Why is BRP not that popular?

[badcat]

It is easy. You could take the Arcanum and Magic World alone and whip out a quick start magic system in half an hour, fully scalable and with loads more punch and flavor than any D&D 3.5 low level mage. And from there you can scale it as low or high powered as you want.

Even the hit points are easy. An old trick from GURPS, limit fireball to 3D6 on the target hex, then add a second ring for 2D6, a third ring for 1D6, like an explosion under the CoC rules (I usually made that a 6 point spell, nonvariable). Dangerous but not always fatal, esp. with armor; but it can be scaled higher depending on how dangerous you want magic to be. Use major wound level or hit location, distribute damage evenly for the latter. An average roll does a couple of points to each location (target hex, with minor damage to other members of a group in the spells' area of effect). More power, more dice...spell damage could be very potent, but at the risk of running out of magic points, a convenient way for the GM to keep control of the game. You control it, not the rules. No out of control damage inflation..unless you want it that way. Lightning bolt, 2D6 to a targeted location, plus 1D6 from a secondary location where the bolt exits (usually a 3 point nonvariable). Again, dangerous but not overwelming. Elemental magic missile spells, doing 1D8 or 1D10 damage but with varied effects according to the type, fire, ice, stone, etc (usually 1 or 2 points, nonvariable). Sleep (1+ points, depending on how many targets the mage wants to attack at once, POW vs. Pow each). The targets may have Countermagic, in which case you have to overcome the Countermagic first to get through. Demon summoning, to have the demon teach a spell or abduct someone...but you have to strike a bargain, using the demon's true name or other form of coercion, from safe inside your circle of protection. Want real power? Mass rituals to your favorite god with high joint POW sacrifice to achieve whatever you want, as with the Elemental Lords in Stormbringer (for instance). You can let your imagination go and not be constrained by someone elses' imagination. That is the real power of BRP, IMO, just the sheer flexibility without the complexity, stiffness, or constraint in other systems. BRP allows any power level. I hope anyone who has run it outside the stock settings realizes this.

Originally Posted by soltakss

One of the things about BRP and RQ in particular that has always annoyed me was the idea that what was in the rules are the only way of playing it.

I couldn't agree more. This may be a tendency among modern gamers, brought up in the ear of splat-books which provide rules and background for every conceivable RPG situation. The one thing which first got me into RPGs, and which has stuck in my mind ever since, is in the introduction to a lot of those older games. They invariably said something to the effect that "there are no rules, only guidelines" - it's your game, do with it what you like.

BRP is a particularly open-ended system, and I have never found this alleged glass ceiling which people talk about. I suspect, as so much forum-backseat-gaming, this is just down to people repeating what has been said (and often argued very convincingly) without actually trying things out in a real game situation.

For example, what about a bladesharp 50 spell, if giant-felling is your bag?

On the point of rules features, we did at one point experiment with things in RQIII, inspired by GURPS advantages and again by D20 feats. But we found that these things could easily be simulated in the system without changing the rules - an extra point of CON here, a bit of a Spot bonus there.

[badcat]

All true, and bitterly, and probably the best kept secret in rpg history.

[RMS]

Hey! First post here, but I recognize most of you from the Mongoose forum, and most seem to have disappeared from there too!

Originally Posted by Enpeze

In RQ3 I admit that spirit and divine magic is somewhat low powered. But sorcery can be totally impressive if paired with high FREE INT and high POW. Imagine what you can do if you have 30 or more FREE INT and 100+ POW. Most spells in other systems are not near as powerful than sorcery can be in RQ3. Another very mighty magician is the experienced shaman with a fetch.

So the day-to-day magic of RQ is low. But the system is scaleable up to extremely high powered magic.

I agree with all of that except one thing. Divine Magic in RQ2 and RQ3 is extremely powerful. There's no cap on the amount of divine magic that someone can have and with frequent power gains it's very easy for priests and rune lords to pile up a lot of divine magic. I have longrunning PCs in my game with 50+ points of divine magic each. Divine magic goes 2-to-1 against spirit and sorcery. In addition, there are a fair number of divine spells that can't be full resisted and for which there are no physical or magical defesnses. Get an Orlanthi with a stacked up Thunderbolt and watch him easily dispatch any single opponent on the field.

We've had several sorcerers floating around that found out how ineffective damage resistance is against a loaded up divine magic using warrior, too!

[Aycorn]

Originally Posted by the Bromgrev

I couldn't agree more. This may be a tendency among modern gamers, brought up in the ear of splat-books which provide rules and background for every conceivable RPG situation. The one thing which first got me into RPGs, and which has stuck in my mind ever since, is in the introduction to a lot of those older games. They invariably said something to the effect that "there are no rules, only guidelines" - it's your game, do with it what you like.

Oh you are SO right!

This has been the cause of more than one rant by me over on yog-sothoth.com, because BRP detractors have put forth arguments such as: the skills system is no good because it doesn't actually describe what a character with a 50% skill can do versus what a character with a 10% skill can do ... or that the system NEEDED advantages/disadvantages because otherwise there was no way to figure out the effects of, say, establishing that a character has legal connections that might be able to get him out of scrapes...

It always seemed to be that it was pretty obvious that a character with a 50% skill was simply more skilled and practiced than one with 10% --- and that oughta be enough!

It always seemed to me that any mature GM and player ought to be able to work out a situation such as the one described above that was fair and equitable.

