Emmet Asher-Perrin’s worthy obit for Steve Perrin mentions such Perrin-related projects as Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, Thieves’ World, Elfquest, Robot Warriors, and (of course!) Superworld. One fascinating Perrin work that often goes unmentioned, probably due to the fact that it has become a comparatively obscure work, is 1982’s groundbreaking Worlds of Wonder. You may not have encountered it, but odds are that you’ve seen and played later games that it inspired or influenced.
The 9½ x 12 x 1 inch box for this game contained four 16-page booklets1: Basic Role-Playing, Magic World, Superworld, and Future World.2 Assisting Steve Perrin were Steve Henderson, Gordon Monson, Greg Stafford, Lynn Willis and others. Roleplaying game design tends to be a team effort.
Basic Role-Playing (or BRP) was a setting-free distillation of the core game engine used in Runequest. Runequest 2nd edition (the one with hypno-boob cover art) was 120 pages long. This rulebook is just 16 pages; it’s a very lean presentation focusing on essentials. For those unfamiliar with the BRP family of games, BRP is skill-based and doesn’t use classes or levels. It focuses (for the most part) on human-level characters. Players more familiar with the robust characters provided by roleplaying games like D&D, Champions, or 13th Age will be surprised and delighted at the fragility of BRP characters! 3
Magic World expands on BRP. adding rules appropriate for a fantasy setting. This is where one discovers how magic (or at least one version of magic; Chaosium would offer many more versions in decades to come) works in BRP. As well, this book provides the stock elements (weapons and monsters) of standard faux-medieval-Europe fantasy settings.
Future World (or alternatively, Future-World) adds rules appropriate for a science fiction setting, one in which interstellar gates have given humans and other species access to the stars without the bothersome necessity of starships or star maps. When one has just 16 pages to explain settings and rules, one has to eschew inessentials. Characters are offered six career paths (paths reminiscent of Traveller’s). Characters may be human or non-human (perhaps one of the species unfortunate enough to have been subjugated by humans). An equipment list—not all of it weapons—is provided.
Finally, there is Superworld, which adapted BRP to the four-colored world of spandex-clad comic superheroes. Superworld was the exception to the rule that BRP characters are human level. A points-based system not unlike 1981 Champions provided the mechanism by which Superworld characters could be enhanced far beyond human limits.
Worlds of Wonder is the first time I encountered an attempt at setting forth that grail of roleplaying games, the universal roleplaying system.4 Given a robust core rule system, one need only provide setting-specific expansions, expansions that would let RPGers play in any genre they liked. They could even cobble together campaigns spanning several genres.5
There may have been earlier attempts at universal roleplaying systems. I don’t know of any, but I’m sure that if there were some, I will find out all about them in the comments.
While quite lean by modern standards, Worlds of Wonder was entirely functional. I played the hell out of it, even going so far as to experiment with trans-genre campaigns. For various reasons the Worlds of Wonder model wasn’t followed by other WOW books for other genres. It was, however, the basis for many BRP-derived RPGs (including a free-standing game based on Superworld).
It may not have been a vastly lucrative venture, but it certainly proved that there was potential in universal systems. Plus, I had a lot of fun playing it, which is the main thing.
Although…perhaps it would be more accurate to say Worlds of Wonder was not followed up at the time. Chaosium’s recently announced Questworlds will feature its own line of Worlds of Wonder genre packs. I for one am quite eager to see them.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and the Aurora finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is a four-time finalist for the Best Fan Writer Hugo Award and is surprisingly flammable.
[1]The box also included ancillary material like dice, a map, cardboard figurines, and reference table booklet.
[2]You may note that the cover lists that last as “Future-World.” No two of the games use the same naming convention. I was and am far too adult to have been irked by inconsistency; I am not now glowering at the box cover.
[3]“Call of Cthulhu” extended the delights of BRP characters’ comparative fragility by adding game mechanics documenting the nigh-inevitably decline of characters’ sanity. Now there was another way to lose a character! Skim the wrong magical tome (“Necronomicon” and its ilk) and pffft.
[4]I would go so far as to call it a *great* universal roleplaying system were the initials not so misleading. Trust me, this is hilarious. …Be happy I didn’t include “Hârn” jokes.
[5]I’ve since come to believe that fitting godlike characters and mundanes into the same game is nearly impossible. Either the mundanes become mechanically indistinguishable from each other or the godlike characters have absurd stats. Feel free to prove me wrong in the comments.
Because I know you care! Chaosium did have a later product called Magic World. Unlike Superworld, it does not appear to be an expansion of WoW’s Magic World but rather a re-use of the title for rules drawn from such Chaosium games as Elric/Stormbringer.
