A faster BRP

There's no doubt here that Basic Roleplaying is an excellent system that's surprisingly easy for beginners, adaptable, and can support extended play. But even if you were to leap in with the Basic Roleplaying SRD as your compact rules, many of the systems grouped under the OSR label, and early versions of D&D itself, have one significant advantage for new players: it's quicker to roll up a new character and get started.

Now, with a group of interested adults 30–60 minutes rolling characteristics, assigning and calculating skills, deriving HP and MP and the rest, creates a substantial, interesting character sheet that will serve well for a long time. But it would be fun, sometimes, to just create a character and go in half the time or less.

To that end, here are some notes towards faster BRP characters. The skills and professions offered heavily favor fantasy and historical worlds.

Faster characters for Basic Roleplaying

Characteristics

Generate the BRP characteristics—STR, DEX, CON, SIZ, INT, POW, APP—according to the SRD. Calculate Hit Points (HP), Magic Points (MP), and Damage bonus (Db), as well as characteristic rolls, using the same procedures.

Adventuring Skills

The standard BRP skill list is comprehensive but long, and skills are drawn from many incompatible eras. These skills are adjusted for fantasy adventuring.

These skills are common to all characters at the starting percentages given. 

• Jump 45%
• Climb 55%
• Perception 35%: replaces Listen, Spot, Sense, Insight, etc. May also be used to track targets with a suitable profession indicated.
• Stealth 25%: Used for all covert movement and covers hiding also. Hiding (without moving) is generally easier (+20% bonus).
• Swim 30% or DEX x 5 if Lucky or approved by GM as suitable to background.
• Throw 45%
• Brawl 45%: fighting with hands and feet, or commonplace and improvised weapons (knives, sticks, etc.).
• First Aid 45%

Professional Skills

Select a broad profession, and figure the related skills accordingly. 

Warrior

Any martial profession, from soldiers to wandering mercenaries to mounted knights.

• Ride (DEX x 5%): may substitute another mode of transport or Strategy (INT x 5%).
• Warrior (Average STR, INT, DEX) x 5% in 3 weapons (maximum 75%).

Expert

Any profession relying on specialist knowledge and training, from scholars to diplomats, merchants, spies, and performers.

• Literacy INT x 5%
• Expertise (Field) INT x 5%: field may be any area of specialist training: medicine, exploration, trade,  engineering, performance, spy-craft, alchemy, and so on.

Magician

Any profession using magical or spiritual powers. such as wizards, sorcerers, witches, mystics, and so on.

• Literacy INT x 5%
• Spells: define four spells at INT x 3% chance to cast

Rogue

Shadier pursuits, often developing expertise on the opposite side of the law. Rogues may be thieves, burglars, outlaws, or merely drifters who live by their wits.

• Sleight DEX x 5%: replaces the Fine Manipulation skill, and tends towards pick-pocketing, snaffling and concealing small items, and so on.
• Tinker DEX x 5%: crafting and improvising with materials at hand, but also tampering with devices such as locks and traps, forcing chests and windows, and so forth.

Hybrid

With approval, combine two professional skills from two professions. The Magician profession spells are too demanding to master with another profession.

Background Skills

As a finishing touch, distribute INTx5 across all skills, including weapons, which have the same base skill rating as the SRD. Can be used to acquire or improve spells with GM approval.

No skill for a starting character can total more than 75%.

Identity

Record Name, Profession, Background, other personal details.

Back to Basics

Add suitable equipment, and you're now ready to play using any flavor of the Basic Roleplaying rules, although the lightest version can be found in the SRD.

Geting in to Character

 Those who meet at the Many Ways Inn are a curious group, driven by many strange paths to seek adventure, after their fashion.

Every game, free-form or otherwise, rests on the interaction of characters and world. And although the referee is the arbiter of the given world, players and their characters represent the active inhabitants and movers of that world. Player characters are there to question and explore. These questions can reveal even to the referee opportunities and realities that were never before apparent.

Characters briefs: in the world, not the numbers

The peoples of Arihmere, townsman and peasant alike, have long settled within stout walls and hedges.

In a free-form system, characters are not defined primarily by mechanics but the terms of the world itself. 

So, we begin with the character’s descriptive brief: a short summary of abilities, background, and calling.

It’s sometimes useful to throw the dice for inspiration to shape your character's background, but there's always choice and room any character concept that appeals.

Roll or select an attribute, a feature of your character that is distinctive and characteristic.

1. Strong
2. Agile
3. Tough
4. Clever
5. Learned
6. Bold

In the largely feudal realms of Arihmere and about, determine a social station: roll 1d6 low to high, or work out a background with your referee.

1. Outlaw, outcast, or an outlander
2. Serf
3. Peasant
4. Freeholder
5. Wealthy
6. Gentry (petty nobility, knight)

Most individuals come from a manor or village attached to a stronghold, but on a roll of 6 they may originate in a larger city or town.

Weave together station and background with a calling. All along the Wolves Lane, we find those who fight, those who work, and those who study.

1-3: called to toil and trade

4-5: called to arms

6: called to faith and learning

For example, a high station and martial calling would suggest a knight errant. A lower standing a soldier or levy. A peasant, called to toil and trade, may be a sort of crafter, or perhaps a forester. An urban freeholder may well be a merchant or artisan.

Character record

Now we're ready to introduce your character with a few notes and mechanics.

