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.

 

[imagineGod]

This is the best quote so far:

This uses an opening gaming license, but not THE Open Gaming License (the commonly used one published by WotC nearly 20 years ago).

 

[imagineGod]

Saw the original Chaosium post.

 

[atanakar]

Very interesting possibilities.

 

[imagineGod]

Very interesting possibilities.

The BRP is next only to the d20 in popularity I believe. So wonder which third party publisher will be first to use this SRD for a new game without needing Chaosium oversight now?

 

[Dreamscape]

It would be good if it was based on the Big Gold Book. As it is it's less than 20 pages of a very bare-bones percentile system and 2 pages of a whole lot of restrictive clauses. Better off writing your own.

 

[Von Ether]

Someone is going to have their work cut out for them since all of the BRP magic systems are prohibited (and the post seems to have changed from last night to further explain that.)

On the other hand, a purely historical game is totally doable.

 

[Reynard]

I don't understand the motivation of providing an SRD and OGL if they are going to make it so restrictive. it's not like anyone who wanted to couldn't create a game with a percentile system at its core. Who is this for?

 

[Jer]

I don't get it. Unless there's some necessary requirement for them to have an SRD for the "community" sites on DriveThru I don't see what they gain by doing this and I don't see what another publisher gains from taking advantage of it. It's like Chaosium still doesn't believe in the benefits of open gaming but have seen everyone else open up their engines and they're taking a half-hearted stab at doing the same?

 

[oknazevad]

Yeah, looking at the license and the SRD content this is essentially useless. If you use any of it you have to slap that logo on your book, "prominently", regardless of how little you actually use. And let's be frank, between the paucity of content in the SRD and the plethora of restrictions in the prohibited content list, there's so little anyone can or would use. Probably the only aspect that is actually distinctly useful is getting the classic resistance table actually under some sort of license (though as a purely mechanical aspect it's probably not copyright eligible in the first place). But again, if you use one thing then you can't use anything similar to the stuff on the prohibited content list and have to put their logo on both the front and back of the book.

And it's not like there aren't already truly open licensed d100 games out there. Both Mongoose editions of RuneQuest (the second under its post-license name of Legend) and OpenQuest (which used the first Mongoose edition's SRD to cover its legal basis) are already out there under the full, true OGL. Those give, without burdensome restrictions and glaring omissions, more than sufficient material to make a d100 game that is truly open.

So the real question is "why bother?" Between a useless SRD and the least open open license I've ever seen, what do they hope to accomplish? It's truly too little (content), and too late (there's already suitable functionally equivalent alternatives).