(crickets)
The BRP family of roleplaying game _are_ similar enough that porting elements from one to another can be done with a little work, so if you have a well-stocked Chaosium library–and really, who doesn’t?–you can see what Wendy Pini’s elves make of Speaker-to-Animals and you can provide all too curious CoC investigators with a chance to interrogate Stormbringer.
Putting godlike characters and mundanes into the same game is do-able, just not in the same campaign. Or the same stage of it anyway. D&D’s “Against the Giants” takes characters from mundanes who might lose a stand-up fight with an irate housecat all the way to (if they hit just the right rolls and objects) demi-god status.
I think that you can avoid the *particular* problems mentioned with putting demigods and mortals together (indistinguishable mortals or absurdly statted demigods) in a couple of different ways. Logarithmic systems (like the old DC systems) can keep even the demigods’ numbers to a reasonable level, for one, and finding other ways to reflect the demigods’ powers besides huge numbers (ala Exalted) for another.
That’s not to say there aren’t other problems with the idea. You still get the “why does Superman need these other guys around” problem, for example. I suspect it might be possible with very careful balancing and players who are very okay with letting the spotlight shine elsewhere–maybe you’ve got a combat heavy game with an assortment of skilled swordsmen and the God of Smarm, who handles the social needs of the whole group but is mostly a source of comedy during the much more common fighting scenes.
In the old Mayfair DC game, how different could Jimmy Olsen’s stats be from Lois Lane’s? Over in Champions, 50 point normals tended to have Str 13, Dex 13 or 14, Con 13, SPD 4 and so on…
@5: “Street level” characters such as Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane tend to suffer in logarithmic games such as Mayfair’s DC Heores or Green Ronin’s Mutants & Masterminds. Pulp heroes (Tarzan, Doc Savage, John Carter) are about as low as you can go and still really differentiate the characters. Pulp-tier Batman operates on the Justice League by having specific skills that God-tier characters like Superman lack (Stealth, tech, intimidation), or by lacking vulnerabilities specific to the God-tier characters (Batman laughs in the face of your kryptonite… Then he punches you in the face). But yeah, they’re not good systems for fully fleshed-out street-tier characters.
I never played any of Chaosium’s Worlds of Wonders settings, but looking back have to agree that the concept changed RPG design. Other generic systems started showing up a few years after WoW, as well as efforts to turn genre-specific systems like Champions into generic systems like Hero. So, well done, Steve and friends.
For those unfamiliar with BRP, two important details: Unlike many [1] other early rpgs, there was nothing like classes so given the right circumstances, any character could try their hand at anything. Also unlike a lot of other games, while one could extend the range and proficiency with many things, this for the most part did not apply to stats. Thus, an experienced warrior of sixty years would be very good at parrying and slashing but he’d have to be because just like some untrained youth [2] it would only take one good hit to part head from shoulders.
See also “Armor: good!”
1 See also Traveller, but there it was balanced by the near total lack of an experience system.
2: Speaking of said untrained youth: whereas your 13th fighter could mow his way through crowds of commoners, an experienced BRP character would discover the novice with connect with a few blows and it only takes one or two to kill a BRP character. Which gets us to “words, and why we should use ours.”
@wiredog: lose a stand-up fight with an irate housecat
You must never have seen what kind of damage an irate housecat can do! Those guys have a lot of strength for their size, go from purr in your arms (note proximity to your face) to all teeth and claws in no-seconds-flat, and they don’t stand still to be punched, or hit with something.
I once picked up a fluffy wee feral kitten with my bare hands to transport it to a carrier I immediately wished was much closer to me than it actually was. So many teeth and claws. And I could not set the kitten down or it would have run off. It was surprisingly near the top of my list of maulings I should have been more careful to avoid, given how small the kitten was.
(A week later, it was an indolent murder muffin, graciously allowing humans to pet and feed it)
I once rescued what I thought was an ancient street cat, only to discover it was six month old kitten lacking in common sense and most feline social skills (thus 3 1/2 legs and all the battle scars: other cats found Eddie off-putting). Once he was eating regularly, though, he turned into this amazing lump of muscle. I discovered just how strong when he wedged himself between me and the back of a chair and proceeded to push me forward until he had most of the chair. If his legs had been longer, I think he could have pushed me off it entirely.
I’ve seen three problems that universal systems tend to have at least one of:
– They break at high power levels, (e.g. giving characters enough points to be a flying brick means they can afford a persuasion skill high enough to convince entire nations to enthusiastically name him God-Emperor for life).
– They have resolution issues at low power levels, (e.g. a beat cop and a bedridden octogenarian have physical stats only differing by 1 at most).
– They require you to pick a power level and characters built for different campaigns are incompatible, (e.g. in a high school hi-jinks game a body of 10 is an Olympic athlete, but in a supers game that same athlete has a body of 4).
