BRP The Edition Wars To End All Wars

[Raleel]

 

[Mankcam]

View attachment 58896

Yes, Exactly, heh heh

 

[Mankcam]

View attachment 58899

FAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKK !!!
Don't unleash the KruegsKraken this early in the morning!
You know you deserve what's-a-comin'
heh heh

 

[Raleel]

 

[Simlasa]

I don't particularly like the Luck points in Mythras and how they're implemented... rerolls and such.
I much prefer how they're done in DCC, where they feel like part of the setting and are more of a gamble.
Even then, I don't think they fit every genre and I've pretty much been willfully ignoring them in our Monster Island sessions.

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't particularly like the Luck points in Mythras and how they're implemented... rerolls and such.
I much prefer how they're done in DCC, where they feel like part of the setting and are more of a gamble.
Even then, I don't think they fit every genre and I've pretty much been willfully ignoring them in our Monster Island sessions.

I think that if you just change the descriptive window dressing this isn't an issue, but that might just be me.

 

[AsenRG]

I suspect that whatever the game, experienced d100 groups end up using a mechanical hit system with narrative overlay. In our case we just ended up writing our own rules to get the swashbuckling atmosphere we desired. However, this involved abandoning both the d100 and roll under!

Care to tell us more?

 

[Mankcam]

(sigh) I would love to be in your position. I gave one of their books that I own a try again the other week and ran into my same eye fatiguing issues and shut down the pdf. Since Chaosium does much much better in paper color and readable fonts, they're my D100 mainstay until TDM gets their font act together.

Yeah I totally get this, as I am using reading glasses now myself
It's probably why I tend to choose to read my RQ6 core rules printed book over the Mythras core rulebook.
Thankfully I also read pdfs on my tablet, and that's generally the main way I read the Mythras core book, as it's brighter and I can easily enlarge it.
But I would prefer just to have the Mythras printed book with bigger text

 

[Vile Traveller]

To play devil's advocate for a moment, publishing a book with a tonne* of typos is kind of in the Chaosium tradition. I mean, RQ2 had the errata right there on the inside covers, and no-one complained about that!



By the way, my theory for cancelling the D12 in the RQ2 errata is they just wanted to save money on dice in the boxed sets. Long live the D12, greatest of platonic solids!

* Tonne because RuneQuest used the metric system.

 

[SJB]

Care to tell us more?

Sure. We wanted rules that allowed us to emulate the 1970s Three Musketeers movies directed by Richard Lester. We all know BRP and variants quite well but our GM was brought up on MERP and believes that roll over is a more flexible mechanic. We also ended up using the d10s as a dice pool rather than percentiles. What we kept - perhaps counter-culturally - is long BRP-based skill lists, with even finer specialisms in some cases. We love our skill lists, which are changed to fit each genre. So far the rules exist in 17th century Europe, post-apocalyptic Britain, Anglo-Saxon England and 2300 AD.

In my defence against CRKrueger my own rules entry for the group is a Mythras hack (very hacked) for Hyboria. It’s recently been christened There Will Be Blood by the others; which is good since it’s meant to be visceral. Critical hits have fixed results; no analysis paralysis.

 

[Triumvir]

Yes that is the book!!!

Many people try to 'correct' me by telling me that I was running Fighting Fantasy Dungeoneer (AFF), but those rules came out a few years later.
I was already running RQ2/3 and MERP/RM by the time Dungeoneer rules were being published..

Hardly anyone remembers that there was an earlier 'group play" version of the original Fighting Fantasy gamebooks rules
It was pretty simple, but it was my transition from gamebooks to rpgs, and I still LOVE the World of Titan to this day.

I have so much love for FF. We should start wurselves another thread.

 

[Lofgeornost]

In my defence against CRKrueger my own rules entry for the group is a Mythras hack (very hacked) for Hyboria. It’s recently been christened There Will Be Blood by the others; which is good since it’s meant to be visceral. Critical hits have fixed results; no analysis paralysis.

Any chance of those being posted on this site?

 

[SJB]

Any chance of those being posted on this site?

Certainly not the first, which isn’t mine. I might post the second at some point - however, in general, I think the world has enough homebrews!

