Halfway Station: Review: Basic Roleplaying Universal Game Engine

In a Nutshell: Universal RPG with a d100 roll-under mechanic, published by Chaosium, closely related to Runequest and Call of Cthulhu. 266 page PDF available here for $25 at time of writing. This edition was published in 2023, but the game has been around in one form or another since 1980, when it was a mere stripling, a 16-page introductory booklet for Runequest, the kind of thing which today we'd probably call a quickstart or test drive.

Core Mechanics

When you try to do something, roll percentile dice. If the result is less than or equal to the relevant skill level, or 5x the relevant characteristic value, you succeed. Exceptionally low rolls are critical successes, very high ones are fumbles.

Opposed rolls are usually handled by the Resistance Table, which effectively means you have a base 50% chance of success, +5% for each point by which your relevant characteristic exceeds your opponent's relevant characteristic - the two characteristics may be different.

Introduction (8 pages): What is roleplaying, in both extended and TL: DR formats; responsibilities of the player and the GM; advantages of BRP as a system (chiefly, it's flexible, consistent, and easy for beginners to learn); glossary of terms; what you need to play.
Characters (24 pages): This begins by talking about the four power levels of the game - normal, heroic, epic, and superhuman; the GM needs to select one before the players can design PCs, as it determines how many skill points they have to spend and their maximum skill level. There are seven basic characteristics - Strength, Constitution, Power, Dexterity, Charisma, Intelligence, Size - which are rolled on 3d6 or 2d6+6, and half a dozen optional rules to tailor that step to a specific setting, including the optional Education characteristic. Powers are touched on lightly, but see the Powers chapter below for that. Then we work out the PC's age (typically around 20 when they enter play) and derived characteristics, such as hit points. Next, choose one of 44 professions (which determines the PC's skills and wealth level) and allocate the appropriate number of skill points across them, as determined by the campaign's power level. Possessions and wealth are abstract, basically you begin with whatever a PC in your profession ought to have, as agreed with the GM.
Skills (20 pages): There are nearly 60 skills, many of them with specialties which are effectively different skills. Each has a description, a category, a base chance of success for untrained PCs, a list of specialties if applicable, any specific effects of criticals and fumbles, and if necessary, notes on setting-specific applications and which rules sections are especially relevant. I liked this chapter for its concise thoroughness; I disliked the number of skills and specialties. The chapter also provides tables of social status and associated wealth by historical era.
Powers (56 pages): It's entirely possible for a game to ignore Powers altogether, but if they are in use, there are several possibilities; magic, mutations, psychic abilities, sorcery and superpowers. Some of those cast spells as if they were skills, some of them use the Resistance Table. Powers are grouped into power sets, and how many power sets a PC can know depends on the game's power level. Each type of powers is discussed, including how it works, what it costs to cast, how to cast, what powers and power sets are known by beginning PCs and how to learn more, and so on. There are also lists of roughly 30 powers for each type, including the range, duration, cost and effects of each; unusually, mutations can be disadvantages rather than advantages. Superpowers are the most complex, due to the character failings (which would be hindrances or disadvantages in most systems), power modifiers, and the dozen or so energy types to be controlled, resisted and so forth. Optional rules include familiars and wizards' staves.
System (14 pages): This expands on the core mechanics to include special successes (better than ordinary, not as good as critical), assisted skills, opposed skills, situational modifiers, fate points (an option for using power points as metacurrency to affect rolls or the narrative), time intervals, movement rates, encumbrance, character improvement, aging.
Combat (16 pages): Combat is handled in rounds, each of which has four phases. Characters first announce what they intend to do, in decreasing order of Dexterity. Then those using powers do so, in descending order of Intelligence. Next, characters perform physical actions such as movement or attacks in decreasing order of Dexterity. Finally, attacks are resolved; to land a blow, you must succeed on an attack roll and your target must also fail to parry or dodge the blow. If you hit, roll weapon damage, possibly including your PC's damage bonus, deduct target armour value, and whatever's left reduces the target's hit points, and may have other effects depending on the target's major wounds threshold.
Spot Rules (18 pages): These are all the niggly little rules that come into play every so often, but aren't part of the experience in every session; ambushes, chases, poison, quick draw, mass combat - that sort of thing.
Equipment (34 pages): This uses an abstract system for pricing, as that can vary so much within and between settings. Each item has a Value, and so long as the PC's Wealth level is at least that good, he can have one; if it's above his level, a roll is required. Some items are Restricted, meaning you need a licence to own one. This chapter goes into some detail on what starting gear a PC has, especially if they are spellcasters, then moves on into the usual lists and tables; weapons (including artillery and explosives), armour, vehicles, books, tools, poisons, etc.
Gamemastering (14 pages): Unusually, rather than banning players from this section, the chapter simply states there's nothing here of use to them. It speaks to players, group size, advantages or on-shots vs campaigns, settings; how to get started, how to teach the rules, how to design campaigns and adventures, GM techniques. Here, we also find a complete checklist of optional rules, allowing the GM to mix and match them more easily to their game.
Settings (16 pages): This chapter talks about settings, effectively genres, listing the suitable character and power types for each, together with notes on available technology and typical adventures. It explains which optional rules go well with which settings, and adds rules for allegiances, passions, reputation and sanity.
Creatures (30 pages): It's a bestiary, what can I tell you; mostly the fantasy stalwarts, although it does nod towards the more common SF creatures. It's worth noting, though, that creatures are statted up in the same way as PCs, including random dice rolls for stats; this makes it unusually easy to use creatures as playable races. Statblocks are concise, but even so take up about a quarter page each, mostly due to the skills and special abilities. There are notes on customising NPCs and creatures.
Appendices (3 pages): Conversion notes for other Chaosium games, which mostly use a very similar system, and a bibliography (ludography?) of them.

