[smascrns]

Great review but some things deserve commenting:

"A better profession system (from Pendragon) is discovered as an optional rule on p294-295." Well, pages 294-295 has the optional Personality Traits and these are not from Pendragon, they are from the RQ2 campaign Griffin Mountain. Pendragon adapted these to the Arthurian context and turned them into PC descriptors, where in RQ and BRP they are directed towards NPCs.

"Effect explanations are given according to whether the skill check was a fumble, failure, success, special or critical which, along with the description". This is worth noting and highlighting. It is one of the really great features about BRP, one that justifies buying the game even for old-time BRP players. Often games with levels of failure/success just handwave the concrete results of these levels. IMO this is highly anoying and greatly diminishes the interest and playability of such games. BRP has concrete explanations and guidelines on what each level of success-failure for each skill means. 30 years of experience allowed the game designers to be able to go this deep. Even with the shortcoming you point to BRP goes much deeper and further away than any other game I know that uses similar alternative results for ability rolls.

I found it odd that BRP does not have a horror setting, what with CoC and Nephilim on its belt.

"There is also a sense that the game system is showing its age, and hasn't incorporated some of the features which are largely commonplace in design, such as advantage/disadvantage systems for social, personal and physical traits". Here I strongly disagree. I'm glad that BRP did not attempt to "rejuvenate" by going down that line. It would only mean another layer of complexity with no real advantage in game terms, and open to all kinds of ad hoc, poorly considered "coolness" as found in so many games these days. BRP has a very strong core but it is only strong if it sticks to it. I'm glad it does.