 

[Bilharzia]

To play devil's advocate for a moment, publishing a book with a tonne* of typos is kind of in the Chaosium tradition. I mean, RQ2 had the errata right there on the inside covers, and no-one complained about that!



By the way, my theory for cancelling the D12 in the RQ2 errata is they just wanted to save money on dice in the boxed sets. Long live the D12, greatest of platonic solids!

* Tonne because RuneQuest used the metric system.

The BRP errata has been a thread on the BRP forum for over a decade, the 1980 RQ2 errata was put in two years after RQ first came out, over forty years ago, and before the age of desktop publishing. These days, in the era of digital publishing, where a home PC and cheap software is capable enough to produce print-ready layout and design; especially when the entire text has gone through a re-design into a new book and a completely different layout, ignoring the errata is just bizarre. Other than the open licence (which admittedly is a big, 180 change in direction for Chaosium) I can't see what the excitement is about.

 

[SJB]

The BRP errata has been a thread on the BRP forum for over a decade, the 1980 RQ2 errata was put in two years after RQ first came out, over forty years ago, and before the age of desktop publishing. These days, in the era of digital publishing, where a home PC and cheap software is capable enough to produce print-ready layout and design; especially when the entire text has gone through a re-design into a new book and a completely different layout, ignoring the errata is just bizarre. Other than the open licence (which admittedly is a big, 180 change in direction for Chaosium) I can't see what the excitement is about.

I think excitement will come if anyone does anything good with it. Unfortunately, Chaosium burned some of their best 3PP such as Design Mechanism, Alepthar, and Cthulhu Reborn; others are in the walled gardens of Jonstown and Miskatonic. So we shall see.

 

[sharps54]

I think excitement will come if anyone does anything good with it. Unfortunately, Chaosium burned some of their best 3PP such as Design Mechanism, Alepthar, and Cthulhu Reborn; others are in the walled gardens of Jonstown and Miskatonic. So we shall see.

If the draft of ORC stands you can literally copy and paste the rules/mechanics text from this release into your own game that is released under ORC. That is a game changer and as mentioned a 180 turn for Chaosium.

 

[Bilharzia]

I think excitement will come if anyone does anything good with it. Unfortunately, Chaosium burned some of their best 3PP such as Design Mechanism, Alepthar, and Cthulhu Reborn; others are in the walled gardens of Jonstown and Miskatonic. So we shall see.

This is true, and I would add Delta Green to that list as well.

The excitement generated by the re-release looks, if anything, pretty sad to me. The approach to the production appears half-hearted and what looks very much like band-wagon jumping (180 in the air and) onto the open licence train. TDM have been just as slow to adopt an open licence, (what licence is not declared) and what exactly Classic Fantasy Imperative will look like is unknown. Nevertheless TDM and Mythras have been the de facto carriers of the BRP torch over the last 10 years, since Chaosium torched their relationship with the BRP-sphere, such that it was. Given Delta Green and Mythras, which have developed into different but intentional branches, BRP is looking pretty tired in the current Chaosium form.

 

[CRKrueger]

If the draft of ORC stands you can literally copy and paste the rules/mechanics text from this release into your own game that is released under ORC. That is a game changer and as mentioned a 180 turn for Chaosium.

It’s not like they’ve done anything real with BRP in…how long? Call of Cthulhu and RQ:G will never have anything near the ORC. They’ll probably bring back Magic World for the ORC too, another abandoned product.

 

[sharps54]

It’s not like they’ve done anything real with BRP in…how long? Call of Cthulhu and RQ:G will never have anything near the ORC. They’ll probably bring back Magic World for the ORC too, another abandoned product.

That’s my thought, we won’t see them release any mechanics they developed this century under ORC. Still since only product identity and setting type things can be protected under ORC it is surprising to see them give all this away, I suppose it is an olive branch to the fans (or a Trojan Horse to draw them in). My understanding is that if someone wanted to they could basically take this entire book, remove the art and rerelease it under ORC for any price they want under their own label. I guess for a company like Paizo that has a long history with SRDs that put their mechanics out for free that might not be a big deal but it is a big step for Chaosium.

