I'm sorry to hear about your RPG friend dying, particularly in childbirth. That's not supposed to happen in this day and age, dammit! [sigh]

The basic BESM rules are available in a PDF from the Guardians Of Order site. Also the DX corebook, which will serve as a full BESM rulebook including Gamemaster stuffs. I bought a DX corebook (getting back into gaming!) for the convenience factor.

Heh, maybe we should get together an IRC BESM session sometime. Online video gaming is fun and all but paper-and-pencil RPG is an intellectual, rather than hand-eye coordination, exercise.