Off the Shelf: Basic Roleplaying (BRP)

One of the things I hear repeated the most about Basic Roleplaying (BRP) is that "It isn't a game system, but a game system you use to make your own games." While that describes the system, it scares off players.

Contrary to the misconception that BRP is primarily a tool for game creation, it is a fully playable system in its own right. In fact, it shares the same versatility and playability as other popular setting-independent systems like GURPS, Savage Worlds, FATE, and Cypher System. We don't introduce GURPS as a system solely for game creation; the same should be valid for BRP.

GURPS requires setting the campaign, tech level, and setting, which is trivial. And BRP is mostly the same, with 30 spells in the core book if fantasy is your thing. Need more magic? The Magic Book has four power systems and 140+ spells for your game. Like GURPS, you pick the powers, setting, tech, and campaign and begin playing from there.

You are 100% able to play BRP with the base book, never need another book, and never do any "game design" at all. I can easily do any TV show or Movie with this game: Buck Rogers, CHIPS, the A-Team, Fallout, Rebel Moon, Aliens, Star Wars - anything is easily playable. If you need specific weapons or gear, just use something similar in the book and re-skin it. As people who play Cypher System often say, "It is all flavor!"

Magic items? You can create those using the base book, with the rules covering "items with powers," you will discover that you can make far more items than D&D can give you. You can simulate the "+1 sword" with a sword with a level of "super skill" for a +20% to-hit bonus and perhaps +10 STR, which will bump the character's natural damage modifier up a few levels. Give it a POW value and a few magic spells, and your "+1 sword" is turning into an artifact far more interesting than the MMO "green item" boring junk most D&D games give you.

If I were hard-pressed to create "magic items" for a BRP fantasy game, I would use any B/X game's magic item charts, roll an item, and then start there (use the items with powers rules, BRP p161). Oh, a +1 spear? Give it POW equal to double hit points (2 x 15 = 30), and give it a few permanent abilities (they cost 5 x POW cost), like permanent "always one" sharpen level 2 costs 10 POW (+10% to-hit, +2 damage), and give the spear a spell or two to use the remainder of the 20 POW with (lightning level 1-3 for 3-9 POW per cast, 1d6 damage per level, 60m range).

That is an excellent spear, unlike any other! Give it a name, like Storm Spire, and you are all set.

One of the best parts about magic items in BRP is they recharge POW off the character at 1 point per round (when the character wills the transfer). Sooner or later, the character's POW is expended, and the character needs to rest and recover. The concept that "magic items drain the power of the user" and "the user needs to rest after use" is a fantastic game mechanic. A reason for warrior types to have POW? Yes, that is a thing in BRP, too.

The items are mighty, but I would rather have fewer, unique, and memorable items than "random +1 trinkets off tables." That old, tired D&D junk that exists to give a +1 somewhere is boring and MMO-like. It is 2024, and we can have better things.

Oh, and as items lose hit points, their maximum POW decreases, and they eventually break. The balance of magic items is built into the system, and getting them repaired may require visiting a unique forge, arcane crafter, or other specialist who may need particular components or services to perform the task. Characters could learn to do it themselves, but the rare items would still need to be acquired.

The game has superpowers, mutations, and mutated and powered items, so a Gamma World-style post-apocalypse setting is within reach. One of the best parts about a game is that you DIY all your magic items and "lost tech" artifacts; the players will have no idea what to expect, and each item will be memorable and unique and not something of a random chart we all saw 1,000 times before. I could look at the superpower list in this game, create an "intangibility bracelet" powered by rare one-use neutronium pellets, and have an item no other game has.

Need more superpowers to make lost artifacts with or for your mutations? Pull them from the Super World game. You may slowly creep into "game design" as you continue building your world, but this "scary" game design is nothing you need when you start your game. Any game genre can be started cold with just the core rulebook and laying out a few parameters, like what powers and technology are available.

Design as you go. The most important part is to start playing.

Never let the old "this is only for game designers" thing stop you.

In BRP, everyone is a game designer, and it is so easy to do that it becomes part of the game.

Off the Shelf: Runequest

My 5E books are on a secondary shelf while I revisit Runequest. I like the BRP d100 system; it is solid and a 'character builder '- you level up what you use. Want to be stealthy? Do sneaky things. Want to use daggers well? Stab things.

