‘Basic Roleplaying’ Character Generation

About Basic Roleplaying

Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine (BRP-UGE) presents a cross-genre, highly customizable version of Chaosium’s well-known house RPG system. In BRP-UGE the primary mechanic is a percentile die roll against a skill or other value. If the dice are below or equal to the skill an action is a success; if above, a failure. A dice roll equal to or less than a fifth of the target indicate a Special Success; a value equal to or less than a twentieth of the target is a Critical Success. On the other hand, a value at or close to 100 (a 00 on d100) indicates a Fumble, which brings additional penalties besides failure.

When a character succeeds at a roll at a critical or dramatic moment, the player can put a check mark beside the skill. At the end of an adventure. the player makes an Experience Check: roll 1d100, and if the roll is above skill rating + Experience Bonus the character adds 1d6 points to that skill. POW, a characteristic (see below), can increase in a similar manner when the character psychically wrestles a stronger foe and succeeds.

I’m leaving out a lot of nuances and details, but that’s the core of BRP.

About the Example

Below I will create a character for a setting I’m tinkering with, code named “Lamplighters”. I’m using it merely as a framework for creating a character.

Notional Setting

Monsters are real: vampires, werewolves, fae, demons, and even stranger things. For millennia monsters preyed on humanity, and hunters tried to exterminate or banish them. A century ago, however, representatives of the hunters and the monsters came together and signed the Rosewood Covenant: monsters will no longer prey on mortals, and mortals will no longer hunt monsters.

The Lamplighters, a secret society, arose to verify adherence to the Covenant, and investigate suspected instances of monsters harming humans … or humans harming monsters, come to that. To that end the Lamplighters employ not only investigators but, should a violation occur, hunters who can put down a monster run amok. They also employ lawyers who can explain instances of vigilante justice to the Rosewood Covenant Council, a board of rational monsters and monster-aware humans.

Not every Lamplighter has Psychic Powers, but those with powers are highly valued. Psychics are considered “human enough” to work on humanity’s side of the fence, although every psychic must submit to mandatory psychological evaluations. No one wants to see a psychic led astray by their powers.

Options Used

The BRP system has a number of predefined options to customize the system to any genre, setting, or GM preference. Here are the ones I’m using.

• Choosing Characteristic Values (BRP-UGE p 10) – roll seven numbers, assign to attributes.
• Higher Starting Values (BRP-UGE p 10) – roll 2D6+6 for each attribute.¹
• Increased Personal Skill Points (BRP-UGE p 16) – increase the number of skill points based on INT.
• Aging and Inaction (BRP-UGE p 120) – older characters lose characteristics based on their age.

Options I’m not using include the EDU (Education) characteristic and the SAN (Sanity) attribute. While the setting is modern day, I expect it to have more hardened warriors than nervous antiquarians. Education will be reflected in a character’s Skills, and characters know basic facts about the world – no roll required. When in doubt, the Game Master may call for an Idea roll.

Skill Simplification

To cut down on the number of Skills, I’m going to merge or eliminate some of them. Maybe I’m not delivering the full BRP experience, but by my count there are upwards of 50 skills, not including the ones that have required specialties like Knowledge (type), Art (type), Craft (type), Science (type), etc.

Character Generation

Step 0: Campaign Power Level

BRP-UGE defines four rough power levels for a campaign: Normal, Heroic, Epic, and Superhuman. The description of Heroic states

Characters have a few strong powers or a wide range of mid- to low-level powers. This is suitable for games featuring inexperienced, costumed heroes or apprentice wizards in training, the mutated survivors of a radioactive apocalypse, vigilante heroes, or a high fantasy world of wizards and warriors.

The Lamplighters are essentially vigilante heroes, tangling with werewolves, vampires, and stranger things on a daily basis. They’re superior to “normals” but not truly superheroes either. I am therefore choosing the power level of Heroic.

Step 1: Name and Characteristics

We’ll name our Lamplighter something random, like “Jonathan Barker”. (I literally used a random name generator.) We’ll find out more about Jon in the steps below.

Since I’m using Higher Starting Values and Choosing Characteristic Values, I’ll roll 2D6+6 seven times and assign them to the seven characteristics of BRP:

• STR (Strength) governs all feats of physical might plus muscle mass.
• CON (Constitution) governs resistance to injury, disease, and poison.
• SIZ (Size) covers general size and bulk.
• INT (Intelligence) represents memory, learning aptitude, problem solving, and (in the absence of EDU) general knowledge.
• POW (Power) represents both willpower, supernatural power, and resistance to mundane or supernatural attempts to affect the mind.
• DEX (Dexterity) covers physical agility, hand-eye coordination, and the nimbleness of one’s fingers.
• CHA (Charisma) indicates how likable the character is.

