BRP The Edition Wars To End All Wars

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Mangoplum said:
And what is it with people caring one way or another if a rules system feels 'contemporary'?
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I'm probably the one who used it most recently in this thread
I used that word because I assumed that most of us are aware that 'contemporary' just refers a current style or way of doing things.
Why people may care is pretty much the same reasons why they may care about any rules that they like

In this context there have been some of the rules in CoC 7E which stand out from the classic BRP rules (which have barely changed over time).
I don't think they are objectively any better or worse, but they exist.

My query was that I felt if a game publisher is going to publish a set of toolkit game mechanics, then why not include mechanics from a wide cross-section of the games they are publishing?
I also feel that these rules would be best presented as Optional Rules, rather than shoehorning people into using them.
Mangoplum said:
You either like it or you don't.
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Totally agree, and in itself this has nothing to do with whether rules are classic or contemporary in flavour
Mangoplum said:
Is it feeling 'contemporary' really a factor in making that decision? Would you turn away a system simply because it didn't feel 'contemporary' enough?
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I think that most people would play whichever system they feel is the better one.
Mangoplum said:
Or is that just shorthand for a collection of elements you don't like?
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Contemporary and Classic are a collection of mechanics that come together in certain styles.
I'm not sure that's shorthand for anything.
Mangoplum said:
Style of illustration maybe?
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Maybe. Light fantasy, sometimes computer-gamey, sometimes cutesy art, is used for some modern fantasy, whereas at other times it is the opposite, almost a dark punk aesthetic vs classic sword & sorcery art or old high fantasy art.
Depends on the publisher. WotC has gone down this path to some extent, also Darrington Press, also some indie publishers (more the punk flavour, not the cutesy flavour), whereas other relatively big publishers like Free League and Modiphius haven't, so I'm not sure if they are after particular markets or not.
Mangoplum said:
Black and white vs. color? Or glossy pages vs. flat paper?
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I think this comes down to how much money a publisher can throw into their book more than anything else.
However colour is not necessarily better than b&w, it really comes down to the quality of the artwork, and the production quality of the books.
 
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As stated above the ORC license is not friendly to the publisher, except for Paizo who has special privileges, so it is understandable that Chaosium not include their newer mechanics as they would become available for anyone to copy and paste in their own ORC game.
 
BTW I’m not a lawyer, but this guy is and I’m basing my statements on ORC from his videos.

 
sharps54 said:
As stated above the ORC license is not friendly to the publisher, except for Paizo who has special privileges, so it is understandable that Chaosium not include their newer mechanics as they would become available for anyone to copy and paste in their own ORC game.
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This could be correct, and makes some sense. Even if those rules cannot be copyrighted. I suppose it could be something like this with the ORC licensing.
 
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Mankcam said:
This could be correct, and makes sense. Even if those rules cannot be copyrighted. I suppose it could be something like this with the ORC licensing.
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Personally I would love to have them in there for completeness but I understand and why they aren’t. I actually don’t like things like the push mechanism for traditional CoC but am fine with it in “pulp mode.”
 
sharps54 said:
Personally I would love to have them in there for completeness but I understand and why they aren’t. I actually don’t like things like the push mechanism for traditional CoC but am fine with it in “pulp mode.”
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Perhaps they could do a Companion Volume for odds and ends like this, but now that you raise potential challenges with the ORC i can see them not doing it.
 
Mankcam said:
Perhaps they could do a Companion Volume for odds and ends like this, but now that you raise potential challenges with the ORC i can see them not doing it.
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I don’t think they are under any requirement to release all their books under ORC although I wonder how that would play out in the social media space. Releasing the basic core rules under ORC and the things they want to keep proprietary not under ORC makes sense to me.
 
