basic Roleplay booklet ancestry. Any home made BRP game has to stand up next to this bouncy BRP newby. I also have perhaps the most elegant and intricately designed expression of the BRP family – the Design Mechanism’s Mythras. I think what I will end up with a reminiscent and comfortable antique, with some extra designed components that will give it a freshness for play. It may be the explicit permission to tinker and build your own that draws me to BRP, even when there is a spectrum of very good designs already out there and being supported. I doubt I will get as far as publishing this under the ORC license, but you never know.
A Publisher powered character sheet and some setting and we are off for a game. I’ll post up the design decision list and character sheet when it is complete enough (and that doesn’t need to be very complete).
Even whilst my GM gaming foreground is full of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and various convention games and game reading, it’s nice to have a backburner that you keep returning to. This one has a nostalgic warm glow for me, with the design options now honed and well presented in the text. I might even get an enjoyable home game out of it.
Here’s to very old friends!