 

[Andrew J. Luther]

This is true, and I would add Delta Green to that list as well.

The excitement generated by the re-release looks, if anything, pretty sad to me. The approach to the production appears half-hearted and what looks very much like band-wagon jumping (180 in the air and) onto the open licence train. TDM have been just as slow to adopt an open licence, (what licence is not declared) and what exactly Classic Fantasy Imperative will look like is unknown. Nevertheless TDM and Mythras have been the de facto carriers of the BRP torch over the last 10 years, since Chaosium torched their relationship with the BRP-sphere, such that it was. Given Delta Green and Mythras, which have developed into different but intentional branches, BRP is looking pretty tired in the current Chaosium form.

While TDM hasn’t yet embraced a fully open license, I have to say that getting a license from them is very easy.

I’ve put out 2 Mythras-licensed products so far, and both times all it required was an email to Loz with a short pitch, and then a copy of the finished PDF for a final review (which was super fast).

Only one of my three pitches was rejected and that was because it matched exactly a product they are already working on. But Loz also said he’d be happy to see me do related support products once it was out.

So not 100% freedom, but still super-easy to deal with. And so much better than some stuff I’ve heard about dealing with Chaosium.

 

[clarence_redd]

While TDM hasn’t yet embraced a fully open license, I have to say that getting a license from them is very easy.

I’ve put out 2 Mythras-licensed products so far, and both times all it required was an email to Loz with a short pitch, and then a copy of the finished PDF for a final review (which was super fast).

Only one of my three pitches was rejected and that was because it matched exactly a product they are already working on. But Loz also said he’d be happy to see me do related support products once it was out.

So not 100% freedom, but still super-easy to deal with. And so much better than some stuff I’ve heard about dealing with Chaosium.

I agree. The TDM license has not caused me any troubles or felt restrictive in any sense. Open licenses are cool, but a reasonable “semi-open” one remains a very good alternative - sometimes even better.

I have looked at various licensing options for Comae Engine and it will probably end up as a slightly more open approach than TDM’s, but not completely open.

 

[sharps54]

The recent Roll of Law YouTube video on the current ORC draft highlights the problems of having too open a license.

Real Lawyer Reviews The ORC Licence

So, we now have the first draft of the ORC licence. It's generally good... but it's got some nasty ramifications that may make it a very bad licence for cr...

www.youtube.com

 

[Acmegamer]

The BRP errata has been a thread on the BRP forum for over a decade, the 1980 RQ2 errata was put in two years after RQ first came out, over forty years ago, and before the age of desktop publishing. These days, in the era of digital publishing, where a home PC and cheap software is capable enough to produce print-ready layout and design; especially when the entire text has gone through a re-design into a new book and a completely different layout, ignoring the errata is just bizarre. Other than the open licence (which admittedly is a big, 180 change in direction for Chaosium) I can't see what the excitement is about.

Which reminds me about the time some years ago that I asked TDM about Mythras errata for their revisions, for those of us who had the books and just wanted to update our physical books. I actually received pushback from them. Which boggled me to be honest.

 

[Endless Flight]

That was one of the things Wizards was good with, at least going back to 3e and their Star Wars stuff, was keeping their errata up on the website, easy to find and updated with Q&A articles. I always found those helpful.

 

[ffilz]

Which reminds me about the time some years ago that I asked TDM about Mythras errata for their revisions, for those of us who had the books and just wanted to update our physical books. I actually received pushback from them. Which boggled me to be honest.

Yea too many game companies answer to errata is “buy the latest printing ”…

 

[CRKrueger]

View attachment 58899

FAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKK !!!
Don't unleash the KruegsKraken this early in the morning!
You know you deserve what's-a-comin'
heh heh

View attachment 58900

Well, he’s right. As presented in the book, they are totally a Narrative construct. The player knows how many luck points they have, something the PC does not know, and they can choose when to use them which the PC cannot. The player is pulling back from immersing into character to talking about the character and the character’s fate in the Third Person. However, as Necrozius said, Luck Points are easily removed if the campaign makes better sense without them.