Mankcam said:
I'm probably the one who used it most recently in this thread
I used that word because I assumed that most of us are aware that 'contemporary' just refers a current style or way of doing things.
Why people may care is pretty much the same reasons why they may care about any rules that they like
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I didn't mean to crawl up your butt about it, it's just that I see people (on various forums) having a degree of concern over what rules are 'modern' vs. others that are 'dated' and it continues to pester me.
I did look up 'contemporary' to see if I was being narrow about its meaning. I took to be things that co-existed in an era. But another meaning is also 'of the present'.
Myself, I see no inherent value in rules being 'modern' or not. Some systems get it right the first time, then the publisher keeps tweaking them to have new product to sell. Any improvements are likely incidental to the primary goal of making some more pocket money.
I've seen people glom onto CoC7e who claim they never liked/played CoC prior to that edition, but find the new one to be the prime motivator in their new found love for the game. I am skeptical of this, and am tempted to think it's due either to the addition of color visuals, OR they are mostly shills for Chaosium. These same folks will often toss around the term 'modern'.
In other words, I'm just feeling cranky.
 
So lemme get this straight… Paizo jumps onto the WotC OGL controversy to oh-so-selflessly create the ORC… which has restrictions for all publishers except Paizo.

…gee people are suckers about Paizo. So many people are converting to Pathfinder to stick it to the evil WotC corporation… by supporting pretty much the next biggest ttrpg game corpo.

I would have thought that nerds would have been more intelligent. But eh, virtue signalling is more important than nuance and thoughtfulness, even for geeks.
 
Having not followed this closely what Paizo exemptions are there?
 
Mankcam said:
But given the direction of the company, I would not be surprised if they did bring it back to the fold being closer to the classic build of BRP, and keep the more contemporary changes with RoL.
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Could you give some sort of breezy precis as to what the key differences are between "classic" and "contemporary"? Or is this just an ad hoc category rather than a systemic variation in... erm, system?

Necrozius said:
So lemme get this straight… Paizo jumps onto the WotC OGL controversy to oh-so-selflessly create the ORC… which has restrictions for all publishers except Paizo.
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As this is the BRP thread, for clarity -- at least as I understand it, I've not fine-tooth-combed, and even if I had, I'm not a lawyer, and even if I were-- Anyhoo. The whole ORC isn't backdoored to Piazo, it allows the licensing party -- i.e., Paizo for their stuff, Chaosium for their Big Metal Book dingens, etc -- to restrict various things. Is that more restrictive than the WotC OGL? Apparently in some respects yes! But the point is, they're not "ungranting" permissions previously extended, and they're not subject to unilateral "pray I do not alter it further" changes by any single licensor. As in the case with Hasbro, who own both their own content, and the OGL itself.

Necrozius said:
virtue signalling
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Please just let's not.
 
is he wrong about the ability for someone else to essentially republish your book of spells or magic items that was released under ORC? I don’t know as I’m not a lawyer but it doesn’t sound like a great deal for creators to me.
 
Mangoplum said:
I didn't mean to crawl up your butt about it, it's just that I see people (on various forums) having a degree of concern over what rules are 'modern' vs. others that are 'dated' and it continues to pester me.
I did look up 'contemporary' to see if I was being narrow about its meaning. I took to be things that co-existed in an era. But another meaning is also 'of the present'.
Myself, I see no inherent value in rules being 'modern' or not. Some systems get it right the first time, then the publisher keeps tweaking them to have new product to sell. Any improvements are likely incidental to the primary goal of making some more pocket money.
I've seen people glom onto CoC7e who claim they never liked/played CoC prior to that edition, but find the new one to be the prime motivator in their new found love for the game. I am skeptical of this, and am tempted to think it's due either to the addition of color visuals, OR they are mostly shills for Chaosium. These same folks will often toss around the term 'modern'.
In other words, I'm just feeling cranky.
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Hey no dramas, btw I have broken my arm this week and now typing from a sling, so I may be the one with the shitty mood, heh heh
For what its worth I wouldn't mind if Chaosium returned to their classic BRP build for the next CoC, and park their more recent rules changes with RoL.
Anything is possible
 
Alai said:
Could you give some sort of breezy precis as to what the key differences are between "classic" and "contemporary"? Or is this just an ad hoc category rather than a systemic variation in... erm, system?
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yeah of course its a vague ad hoc term pulled outta our butts, but most BRP fans will kinda get the picture
I dont have time for detail at present, but I will get back to throw in some vague defining lines, as this is an 'Edition War' discussion after all
Happy for others to define it as well
 
