What in your opinion is the best generic role playing system?

I honestly like burning wheel and it's ilk for gritty. It's theatrical without the rule bending wackiness that usually ensues with other theatrical rpgs like FATE

It can. In fact it can do anything, but the restrictions are set in the same rulebook: characters must be competent, proactive, and dramatic.

Competent characters means that characters must be actually GOOD at what they do, and they must be the best ones for doing the task they will perform during the game. So, all zero to hero games are a big no no. In gritty games this means they could, say, be elite soldiers in the middle of a war.

Proactive means that characters are actively looking for drama and that the GM isn't supposed to spoonfeed them with the adventure. If nothing is going on, they must be able to self-motivate to progress with their goals.

Dramatic means that characters are ultimately human, and as such they will suffer or feel emotions as humans do. If a character is having a good time you must seek the way to make their life dramatic.

You can do gritty, so long as you meet those three constraints. That said, other games do other sorts of gritty stuff better.

Wild talents. Mostly cause I can do most things half way decently with it, and I really enjoy the flexibility it brings

For me GURPS is not only the best generic RP system, but the best RP system. That's just me though, I understand why some people might not like it but also feel there;s a TON of misconceptions about it.

>wild talents
Ugh

What's wrong with Savage Worlds?

I honestly don't know. The more I play RPGs, the more I become convinced there isn't a good one.

I find that I can do just about anything I need to with Risus.

>Ugh.
BBEG

GURPS is obviously not perfect for every setting, but as a generic system I think it covers a much wider space than FATE does.

GURPS is basically a physics sim. The mechanics are designed to simulate a world. You can mess with the parameters to create whatever world you want, as long as it follows some set of reasonably consistent rules. In other words, it covers pretty much 99% of all fiction, outside of particularly surreal shit.

FATE is more of a narrative sim. The mechanics are designed to simulate a collaborative story: tension, drama, emotional conflicts, etc. The problem is that this defined narrative structure doesn't really work for a lot of fictional styles and settings. It's hard to play a FATE game set in an uncaring universe, because the rules conspire to make you care about the characters, their feelings, their desires, their relationships. It's hard to play FATE in a setting where the characters have low power/agency, because the aspects mechanic inherently gives players a lot of power and open-ended creativity.

GURPS is also much more modular than pretty much any other generic system. If you want to play a teen superhero drama game, you can graft some FATE mechanics onto GURPS. But if you want to play a deadly tactical dungeon crawl in FATE, you can't really add inventory management, grid combat, etc. without fundamentally breaking some of the core FATE mechanics.

That said, GURPS is also pretty absurdly crunchy, and can require a stupid amount of work for both GMs and players. It's not the best system, but it's probably the best truly generic system. Especially if you factor-in how much decent content you can find (compared to the shitty homebrew that plagues most other systems).

GURPS is the only truly universal of all generic, since the remaining ones are much more flavoured and biased toward specific vision. GURPS lacks that almost entirely (Note the word "almost" before saying anything about Ultra Tech) and is also the easiest to use when you want to have characters at different power level in the same campaign. Other generics have serious issues when there is a noticable disparity between characters

Everyone is John.

I'm not even joking. I've run a gamut of games in different settings and at one point I made a campaign out of it that made things go from a "ooo wacky my goal is to masturbate in public" to "I must ensure the safe passage of this family's heir to save what I believe is the only hope for humanity" level of epicness."

I like Strike!.

It just needs a few more editions to hammer out the kinks.

D20 Modern

youtube.com/watch?v=NVGMsTCAyi0

Risus!

3.PF

I'm curious. Why the hate?

Not that guy, but d20 system and levels simply don't mesh with real life or any sort of realistic format, meaning that's one genre out the window. There isn't a level 20 politician who is 19 levels of dramatically better than a level 1 politician.

So it's the premise alone? I can understand that.

Long time ago, I played a D20 Modern space western game. Enjoyed it quite a bit, but then... we didn't really know much else.

>inb4 why shilling strike

>What in your opinion is the best generic role playing system?
Interestingly enough, nobody has ever played a generic role playing system, merely a specific individual instance of one.
Experiences aren't generic, they're specific.

