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Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium RolePlaying system
Chaosium's BASIC ROLEPLAYING is a core rulesbook that gathers in one place the rules, modules, and options for one of the original and most influential role playing gaming systems in the world. BASIC ROLEPLAYING is designed to be intuitive and easy to play. While character attributes follow a 3D6 curve, most of the other BASIC ROLEPLAYING mechanics are even simpler. Virtually all rolls determining success or failure of a task are determined via the roll of percentile dice.
400 pages, Paperback
First published June 20, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 15, 2008
THE GREATEST @#$@# RPG OF ALL !#@$!#@ TIME.
September 26, 2013
The Basic Roleplaying System forms the skeleton for one of the earliest RPGs, first appearing as 1978's Runequest, and continuing to be used for luminaries like Stormbringer and Call Of Cthulhu. However, until the Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium Roleplaying System book was published, there was never any generic version of BRP. There were iterations of it for cosmic horror, high fantasy, sword and sorcery, mythic fantasy, superheroes, modern occult, and several other genres, but for each of these implementations, BRP was tailored to the specific game. There was never a generic version designed to be used with multiple different settings and milieux...until now.
I admit, I just wanted to use "milieux" in a sentence.
Anyway, the Big Gold Book is BRP designed to be used to play anything from prehistoric protohumans fighting dinosaurs to World War I soldiers vs. cannibal ghouls in the trenches of Europe to a rag-tag band of heroes fighting the armies of an evil necromancer to bikers roaming the ruins of America searching for more go-juice to the First Expeditionary Force on board the starship Enterprise to, essentially, everything. Because of that, the mechanics are necessarily rather generic. The familiar BRP stats are there, with APP instead of CHA, along with the skills, and then five separate power systems to span the possible genres where special powers would exist: magic, mutations, psychic powers, sorcery, and superpowers. And really, that's it. There aren't any backgrounds or advantages/disadvantages or anything else, which is pretty standard BRP. That's one of the reasons the system is popular: the tendency to have few, easily understandable rules so that it "gets out of the way," as gamer parlance goes.
There are a lot of other optional rules, though. An Allegiance system to represent supernatural or metaphysical bonds, hit locations with individual hit points, sanity and insanity, point-buying attributes instead of rolling them randomly, ways to deal with skills over 100%, a different initiative order for powers, universal ways to reroll dice or stave off damage usingmagicpower points, and so on. There's plenty to mix and match to tweak into whatever kind of game the GM wants to run.
Unfortunately, for me the whole thing felt a little too generic. Call of Cthulhu's magic system, compiled over decades by writers with different purposes who didn't talk to each other, has a lot of spells that do the same thing, spells that are just better than others, some spells that just work and some spells that require elaborate rituals and astronomical conjunctions...overall, it's a much more interesting magic system than both of Basic Roleplaying's two systems combined. The spells in this book have names like "Dark" and "Ward" and "Lift" and "Vision" and "Illusion" and then several attribute-buffing spells named "Sorcerer's [foo]." That kind of thing is necessary in order to provide a proper base in order to layer flavor on top of, but it certainly isn't that interesting to read. The other powers systems are serviceable, though in true generic fashion, none of them are as good as the systems in dedicated games I've seen.
It would also be nice to have had an advantage/disadvantage system just as an example of how to implement one. It's not a standard BRP thing, but it's not like it's never appeared before, since Cthulhu by Gaslight had one, and I think it would have been another good way to help differentiate characters. There is a system of weaknesses, but they're mostly tied to the superpowers subsystem or the mutations subsystem and wouldn't really represent, say, a character with a less obvious or crippling flaw.
After all the character creation and powers sections, the rest of the book is an advice section, a guide to constructing a setting, a bestiary and a list of sample NPCs (which contain a number of entries which I suspect would have IP lawyers salivating if Chaosium actually had any money), and some appendices, including a guide to converting any of the individual BRP games into Basic Roleplaying's generic version and a reprinting of the various charts and tables throughout the book.
There was one bit of advice that really struck me, because I haven't seen it in GMing advice sections before but it really needs to be printed in 36-point font in basically every roleplaying book. Don't hyper-plan out everything. This is helpful no matter the circumstances, but it's especially useful in a generic system where the GM is expected to build or adapt the setting themselves. It's tempting to meticulously plan everything out in great detail, in order to be prepared for any kind of circumstances, but that can cause more problems than it solves. Anyone who's GMed for a while has had a situation where they planned out a night's session only for the players to do something that invalidated their planning in the first few minutes. That's even worse if it happens to the setting--what if you've extensively mapped out the area around Ye Starting Town and then the PCs become caravan guards and head off across the Great Desert? What if someone wants to play a warrior from a barbarian tribe but your detailed setting has no barbarians at all? Better to avoid those situations entirely and deal with questions as they arise.