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Mankcam said:
yeah of course its a vague ad hoc term pulled outta our butts, but most BRP fans will kinda get the picture
I dont have time for detail at present, but I will get back to throw in some vague defining lines, as this is an 'Edition War' discussion after all
Happy for others to define it as well
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Sorry, wasn't clear on that. Thought there might be some systematic nBRP/oBRP distinction I was behind on my memos on. If it's just a myriad of different seemingly ad hoc things, no worries. Especially with a broken arm, sorry to hear that!

sharps54 said:
is he wrong about the ability for someone else to essentially republish your book of spells or magic items that was released under ORC? I don’t know as I’m not a lawyer but it doesn’t sound like a great deal for creators to me.
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I think he choose the example of a book of spells on the basis that'd be end-to-end crunchy game-mechanics, and hence "Licensed Material", and no what-some-might-call fluff, which would be "Reserved Material", whatsoever. I haven't been through the weeds of the OGL text (and see earlier disclaimers), so I'm not sure how 'repackaging and undercutting' of LM works. Clearly -- I think! -- you can't do that with RM.

Spellslinging Sellsword said:
The ORC isn't some Paizo trap. The Roll of Law guy just dislikes open gaming licenses and is full of :crap:.
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Don't know about the second, but isn't his beef with the ORC that it's (in some senses) less "open" than that OGL, and isn't he allegedly working on his own open licence?

Very possibly just likes the sound of his own voice, and the sound of monetised clicks.
 
The Cthulhu Eternal people seem to be cranking out material at quite a rate, so anyone who wants to play d100 without going anywhere near CoC7e has a place to go.

On the obscure BRP-derivatives front we have a Spanish game called Special Agency.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com www.drivethrurpg.com

As one might expect the PCs are special agents. Of particular note are some of the adventure settings. I don’t know of many scenarios set in early 1950s Spain outside this example:

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com www.drivethrurpg.com
 
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Mankcam said:
I just threw that out there, I doubt that there are any formal plans afoot for CoC 8E for the next five years!

But given the direction of the company, I would not be surprised if they did bring it back to the fold being closer to the classic build of BRP, and keep the more contemporary changes with RoL.

But yeah there is no hints of CoC8E at this stage, that's just me throwing that out there to the void, heh heh.

Yes and that's pretty well reflected in many forum posts around the world.

Whilst I don't mind some of the changes with CoC 7E, I was unhappy with a few others and would also prefer the current edition to be FULLY compatible (not CLOSELY compatible) with all other edition supplements, as per ALL of the previous editions.

I think RoL looks a great place to park the 'contemporary BRP' mechanics, and that way the 'classic BRP' mechanics can sit with their evergreen games like CoC etc

Anyway, I'm just speculating for the sake of it, heh heh
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I thought this thread seemed pretty swo, sure enough it was instigated by Mankcam Mankcam
short-sleeve-shirt-chinos-tassel-loafers-large-72864.jpg​
Mankcam Mankcam models contemporary classics between stirring up fights about BRP editions and harassing kangaroos
 
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SJB said:
The Cthulhu Eternal people seem to be cranking out material at quite a rate, so anyone who want to play d100 without going anywhere near CoC7e has a place to go.
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Interesting. Will have to take a closer look.
 
K_Peterson said:
Interesting. Will have to take a closer look [at Cthulhu Eternal].
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So, the Cthulhu Eternal variants are based mainly off the open game mechanics of Delta Green 2E. A few extra rules pieces added in, but basically the DG mechanics reskinned for different eras of CoC gaming.

It's interesting to look through. A few years back, I had some rough notes on using DG2E for CoC, and 'constructed' some Professions appropriate to 1920s/1930s play and gave some thought about what would need to be changed. I wrote up some chargen notes; made my own character sheets; and hemmed-and-hawed over the potential spike in 'power level' between traditional-CoC and "1920s DG". So, it makes for an interesting comparison between my old notes and what they produced.
 