Assign three notable abilities related to to their:

• attributes (characteristics or physical and mental features)
• skills and training related to calling and background
• Player characters have one distinction (a special ability, characteristic, or knack that makes the character unique).

Resilience

For the purposes of play, characters have an initial Resilience rank of [2].

Resilience is used to assess how many major impacts or injuries the character can withstand, and also their general level of ability and expertise.

0: Unranked—weak or untrained

1: lowly — commoners, levies, harriers

2: adventurers (start here) — trained militia, soldiers

3: skilled —veterans, captains, tough creatures

4: experts — strong, deadly

5: masters — champions, exceptional, monsters

6 or more: legendary — heroes, dragons

Solo tinkering — Play all the Books

The Tinkerage has been experimenting with solo roleplaying as a way to test some of the freeform, light and Play the World concepts with house rules and designs.

One unexpected benefit of this approach, which could be brought to multiplayer games, is that you get to play not just your own system but ALL the RPG systems, and so one's collection of gaming books acquires new life when you're not tied to a single rules set. So far I've used Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to generate careers and encounters, BareBones Fantasy to generate missions and locations, Blacksand for Advanced Fighting Fantasy for urban design, adapted Traveller to set up combat ranges, and so on. Now, all the careers, classes, spell-lists, and random mission, encounter, and reward generators scattered across a shelf of game books and systems become relevant and useful again, and help to generate a world and adventures I would never have picked from my own head.

The "system" is free-flowing and based on roll and read principles with other ideas I’ve used here, but structured enough to generate variety and surprises.

For characters, I pick or adapt a handful of basic characteristics from any system that inspires or feels right. In this case, Strength, Dexterity, Intellect, and Will. I roll 2d6 for each characteristic, and a 9+ is "+1" and an 11-12 is "+2"; a 5- would be "-1", but for the sake of playability I would discard a character with a net negative set of characteristics.

Then, from the career or class description (I used a Soldier from Warhammer, rolled at random) I choose a suitable 4-5 skills or talents, and allocate 6-7 points, with +2 the highest single rating.

The player character has 3 Hits, but experimentally I converted each "Hit" to 1d6 hit points, so rolling for a total from 3-18.

For example:
Corporal Angfire, Peasant, Soldier
Strength 6, Agility 9 (+1), Intellect 9 (+1), Will 8
3 Hits (12 hp)
+1 Fight, Cool, Dodge
+2 Marksman

In play, whenever the character is in a spot, a point where I, as player or GM, can't easily judge the outcome, I roll 2d6, and add any modifiers for the character:

• On 7+ the outcome is a bare success, enough to keep the scene moving. The character may still be in trouble.
• A roll of 9+ is decisive.
• 5- is a setback or failure. A hit in combat. 
• A 2-3 indicates severe negative consequences, such as a heavier hit.
• The target roll occasionally shifts to indicate situational risks or advantage, but it is is never less than 5+ or more than 9+.

Most combats are skirmishes, and so only the character rolls to attack and/or defend. If the combat were to be more dangerous or against a single, determined opponent, both sides would roll and compare totals.

As I said, the character's Hits are tallied by hit points, and so damage is also converted to a d6 roll, with armour reducing the hit points lost by a small amount (1–2 points for light to medium protection). Ordinary creatures and opponents just have a fixed number of Hits to take them down.

There are two other rolls I use to represent the uncertainty of a scene in a solo game:
Probability - what are the chances? (1d6):
Very likely 2+
Likely 3+
Possible 4+
Unlikely 5+
Very unlikely 6+

Situation - how good or bad is the current situation? (1d6):
1- Very Bad
2 - Bad
3 - Doubtful
4 - OK
5 - Good
6 - Excellent

So with a light framework and some inspiration it’s possible to play all the books.

Freeform, Light Characters

As outlined in the last post on playing the world with freeform, light rules, creating a character becomes a process of developing a description and highlighting only the significant, to play, attributes.

How might this work?

First, come up with a concept around the role you want to play. This can be a profession, a character type, or even a simple background. Later, you'll attach a name and a short title to this role.

Then, come up with a description of a couple of lines or sentences. This description will include the characteristics (such as deft, tough, cunning) and the skills (swordplay, climbing, crafting) that best fit the role you have in mind, and any quirks that make a character unique.

How to come up with a concept or description and pick skills and characteristics? The freeform technique means that this can be almost anything. You can choose from a book or show that you like. You can draw a picture or choose a miniature, and let what you see be your guide. You can pick up any RPG rules and choose character professions and characteristics and abilities that capture your interest and look playable. You can even roll a few dice for the stats in that rulebook (such as strength, dexterity, intelligence, and so on) and shape your concept around the results.

When you're satisfied with the description, then pick out the notable attributes: from 5 to 7 is a good number. Assign a +2 score to two at most, and +1 to the rest. This does not have to be exact, or add up to given number of points, because it's up to the player and the GM to judge how valuable each attribute might be.

Here are two characters, built using this method, with sketches as inspiration.

Gilbert Lurkerer, professional sneak, is extremely quick and quiet, clever, handy with a short blade or a thrown missile, and an affable gossip.
Quick+2, Quiet+1, Clever +1, Short blades +1, Throw +1, Gossip +1

Temerra Quickfoot, woodlands archer, is uncannily deft and graceful as any of her elven kin. She is a deadly archer, skilled hunter, and master of all the woodlands.
Deft+2, Elvish Grace+1, Deadly Archer+2, Hunter+1, Woodlands+1