BRP News

The Old School Renaissance owes a huge debt to the release of the d20 System Reference Document and the Open Game License by Wizards of the Coast in 2000. With them, many of our favorite retro-clones, like Labyrinth Lord and Old School Essentials, among many others, would have been impossible (or at least much more difficult) to produce legally, not to mention many other RPGs, adventures, and support materials derivative of the contents and rules of Dungeons & Dragons.

Over the last two decades, other publishers has followed in the footsteps of Wizards of the Coast, making their game rules and content open and available for use by other publishers. The latest to do so is Chaosium, whose celebrated Basic Roleplaying system, originally created for RuneQuest but eventually used in nearly every RPG published by the company, is now offering its own System Reference Document and royalty-free license for use by third parties. You can find all the details at the BRP website.

As long-time admirer of Basic Roleplaying and many of the games Chaosium has produced using a version of BRP, I think this is exciting news. Chaosium already has several community content programs in place that, by all accounts, have produced some excellent materials. With the SRD and license, it's quite possible we'll start seeing whole new BRP games being published, which is remarkable. We've already seen renaissances of interest in D&D and Traveller thanks to similar arrangements; here's hoping the same happens for Basic Roleplaying.