There are several typos in the book. Not enough to ruin the text, but enough that they stuck out in my memory.
Overall, it's a good generic system, but with nothing that really stood out for me. If you're looking for something that's easy to explain to players, simple to run, and doesn't have any bells and whistles, and you don't want to run a fantasy game using pre-3.x Dungeons and Dragons, Basic Roleplaying is a good choice.
I admit, I just wanted to use "milieux" in a sentence.
Anyway, the Big Gold Book is BRP designed to be used to play anything from prehistoric protohumans fighting dinosaurs to World War I soldiers vs. cannibal ghouls in the trenches of Europe to a rag-tag band of heroes fighting the armies of an evil necromancer to bikers roaming the ruins of America searching for more go-juice to the First Expeditionary Force on board the starship Enterprise to, essentially, everything. Because of that, the mechanics are necessarily rather generic. The familiar BRP stats are there, with APP instead of CHA, along with the skills, and then five separate power systems to span the possible genres where special powers would exist: magic, mutations, psychic powers, sorcery, and superpowers. And really, that's it. There aren't any backgrounds or advantages/disadvantages or anything else, which is pretty standard BRP. That's one of the reasons the system is popular: the tendency to have few, easily understandable rules so that it "gets out of the way," as gamer parlance goes.
There are a lot of other optional rules, though. An Allegiance system to represent supernatural or metaphysical bonds, hit locations with individual hit points, sanity and insanity, point-buying attributes instead of rolling them randomly, ways to deal with skills over 100%, a different initiative order for powers, universal ways to reroll dice or stave off damage using
Unfortunately, for me the whole thing felt a little too generic. Call of Cthulhu's magic system, compiled over decades by writers with different purposes who didn't talk to each other, has a lot of spells that do the same thing, spells that are just better than others, some spells that just work and some spells that require elaborate rituals and astronomical conjunctions...overall, it's a much more interesting magic system than both of Basic Roleplaying's two systems combined. The spells in this book have names like "Dark" and "Ward" and "Lift" and "Vision" and "Illusion" and then several attribute-buffing spells named "Sorcerer's [foo]." That kind of thing is necessary in order to provide a proper base in order to layer flavor on top of, but it certainly isn't that interesting to read. The other powers systems are serviceable, though in true generic fashion, none of them are as good as the systems in dedicated games I've seen.
It would also be nice to have had an advantage/disadvantage system just as an example of how to implement one. It's not a standard BRP thing, but it's not like it's never appeared before, since Cthulhu by Gaslight had one, and I think it would have been another good way to help differentiate characters. There is a system of weaknesses, but they're mostly tied to the superpowers subsystem or the mutations subsystem and wouldn't really represent, say, a character with a less obvious or crippling flaw.
After all the character creation and powers sections, the rest of the book is an advice section, a guide to constructing a setting, a bestiary and a list of sample NPCs (which contain a number of entries which I suspect would have IP lawyers salivating if Chaosium actually had any money), and some appendices, including a guide to converting any of the individual BRP games into Basic Roleplaying's generic version and a reprinting of the various charts and tables throughout the book.
There was one bit of advice that really struck me, because I haven't seen it in GMing advice sections before but it really needs to be printed in 36-point font in basically every roleplaying book. Don't hyper-plan out everything. This is helpful no matter the circumstances, but it's especially useful in a generic system where the GM is expected to build or adapt the setting themselves. It's tempting to meticulously plan everything out in great detail, in order to be prepared for any kind of circumstances, but that can cause more problems than it solves. Anyone who's GMed for a while has had a situation where they planned out a night's session only for the players to do something that invalidated their planning in the first few minutes. That's even worse if it happens to the setting--what if you've extensively mapped out the area around Ye Starting Town and then the PCs become caravan guards and head off across the Great Desert? What if someone wants to play a warrior from a barbarian tribe but your detailed setting has no barbarians at all? Better to avoid those situations entirely and deal with questions as they arise.
There are several typos in the book. Not enough to ruin the text, but enough that they stuck out in my memory.
Overall, it's a good generic system, but with nothing that really stood out for me. If you're looking for something that's easy to explain to players, simple to run, and doesn't have any bells and whistles, and you don't want to run a fantasy game using pre-3.x Dungeons and Dragons, Basic Roleplaying is a good choice.
