TTRPG Talk - Basic Roleplay Universal Game Engine 

I just love this game mechanic. Clear, indepth. Skill driven, fairly realistic. Immersion orientated.

Dragonbane is a great descendant system, as is OpenQuest. Mythras is great if you want more crunch in the combat department. BRP is about as simple as a traditional game gets, but it also has a great amount of add-ons. Great vid.

I love Basic Roleplaying. I'm biased, because I got my start with Worlds of Wonder back in the 80s. My dad had played D&D when it first came out, but his crew switched to RuneQuest as soon as that was available. So, it was BRP that he used to introduce me to the hobby. I've always preferred skill-based games over class/level based ones. It's also the system, often through Call of Cthulhu, that I use to introduce folks to the hobby. I find that most new RPG players grasp the percentile/roll-under system quite quickly. Usually the only people who have a hard time with it are people coming over from D&D, who just need a bit more time to adjust the way they look at things. I get that, as I've never felt comfortable going the other way. I'm hoping to pick up this new edition in the new year. I like that it appears to be quite modular. The original rulebook for BRP from Worlds of Wonder was maybe 18 or 20 pages long, including character creation, combat, charts, art, character sheets, a small adventure, etc. So, the core rules, which really haven't changed in 40+ years, are quite simple. There are a lot of "plug-in" things that can complicate it, though. But, of course, with it being modular, you don't have to add in the parts you don't want to deal with. I really like that. I'm always wary of a game calling itself "universal," however. I've used BRP for a LOT of different games, but there are definitely games I don't think it would be appropriate for. For example, it wouldn't be very good at doing D&D 5e type games. Combat is too deadly, and you never become superhero/gods. Engaging in combat two or three times a session or trying to face threats meant for a level 20 5e character isn't ever going to go well, when you're only ever going to have 10 or 12 hit points. But for anything moderately grounded (Lord of the Rings, Wild West, Conan, Thieves World, Star Trek, Dune, etc.), I think it could work wonderfully. That said, just because it CAN work, doesn't mean there isn't a better system for capturing the essence of a certain thing. I think it's a truly great system and a hell of a lot more versatile than D&D ever was, but it's not always the system I want to use. Even recently, I was thinking it would be a great system to use for running 2300AD (semi-realistic, near-future Science Fiction in the vein of Outland or The Expanse). But though it would work extremely well for that game, I think I'd actually use the Alien RPG's rules for it instead. Sometimes, though it would be great, there might be something else that's even better. Anyway, cool video. I hope this new edition, especially with its open license, will help folks grow in the hobby.

I was thinking of adapting BRP for my setting.. Your video has made me decide to buy the book and do exactly that. Sure, I still have to find all the skills for each era as well as equipments, and it is a much simpler system overall than I wanted; but a 1 man dev team building what I want to build from scratch is... insane, lmffao

Great video, your explanations are very clear and concise. This system/engine seems more complex than what I expected from the name. I've been looking for something that's about as simple as FATE but with more variety of mechanical actions/choices (after a year long campaign of FATE it was feeling a bit same-y). I guess it's a bit of a paradoxical ask, but one can dream 😅