K_Peterson said:
So, the Cthulhu Eternal variants are based mainly off the open game mechanics of Delta Green 2E. A few extra rules pieces added in, but basically the DG mechanics reskinned for different eras of CoC gaming.
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Thanks to SJB SJB and K_Peterson K_Peterson for mentioning Cthulhu Eternal in this thread.

My name is Dean and I run the micro-publishing house Cthulhu Reborn that has been the vehicle for bringing the various versions of CE into existence. We probably should be more active here on the Pub but we're super-small and though we read lots of stuff here, we don't always have time to post. Our bad, we know.

Anyway, the spiel for Cthulhu Eternal is that it's basically a 100% free/open iteration of the D100 system which reinterprets the original OGL-published rules engine created by Arc Dream (for their Delta Green RPG) in a variety of historical and future settings. Over the past 18 months we've released SRDs for full-featured rules optimized for vanilla modern era, Cold War era, WW2, Jazz Age, Victorian Era, Age of Revolutions (18th C), Medieval, and Post-Apocalyptic settings. Each of the SRDs is about 100-ish pages of free text-only rules which anyone can use as a platform for a new game, campaign, or scenario. We also recently released an SRD with CE-compatible game stats for all the public-domain Mythos elements created by Lovecraft for his fiction.

Info about all these (and links to download the free files) can be found at the Cthulhu Eternal website. More era-specific SRDs are in the works.

We have personally used the CE platform as a way to publish a bunch of of our own scenarios, and a few other small publishers have done likewise. But the rules are there for anyone to use and adapt however they want -- with (virtually*) no licensing involved. Home brewers and self-publishers would probably benefit the most from what we've shared, but we've also been able to get some absolutely excellent Lovecraftian scenarios out into the wild using this platform. From the perspective of this thread ... it's just another iteration of the great family of BRP games ... but one which comes with very few strings attached.


Dean (from Cthulhu Reborn, publishers of Cthulhu Eternal and APOCTHULHU)


*use of the Cthulhu Eternal logo is not entirely free since it's a trademark of Cthulhu Reborn, but there is a very lightweight compatibility logo license that makes it easy to identify a product as CE-compatible as long as some very basic conditions are met.
 
I bought a couple of the Misery Engine / cthulhu reborn books (Apocathulu) - it's based on delta green.
 
cthulhu_reborn said:
Thanks to SJB SJB and K_Peterson K_Peterson for mentioning Cthulhu Eternal in this thread.

My name is Dean and I run the micro-publishing house Cthulhu Reborn that has been the vehicle for bringing the various versions of CE into existence. We probably should be more active here on the Pub but we're super-small and though we read lots of stuff here, we don't always have time to post. Our bad, we know.

Anyway, the spiel for Cthulhu Eternal is that it's basically a 100% free/open iteration of the D100 system which reinterprets the original OGL-published rules engine created by Arc Dream (for their Delta Green RPG) in a variety of historical and future settings. Over the past 18 months we've released SRDs for full-featured rules optimized for vanilla modern era, Cold War era, WW2, Jazz Age, Victorian Era, Age of Revolutions (18th C), Medieval, and Post-Apocalyptic settings. Each of the SRDs is about 100-ish pages of free text-only rules which anyone can use as a platform for a new game, campaign, or scenario. We also recently released an SRD with CE-compatible game stats for all the public-domain Mythos elements created by Lovecraft for his fiction.

Info about all these (and links to download the free files) can be found at the Cthulhu Eternal website. More era-specific SRDs are in the works.

We have personally used the CE platform as a way to publish a bunch of of our own scenarios, and a few other small publishers have done likewise. But the rules are there for anyone to use and adapt however they want -- with (virtually*) no licensing involved. Home brewers and self-publishers would probably benefit the most from what we've shared, but we've also been able to get some absolutely excellent Lovecraftian scenarios out into the wild using this platform. From the perspective of this thread ... it's just another iteration of the great family of BRP games ... but one which comes with very few strings attached.