March 12, 2023
Ring Side Report- RPG Review of Basic Roleplaying
Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea every day!
Product- Basic Roleplaying
System- Basic Roleplaying
Producer- Chaosium
Price- $15 here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/24384/Basic-Roleplaying&affiliate_id=658618
TL; DR- Want to play Runequest in whatever world you want? 95%
Basics- Why not do EVERYTHING! Basic Roleplaying is Chaosium’s basic game design for their systems, with rules for a basic RPG and then additional rules to build out different type of games from magic spells, mutations, weapons, and combat actions.
Basic mechanic- This game uses the same percentile system as most of their products. Take the basic skill or attribute and try to roll under it. Attributes are your standard DnD ones, but then you multiply by 3 for hard checks or 5 for normal checks and attempt to roll under that value. Roll under and succeed!
Powers- Powers come in LOTS of varieties here. Mutations and super powers almost function like feats in other games. Magic, psychic abilities, and sorcery are more akin to spells in Call of Cthulhu with a character using power points.
Combat-Combat is a bit more advanced than Call of Cthulhu, but builds well and shows its influence on Runequest. In turn order, you do an action. Opposed rolls like attacks allow an opponent to do dodges or parries, but each dodge or parry has an escalating chance of failure. From there you consult a chart to see how hard you hit or miss.
Ok, thats the basics, let’s look at my thoughts!
Mechanics or Crunch- Do you like Runequest? I do, but it’s not my favorite. I prefer the simplicity of Call of Cthulhu for managing mechanics. Then again, you can’t get the gritty nature of combat like you do in Runequest. It’s much less “roll and check your percentage” and more “let’s compare skills/attributes, then check a chart,then maybe oppose roll” So, there is a trade off of what you want in the game. None of that is bad in any way, but how deep do you want the game to be? Some days you just want a simple ham sandwich and some days you want nine layers of flavor. Both are good at the right time. The one thing that I feel Call of Cthulhu misses is feats or character qualities. This has it, but I still don’t completely get what I want as its not just “You’re better at X or get a reroll with Y.” Sure its simple, but I would like that small thing to make this game just a hair closer to DnD’s bonuses. Overall, solid crunch that misses a few things by a just a bit. 4.5/5
Theme or Fluff- Theme is hard to judge here. This is the basic game, so its basically for everything. I feel its well done, but its also VERY general. But thats on purpose. If you wanted a high fantasy game or a superheroes game, this book would honestly work for both. It also has a bit of art and themes for both as well. 5/5
Execution- What’s here is good, but the book just needs a bit more pizazz. There is art, decent layout, the text reads easy, and there are hyperlinks because this is 2023. That said, the book is completely black and white all the way though, so even though I’m reading a book on a tablet it feels like I’m reading a hardcover in the 80s. That’s nitpicky, but that’s the worst I have to say. 4.75/5
Summary- How much you like this book comes down to how much you like how Chaosium handles games in general. Do you like percentile-based systems? Chaosium does it the best with Call of Cthulhu. I would argue the second best is Runequest. This book feels like the precursor to the latest edition of Runequest with lots of mechanics being identical between them. So, to find out if you like this book and system, just ask yourself “Do I want to play Runequest set in X?” If you want Runequest in a sci-fi setting, then this is a good book. If you want Runequest in Tolkien, then this would be a good book. I would turn down none of those, so I like this book. Still, want my feats and some color art, but for the price and all the things you get with it this is a fantastic general system to get into right away. 95%
Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea every day!
Product- Basic Roleplaying
System- Basic Roleplaying
Producer- Chaosium
Price- $15 here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/24384/Basic-Roleplaying&affiliate_id=658618
TL; DR- Want to play Runequest in whatever world you want? 95%
Basics- Why not do EVERYTHING! Basic Roleplaying is Chaosium’s basic game design for their systems, with rules for a basic RPG and then additional rules to build out different type of games from magic spells, mutations, weapons, and combat actions.
Basic mechanic- This game uses the same percentile system as most of their products. Take the basic skill or attribute and try to roll under it. Attributes are your standard DnD ones, but then you multiply by 3 for hard checks or 5 for normal checks and attempt to roll under that value. Roll under and succeed!
Powers- Powers come in LOTS of varieties here. Mutations and super powers almost function like feats in other games. Magic, psychic abilities, and sorcery are more akin to spells in Call of Cthulhu with a character using power points.
Combat-Combat is a bit more advanced than Call of Cthulhu, but builds well and shows its influence on Runequest. In turn order, you do an action. Opposed rolls like attacks allow an opponent to do dodges or parries, but each dodge or parry has an escalating chance of failure. From there you consult a chart to see how hard you hit or miss.