I hadn’t realized Perrin designed Robot Warriors, which was one of my favorite Hero-system spinoff games. Which also reminds me that the Hero system – games derived from Champions with point-based stat generation – could also be considered a universal system, using the same stats and system for fantasy, pulp, SF, spy, etc.
This did lead to a a different version of the hero-scaling problem alluded to above – fairly reaslistic stats for modern weapons combined with the Marvel-level characters of Champions meant that a normal character with a 7.62mm automatic rifle, let alone a RPG or grenade launcher, was a very very serious threat to most superheroes.
Yeah, even a 250 point brick needs to be cautious around Barrett M82s. Particularly if the GM uses hit location. Brace, set, called-shot head…
Great read. I’ll gladly read more articles on Perrin.
The greatest feature of these universal percentile systems he helped create like RuneQuest and BRP are that porting in other rules you like from other edition or systems is a snap.
The difficulty is that they are reliant on a gamemaster willing to put in the effort to make it all work.
I think a lot of RPG systems have a “Sweet spot” where characters are interacting well with threats and the environment and each other, but too far away from that, they start to break down, unless a system makes allowances for things like retiring (e,g. PBTA games do this, or allow a Second Character). So the game that tries to run 1st and 20th level characters at the same time can show some wear in the seams
@bmac #11
Hero Games even did an article that opened with the question “why isn’t the army out dribbling supervillains like basketballs?”
Their answer boiled down mainly to two points: First, that supers often had attacks/defenses that would cause all kinds of problems for a conventional opponent. Second, and more importantly, supers make even rapid deployment units look like snails.
It’s a real shame that there was never a good SF RPG based on BRP. I exclude the Ringworld RPG which went out of its way to limit its scope by having only one setting, the Ringworld itself, and wasn’t even usable as a Known Space RPG because it gave no details of the rest of its universe. I suspect someone signed a contract that was WAY too restrictive…
I remembered Ringworld the RPG as being very RW-specific but when I reviewed it in 2015 discovered that there was enough info to run a Known Space campaign if one wanted to. That said, there’s no cap on age-related skill acquisition in RWtRPG, which may be disconcerting to BRP GMs used to skills being less than 100 percent.
My coffee is still making its way into my bloodstream so I may be overlooking games but I’ve read at least a couple of interesting BRP-adjacent RPGs: Other Suns, whose system isn’t BRP but shares enough similarities that it’s easy to pick up, and M-Space, which has a very interesting take on resolving conflicts. Actually, I had a list of BRP and BRP-adjacent SFRPGs for an abortive review project:
My current list of candidates was:
BRP Mecha
Chronicles of Future Earth
Cthulhu Rising
Elfquest
End Time
Fractured Hopes
Future World
Hawkmoon
High Colonies
Laundry
Luther Arkwright
M‑Space
Mission to Epsilon
Mutant
Once Men
Operation Ulysses
Outpost 19
Other Suns
Ringworld (Already reviewed)
River of Heaven
Rubble and Ruin
Star Wars (RQ6)
Swords of Cydoria
Worlds Beyond
Ringworld had a lot of information on Known Space, but more importantly, there was a lot more material in the pipes. But then the license was suddenly sold to someone else, and Chaosium had to scrap the already mostly written expansion with dolphins and more Known Space, and scrap all plans on continuing. The license was fine, it was just a bit mismanaged by Niven’s agent. The whole story can be found in the Niven group on FB.
Actually, I had a list of BRP and BRP-adjacent SFRPGs for an abortive review project
Does the FASA Star Trek game count? IIRC that was percentile-skills-based, though not directly BRP.
Sentinels of the Multiverse deals with godlike and talented normals working together by having a compressed power scale based on die types. For actions ranging from combat to task resolution, characters use a dice pool consisting three dice from the Powers, Qualities, and Current Status categories (different characters get different dice based on how how dire the situation is). The dice range from D6 to D12, with the twist being that the middle die value is used.
So in playn a Exiled Demigod character could have D12 in Cosmic Power and 1D8 in ranged combat, and her pal the Ninja Girl could have 1D10 in Agility and 1D10 in Close Combat, while the current environment gives both of them a status die of D8. One rolls D12/D8/D8, and the other 1D10/1D10/1D8 The bottom line being both are probably going to in the same range, and a lot of the difference is going to come from unrolled character elements like background and character fiction.
It sounds like it’s short-selling the godlike characters, but in actual play it works wel, and it really does give the feeling of a team like the Avengers or Teen Titans whereeveryone contributed.
20: I think I tried to roll up a character for a ST campaign that didn’t launch but I don’t remember the details well enough to say how it compares to BRP.
Big BRP News! Fria Ligan (Alien RPG, Tales from the Loop RPG, Coriolis RPG and others) has acquired the rights to Drakar och Demoner AKA Dragons and Demons. In its initial edition, DoD was BRP + Magic World, although it has evolved some since then.