by Demian Katz
Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium Roleplaying System
Published by Chaosium
Revised by Jason Durall and Sam Johnson
Edited by Charlie Krank and Lynn Willis
Based on the Basic Roleplaying system created by Steve Perrin,
Steve Henderson, Warren James, Greg Stafford, Sandy Petersen, Ray Turney
and Lynn Willis
Basic Roleplaying system contributions by Ken St. Andre, William
Barton, Bill Dunn, William Jones, Ben Monroe, Gordon Monson, Sam
Shirley, Mark Morrison, Richard Watts, et al.
399 page perfect-bound book
$39.95
Since its birth in the late seventies as part of RuneQuest,
Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying has been used in a lot of different ways,
distinguishing itself as perhaps the first stand-alone generic system
and probably best-known as the core of Call of Cthulhu. Although
the game system hasn't always been given the presentation it deserves
(see my review of the
2002 release for a painful example), it has held up surprisingly
well over the years and remains one of my first choices for running a
game.
The key to Basic Roleplaying's success is that, as the name
suggests, it's fairly basic. There are really only two core concepts
that have to be understood. Most of the game is built around character
skills that have a percent chance of success. Characters also have
D&D-ish character attributes (Strength, Constitution, etc.), and
most actions that aren't covered by skills are resolved by comparing
relevant attributes on a "Resistance Table" and using the resulting
percentage. Of course, there are also Hit Points to keep track of when
people die, and there are a host of customizations that vary from game
to game, but most of the game comes down to determining a percent chance
of success, rolling some dice, and moving on. It also helps that
everything in the game, from characters to equipment, is defined in the
same terms (for example, weapons and armor have Hit Points that
determine when they break), so there aren't a lot of disparate concepts
to understand.
The percentage concept is quite easy to explain to new players, and it
makes running a game quite smooth – you don't often have to wade through
tons of rules to figure out how to deal with a given situation, and it's
not hard to improvise something that feels consistent with the rest of
the game. The system tends not to bog down and get in the way of
role-playing, but it has enough game to it to feel like you're doing
more than just playing pretend. It also has the best character
experience system I've ever encountered: rather than accumulating
arbitrary "experience points" and then leveling, you instead check off
all the skills that you actually use during an adventure. At the end of
the adventure, there is a chance that those skills will improve. A
perfect example of how this system tends to just make sense, rather than
feeling like a system for the sake of being a system.
The New Edition
The 2008 edition of Basic Roleplaying is certainly the most ambitious
presentation of the game as a stand-alone system, following the
lamentable 2002 booklet and a limited-distribution multi-volume version
produced in 2004 as part of Chaosium's "monograph" line. In just under
400 pages, the book provides all that you need to run a game in
practically any setting or style of play. In addition to the core
rules, there are subsystems for magic, mutations, psychic abilities and
super powers, plus substantial numbers of sample creatures, items and
campaign worlds. No prior knowledge of role-playing is assumed, so the
book is aimed at new gamers as well as experienced veterans. Being
literally everything to everyone is an incredibly lofty goal, but this
volume does an admirable job of coming pretty close to succeeding at a
clearly impossible task. Exactly how successful the book is at
satisfying your needs depends on where you fall in the audience...
Basic Roleplaying for Beginners
It's sort of an industry given that every role-playing game is written
as though it is the first role-playing game the reader has ever seen,
even though most games are only realistically going to be found by
people who already have a basic idea of what they're about. Basic
Roleplaying is no exception, devoting space to the expected "what is
role-playing," "what does d20 mean" and "gamemastery tips" material.
These sections are well-written, particularly the game mastering chapter
and the sidebar on miniatures, but I still think this book is a hard
sell as an introduction to role-playing. It's like giving somebody a
thesaurus as an introduction to English literature – it's a great tool,
but it's mostly a dry reference work, and it takes some experience to
put all the pieces together into something useful. I would expect most
beginners to be either intimidated or bored. A really motivated,
creative potential gamer might find this incredibly inspirational, but
the average person probably needs a bit more hand-holding to become
comfortable with the hobby. Generic role-playing is a wonderful thing,
but a narrower scope is generally an easier entry point.
Basic Roleplaying for Veterans
On the opposite end of the spectrum, players with a long history of
using the Basic Roleplaying system will not be disappointed at
all by this release. The authors of the current edition are long-time
fans of the system, and they have not forgotten about its history. From
the introduction, peppered with cover illustrations from past games
using the system (anyone remember ElfQuest?), through to the
appendix mapping variant skill names from multiple games to the generic
forms used here, it's clear that every available reference was used to
compile this volume. Great effort has been made to maintain
compatibility with every Basic Roleplaying game. To accomplish
this, some terms have been made generic (for example, the same "Power
Points" fuel everything from psychic powers to magic, and most skill and
power names are intentionally bland), and potentially incompatible ideas
from different games have been presented here as parallel optional rules
for players to choose from. This certainly has the potential to be
confusing, but it's presented well – if you know what kind of rules you
want to use, you can plug them into your game with reasonable confidence
that they will interact well with the rest of the system. Basic
Roleplaying offers the chance to add superpowers to Call of
Cthulhu... or car chases and automatic weapons to RuneQuest.
