I think I'm becoming a BRP Fanboy

[Dstack1776]

[Fanboy mode on]
Of late my gaming group which had been stable for years had a massive exodus of people moving for jobs and family reasons - sometimes out of the country. We made a conscious choice to keep gaming and invested in Fantasy Grounds.

Having wanted to play Call of Cthulhu for years and having had some success with Mongoose Runequest II we went ahead and kicked off our Call of Cthulhu campaign. I'm a person who loves funky systems - I've been aching to play FATE for years, I love the system of Bennies and powers in Savage Worlds. I was sorely tempted to play Trail of Cthulhu - indeed we probably will at some point - it has a lot of stuff I like.

What has been awesome however is how well the Call of Cthulhu game has gone. I wasn't sure I'd be too crazy about a system that "fades into the background" but it has worked amazingly well for us. I've made very few rules tweaks - occasionally halving or doubling a skill for difficulty, a rule mentioned in one of the Keeper Compendiums and we've used the idea I've seen here - that in critical clue situations a failed skill roll can mean a success with a complication. In our most recent game I had a player who made the comment - "hey I think I only rolled twice in this session" - and he meant it as a good thing.

I've also been pleased to see what sort of behaviors the system has encouraged. We took a break in the springtime to do a few D&D 4e sessions and while they were quite fun, players really focused on the character sheets to determine what they could do. In our CoC game the players have been super innovative. I was most impressed with a moment in our most recent game when they encountered a Servitor of the Outer Gods in a cavern hidden under a barn. I was convinced that this encounter would result in a blood-bath. As the Servitor began using its flute to call down a magical darkness they took the opportunity to get the hell out of there, barricade the entrance to the cavern, and burn the barn down! One player mentioned "we're only marginally better than your average person - if I see a sanity-bashing monster I'm going to run like hell".

[chicklewis]

Good story !!

[WiseWolf]

[Fanboy mode on]
As the Servitor began using its flute to call down a magical darkness they took the opportunity to get the hell out of there, barricade the entrance to the cavern, and burn the barn down! One player mentioned "we're only marginally better than your average person - if I see a sanity-bashing monster I'm going to run like hell".

LOL. Good stuff. Welcome to our loved and fragil world.

[synthboy]

Classic! Sounds like you and your players are really getting into the whole CoC thing.

[Max_Writer]

Sounds great. I think the BRP is one of the best systems out there (so I'm in fanboy mode as well).

[Dstack1776]

Amusingly I've had some form of Call of Cthulhu since I was in High School (I'm turning 40 in less than a week) but only as of last autumn did I kick off a long-term campaign, aside from the occasional one-shot here and there. I still absolutely love my original edition of the rules - my parents got me the Third Edition Games Workshop Hardcover for Christmas back when I was in High School. Those color plates and sample adventures were drilled into me (indeed the adventure I mention up above was from that book, a nice southwestern adventure in Castronegro, New Mexico...)

What I've found in my advancing years is that while I don't like absolute free-form gaming, the more a game defines things the more along those lines players (at least those I've gamed with) will operate. I've been finding BRP a nice mix of guidelines without rigid definitions. And as a result I've seen players really think about what their characters would do and they are very prepared to improvise. The number cruncher/realist in me keeps telling me that a percentile system is inferior to a bell curve with modifiers (i.e. GURPS, Hero) but then we actually sit down and play and it slips elegantly into the background.

[Max_Writer]

Agreed. I have a 3rd edition boxed set that I got in middle school (I think). I continued to get various books and supplements as they were so much fun to read. But I never ran it until 2007 - and I'm 45, so you can see how long it languished on my shelf.

[Beast]

I love BRP for at least two reasons - it is very easy to learn yourself and teach to new players and it never gets in the way of roleplaying. As a bonus it is very adaptable to any setting or playstyle.

[Mr. Bill]

In our most recent game I had a player who made the comment - "hey I think I only rolled twice in this session" - and he meant it as a good thing.

One of my players said something very along those lines after our last session - and they're all boardgamers, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear he felt that way.