Dean (from Cthulhu Reborn, publishers of Cthulhu Eternal and APOCTHULHU)


*use of the Cthulhu Eternal logo is not entirely free since it's a trademark of Cthulhu Reborn, but there is a very lightweight compatibility logo license that makes it easy to identify a product as CE-compatible as long as some very basic conditions are met.
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What products would you recommend for least effort involved in hacking in powers or magic? I know there are a gagillion BRP products.
 
PencilBoy99 said:
What products would you recommend for least effort involved in hacking in powers or magic? I know there are a gagillion BRP products.
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I'd look at the BSB/BYB if you want a "toolkit" of options to add, and the RQG CB if you'd prefer a "worked example" of several different magic systems in a particular (very particular, some might say!) setting.
 
PencilBoy99 said:
What products would you recommend for least effort involved in hacking in powers or magic? I know there are a gagillion BRP products.
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Hear me, grass...screw that. The Yoda-Kenobi impersonation feels wrong today, so I'm not going to do it:thumbsup:

So, hear me PencilBoy99 PencilBoy99: all that most of those XXX-illion d100 products are doing is giving you a number between 1 and 99 to roll against, trying to get under or equal:shade:. OK, might be coupled with some price in Magic Points, in rarer cases the price might be rather steep and might need a group to pay it.
And to make you attempt that roll, they offer you an effect, from snakes erupting from the ground, constricting and crushing your enemies until they can't move, then swallowing them whole to getting +5% to your next Seduction roll to getting the desire of your heart, once... just attempt the roll and pay the price:grin:!

If you make the roll, the power works.
Thus, all of those are mutually compatible. If the skill doesn't exist in the specific d100 iteration you're playing: if it's an "everyday skill" - a physical, mental, combat or social skill - just replace with the closest analogue at no penalty; if it's a magic skill, add it to the skill list.
Done. Now there should be exactly 0 effort involved in the hacking, whether you're using Mythras, BRP, Chthulhu Eternal, Revolution, or whatever other version...:shade:
 
cthulhu_reborn said:
Thanks to SJB SJB and K_Peterson K_Peterson for mentioning Cthulhu Eternal in this thread.

My name is Dean and I run the micro-publishing house Cthulhu Reborn that has been the vehicle for bringing the various versions of CE into existence. We probably should be more active here on the Pub but we're super-small and though we read lots of stuff here, we don't always have time to post. Our bad, we know.

Anyway, the spiel for Cthulhu Eternal is that it's basically a 100% free/open iteration of the D100 system which reinterprets the original OGL-published rules engine created by Arc Dream (for their Delta Green RPG) in a variety of historical and future settings. Over the past 18 months we've released SRDs for full-featured rules optimized for vanilla modern era, Cold War era, WW2, Jazz Age, Victorian Era, Age of Revolutions (18th C), Medieval, and Post-Apocalyptic settings. Each of the SRDs is about 100-ish pages of free text-only rules which anyone can use as a platform for a new game, campaign, or scenario. We also recently released an SRD with CE-compatible game stats for all the public-domain Mythos elements created by Lovecraft for his fiction.

Info about all these (and links to download the free files) can be found at the Cthulhu Eternal website. More era-specific SRDs are in the works.

We have personally used the CE platform as a way to publish a bunch of of our own scenarios, and a few other small publishers have done likewise. But the rules are there for anyone to use and adapt however they want -- with (virtually*) no licensing involved. Home brewers and self-publishers would probably benefit the most from what we've shared, but we've also been able to get some absolutely excellent Lovecraftian scenarios out into the wild using this platform. From the perspective of this thread ... it's just another iteration of the great family of BRP games ... but one which comes with very few strings attached.


Dean (from Cthulhu Reborn, publishers of Cthulhu Eternal and APOCTHULHU)


*use of the Cthulhu Eternal logo is not entirely free since it's a trademark of Cthulhu Reborn, but there is a very lightweight compatibility logo license that makes it easy to identify a product as CE-compatible as long as some very basic conditions are met.
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Oh...welcome to the Pub, Dean! I just started reading your SRDs, and it's very solid work:thumbsup:!
 