 

[Mankcam]

I was interested in getting a copy of this new BRP Universal Rules, but everything tells me that there's not much value-add for anyone who already has the previous copy of BRP.

The 'new' Sanity Rules are just a simplified Call of Cthulhu Sanity mechanic that appeared as an optional rule in a Stormbringer Companion in the early 1980s. The inclusions of Passions is good, although way overdue,as they have been in Pendragon for years and could have easily been in the previous BGB. They have also been front and centre in RQ6/Mythras for years, and now obiviously RQG. The Reputation mechanic sounds good, but most of us houseruled this as a setting variation of Credit Rating anyway.

The fact that the new CoC 7E and RoL mechanics are not included even as optional rules or rules package options is just weird. CoC 7E is likely the current biggest fan base for Chaosium products. One would think capturing that market and providing them a toolkit would be a great idea moving forward.

The new fillable character sheet is quite decent, but not really any improvement on the previous one except for the inclusion of Passions.

The only thing that I really like is that the current production values of Chaosium books are quite good, and the BGB needs to be produced likewise.
As far as editions goes, if this was a D&D edition then it would wouldn't even be considered enough to be a Revised (or 0.5) edition, perhaps BRP.02 at the most.

My excitment is waning with it, and I'm generally a big BRP supporter.
I didn't want to see a radical overhaul, but I did envision this book to be more comprehensive than what is being described.
I'll likely pick the pdf up as part of a sale, but I'm not currently jumping in for a print + pdf copy at this stage, given that there are other game lines I am currently collecting (WFRP 4E and Numenera/Cypher are draining my coffers at present, not to mention I just backed Shadowdark and Talislanta).

This would be a great time for a new version of Mythras with bigger font, coloured title pages, and a more universal toolkit aproach (including firearms rules, mythras companion expansion included, etc). Not sure whether it needs to be ORC or if Mythras Gateway licence is just as good, but either way I'll be more excited about it than this new BRP Universal Rules which I've wanted for so long.

 

[sharps54]

It isn't weird at all that they aren't including the CoC7 or RoL mechanics because ALL the mechanics in the book can be directly copied and pasted into any ORC product by any publisher. The things in this book are the things they are OK with other publishers stealing.using wholesale in their own products.

 

[Raleel]

I was interested in getting a copy of this new BRP Universal Rules, but everything tells me that there's not much value-add for anyone who already has the previous copy of BRP.

The 'new' Sanity Rules are just a simplified Call of Cthulhu Sanity mechanic that appeared as an optional rule in a Stormbringer Companion in the early 1980s. The inclusions of Passions is good, although way overdue,as they have been in Pendragon for years and could have easily been in the previous BGB. They have also been front and centre in RQ6/Mythras for years, and now obiviously RQG. The Reputation mechanic sounds good, but most of us houseruled this as a setting variation of Credit Rating anyway.

The fact that none of the new CoC 7E and RoL mechanics are not included even as optional rules or rules package options is just weird. CoC 7E is likely the current biggest fan base for Chaosium product. One would think capturing that market and providing them a toolkit would be a great idea moving forward.

The new character fillable character sheet is quite decent, but not really any improvement on the previous one except for the inclusion of Passions.

The only thing that I really like is that the current production values of Chaosium books are quite good, and the BGB needs to be produced likewise.
As far as editions goes, if this was a D&D edition then it would wouldn't even be considered enough to be a Revised (or 0.5) edition, perhaps BRP.02 at the most.

My excitment is waning with it, and I'm generally a big BRP supporter.
I didn't want to see a radical overhaul, but I did envision this book to be more comprehensive than what is being described.
I'll likely pick the pdf up as part of a sale, but I'm not currently jumping in for a print + pdf copy at this stage, given that there are other game lines I am currently collecting (WFRP 4E and Numenera/Cypher are draining my coffers at present, not to mention I just backed Shadowdark and Talislanta).

This would be a great time for a new version of Mythras with bigger font, coloured title pages, and a more universal toolkit aproach (including firearms rules, mythras companion expansion included, etc). Not sure whether it needs to be ORC or whether Mythras Gateway licence is just as good, but either way I'll be more excited about it than this new BRP Universal Rules which I've wanted for so long.