That said,
This.

Mini6!

freeform + one die

>Can FATE do gritty? I've never heard of that working at all well.

It can because the stress / consequences can be adjusted very easily. You could just say that you have to take a consequence each time you get a physical stress level. But it's not really built for it, I admit. However unlike other systems guns don't do set damage. There is really not much equipment-related in the game.

The best generic system is the one you're most comfortable with. The more you play any one generic system the more elegantly you'll be able to use it for whatever you like.

I think it'd be more a matter of having consequences come up more, to really emphasize the lingering hurts as things progress and get a bit more out of hand.

The bennies make the characters' power level entirely dependent on how long you play. For example, we used to play 2 hour sessions yet the game suggests 3 bennies per session and a 4-6 hour session. So we could either reduce it to 1 benny per session (which would make Luck and Great Luck edges that give an extra benny per session, even more powerful than they already are), or just suck it up and deal with it. The bennies really are just another way to make the characters more durable, because dice can explode infinitely, and due to the physics of d4s being nearly impossible to roll properly, you can easily get like four 4s in a row and end up with some fucktarded damage / skill result. And people will say "oh oh well just use d8-shaped d4s" but in that case why not just play another system? The wild die and bennies seem to be there to make sure characters almost never fail a skill check. Wild attacking is incredibly overpowered (a single -2 in return for two +2s), the shotgun gives an inherent +2 to hit which is like a +8 if you were in d20 system. Imagine if a weapon gave you +8 to hit. Why the fuck would you use anything else? The developers know nothing about firearms, they think shotguns are epik boomsticks you don't even have to aim. Three-round-burst rules also give a fuck-huge bonus to hit and damage, despite 3RB barely even being effective in the real world. And you can tell me "oh well it's a pulp game" but then explain to me how even an untrained PC has something like a 75% chance to hit with 3RB on. The developers shit huge-ass +2 bonuses all over their game, despite the fact that it takes place in a small number range (you are roll d4s to d12s for your attacks for the most part, with d6 being the "average" skill/attribute).

Not to mention, the Toughness system is a cool idea for "mooks" to make combat go quickly but for boss fights the game is just absolute shit. You either have to give it a shitton of immunities and crap that barely make sense, or have the creature go down from aggro in the first round. Combat is fast, furious fun! but it's too fucking fast and furious to be fun sometimes.

I could continue but it'll just get tiresome. I haven't even gotten into the trap-option feats the game is chock-full of, and why there are only one type of edge but there are minor/major hindrances. Savage Worlds is full of good ideas that are shittily executed, unelegant system despite having a really elegant core, I still run it and enjoy it but having to houserule so many of the objectively-stupid gun rules just pisses me off to no end.
>It's hard to play FATE in a setting where the characters have low power/agency, because the aspects mechanic inherently gives players a lot of power and open-ended creativity.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the GM still has near-complete control in a FATE game? As in, it is up to him to interpret the results of character actions, thus he can easily control the results to create this tone of "anything you do has potentially shitt consequences"

Apocalypse World might be a better system for that, though.

MiniSix is nice.

d20 modern is okay-ish, it works well for Die-Hard or James-Bond-type superheroics with guns. The game is literally D&D in a modern setting, if you try to use the system for anything else then you are doing it wrong. It's not for gritty investigative campaign or brutal war campaign it's for over the top action with guns. That said the gun rules are shit, I don't care about the wealth system but the gun rules made me have to make a whole page of house rules.

Risus for comedy, Fate for drama, GURPS for realism.

They all have their flaws, but they all have something amazing going for them too.

Roll your D4s properly you lazy faggot.

>but then explain to me how even an untrained PC has something like a 75% chance to hit with 3RB on

Untrained PC is still a figure in a pulp game. The game seems to be designed to keep shit moving, which failed attacks and checks don't facilitate.

>boss fights

In fiction, fights against the final guy don't typically last long either. How many times does Conan or Elric bring some badass motherfucker down in a few swings?