Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph Paul
How is BRP not generic at this time? After all it is BRP and not RQ, CoC, SB, SW, EQ, RW etc. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, I am just confused how BRP could be seen as not competing with the others for share in the generic toolkit games market.
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Let me (hopefully) be utterly clear:
My goal when working on this was never to make
just another set of generic game rules sake for the sake of having
just another generic system out there.
It was to take the much-beloved and easy-to-use BRP and make a version of it that wasn't tied to
Stormbringer or
Call of Cthulhu, and brought back some of the cool stuff that had appeared in games as diverse as
Elfquest, Runequest, Ringworld, Superworld, and
Worlds of Wonder. I have long been the type of GM who ends up adapting many settings to BRP, and I was getting frankly tired of having to drag my Stormbringer, RQ3, Call of Cthulhu, and other rulebooks out whenever I wanted to create a new setting. I was also a bit annoyed how the different strains of BRP never seemed to be exactly congruent - there was always something squidgy that wasn't the same between the different game lines, and I wanted something
consistent.
If anything, think of this as the super-complete version of the old BRP 16-page booklet that appeared in
Worlds of Wonder and the original
Call of Cthulhu boxed set. The goal is that GMs can use it to make their own settings in the style of
Super-World, Magic World, Futureworld, etc.
Sure, it will be viewed as competing in the same "generic RPG space" as GURPS and HERO, but those games have their audiences, and a strength of BRP is ease of use. I would venture to say that most people who play GURPS like crunchy rules for building vehicles, and most people who play HERO like the effects-based powers systems.
I think of it BRP competing against them in the same way that fruit juice competes against soda and liqueurs in the drinks category - they're essentially the same sort of thing (something sweet to drink), but fulfill very different tastes.