Not so important for you I think, but pretty useful for making an SRD to work against. I’m hopeful we will see more Mythras rules under ORC as well

 

[Acmegamer]

I was interested in getting a copy of this new BRP Universal Rules, but everything tells me that there's not much value-add for anyone who already has the previous copy of BRP.

The 'new' Sanity Rules are just a simplified Call of Cthulhu Sanity mechanic that appeared as an optional rule in a Stormbringer Companion in the early 1980s. The inclusions of Passions is good, although way overdue,as they have been in Pendragon for years and could have easily been in the previous BGB. They have also been front and centre in RQ6/Mythras for years, and now obiviously RQG. The Reputation mechanic sounds good, but most of us houseruled this as a setting variation of Credit Rating anyway.

The fact that none of the new CoC 7E and RoL mechanics are not included even as optional rules or rules package options is just weird. CoC 7E is likely the current biggest fan base for Chaosium product. One would think capturing that market and providing them a toolkit would be a great idea moving forward.

The new character fillable character sheet is quite decent, but not really any improvement on the previous one except for the inclusion of Passions.

The only thing that I really like is that the current production values of Chaosium books are quite good, and the BGB needs to be produced likewise.
As far as editions goes, if this was a D&D edition then it would wouldn't even be considered enough to be a Revised (or 0.5) edition, perhaps BRP.02 at the most.

My excitment is waning with it, and I'm generally a big BRP supporter.
I didn't want to see a radical overhaul, but I did envision this book to be more comprehensive than what is being described.
I'll likely pick the pdf up as part of a sale, but I'm not currently jumping in for a print + pdf copy at this stage, given that there are other game lines I am currently collecting (WFRP 4E and Numenera/Cypher are draining my coffers at present, not to mention I just backed Shadowdark and Talislanta).

This would be a great time for a new version of Mythras with bigger font, coloured title pages, and a more universal toolkit aproach (including firearms rules, mythras companion expansion included, etc). Not sure whether it needs to be ORC or if Mythras Gateway licence is just as good, but either way I'll be more excited about it than this new BRP Universal Rules which I've wanted for so long.

I'll snag it simply for the layout improvements, though I totally get your point of view. Your last paragraph for me btw is my dream. I just know it won't happen but I can dream.

 

[AsenRG]

Certainly not the first, which isn’t mine. I might post the second at some point - however, in general, I think the world has enough homebrews!

 

[ReluctantGM]

I have all the older BRP books embedded in my reptilian hind-brain and PDFs for when my ADHD gets the better of me. I bought the new PDF and will absolutely get the printed version when it's released. I do this so my players will have a current, fully up to date (for a given definition of "up to date") book at the gaming table.

My main game is in-person these days and my players aren't fans of PDFs so a recently released and supported rules book is a solid choice for me. I expect that there will be bits in the book that are at odds with how I do things and I will absolutely have my wicked way with any rule that doesn't fit my preferences. I did this with Stormbringer, the BGB, Magic World, Mythras, and that I'm gonna do this with the new BRP book is nothing new.

FULL SPEED AHEAD, MOTHERLOVERS!

 

[SJB]

The release of BRUGES sent me back to the mildly insulting Open BRP that Chaosium posted last year. I had been kit-bashing it for Milites (Nibelungenlied set in AD 1056) but gave up. Viewed through the prism of BRUGES, Open BRP actually looks like a good simple version for open-source d100 (everything in Open BRP is in ORC BRUGES).

The only thing I needed to add in from BRUGES in the basic rules was the stats for the lance, pretty central for a game about mounted warriors (yeah, it would not have been beyond the wit of man to do that without help, but the “game” is to use Open RAW.)

The real pain in the backside was not lack of magic but lack of creature stats, and they are now freely available.

Now, of course, all this has been done before by Chaosium themselves in Cthulhu Dark Ages, which despite its name covers the period up to AD 1050. However, that setting is not open.