[badcat]

I have always been puzzled when someone says something like that, the part about percentiles having no connection with what the character can do. There are all kinds of ways to sort it out, of course. The primary one being...you can do whatever it is no matter the percentage score with no roll, until a situation comes up which will have significant consequences: then you roll. And then you have several mechanisms in place to adjust and/or modify the roll...+/- modifiers, critical/special levels, halve or double the chance, roll two skills at once even (do you climb the wall quietly?), resistance rolls. I cannot understand why this isn't a no-brainer to some people, I really can't.

Even more irksome to me is the refrain I have seen so very often over at rpg.net, in particular, that BRP is old, obsolete, out-of-date. And doesn't have useful 'new' mechanics like the ads/disads as you mentioned. Snort. Truth is the system is so easy to modify you can add any of that stuff without breaking the system. If you want to. Other games are very intricately designed and many break down if you take away some of those 'essential' mechanics. Essential to them, not BRP. I am sure you can name some of those other games.

BRP has always been the best 'sweet spot' for me, the best combination of elegance, 'realism', playability, robustness. Not too complex, not too simple, but it can be made complex or simple if that is what you want. I don't want to trash somebody elses' fun, but I will never be able to understand why some people are so down on such a great game.

I really hope the new book is still the BRP that some of us understand and appreciate, and never gets 'modernized'. Personally I believe it can stand the test of time just as it is, like chess, even if it is never as popular as certain other games. No need to ruin something good to keep up with the Joness.

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by RMS

Hey! First post here, but I recognize most of you from the Mongoose forum, and most seem to have disappeared from there too!



I agree with all of that except one thing. Divine Magic in RQ2 and RQ3 is extremely powerful. There's no cap on the amount of divine magic that someone can have and with frequent power gains it's very easy for priests and rune lords to pile up a lot of divine magic. I have longrunning PCs in my game with 50+ points of divine magic each. Divine magic goes 2-to-1 against spirit and sorcery. In addition, there are a fair number of divine spells that can't be full resisted and for which there are no physical or magical defesnses. Get an Orlanthi with a stacked up Thunderbolt and watch him easily dispatch any single opponent on the field.

We've had several sorcerers floating around that found out how ineffective damage resistance is against a loaded up divine magic using warrior, too!

Maybe you are right. I had never such powerful priests in my games but I think we can add divine magic to the "very powerful department".

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Years ago Chaosium stated that the reason for the similar discrepancy between RQ and the Gloranthan board games was that RQ magic was individual spells, while the magic in the board games was a collective effort of several casters.

In theory, you could reflect this in RQ by allowing for some sort of community/rtiaual effect to amplify battle magic. For example, if a 100 man unit could boost thier leader's bladesharp to bladesharp 100, or give each man a 1 point bladesharp spell, you start to get HQ level effects.

Off the top of my head, if you took the RQ3 ceremony chart, replaced time with worshippers/followers, required a ceremony roll and charged each participant 1 MP, you could use it to calculate the "group bonus".

Two things:

1. That doesn't always work; sometimes high magic units in the board games were individuals.

2. That wouldn't mean anything for the matter at hand, since it _is_ individual power.

As to comments others have said; for the most part, it doesn't matter what you _can_ do with the system; of course there's nothing intrinsic in a BRP style approach that prevents a high-magic setting. What matters is what's there already. People tend to forget that most people aren't major league game mechanics; they don't want to have to do system work, and to the degree they will, they don't want to do much. And the _majority_ of BRP magic systems people will have been exposed to aren't high magic, and as such won't have attracted them to it.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by RMS

Hey! First post here, but I recognize most of you from the Mongoose forum, and most seem to have disappeared from there too!



I agree with all of that except one thing. Divine Magic in RQ2 and RQ3 is extremely powerful. There's no cap on the amount of divine magic that someone can have and with frequent power gains it's very easy for priests and rune lords to pile up a lot of divine magic. I have longrunning PCs in my game with 50+ points of divine magic each. Divine magic goes 2-to-1 against spirit and sorcery. In addition, there are a fair number of divine spells that can't be full resisted and for which there are no physical or magical defesnses. Get an Orlanthi with a stacked up Thunderbolt and watch him easily dispatch any single opponent on the field.

We've had several sorcerers floating around that found out how ineffective damage resistance is against a loaded up divine magic using warrior, too!

There are two problems with divine magic in the paradigm of people who come from broad, high powered magic systems.

1. It's narrow. Even a rune priest with a large amount of rune magic doesn't typically have a wide range of it, because that usually requires access to multiple cults, and that's anything but typical; its often in practice impossible to combine some spell access options in some settings (as an example, a Gloranthan priest is, for self-evident reasons, going to not be able to access both Lunar and Storm magics in any way that I can think of barring possibly Illumination).

2. Its impressive in its own context, but not in an absolute sense by the standards many people are aware of. Using the most well known example, almost no rune spell compares to anything beyond a 5th level D&D spell, and even those that compare to lower level ones are usually weaker in at least some respect (there's essentially no significant area damage spells for example, and the few that there are have pretty small areas).

There are perfectly good reasons why this is the case, but people asked why some people don't like BRP. That's one of the reasons why.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by badcat

Even more irksome to me is the refrain I have seen so very often over at rpg.net, in particular, that BRP is old, obsolete, out-of-date. And doesn't have useful 'new' mechanics like the ads/disads as you mentioned. Snort. Truth is the system is so easy to modify you can add any of that stuff without breaking the system. If you want to. Other games are very intricately designed and many break down if you take away some of those 'essential' mechanics. Essential to them, not BRP. I am sure you can name some of those other games.

The problem is to those people those _are_ essentials; that BRP doesn't have them _does_ make it more limited. Whether that's desireble to other people doesn't change the fact that's one of their needs.