PencilBoy99 said:
How is Rivers of London different?
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I haven't bought it yet, but this is what I was replying to...
Mankcam said:
I’m skimming through the Rivers of London book and quite like the core mechanic.
When CoC 7E came out, it seemed a bit confused and sat somewhere between classic BRP mechanics and a more contemporary rule set.

RoL however feels much more contemporary, yet remains very recognisable as BRP. It has a lot of the rules that were added to CoC 7E, yet because the system feels lighter, then these rules don’t feel like bolt-on mechanics, instead they all help to make RoL run as a smooth game engine

I’m now thinking that CoC8E should follow suit and do a variation of this RoL BRP build, or otherwise it returns to its more classic BRP roots of the pre-7E editions.
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Mankcam said:
Yes, I just bought these, and yes they are good.

The only issue is that this is gonna take many volumes to collect, and that may be a barrier for folk new to the setting.
However for those who like Glorantha, these books look pretty much like what we were told - full-colour expanded cult write-ups heavily inspired by RQ2 Cults of Prax and Cults ofTerror.

I think I read it's going to be ten books in total, and so far we only have three - The Prospaedia, The Lightbringers, and The Earth Goddesses.
I'm in for the journey, they look great and are good reads.

I loved RQ2 and RQ3 back in the day, and the RQG book looks absolutely beautiful. However RQG as a ruleset just feels a bit like a hobbled collection of BRP mechanics, some of which have been long superceeded by other editions. I want to like RQG, but it feels cumbersome for me, and at the end of the day I feel that both Mythras and OpenQuest are smoother sets of BRP core mechanics.

If I do run Glorantha, I'm likely using Mythras and adding three Rune Passions and renaming Theisim to Rune Magic, that's it. The system is back on track how I like it, and most of the RQG NPC stats and content in these books seem easily portable or can be handwaved converted with ease. Maybe OpenQuest may be an easier option, I really like it, but I do prefer Hit Locations for my Gloranthan games - ah the nostalgia of losing limbs in dusty Prax - so RQ6/Mythras it will be (I have a few other ideas for OpenQuest).

However I'm not sure if I'm ever running games in Glorantha again, as the setting just seems to be becoming so lore-laden that I don't know if I can sandbox the old loose way I used to. It's like the more I know, the less I create. Maybe I'm just getting older too, heh heh.

Not to worry, I have many other trpgs on my shelves these days, so I may be just collecting these Gloranthan titles purely for reading and reference, I'm not sure.

In any case, I'm glad I just ordered these Cults of Glorantha hardcovers, and the pdf versions are currently in my tablet getting perused.
Highly recommended if you like Glorantha, but beware, there is definately more of the new artwork which may not fit everyone's interpretations of the setting.
I don't mind it however, and think these are great for Gloranthan lorekeepers, but possibly may shy away newcomers to the setting.
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why did you pick Mythras as your base?
 
Fenris-77 said:
I haven't bought it yet, but this is what I was replying to...
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I haven't had a thorough look at Rivers Of London yet, as I only have the pdf and I usually read them as back ups.

The setting and fiction looks really great, but I don't have time to invest in this as a GM at present. My mate has read the series however, so I expect he'll end up being our nominal Rivers of London GM if we manage to get this to the table.

I've just given the core mechanics a very scant read, and most of what I'm surmising is from just looking at the character sheet.

I see no SIZ in the Core Characteristics, which is fine. Any value that SIZ contributed to could easily be replaced with a nominal value for 'human-sized' beings, or even replaced with just STR or CON, depending on the situation. SIZ has always been a bit of an odd Characteristic anyway, so it's probably good it's been cleaned up. I'm happy to keep SIZ, but I'm just as happy if it's gone, it's vestigial baggage in some ways.

From looking at the character sheet it seems it's got far less Skill bloat, which I like these days, as you really only need trademark skills recorded.

After another glance I see Hit Point and Fatigue Levels look one and the same, which is a good idea.

