Chaosium Releases Basic Role Playing SRD

Chaosium has released the Basic Roleplaying System Reference Document (SRD).



The Basic Roleplaying SRD is based on Basic Roleplaying, the simple, fast, and elegant skill-based percentile system that is the core of most Chaosium roleplaying games, including Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, SuperWorld, and others.

Under the provisions of the Basic Roleplaying Open Game License (OGL), designers can create their own roleplaying games using the Basic Roleplaying rules engine, royalty-free and without further permission from Chaosium Inc.

For further details and to download the SRD document, see our Basic Roleplaying SRD information page.

This uses an opening gaming license, but not THE Open Gaming License (the commonly used one published by WotC nearly 20 years ago). It is based on similar concepts, but this uses the BRP Open Game License. A notable difference is that instead of "Product Identity") (which in the original license typically includes trademarks, proper names, a handful of iconic monsters, etc.), this license used "Prohibited Content" which expands that to include mechanics, or "substantially similar" mechanics to some selected features of the rules system. For example, part of the prohibited list includes:

"Augments: The use of one ability — whether skill or characteristic — to augment another ability of the same or a different type, in a manner substantially similar to those of the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha rules."

Obviously you can make similar mechanics without using this license, but if you use this license you agree not to use mechanics similar to those in the prohibited content list.

The prohibited content list also contains Le Morte D'Arthur, and the Cthulhu Mythos.

 

[aramis erak]

Greg Lee’s work was Cirque for T5 wasn’t it? Well, T5 was always exempt, because it was Marc Miller’s personal work. SJGames were given dispensation after MGT1’s licence to make Interstellar Wars as their last publication for Traveller, and the entire line has been available in PDF form for a while.

No negotiation for a license ever amounts to a 'straight renewal'. Both parties had things they wanted from the deal. Presumably, both parties got what they wanted from it. From what I can see, Mongoose Traveller 2 has been a well received success, that continues to produce great products and has attracted new audiences.

Actually, the original license required Marc to publish all T5 materials through Mongoose, and for MGT1 to be derived from T5... but that fell apart because Marc's writing pace was too slow. He still couldn't license
Greg until the renewal. (Again, according to Greg.)

 

[TrippyHippy]

Actually, the original license required Marc to publish all T5 materials through Mongoose, and for MGT1 to be derived from T5... but that fell apart because Marc's writing pace was too slow. He still couldn't license
Greg until the renewal. (Again, according to Greg.)

I do know that the promotional discussion at the time was that Marc’s T5 was set to be the ‘advanced’ version of the Traveller game being published by Mongoose. However, MGT1 was written by Gareth Hanrahan, and was open play-tested throughout the design process. From the very word go, the rule design of the new game was explicitly based on Classic Traveller as default. Marc Miller’s T5, of which there were some promotional elements floating around on the net also, was very much an extension on his work on T4. I don’t think, for example, there was any suggestion of MGT1 at any stage using a roll under mechanic which was used in T4/T5.

All of this is much of a muchness. Back in 2008, when MGT1 came out, nobody knew if it was going to be a success or not and the game design itself was very much a formative process. In 2016, after eight years of development, both Marc and Matt knew what they both wanted, respectively, out of a prospective new licence moving forward.

 

[aramis erak]

I have it, for a while now; own most of mgt too, and was playing up until recently, also just finished a T5 game. Mostly what I would be interested is ISW stuff, maybe rp the Imperium wargame.

The wargame is on CT disk. It's also available from Drive Trhu via their Wargames Vault interface.
The GTIW core is on GT 1.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Chaosium: BRP is dead. We don't support it anymore. Maybe we should open it up for official fan content and if that generates interest we can sell BRP product again and it costs us nothing! Win-win!

Also Chaosium: Yo, dawg here's a 19 page SRD that's so restrictive and bare bones that there's no reason to use this over like, three other alternatives. Also, we don't know what "open" means.