...and we close with an index and character sheet.

What I Liked

The product is available under the Open RPG Creative (ORC) licence. That's not likely to be something I use personally, but it shows an attitude to 3rd party products ("go ahead and use it so long as you credit us") of which I strongly approve.
This edition of BRP unifies the various forks of the system which have been used in various games, largely through the use of optional rules.
Multiple options for character creation, including point buy and various levels of randomness.
How skills are improved; essentially, if you successfully use a skill in an adventure, the next time you rest up, roll again, and if you fail, add 1d6 % to the skill level. This is an extremely elegant way of showing diminishing returns.

What I Didn't Like

The character sheet is two pages of A4, which is bigger than I like. Admittedly it has almost everything you need as a player on it, so it doubles as a quick reference sheet.
Hit locations, each of which has different hit points; I dislike these in general. However, this edition mitigates this by relegating them to an optional rule, and allowing you to ignore them completely. Which I would.
Skill specialties, another red flag for me as it greatly multiplies the number of skills a PC needs to acquire to be competent.
Rolling to parry or dodge attacks, which I consider an unnecessary complication of the attack sequence. Is it realistic? Probably. Slower? Definitely. More fun? Not in my opinion.
Multiple different damage types and wound level thresholds. More realistic? Probably. Slower? Yes. More fun? Not for me.

What I Think

Goodness, there are a lot of optional rules. It looks like you could tweak the game for any setting; it also looks like you would need to spend some time thinking about which optional rules are worthwhile for your game.

Combat is unnecessarily slow and complex for an allegedly basic RPG. All of the options presented would further slow and complicate it, I didn't notice a way of speeding it up.

I've often felt there is a natural law that so long as people are paying to buy a game system, it will inevitably grow larger and more complex. BRP supports that theory, being more than ten times the size now that it was to begin with, and with sufficient complexity in the form of optional rules to make my eyes glaze over.

So perhaps we've now reached the stage where we need a Basic Basic Roleplaying? A shorter 15-20 page version to introduce people to the game? (Ducks for cover.)

I can see that it's a good system, flexible and easy to understand, but character generation and combat - the two staples of RPG rules for my games - are both quite involved, and overall the game system is too complex for me. I'd play it, but I don't see myself running it so long as I have other options.