You don't get free powers just to get a level. Every power is earned through hard work and making skill rolls. Since everyone has magic, your spells enhance your weapons and combat powers. Want a magic sword strike? Learn the spell that does it, and cast a sharpening spell on your blade. Learning magic is more than reading a spell list; a few magic systems are in the game, and they all work differently.

Unlike GURPS, you cannot "spend points on whatever." This is an involved character simulator, and if you want skills in areas where it takes work to earn skill points, you will need to work at them. You can't learn history sitting in a forest or how to get better at combat if you find a few thousand GP and convert them to XP.

Nothing comes for free in BRP. You earn every point. Your characters level organically. Combat is deadly.  Roleplaying and knowing the "who's who" in a tribe or culture matters. Getting favors and survival matter. Crafting even has a place. Parts of this game feel like Minecraft, where you hunt, forge, mine, craft, and build. This is another "thinking person's game."

And it is one world, the Bronze Age, with established lore and culture, without silly planar travel to multiverses. There are no robots or talking skeletons here. You play primarily humans, but with such a diverse civilization, you can find all the diversity you want in this game by being human. In D&D, diversity can feel "faked" in that humans are boring, primarily the European stereotypes, and diversity is equated with the fantastical cartoon races.

In Runequest, diversity is not just a feature; it's a necessity. To succeed and thrive in this world, immerse yourself in its cultures and understand their nuances. This game demands that you care about the world you inhabit, and that means doing your homework.

Do you want to be diverse in this game? Learn about the world your character lives in and its history.

Runequest also divorces the same-old Renaissance level of technology with the plate-mail, steel, crossbows, and tall ships that pervade the entire notion of fantasy gaming today. It feels like Minecraft, where you craft your gear, bartering, building shelters, and crawling through ancient ruins. You do not have worldwide trade, steel, universities, huge guilds, giant castles, armies of plate-mail knights, or even the stirrup. This is the Bronze Age, a different time where personal magic, skill, and heroism matter more than "gear loadout."

Everyone has magic, even if it is just minor incantations. Even people in town find ways to use "everyday magic" - minor spells to make the hard life a little easier. The setting isn't high magic; it is very spiritual and enlightened, where minor magic is a part of everyday life for many. You can play this up or keep it down as much as you like in your games, but this personal magic exists. It isn't used as a "technology replacement metaphor," but here.

Spells can be expensive to learn or held by cults, so while everyone may have magic, the spells needed to cast them are not always freely available. A tavern owner may only know two spells that ignite and extinguish small fires, but each spell costs 50 silver coins, and 60 silver per year is the average standard of living for a free family. Compared to today, this is like one minor spell, costing a household the entire cost of living for a year. Magical knowledge can be very expensive!

Runequest is a game with a lot of the lore and culture baked in, and learning about it is as much playing the game as playing is. This is the game that the 1990s AD&D always wanted to be, a mix of race, culture, world, and history where everything and everyone matters. Nothing is generic or cheaply borrowed from Tolkien. Dark Sun came close, but the dream died when TSR did. It is also a game like Traveller, where the setting is a massive part of the fun.

This game destroyed my love for Pathfinder 1e and the old-school Golarion theme park world. You can't throw tropes together and expect a world to happen. It showed me how to create a world, rules, and settings where everything makes sense together. Culture matters. History matters. Geography matters. Religion matters. Technology (and the lack of it) matters. Survival is the goal. Learning about the world makes you more powerful. Understanding people makes you more powerful. Magic is the key to power.

And knowledge is a powerful thing.

There is Too Much 5E

I am reminded of the days when the Atari 2600 market collapsed. Games that were 30 or 40 dollars the week before were tossed into bins in the center of aisles and marked down to a dollar each. We kids had a field day, and Mom saved a lot of money.

Strangely enough, nobody else was buying them, either. The bins were not picked over and were full of good stuff.

These days, 5E feels like this: Everyone is making "my 5E," and Kickstarter is flooded with 5E rules replacement systems. All these projects must be completed before D&D 2024 releases, so there is a flood of them now.

For me, Level Up Advanced 5E is the ultimate 5E system. I've been using it as my core system for years, and it's always impressive. This system was built from a clean-room rewrite of the SRD, and it's a testament to the power of community-driven projects. The old-school mix of 4E, OSR, and 5E concepts to support the pillars of play is an excellent, fun-focused rebuild of the game. Level Up is more for advanced players than beginners.

Tales of the Valiant is also a worthy 5E replacement, and this cuts closer to the 5E rules instead of rebuilding the game rules from the ground up. Due to its compatibility with 5E, it adopts some of the same issues (everyone with dark vision tripe), but the rules are clean, well-presented, and easy to use. Compared to the 2024 PHB, the ToV core book is a lot easier to use, learn, and hand to a new player to grasp.

The D&D 2024 books are non-starters to me. I don't like how the company does business, and from the previews I have seen, the organization of the books could be better. In a world where Shadowdark is winning Ennies for clean layout and presentation, releasing books that look like wall-of-text-layouts in 2005 without cross-referencing is such a massive miss that it is a near-fatal mistake.

Shadowdark feels like it is picking up the ball where D&D dropped it. This is what 9-year-olds play with their families and run the game as DMs. Hasbro shareholders should ask management what the young player strategy for the brand is because I don't see it, and in 10 years, this will come back to bite the company hard.

It did TSR.

We have Nimble 5E, MCDM RPG, and many others coming out, and targeted at current players. The OGL mess told the community, "Make your own," and Wizards fragmented the market into a million pieces. We have a glut of new systems, not to mention the other non-5E fantasy games like Dragonbane, Pendragon, Runequest, Forbidden Lands, Shadow of the Demon Lord, and others, gaining fans and picking up the torch. The OSR is still strong, along with OSE, DCC, Worlds Without Number, Castles & Crusades, and many others.

It feels like "too much 5E" for the market to support. Many, especially the experienced players (which many DMs fall into), never return to D&D and are happy in other games. The 2024 D&D books feel targeted to a narrow set of D&D Beyond players, not the mass market - and certainly not towards the next generation. This is the AD&D 2nd Edition mistake all over again; when Basic D&D was killed, there were no offerings for young players, and TSR just banked on the hardcore players to pay the bills.

Ten years later, they were out of business.

TSR made a few other huge mistakes, and that was a different market, but still, a VTT that does not sustain the level of growth a video game would pull in will be an expensive failure and equal the bad decisions TSR made, just in money and resources spent.

The younger generation played Nintendo in the 1990s, not Basic D&D. D&D 2024's mistake will only be seen in hindsight since AD&D 2nd Edition was incredible when it launched but could not sustain the company and attract young players. And I don't see a static VTT (with a few animations) entirely dependent on DMs as sustaining the market or interesting younger players.

It feels like a glut, and my gut feeling is that we are in that phase where the shelves are loaded with expensive Atari games, and next week, the bargain bins will be full.

I still enjoy my 5E books, and I will for many years. Many people will. The existing players are still a huge number. But I don't see the market here for as many games as we are getting, and the many more coming. And I don't see the replacement players coming into a mature market to replace the natural loss of interest and players.

Tales of the Valiant: Lineages & Heritages, Supplement 1

Man, these titles are getting long. One problem with "fixing words" is that the replacements for the old ones are often twice as long and wordy, and they, too, will someday be deemed inappropriate and need to be replaced with even longer words. The meanings are not as clear; back in the 1990s, this would have been called race and background options, six syllables versus the nine of this title. Also, "Supplement 1" tacked on there makes an even wordy title so long it probably rolls over on my post title.

I was raised on the use of clear and concise language. Using more words than was needed was disrespectful to your reader and their time.

That said, this book is good for ToV players. ToV desperately needs more options! This is a good first step, even if it is PDF-only at this point. I would love to see many more titles come out in this line and for them to be collected into a hardcover.

We get six new lineages, ten new heritages, and a background here, covering some less-popular options but important ones like goblin, lizardfolk, gnoll, dryad, and dhampir. Eonic is a time-traveler who would work better as a background (and allow for different lineages to be from the future, too). They can't time travel; they just randomly see the future.

This supplement is a step in the right direction for ToV players, but it's just the beginning. We're hungry for more, especially in the form of new class options and character development. The Midgard character option department, in particular, is in urgent need of expansion. We're ready for more, and we're ready now.

The downside? Five of the six lineage options have a dark vision ability. I swear this is a massive problem with all of 5E these days (addressed in Level Up A5E and Shadowdark), and most of 5E being a "dark vision party" is a joke at this point in gaming. Tales need to keep compatibility, so they suffer.

Dark vision for nearly everyone is one of the laziest design decisions in 5E, and at this point, just get rid of light sources and assume everyone (even humans) can see in the dark. This is also why many are leaving for Shadowdark, a game that takes light mechanics seriously appeals to so many, and that "fear of the dark" thing ingrained in humans that "in-humanist designers" fail to see in their rush to make everything play fairly like a mobile phone game rigged to sell stamina and currencies.

Nobody wants to play a "light game" in D&D, so they give everyone dark vision and hand-wave it away as a non-problem.

This book needed a few more backgrounds; only having one feels like a mistake. The PDF could have gone two more pages and given us at least four to six new ones. Level Up Advanced 5E blows ToV out of the water when it comes to character background choices, and once you start designing them and pulling in others from 3rd party books, you have almost too many - and that is a good thing.

This book highlights the differences between Tales of the Valiant and Level Up Advanced 5E. ToV needs to maintain D&D compatibility, so they must take D&D's flaws into account and make it work. Level Up threw out parts of D&D that were garbage and fixed the systems to make them fun and support the classic pillars of play.

I feel that maintaining D&D compatibility (which is different from 5E compatibility) will drag your game down with the hot mess from 2014 to 2024, with ten years of broken expansion books. I love ToV, but Level Up is the more radically redesigned and fixed version of 5E on the market. Outside the new "Queen of the Throne" of dungeon crawling, the excellent Shadowdark.

It also tells that the games that fix the dark vision problem are seen as better experiences. We live in strange times.

A great book; more of this is needed; please keep them coming, Kobold Press.

They Don't Own the Idea

This is the first time we have seen this much money spent pushing a game outside of the video game industry. My YouTube feed is flooded with positive D&D 2024 book previews, making every second video either 2024-related or someone discussing 2024 content. It is beginning to feel desperate.

I swear much money is being given to Google to hype this.

The more I see, the less interested I am. An old saying is that a lie repeated enough is the truth, and we certainly see the repetition. Another disturbing trend is this manufacturing of alternate realities. We are no longer allowed to have our own opinions, especially regarding entertainment and gaming.

Our opinions will be delivered to us via YouTube algorithms.

Some billion-dollar company will give a trillion-dollar company tens of millions of dollars, and whatever truth they want to happen will magically be the accepted reality. Shills hungry for pennies and attention will always be there to push new things on the cheap. It is all money passing from one Wall Street firm to another.

The community will never see a dime.

When gamers support indie games and remove money and attention from the cycle? Then they get angry.

Even supporting old games via POD feeds into the cycle; they are siphoning money off you for nostalgia. Those ideas "own" your idea of fantasy gaming. You can never leave the classic D&D settings or mindset.  "The planes" encompass every other setting, even 3rd party ones.

"We own all this, even if we don't."

I see this in gamers. They will want to express a fantasy character, and the first thing they do is run to D&D Beyond to create them; even though the character has nothing to do with D&D, that system "owns the idea."

Beware when one company owns an entire genre of imagination and expression of creative ideas. This is the theft of myth and lore that Disney does so well, where the stories we pass down between generations become "corporate IP monetized for profit."

That isn't Tolkien. That is D&D.

Of course, the Little Mermaid has a talking fish in it.

Putting my money into the pockets of smaller teams, indie creators, and people hungry for my gaming dollars is always better. I willfully remove my money from the cycle. I support communities outside the default choice. I say no to Wall Street, and the cyclic money siphons like a needle in our imaginations.

You can't be socially progressive, preaching communal ownership of everything and giving fistfuls of money to Wall Street to own a part of your imagination and identity. You just can't. It is incompatible with who you are, and shockingly, I need to say this. I'd say the same thing to the people who work there. Why are you doing this?

Myth, legend, heroism, and the concept of fantasy are not owned by one billion-dollar company to be put behind a paywall.

They are freely owned by the people.

The ownership of the ideas inside our heads.

The ones that belong to all of us.

Support the Alternatives

I deleted my rant about the YouTube 5E preview channels that I have never heard of or subscribed to flooding my feed. I feel someone is paying to boost all these videos, and I am not giving them any views. The closer we get to the 2024 D&D releases, the less I care about the official books.

D&D died during the OGL disaster.