Ok, thats the basics, let’s look at my thoughts!
Mechanics or Crunch- Do you like Runequest? I do, but it’s not my favorite. I prefer the simplicity of Call of Cthulhu for managing mechanics. Then again, you can’t get the gritty nature of combat like you do in Runequest. It’s much less “roll and check your percentage” and more “let’s compare skills/attributes, then check a chart,then maybe oppose roll” So, there is a trade off of what you want in the game. None of that is bad in any way, but how deep do you want the game to be? Some days you just want a simple ham sandwich and some days you want nine layers of flavor. Both are good at the right time. The one thing that I feel Call of Cthulhu misses is feats or character qualities. This has it, but I still don’t completely get what I want as its not just “You’re better at X or get a reroll with Y.” Sure its simple, but I would like that small thing to make this game just a hair closer to DnD’s bonuses. Overall, solid crunch that misses a few things by a just a bit. 4.5/5
Theme or Fluff- Theme is hard to judge here. This is the basic game, so its basically for everything. I feel its well done, but its also VERY general. But thats on purpose. If you wanted a high fantasy game or a superheroes game, this book would honestly work for both. It also has a bit of art and themes for both as well. 5/5
Execution- What’s here is good, but the book just needs a bit more pizazz. There is art, decent layout, the text reads easy, and there are hyperlinks because this is 2023. That said, the book is completely black and white all the way though, so even though I’m reading a book on a tablet it feels like I’m reading a hardcover in the 80s. That’s nitpicky, but that’s the worst I have to say. 4.75/5
Summary- How much you like this book comes down to how much you like how Chaosium handles games in general. Do you like percentile-based systems? Chaosium does it the best with Call of Cthulhu. I would argue the second best is Runequest. This book feels like the precursor to the latest edition of Runequest with lots of mechanics being identical between them. So, to find out if you like this book and system, just ask yourself “Do I want to play Runequest set in X?” If you want Runequest in a sci-fi setting, then this is a good book. If you want Runequest in Tolkien, then this would be a good book. I would turn down none of those, so I like this book. Still, want my feats and some color art, but for the price and all the things you get with it this is a fantastic general system to get into right away. 95%
November 27, 2022
Excellent toolkit to allow you to design your own bespoke variant of the BRP system, drawing on the full repertoire of system features as of the time of writing. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
August 17, 2017
New review:
I like this system somewhat more upon rereading it. I still think there's a frustratingly large number of editing glitches, even more so than average for RPG books. And I also feel like the mutations system is pretty much useless because it relies far to much on the GM handwaving up something. I'd much rather have a longer, more detailed list of good and bad mutations. However, the Sorcery magic system is still one of my favorite magic systems in gaming. The mechanics don't do much that's revolutionary, though they are a nice hybrid between D&D magic and MP based stuff, but the spells themselves are full of flavor, with abilities like seeing through the eyes of rats and birds and conjuring immense amounts of earth, wind, fire, or water. The basic magic and psychic systems are fun, and I appreciate that superpowers is point buy and has a nod towards using it for gadgets as well as built-in powers. It makes me wonder what the dedicated SuperWorld books are like. I love the Settings chapter because it gives a nice overview of a number of time periods, from prehistory to the Star Trekesque future. Inspirational sources and potential adventures are discussed, and there's a list of possible rules options. I am disappointed that there are fewer neat optional rules than I remember. None of them are mindblowing, and some, like hit locations and strike ranks, seem like they'd slow down an otherwise fairly elegant system. I do like the attempt at including an action point style mechanic, even if it feels a bit underwhelming to me. The basic system is old school, and a little clunky with stuff like the Resistance table (even though stats can be turned to percent scores by multiplying them by five, let's have a big table to use for stat vs. stat instead), but I feel like it would accomplish the goal of getting out of the way of the roleplaying pretty well. I like the idea of characters growing based on what skills they use, the lack of levels, and the abstract money system, which works well for modern or future campaigns. Combat is straightforward and deadly, though it'd be easy to alter that a bit by making characters better at weapons and giving them more hit points. All in all, this is a pretty nice rulebook, and I actually don't mind that it's sort of a toolkit approach rather than one predefined game, because the book is good about outlining what you should use depending on your playstyle. I'm not sure whether I'm likely to run this much, or at all, since I think I'm more interested in the Call of Cthulhu game this is built from. It does seem like it could be a fun game for beginners and I like the nice elegant roll under core mechanic, especially compared to the complications in the related Mythras. Plus, while there aren't as many options as I thought, the ones that are here are mostly good. I'm glad I have this game, and I had fun reading it again, and if I ever do play or run it, I'm sure I'll have plenty of fun with that too.
