I was working on my game last night and the age old question came up.

“But it’s not what you think,” to quote one of my favorite YouTube channels. The question isn’t “What is a roleplaying game.” The question becomes, “Do I include that description in my game?”

Do I just assume people know what a TTRPG is by this point? I mean, we have the Internet. People can look it up.

The same question can be asked regarding, “What are all these funny looking dice?”

My gut is telling me to save the space and just do the darn thing. Skip right straight into character creation and good enough. People will already know what the game is about and have an idea of how it works from playing other games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, or  Call of Cthulhu.

BRPG is not exactly a ‘new kid’ friendly system.

My intention here is to invite everyone, but at the same time I believe my target audience should already have the basic questions out of the way. Part of me wishes pages 1-3 of Basic RolePlaying: Universal Game Engine were in the System Reference Document so I could just transcribe them straight into my game. It would make things easier. Then again that’s three more pages of lore I could include.

Creating a BRP character is not a simple, quick task. There’s more on the sheet than D&D or Pathfinder and I’m trying to find ways to narrow it down to make it new player friendly. I definitely sympathize with the Call of Cthulhu players who build up an awesomesauce character only to have them lose all sanity points and wind up face down in the dead character pile. I’m trying to streamline character creation as much as possible in the event the unthinkable does happen.

A more proper review of BRP: UGE will be posted soon. Obviously I like much of the game or I wouldn’t be designing it into my settings. I’ll be talking more about that in my review. (*Coming soon?) The engine works awesomely within a lot of game frameworks, and I can’t wait to see how my game fits it.

The beauty of BRP: UGE.

One of the many things I like about the system is the fact that it’s had years upon years of playtesting in a wide variety of genres. There’s still plenty of room for expansion and maybe other ways to repeat some of the same genres. Other game systems have proven that it is possible to reinvent the same TTRPG many times over.

A good number of games are buggier than BRP. How many times have we said we’re tired of going back and fixing [REDACTED]’s mistakes? How many homebrew solutions have we had to implement because material from Third Party Publishers was better than official [REDACTED] products? Chaosium has a very good track record over the course of seven Call of Cthulhu editions and six renditions of Pendragon. If they could only bring Elfquest back…

My only main concern with the initial question is new players.

I was more or less gatekept out of TTRPG publishing back in the day (like, even last year) by people who kept saying, “Come back when you have some experience under your belt.”
That made me feel incredibly shitty when I heard that sentence, especially from people I really looked up to in the hobby at the time. It sucks when you have to get experience, but no one will say “yes” long enough for you do what they’re asking for. As a GM, I try to make it a point say yes to new players as often as possible.

Having said that, I’m very hesitant to exclude the What is a RolePlaying Game and What are Dice sections of my game now. It may come down to how badly I need to cut space to make room for more content in the end. Otherwise, I’ve got five more volumes after the drawing board for whatever ends up on the cutting room floor. Something can shift to make room.

I guess it’s decided, then. That was easy enough. You’re a good listener. Thank you!

Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.