Without those options I would roll 3D6 for each characteristic except SIZ and INT, for which I would roll 2D6+6, and assign them in order.

I rolled 17, 16, 16, 15, 12, 12, 9 in descending order, and I’ll assign them as follows:

Jon is a small man, but very smart, very healthy, very dexterous, and gifted with profound supernatural potential.

Step 2: Powers

Lamplighters are only allowed Psychic Abilities. (Monsters may have other powers.) So let’s give Jon some.

There are 20 Psychic Powers, which in the BRP system are skills that work and improve like regular skills. According to BRP-UGE (p 71), a Heroic character starts with four Psychic Powers with a base skill of POW×1%. We will raise them in a later step.

The four powers I’ve picked are as follows:

• Danger Sense: Sense a threat posed by a person or situation.
• Intuition: Sense a specific person or type of item.
• Mind Shield: Protect against psychic attacks.
• Sensitivity: Sense psychic activity or supernatural creatures in an area.²

All powers are defensive and/or sensory; no Telepathy or Telekinesis. My thought is that a Lamplighter is more of a detective than a warrior, so I avoided powers that provide advantages in combat. Jon will have to use mundane skills to defend himself.

Step 3: Age and Experience

By default Jon is (17+1D6) 22 years old. However, I imagine him as somewhat older, perhaps in his 30s. According to the rules (BRP-UGE p 10), in a Heroic game Jon would gain +20 Professional Skill Points for every decade he’s above the default age, dropping fractions. We’ll return to this in a later step.

Step 4: Characteristic Rolls

Nearly each characteristic has a “Characteristic Roll” derived from multiplying the characteristic roll by 5%. That gives us:

Step 5: Derived Characteristics

BRP also defines a number of Derived Characteristics, most of which relate to combat:

• Damage Modifier, the modifier to damage from muscle-powered weapons, is based on a lookup table using STR+SIZ. Jon’s is +0.
• Hit Points, the amount of damage a character can take before they’re in serious trouble, is the average of CON and SIZ, or 13.
• Major Wound Level, the threshold for Major Wounds that can potentially debilitate a character, is half HP rounded up, or 7.
• Power Points, expended when using or being subjected to supernatural powers, are equal to POW, or 17 for Jon.
• Experience Bonus, added to Experience Rolls to improve skills, is defined as ½INT rounded up, or 8 for Jon.
• Move (MOV) is a measure of how fast the character can move. For humans, this is always 10.

Step 6: Personality Type Option

BRP-UGE presents four “personality types” which gives characters a bonus in certain relevant skills. (The Game Master can create his own.) From the options in the book I’m going to choose Cunning, which gives me +20% each in the following skills: Appraise, Bargain, Disguise, Insight, any two Knowledge skills, Listen, Research, Sense, Spot, Stealth, any one Technical skill, any one Combat skill.

The net effect is to increase the default for the listed skills. Here are the skills, including my choices.

Putting on my GM hat, I’m going to rule that Science (Forensics) is the skill for actually doing lab work. Knowledge (Forensics) covers how not to mess up a crime scene, how to collect evidence, etc.

Step 7: Skill Point Allocation

This step is the longest and most complicated step. Here we allocate two pools of points, Professional Skill Points and Personal Skill Points, among 50+ skills.

In a Heroic-scale setting, Jon has 325 Professional Skill Points, plus the +20 for his extra decade, so 345. Personal Skill Points are equal to INT x 15, exercising the Increased Personal Skill Points option, so Jon has 225. (BRP-UGE pp 11, 16.)

Professional Skill Points may only be spent on skills appropriate to the character’s profession. BRP-UGE pp 22-31 lists a number of professions (interspersed with sidebars and tables). We’ll say that Jon used to be a Detective for the police. This means his professional skills are the following: Firearm (Handgun), Knowledge (Law), Listen, Persuade, Spot, Research, and any four of the following: Art, Brawl, Disguise, Dodge, Drive, Fast Talk, Firearm (any), Grapple, Hide, Insight, Knowledge (any), Language (Other), Language (Own), Medicine, Ride, Science (any), Technical (Computer Use), Stealth, Track.

I’m also going to choose Jon’s Personal Skills at this time. The final tally is the following.

Having done this a few times over the years, one pro tip is to allocate skill points in blocks of 5 or 10.