 

[Fenris-77]

On another forum I posted something about that tried to outline some preliminary thoughts I've had about what 'crunch' actually does from a design standpoint, and this seems like the right thread to drop it into. So without further blather...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between crunch and how players represent their characters (as well as what crunch actually means in terms of design goals and resolution). In the TTRPG sphere we have character sheets running from index card-sized to sheets that are four or more pages long. If we want to parse what 'crunch' means in terms of characters we have two main axis - first we have what I'll call breadth, which appears as long lists of skills, spells, gear, or whatever - but in all cases the (I'll assume) goal is to institute a certain level of coverage in terms of what the character can do mechanically speaking. The premise there is that increased crunch, so more skills or whatever, has the specific (but not solitary) goal of making more granular the number of mechanical button the player can press to alter the game state. In terms of modern of Sci-Fi settings this makes a lot of sense, so don't take this as a criticism.

The second axis is depth, which I'll identify as specific mechanics and subsytems designed to model/represent/handle/whatever certain specific actions. The low hanging fruit here is combat, which often gets far more mechanical attention than other things. To take Mythras for example, you have a bunch of special actions designed to make combat more granular and controllable for the player. Some might blanche at my assertion that granular equals player control, but I think it is a supportable position. If we take some thing like Free Kriegspiel as one end of the TTRPG spectrum, and with something in a crunch-drenched BRP game at the other end, I think this idea becomes pretty uncontroversial. The more skills, the more mechanics, the more specific buttons a payer can push to effect diegetic change the more specific control the player has. Why more specific control? Because that granularity takes some parts of the adjudication process out of the hands of the GM. A specific example might be the notional difference between adjudicating a roll vs a generic 'knowledge' skill in some sort of OSR game versus the cornucopia of academic skills present in a game like CoC. In the first instance the GM has rather a lot of latitude about what the PC might or might not know, but which becomes more fixed as the range of skills gets more and more specific. This isn't a value judgment, nor even something I'm completely sure of, but it makes enough sense for me to toss it out here and let people pull at the flaky bits.

I have more to say, but I suspect I'll start to ramble, so I'll stop here and let people stress test the idea above (if they feel like it).

 

[TristramEvans]

View attachment 58899

lol, not even

 

[TristramEvans]

I don't particularly like the Luck points in Mythras and how they're implemented... rerolls and such.
I much prefer how they're done in DCC, where they feel like part of the setting and are more of a gamble.
Even then, I don't think they fit every genre and I've pretty much been willfully ignoring them in our Monster Island sessions.

I don't like rerolls as a mechanic overall. 'Luckily" the solution with Luck Points is easy - just don't use them. Doesn't affect the system at all.

 

[TristramEvans]

On another forum I posted something about that tried to outline some preliminary thoughts I've had about what 'crunch' actually does from a design standpoint, and this seems like the right thread to drop it into. So without further blather...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between crunch and how players represent their characters (as well as what crunch actually means in terms of design goals and resolution). In the TTRPG sphere we have character sheets running from index card-sized to sheets that are four or more pages long. If we want to parse what 'crunch' means in terms of characters we have two main axis - first we have what I'll call breadth, which appears as long lists of skills, spells, gear, or whatever - but in all cases the (I'll assume) goal is to institute a certain level of coverage in terms of what the character can do mechanically speaking. The premise there is that increased crunch, so more skills or whatever, has the specific (but not solitary) goal of making more granular the number of mechanical button the player can press to alter the game state. In terms of modern of Sci-Fi settings this makes a lot of sense, so don't take this as a criticism.

The second axis is depth, which I'll identify as specific mechanics and subsytems designed to model/represent/handle/whatever certain specific actions. The low hanging fruit here is combat, which often gets far more mechanical attention than other things. To take Mythras for example, you have a bunch of special actions designed to make combat more granular and controllable for the player. Some might blanche at my assertion that granular equals player control, but I think it is a supportable position. If we take some thing like Free Kriegspiel as one end of the TTRPG spectrum, and with something in a crunch-drenched BRP game at the other end, I think this idea becomes pretty uncontroversial. The more skills, the more mechanics, the more specific buttons a payer can push to effect diegetic change the more specific control the player has. Why more specific control? Because that granularity takes some parts of the adjudication process out of the hands of the GM. A specific example might be the notional difference between adjudicating a roll vs a generic 'knowledge' skill in some sort of OSR game versus the cornucopia of academic skills present in a game like CoC. In the first instance the GM has rather a lot of latitude about what the PC might or might not know, but which becomes more fixed as the range of skills gets more and more specific. This isn't a value judgment, nor even something I'm completely sure of, but it makes enough sense for me to toss it out here and let people pull at the flaky bits.