Original Review, 2012: The system is interesting, and does seem like it could be a good fit for people new to roleplaying. However, there are a lot of editing issues and some amount of vagueness in the rules that I'm not hugely fond of. While I'm okay with strange or vague rules in older RPGs, I like more recent ones to be more clearly written. Thus, while this is interesting, and I do like Call of Cthulhu, which is based on this system, I get the feeling that I'm unlikely to use BRP that much, except perhaps for play by post games. I feel like I'd rather use Savage Worlds, which seems to occupy roughly the same niche and does a better job, at least in my opinion.
I like this system somewhat more upon rereading it. I still think there's a frustratingly large number of editing glitches, even more so than average for RPG books. And I also feel like the mutations system is pretty much useless because it relies far to much on the GM handwaving up something. I'd much rather have a longer, more detailed list of good and bad mutations. However, the Sorcery magic system is still one of my favorite magic systems in gaming. The mechanics don't do much that's revolutionary, though they are a nice hybrid between D&D magic and MP based stuff, but the spells themselves are full of flavor, with abilities like seeing through the eyes of rats and birds and conjuring immense amounts of earth, wind, fire, or water. The basic magic and psychic systems are fun, and I appreciate that superpowers is point buy and has a nod towards using it for gadgets as well as built-in powers. It makes me wonder what the dedicated SuperWorld books are like. I love the Settings chapter because it gives a nice overview of a number of time periods, from prehistory to the Star Trekesque future. Inspirational sources and potential adventures are discussed, and there's a list of possible rules options. I am disappointed that there are fewer neat optional rules than I remember. None of them are mindblowing, and some, like hit locations and strike ranks, seem like they'd slow down an otherwise fairly elegant system. I do like the attempt at including an action point style mechanic, even if it feels a bit underwhelming to me. The basic system is old school, and a little clunky with stuff like the Resistance table (even though stats can be turned to percent scores by multiplying them by five, let's have a big table to use for stat vs. stat instead), but I feel like it would accomplish the goal of getting out of the way of the roleplaying pretty well. I like the idea of characters growing based on what skills they use, the lack of levels, and the abstract money system, which works well for modern or future campaigns. Combat is straightforward and deadly, though it'd be easy to alter that a bit by making characters better at weapons and giving them more hit points. All in all, this is a pretty nice rulebook, and I actually don't mind that it's sort of a toolkit approach rather than one predefined game, because the book is good about outlining what you should use depending on your playstyle. I'm not sure whether I'm likely to run this much, or at all, since I think I'm more interested in the Call of Cthulhu game this is built from. It does seem like it could be a fun game for beginners and I like the nice elegant roll under core mechanic, especially compared to the complications in the related Mythras. Plus, while there aren't as many options as I thought, the ones that are here are mostly good. I'm glad I have this game, and I had fun reading it again, and if I ever do play or run it, I'm sure I'll have plenty of fun with that too.
Original Review, 2012: The system is interesting, and does seem like it could be a good fit for people new to roleplaying. However, there are a lot of editing issues and some amount of vagueness in the rules that I'm not hugely fond of. While I'm okay with strange or vague rules in older RPGs, I like more recent ones to be more clearly written. Thus, while this is interesting, and I do like Call of Cthulhu, which is based on this system, I get the feeling that I'm unlikely to use BRP that much, except perhaps for play by post games. I feel like I'd rather use Savage Worlds, which seems to occupy roughly the same niche and does a better job, at least in my opinion.
February 21, 2018
Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium RolePlaying system is a great and simple story geared alternative to D20 role-playing. BRP is a skill-based, D100 rules system that will get your campaign, adventure, or world setting off the ground without the hassle of endless tedium. As a GM I of course took from it what I needed and set it aside for reference. I'm far more story driven over rules focused minutiae so for me at least BRP was refreshing.
July 8, 2011
Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium d100 system was a great read. Really inituitive system for kicking off just about any historical, fantasy or SF game. Well worth the money!
November 13, 2010
An excellent compendium that forms what is certainly the best universal RPG rules system going. I can't recommend this highly enough to serious gamers.
January 18, 2017
The only system I play. Love it for all its contradiction and weird rules. Be prepared to edit this book and have a set of house rules to deal with the issues you will have with it.
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October 27, 2014Gerenic maybe but at no point do feel that you can't add house rules to make it "your" rpg.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews