Why Is BRP Not More Popular?

RPGPundit · January 16, 2018, 11:32:09 AM

Quote from: Toadmaster;1019062Basic Role Playing was a 15-20 page stand alone game that was included in Chaosium's boxed sets, so it goes back to at least the very early 1980s (I got my Boxed Runequest no later than 1981).

I'm sure it did, but I don't recall anyone thinking of it in that way.

Toadmaster · January 16, 2018, 09:15:42 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit;1019875I'm sure it did, but I don't recall anyone thinking of it in that way.

I agree with that, we didn't either. For the most part we treated it like the chapter on "What is a role playing game" some games include, we basically ignored it. I kind of said that in fewer words below the part you quoted, but understand if that wasn't clear.

QuoteIn my experience the small BRP booklet for the most part stayed in the box, we played the game we bought (RQ, CoC etc).

RPGPundit · January 18, 2018, 10:55:00 PM

OK, right.

TheShadow · January 19, 2018, 10:13:50 PM

Honestly, I don't recall anyone ever saying, offline or online, that they used the original 20 page Basic Role-Playing booklet as a basis for play. Even Worlds of Wonder, which took that booklet and added genre treatments, was not a commercial success. People wanted compelling, full-treatment games like RQ, CoC and Stormbringer.

And I'm pretty sure that use of "BRP" as a deliberate brand term for the whole family of games only dates to the 2006 Big Gold Book (and it's incredibly weird to realise that it's well over a decade old now).

markmohrfield · January 20, 2018, 04:01:22 AM

Quote from: The_Shadow;1020686And I'm pretty sure that use of "BRP" as a deliberate brand term for the whole family of games only dates to the 2006 Big Gold Book (and it's incredibly weird to realise that it's well over a decade old now).

The term was in use well before the publication of the big gold book, for what it's worth.

TheShadow · January 20, 2018, 07:42:31 AM

Quote from: markmohrfield;1020728The term was in use well before the publication of the big gold book, for what it's worth.

Your statement is not necessarily in conflict with mine; "Basic Role-Playing" dates back to 1981. But I don't recall anyone casually referring to BRP and expecting it to be understood as the Chaosium house system prior to the BGB.

AsenRG · January 20, 2018, 05:53:52 PM

Quote from: The_Shadow;1020686Honestly, I don't recall anyone ever saying, offline or online, that they used the original 20 page Basic Role-Playing booklet as a basis for play.

If you mean the French version, I've done exactly that:).

NeonAce · January 20, 2018, 06:57:10 PM

Using "BRP" as a brand term for the whole family of games goes back quite a ways, at least as far back as 1989. Out of curiosity I poked around in some old Usenet groups and found people using and understanding what it meant, etc. Here's an example post from back in the day: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/chaosium$20brp|sort:relevance/rec.games.frp/58Wak0oB5Ic/_8ytOFJv4hEJ

TheShadow · January 21, 2018, 09:59:36 PM

Quote from: NeonAce;1020807Using "BRP" as a brand term for the whole family of games goes back quite a ways, at least as far back as 1989. Out of curiosity I poked around in some old Usenet groups and found people using and understanding what it meant, etc. Here's an example post from back in the day: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/chaosium$20brp|sort:relevance/rec.games.frp/58Wak0oB5Ic/_8ytOFJv4hEJ

Looking at that Usenet link, one poster did indeed use the term BRP, while others wrote things like this:

>>Do you know of any RuneQuest-style games? I am interested in collecting them
>>By RuneQuest-style, I mean games that are skill-based, and use the
>>resistance table and 7 characteristics (STR,CON,SIZ,INT,POW,DEX,APP/CHA).

This poster clearly didn't recognise "BRP" as a brand and I doubt Chaosium used the term in any promotional material. I guess you could check old issues of Different Worlds. Perhaps a few savvy gamers used the term as the moniker for the Chaosium house system, as opposed to the BRP booklet, but I don't think this was a recognised brand.

markmohrfield · January 21, 2018, 10:08:19 PM

That just means it wasn't universally known, and really, what is?

Bren · January 21, 2018, 10:57:37 PM

Quote from: markmohrfield;1021044That just means it wasn't universally known, and really, what is?

No it doesn't just mean that. It also means the quote doesn't prove anything more than that one guy in 1989 used the term BRP in his Usenet posts. That comes nowhere near showing that the term was commonly used back then.

Simlasa · January 22, 2018, 01:51:29 AM

I know I was using the term before the BGB came out... but only on threads/forums full of Chaosium fans, not in the general populace who'd invariably ask, "What's BRP?"

NeonAce · January 22, 2018, 02:05:40 AM

Quote from: Bren;1021056No it doesn't just mean that. It also means the quote doesn't prove anything more than that one guy in 1989 used the term BRP in his Usenet posts. That comes nowhere near showing that the term was commonly used back then.

It's hard to definitively prove or measure "commonly used", but "BRP" was definitely used as an abbreviation and understood by other folks well before the 2006 book. A browse of dates and summaries here will show it being used and understood in the '90s anyways. It's hard to dig up online stuff prior to '94 when the internet hit big, but you'll see more frequent references from '92 on.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/chaosium$20brp%7Csort:relevance

Here's a kinda amusing 2000 post I dug up that accuses WotC of "BRP Thinking" in regards to using D20 as a house system.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.games.frp.misc/brp|sort:date/rec.games.frp.misc/kyKJxE2snBE/aNIwg3Jcm24J

RMS · January 22, 2018, 07:40:20 AM

Quote from: Bren;1021056No it doesn't just mean that. It also means the quote doesn't prove anything more than that one guy in 1989 used the term BRP in his Usenet posts. That comes nowhere near showing that the term was commonly used back then.

BRP was pretty common in the 80's as short-hand for the underlying system in Runequest, Stormbringer, CoC, etc. It was probably the most common, though at the time calling it simply the d100 or percentile system was also fairly common.

Anytime someone would make some mashup out of the various Chaosium games it was pretty universally (commonly at least) referred to as BRP.....probably due to the name of the little pamphlet that came in all the boxed sets that nobody actually used, but we all knew the name of the underlying system.

TheShadow · January 22, 2018, 08:35:12 AM

Well, I stand corrected. I found the following in Different Worlds 17 (Dec 1981) in the article "Questworld" on p.24:
"QuestWorld is intended to be an open campaign world for RuneQuest and its variants, and for the constantly expanding Basic Role-Playing family." [italics in original]

The article is credited to Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford. So it seems that yes, Chaosium did see Basic Role-playing as more than just the 20-page booklet, but as the name for their house system.