I have more to say, but I suspect I'll start to ramble, so I'll stop here and let people stress test the idea above (if they feel like it).

i agree with the depth part, not so much the breadth. How many stats/skills whatever make up a character sheet may likely indicate the degree of crunch in a system, but not necessarily. If you have a laundry list of skills that all work the exact same way, that is less crunchy than a game with only a handfull of skills, but each is it's own subsystem. Crunch comes down to how much a player has to engage with the system during play, the way a system divides up/categorizes definitions of characters is completely surface-level.

 

[AsenRG]

I don't like rerolls as a mechanic overall. 'Luckily" the solution with Luck Points is easy - just don't use them. Doesn't affect the system at all.

"I use a Luck point to remove Luck Points!"

 

[3rik]

"I use a Luck point to remove Luck Points!"

If you - optionally - spend all your Luck points in CoC 7E you'll be effectively left without a Luck stat, i.e. you'll fail any Luck roll.

 

[gruagach]

On another forum I posted something about that tried to outline some preliminary thoughts I've had about what 'crunch' actually does from a design standpoint, and this seems like the right thread to drop it into. So without further blather...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between crunch and how players represent their characters (as well as what crunch actually means in terms of design goals and resolution). In the TTRPG sphere we have character sheets running from index card-sized to sheets that are four or more pages long. If we want to parse what 'crunch' means in terms of characters we have two main axis - first we have what I'll call breadth, which appears as long lists of skills, spells, gear, or whatever - but in all cases the (I'll assume) goal is to institute a certain level of coverage in terms of what the character can do mechanically speaking. The premise there is that increased crunch, so more skills or whatever, has the specific (but not solitary) goal of making more granular the number of mechanical button the player can press to alter the game state. In terms of modern of Sci-Fi settings this makes a lot of sense, so don't take this as a criticism.

The second axis is depth, which I'll identify as specific mechanics and subsytems designed to model/represent/handle/whatever certain specific actions. The low hanging fruit here is combat, which often gets far more mechanical attention than other things. To take Mythras for example, you have a bunch of special actions designed to make combat more granular and controllable for the player. Some might blanche at my assertion that granular equals player control, but I think it is a supportable position. If we take some thing like Free Kriegspiel as one end of the TTRPG spectrum, and with something in a crunch-drenched BRP game at the other end, I think this idea becomes pretty uncontroversial. The more skills, the more mechanics, the more specific buttons a payer can push to effect diegetic change the more specific control the player has. Why more specific control? Because that granularity takes some parts of the adjudication process out of the hands of the GM. A specific example might be the notional difference between adjudicating a roll vs a generic 'knowledge' skill in some sort of OSR game versus the cornucopia of academic skills present in a game like CoC. In the first instance the GM has rather a lot of latitude about what the PC might or might not know, but which becomes more fixed as the range of skills gets more and more specific. This isn't a value judgment, nor even something I'm completely sure of, but it makes enough sense for me to toss it out here and let people pull at the flaky bits.

I have more to say, but I suspect I'll start to ramble, so I'll stop here and let people stress test the idea above (if they feel like it).

These axes of crunch you've laid out make sense. I'm with TristramEvans that breadth can be a tricky way to measure crunch, as their example of a long list of skills all working the same way mechanically illustrates.

No matter how it's defined, I commonly encounter people who espouse three benefits of crunch with regards to character: character niche definition/protection; identifiable and tangible character growth over time; strong sense of verisimilitude.

For players that prioritize one or more of those three, high crunch seems attractive.

Note, there are myriad other things higher crunch delivers to players with regard to character portrayal, the three I wrote above are the three I hear most often.