I also see that it has an Advantage/Disadvantage section, so I'm guessing this is like D&D Feats, which should lend itself well to a more pulpy playstyle.

Overall it looks like a very clear character sheet to play with at the table:
RoLp1.PNGRoLp2.PNG
PencilBoy99 said:
why did you pick Mythras as your base?
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Mythras captures what I love about RQ2/3 - the meaty combat system, the grittiness, the tactile flavour. I find many other combat mechanics not as satisfying as RQ2/3, and Mythras captures this as a foundation and builds upon it, making it better in my opinion.

For me Mythras also has a more usuable approach to actions and task resolution - every dramatic action the player-characters attempt is calculated by adding two Core Characterisitics together - that's really intuitive and simple for me!
I just let the players explain whatever their characters are attempting to do, then I advise them which two Core Characteristics to add together to give them a percentile chance score. Once they know the score they make a D100% skill roll to determine whether they succeed or not.
They'll quickly point out to me if they have a Skill which superceeds this - in many cases it's often self-evident, but sometimes it involves colourful rationales.

The combat system is the same - I just tell them if they rolled one Effect or two Effects worth of Success, they narrate their explanations according to that scope, and I fit that into the Combat Options available, very easy and loose, it feels like RQ but lends itself to more cinematics.

Bonuses and Penalties to actions are easy for a GM to do on the fly as well, just using the Simple Modifiers option of +/- 20%, +/- 40%, etc.

Add Passions for character motivations, and throttle the Luck Pts according to the flavour of the setting and it pretty much can adapt to almost anything.

After playing versions of BRP since the late 1980s, I feel that BRP is a reasonably solid game engine to rift off. I have had numerous house rulings to the various BRP games and the system doesn't seem to break. Subjectively BRP could be perceived as dated in some areas (eg: skill bloat, etc), but for those familar with it is is a very solid chassis at it's core, and also very intutitive for both GMs and PCs.

In my opinion Mythras has been the best set of all-round BRP mechanics which can be used consistently across a wide range of genres, so it's where I've settled in regards to BRP. I just use it liberally with the other BRP products now, the NPC stat blocks of all BRP games are easy to hand wave, so I just keep Mythras as the core DNA for me to run and tweak it accordingly.

Overall Mythras feels like a good blend of old school and more recent mechanics, ideal for gritty games.

I'm also preferring the more simplier Mythras Imperative character sheet these days, I wish there was a form-fillable version of it:
MythImp.PNG
Overall it looks like a more clear character sheet to play with at the table, which is a theme with me these days. After running BRP games since the 1980s, I've found in more recent years that I prefer simplier character sheets (from all trpg systems) as this allows me to visualise the character concepts more clearly than crowded character sheets that remind me of accounting ledgers.

Anyway, that's my thoughts regarding Mythras.
Lucky I found a place to lay my hat here in the RPG Pub, heh heh :grin:
 
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Mankcam said:
Mythras captures what I love about RQ2/3 - the meaty combat system, the grittiness, the tactile flavour. I find many other combat mechanics not as satisfying as RQ2/3, and Mythras captures this as a foundation and builds upon it, making it better in my opinion.

For me Mythras also has a more usuable approach to skills - everything being calculated by adding two Core Characterisitics together - that's really intuitive and simple for me! I just let the players explain whatever their characters are doing, then I advise them which two Core Characteristics to add to actually do it. They'll quickly point out to me if they have a Skill which superceeds this (in many cases it's often self-evident, but sometimes it involves colourful rationales).

The combat system is the same - I just tell them if they rolled one effect or two effects worth of success, they narrate their explanations according to that scope, and I fit that into the Combat Options available, very easy and loose, it feels like RQ but lends itself to more cinematics.
Modifiers are easy for a GM to do on the fly as well, just using the Simple Modifiers option of +/- 20%, +/- 40%, etc.

Add Passions for character motivations, and throttle the Luck Pts according to the flavour of the setting and it pretty much can adapt to almost anything.
Click to expand...
If I weren't already sold on Mythras, that short text would do it.
 
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