The possibilities are endless!
Basic Roleplaying for Game Masters
If you haven't previously played a Basic Roleplaying game and
you're looking to start a campaign of your own design, this is
definitely a worthwhile purchase. The book is an extensive tool kit,
and it's really just a matter of choosing the options that fit your
game. There are a lot of decisions available here. The game adjusts to
four different power levels ranging from normal (where characters are
everyday people) all the way up to superhuman (where characters are gods
or superheroes), and the book does a good job of accounting for the
differences between these styles of campaigns. The basic core system is
sufficient for a light game, but players who prefer complexity have lots
of optional subsystems to add. Need hit locations and critical hit
tables? They're here. Need Call of Cthulhu-style sanity rules?
It's here. What about weapons, armor and equipment ranging from fantasy
to modern to science fiction? Here. About the only thing that the
authors admit is beyond the scope of this volume is mass combat, and
even that gets some loose guidelines and the promise of deeper coverage
in a possible future volume. As a nice touch, the book actually
provides a checklist of all the optional rules, so a game master can
easily show players what is in effect in a given campaign.
One of the biggest decisions in building a game using this book is which
Power system (or systems) to use. Each system provides a list of
special abilities that can be applied to characters to give them unique
powers beyond the more mundane basic skills along with rules for how and
when they may be used. There are five options, all quite adaptable.
Magic and Sorcery provide two different approaches to spellcasting,
allowing different flavors of fantasy gaming (which is not to say that
they're unsuitable for other genres as well). Mutations cover unusual
physical changes to characters, both positive and negative. Psychic
Abilities cover mental modifications. Super Powers are largely the
domain of the costumed hero, but many can also be used in more mundane
environments where some individuals stand out; they also stand out by
having interesting customization rules – for example, you can reduce the
cost of using a power by imposing prerequisites on its use or
limitations on its effectiveness. It's also important to remember that
these Power systems are not solely the domain of player characters -
they can be applied to anything in the game. You can create all kinds
of monsters by taking animals from the creature section and giving them
Super Powers. You can create magical items by adding Magic or Psychic
Abilities to swords and helmets. The game's internal consistency really
shines here – almost anything is possible with a little creativity.
While this book provides rules for just about anything you can think of
(or at least something close that you can adapt for your needs), it does
not go beyond the basics. If you have a cool idea for a spell, you can
probably find something similar here and adapt it, or combine a few
abilities together to come up with reasonable rules to make it happen.
However, you should not come to this book looking for cool spells to add
to your campaign – it's all fairly basic, obvious stuff. This is not a
criticism of the book; presenting crazy new ideas is simply beyond its
scope. If you're looking for innovative new ideas, you may be
disappointed, but if you're looking for solid general guidelines that
adapt to nearly any application, you can't do much better.
Basic Roleplaying for Players
A game master building a new campaign may appreciate the broad scope of
this book more than a player trying to participate in it once it is
built. However, tools like the "Optional Rule Checklist" help players
narrow their focus to the relevant sections, and the step-by-step
character generation coverage is a decent guide to the broad range of
options available. As with everything else in the book, professions and
skills are described in general terms so that they adapt easily to any
setting, but there's plenty of detail on how they can be used. The
skill descriptions are particularly well-done, with every listing
providing notes on how it adapts to various settings and explaining the
effects not just of success or failure but also of fumbles and
exceptional successes. Some negotiation may be necessary between the
player and the game master to customize skills and powers, but just as
the book provides the pieces necessary to build nearly any campaign
world, is also does an admirable job of allowing nearly any character
concept to be built.
Presentation
Though it has a few typos and organizational quirks, the overall
presentation of this book is above average, especially considering its
size. A few rules seem a little out of place (why is Sanity covered in
the "Settings" chapter?) and the index could use a little work (I'd
rather see "Acid" as an entry by itself under the letter A rather than
as a subsection of the "Spot Rules" listing), but these are relatively
minor complaints. The artwork in the book reflects the diverse
potential of the game and provides some unconventional possibilities
(gun-wielding squirrels, campaigns built around genre-blending or less
familiar cultures), but many pieces look dated or rushed, and the
overall effect isn't especially stylish. Again, this doesn't
particularly diminish the value of the book, but it might be a turn-off
for some.
Conclusions
Basic Roleplaying isn't for absolutely everyone, but it's an
excellent addition to anyone's gaming toolkit, especially if they
already like the system or are planning on a do-it-yourself campaign.
This is the best generic role-playing tool I've encountered, and it's an
impressive encapsulation of thirty years of growth and development.
There's still room for improvement, and I hope we see an even better
edition in a few more years, but for now, this is quite good enough, and
I look forward to putting it to use in my next game.
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