It’s pretty wild to look at the original Basic Role-Playing rulebook, all 16-pages of it, and then pick up the hefty modern edition, Basic Roleplaying (2023), which weighs in at 260 gorgeous pages. If there is an overarching trend at Chaosium in the last ten or so years, it seems to be one of refining and perfecting their classic tent pole games, and this is no exception. It’s everything the original booklet promised, and more.

It’s a massive expansion, primarily of “powers” and small mechanical systems for specific situations. In sum, the new material brings BRP in line with something like GURPS, though I think the result is a bit more accessible and…internally modular? By which I mean, I feel like the core GURPS rules are meant to be used in total, with the modularity coming from additional sourcebooks. With BRP, I don’t think there is an expectation of using all of this, but rather the intention is to pick the handful of specific systems that dial the experience in to the parameters of the players.

I really cannot stress enough how beautiful a book this is. Despite the page count and the density of the text, the layout feels open and welcoming. The paper stock has a very nice matte finish that gives the illustrations a richness that I find extremely appealing. And the fact that there is no central setting or theme makes the art a lot of fun. There are no rules! Page after page of illustrations whose primary job is to make the reader wonder “Oooh, how do I do that in a game?” It’s a shame that there aren’t more opportunities in TTRPGs to let artists go off like this. There are, alas, far too many artists to list here, and no clear credits. Loïc Muzy does the cover, though, a riff on da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man (who has been associated with BRP since the equally monstrous 400-page 2008 edition). A different Vitruvian variant (presumably by Muzy) heads up every chapter, which is a nice recurring theme.