It is a mobile game now, and I am not interested.

I prefer supporting new games and communities rather than old games or giving money to people I dislike. Don't reward behavior you disagree with, and don't fall into the hate or hype. These "Wizards did What?" YouTube videos are just as annoying as the other side's boosted shills.

Let go of the old editions and support new, independent games. I'd much rather play Old School Essentials than Rules Cyclopedia, B/X, BECMI, AD&D, or any other classic version of the game supplied by Wizards. With editions like Basic Fantasy, you can even play for low cost or free.

I keep going back to the late 1980s when the community said AD&D sucks, and we all abandoned the game. We moved on to GURPS, Rifts, Shadowrun, BattleTech, Vampire, and other games until Magic the Gathering killed the hobby. The hobby has been dead since 1995 when the market collapsed.

However, the only thing that has changed between 1989 and today is the impact of social media and nostalgia. To those of us who were there, we gave up on AD&D since it was level-based, it was too "kill for treasure," and the class-level-race-alignment system was too limiting and did nothing for roleplaying. There have been no fixes to the game since we all walked away. Nostalgia is not a patch.

But some people in the indie scene are giving it their best shot.

Now is the time to back indie, non-OGL, and non-SRD games and communities. By doing so, we can help them flourish, ensure they receive the support they need, and foster competitive alternatives. People can write adventure and rule supplements for these games, which is a freedom not available for AD&D or any other legacy TSR game.

Do I play classic legacy games like the originals? Yes, I do. They are all from indie creators, though, and the appeal is more for nostalgia than gameplay in some situations. Shadowdark took aim at the gameplay and modernized it, which makes a game that not only hits the nostalgia note but also delivers an upgraded gameplay experience.

I lean more toward OSR games that "fix the game" and make gameplay enhancements rather than copying old games, warts, etc. Other OSR games, like Stars Without Number, use the familiar as a base for new experiences.

For 5E, I am settled on Level Up A5E. Tales of the Valiant is still far too new to make a call. This is another edition that "fixes the game" rather than photocopies it. But this discussion is not about 5E, though my pick for it matches my feelings towards OSR games.

The games I am sticking with either enhance the experience or provide a new one. My top five are Stars Without Number, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Shadowdark, GURPS, and Old School Essentials. I could put Castles & Crusades in here, but that insanely good game tends to crowd out the others. I have it in storage to give the others (OSE & LU A5E) a chance. C&C will kill 5E if I have it out, and I have books I want to enjoy for Level Up.

C&C will have a spot in my top five.

But for now, it feels nice to ignore the bought-and-paid 2024 previews and do my own thing. My mind is mine, I enjoy what I do, and I am no longer jumping on AAAA-game bandwagons for the hype.

Off the Shelf: Stars Without Number

I have looked at many sci-fi games, and none have completed the package, like Stars Without Number. The Kevin Crawford games are masterpieces of simplicity, function, and design. The Worlds, Cities, and Stars Without Number games are all amazing.

One page of rules on an easy reference sheet for each game.

The ship combat in this game is a breath of fresh air, playable and functional without the overwhelming complexity that plagues many other games. Some starship combat systems are so convoluted that it's a battle just to understand the rules, let alone enjoy the game. But in Stars Without Number, you can navigate the rules and one turn without feeling defeated, making the game a truly enjoyable experience.

Not in SWN. The system works like B/X combat, and characters in different crew positions matter.

The base rules? A mere one page, consistent across all the games. This simplicity is a testament to the game's design, making it easy for players to grasp the fundamentals and dive into the action without feeling overwhelmed.

Fantasy? Got it. Worlds Without Number.

Cyberpunk? Got it, Cities Without Number. This can even be a Shadowrun with magic and monsters. Each game is a toolkit with random tables for creating anything in these worlds. They are each hex crawl masterpieces. You can even play Cities Without Number as a dystopian, violent city exploration hex crawl where you encounter random factions, gangs, government types, citizens, and other pieces of a post-modern civilization lying in squalor, decay, and post-prime ruin.

They don't have the "sim power" of GURPS, but they do have fun and content creation included with the game. These also beat many other OSR games for me, just because of the toolkit and simplicity of the rules. While the generators can be used with any game, the game itself, in one book, just begs you to play and explore.

Some games are just rules to use in a universe.

The 'Without Number' games come with infinite universes.