All points are allocated, and no total skill is over 90% (as appropriate for a Heroic Power Level).

Step 8: Armor and Equipment

Adapting the list on BRP-UGE p 16, Jon has the following:

• A few suits for work, plus some comfortable clothes for his (few) hours off.
• An amount of pocket money and assets appropriate to someone of Average Wealth (the default for a Detective).
• A photo of Jon’s brother, whose murder was never solved.
• A private detective’s badge (he went private) and a rented office containing a computer that can connect to databases for background checks, etc. He probably also owns a camera and some off-the-shelf listening devices.
• A revolver with ammunition, plus a set of silver bullets (just in case).
• A beat up old car, because his city is impossible without a car.

Step 9: Distinctive Features Option

As noted before, at SIZ 9 Jon is short and slender.

BRP-UGE p 25 contains an optional rule to generate distinguishing features randomly, but I’m going to pass for now.

Step 10: Background and Final Pass

Based on the above, we can infer several things about Jonathan Barker.

• He is a small, slightly built man, usually wearing a suit.
• His day job is as a private detective.
• Because of his build and inclinations, he prefers to gather intelligence about a subject, physically tracking them if all else fails.
• He can be very persuasive when he confronts a subject.
• If persuasion doesn’t work, he’s a good shot with a revolver.
• His role in the Lamplighters is to gather evidence, surveil subjects without being seen, and relay that evidence to the Rosewood Covenant Council.
• In a physical confrontation, his main talent is dodging out of the way. He’s no more of a brawler or weapon master than the average man on the street.
• Likewise his Psychic Abilities are not very strong, and oriented more toward information gathering and protection from myriad dangers of the Lamplighter life.

Character Sheet Equivalent

Since the character sheets in the book are likely considered Reserved ORC Content, here’s the equivalent information in a long text block.

Commentary on BRP

Characteristic Rolls

Characteristic rolls for nearly every characteristic are, I believe, new in this edition. Earlier versions had the Luck and Idea rolls, but the others are completely new. I’ll have to delve deeper to understand when to use them and when to use a skill.

Derived Characteristics

Derived Characteristics have changed little in the last forty-ish years since the original system’s debut. Except for the Damage Modifier table, I could do them in my sleep.

A Lot of Skills

Coming back to BRP after a long time away, I was struck by how many skills it has. Granted, BRP-UGE is attempting to fit all genres and all settings, but even with my trimming there are 50+ skills, not including the ones with mandatory specialization. You could consolidate them even more, e.g. group Listen, Sense, and Spot into a single Perception rating. On the other hand, perhaps spreading them out prevents skills from rising too fast under the Experience Check rules.

Furthermore, the defaults for skills seem arbitrary. OpenQuest calculates the default as the sum of two characteristics (usually); Cepheus defines the default of any skill not listed as -3. I had to look up defaults for every skill, although I only really need to do that once.

Finally, I opted not to use Skill Category Modifiers (BRP-UGE p 22) just to keep skills simple. If I had, these would have been the modifiers:

These modifiers would definitely make a difference. Skill modifiers also count toward the cap on initial skills, which in Heroic games is 90%, so I could have shaved off a point or two above. On the other hand, other BRP-based games get along just fine without Skill Modifiers, and Jon is already highly skilled to the point of being overpowered.

Comparison With OpenQuest

Inevitably one compares BRP-UGE to OpenQuest. OpenQuest has a smaller and tighter list of skills, albeit optimized for Bronze Age and Iron Age fantasy. While BRP players use the Experience Check, OpenQuest players gather Growth Points and spend them on improving skills. BRP’s method leads to an arbitrary number of skills advancing based on the number of checkmarks and the success of each roll. Increasing skills becomes harder and harder in BRP as the skills increase, while OpenQuest must impose an asymptotic curve for the Growth Points required for each progressive skill level.

Which is better, I cannot say. Letting skills improve with use appeals to me, but tying advances to goals accomplished during an adventure is equally compelling.

Summary

Honestly I would really like to play BRP again. This new version is heavily based on the Big Gold Book released in 2008, so I doubt there would be much of a learning curve … at least for me. Other players may find the skill list a little too large, skill defaults arbitrary, and the Experience Check system clever but subject to GM determination as to whether the use of a skill was “significant”. I’m convinced, though, that with a little coaxing most players will pick up BRP-UGE far more easily than some of the competition. Its rules are reasonably consistent, with only minor exceptions for special situations and corner cases. I’ve played it off and on, in various editions and iterations, and it truly is a Universal Game Engine.