This one contained the Basic Role Playing hardback (the so-called "Gold Book") and the pocket edition of A Song of Ice and Fire.
I normally buy my stuff locally, but I wasn't really jonesing for BRP badly enough to pay RRP and the deals on each of these were so good it was too good to pass up.
I've been using BRP, or one version of it, for about thirty years now in my Call of Cthulhu games. I used to keep a copy of Runequest with me for those times when the Call of Cthulhu version failed to deliver (typically in combat). Runequest was the original game from which BRP was derived.
I started a voyage of discovery about a year and a half ago in which I deliberately sampled many new game systems. GURPS, Savage Worlds, D20, these were the initial focus of my experiments.
Savage Worlds was a spectacular success. I have reservations about some aspects of the system, but the benefits it offers as far as easy adoption and rapid assimilation along with the obvious enjoyment of the players have made his a new favorite with me. I have become known as something of a Savage Worlds evangelist at my LFGS (Local Friendly Game Store).
GURPS was fascinating but scary. Characters take forever to build in this system, but the realism possible using it is incredible and the flexibility of the engine for powering the incredible number of settings is legendary. It seems that Steve Jackson Games is not in the business of Setting books any more - there's only one I'm aware of (Vorkosigan Saga) in a fourth edition, er, edition. In any event, the rulebooks are terrifying to me now. When I was thirty I would have lapped this stuff up. Now, I don't have the time or the mental agility for it.
D20, the old workhorse, has proved surprisingly flexible while at the same time proving that the GM must be aware at all times of the level-based abilities, even in a game where XP are sparse. D20 Call of Cthulhu has proved popular, but I think I may be close to breaking the game because of my earlier carelessness in adjudicating advancement awards. We'll see. I'm not scared of D20, but I think Savage Worlds offers much that D20 does at much less cost in brain cells.
But of late I found myself wondering what all the fuss was about with the Gold Book. The price was right for me to explore BRP in depth again. Who knows where that will lead? As I skimmed the book I found myself pondering different games I could run using BRP...
Maybe I'll do a port into BRP that I was intending to do as a Savage Worlds port.
In any event, I'll post my thoughts here as I browse.
A Song of Ice and Fire was purchased because I signed up for a game just to see what the fuss is all about. I'll let you know what I think after I've had a chance to digest it.
1 comment:
I, as you know, am also a fan of Savage Worlds but there are some games which work better with BRP: certain Mythos games, for one, and also Firefly/Serenity.
I cannot imagine that would go well in Savage Worlds. The setting is too gritty, the Reavers too sanity-punishing. The pulpy feel of SW would be too grating.
I had an idea to run a bait-and-switch Mythos game in the last days of humanity's time on Earth: the reason that we left Earth for the 'Verse was that The Stars Were Right, and it was time to leave. Let Cthulhu have the rotting shell of Earth - we were done with it.
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