Hey, I made an alignment chart for universal systems to help me organize my thoughts about what the differences are...

Seconding Really all of it

>Savage Worlds should be GN. Gritty=/=realistic, and SW is pretty lethal.
I explicitely said that Grittiness/Heroism isn't necessarily lethality, it just often implies lethality. Grittiness/Heroism is the degree to which the PC's are fundamentally different from the non-PC elements of the world. In SW, the PC's are built on the same chassis, but the Bennies and/or any mechanic that separates the PC's from the mooks and the ELITE NPC's at-least makes it neutral. I was actually going to use SW as an example of how Grittiness/Heroism isn't EXPLICITELY a measure of lethality, just a measure of how Different the PC's are from the world around them.
>FAE should be HL
Despite Fate-Points being a thing, FATE PC's have the same basic construction chassis as FATE NPC's. Lasers+Feelings (and the five million clones you see everywhere doing everything from fantasy to cyberpunk) has PC's who have completely different stats than the world around them, if for no other reason than everything that's not a PC is simply a challenge with a DC, rather than a seperate entity with a stat.
>LARPing just doesn't fit here. Replace it with LotFP or something
Eh, I honestly don't think ANYTHING fits there, even LotFP (which it too crunchy for Rules-Light collum)
>GURPS's pick and choose nature kind of defies classification.
It looks like that at first, but the hyper-simulationist nature of GURPS informs a certain type of gameplay. The system itself absolutely relegates it to the Crunchy Collum.... it's mathy as fuck, no matter how many subsystems are added, and while I would concede that some of the action-movie style books might be able to bump it from GC to NC, GURPS is never going to run Heroic-style games: that's just not what it's for. Part of the point of the chart was to point out that, even if they're setting-neutral, every system can't run every type of game, because the type of game you run is so much more than the superficial genre of the setting.

>You have non-generic non-universal systems here: DnD obviously isn't
Well 4e is sharing a space with STRIKE! which is indeed a generic system, and I've seen many people use 4e as a generic system. As long as the setting allows melee to be a viable option compared to ranged, doesn't have flight before "epic" play, and is okay with the PC's being the BigDamnProtagonistsTM, it can run that setting. This is a result of the extreme separation of rules and fluff. In this way, 4e and STRIKE! are very much sister systems that can largely do the exact same things, and I kind of lump them together in my mind like 3e and PF, except one of them is intentionally Generic, and the other is unintentionally. IF you're talking about "D20" when you say D&D, then you clearly didn't walk through a Borders in the early 00's, because literally every book was [Insert Genre]D20. They even made a fucking CoCd20.
>you should have PbtA rather than Apocalypse World
Apocalypse World logo was easier to find, and it's pretty obvious what I meant.

>I would also argue that the distinction between heroic and gritty is pretty bullshit.
IDK man, if anything, when selecting a system to run a game, that's the most important thing I think of first: "On a scale of 'Just Like Everyone Else' to 'Destined Heroes' How special do I want the PC's to be in this campaign." One of the biggest reasons I've seen campaigns fall flat is people trying to a gritty game in a heroic system or vice versa (people trying to run OSR-style dungeon-crawling-survival in 4e, and people trying to run "Heroes of destiny save the world" in 5e come to mind as tone-deaf system choices.

What if I want to play a spy game, with almost no combat? Or a Mad Max game based around war-cars? 4e is a heroic fantasy hack and slash game which can be refluffed, but is not a generic system.

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

>GURPS is never going to run Heroic-style games: that's just not what it's for.

Literally done it before though. It's not even hard with just the basic rules. The system defaults to heroic realism.

Not any harder than it shills any other Generic system? For every "what system should I use for this" thread there's always a Gurpsfag, a SWfag, a FATEfag, and a STRIKE!fag. Maybe the STRIKE!fags are more apparant to you because they also show up in edition wars and the 4Eg, and really any thread in which 4e is discussed in depth, because STRIKE! was explicitely made with 4E as inspiration.

Veeky Forums has a contingent of people for any given generic system who will suggest that generic system for literally everything. STRIKE! is no different, it's just newer... it's also not magically less limited in tone than any other generic system.

4e and Strike! sharing a spot is kinda weird cause the latter is massively simplified compared to the former. I guess you could argue that even with that it's still pretty crunchy.

>Or a Mad Max game based around war-cars?

Strike! has a supplement for that. The gist of it is that you stat your cars as characters using some modified rules.

It's a meme, don't take it seriously. Also, you don't need to capitalize.

>tfw a GURPS and FATE fag

No game is beyond my capabilities.

>What if I want to play a spy game, with almost no combat?
Then you're probably not going to be looking at the Crunchy column to begin with. However, an OTT spy game with kung-fu fighting every five minutes could work just fine with reflufed 4e.
>Or a Mad Max game based around war-cars?
I'd probably reccomend the entire upper left 4square of systems.
>4e is a heroic fantasy hack and slash game which can be refluffed
More like 4e is a combat heavy tactical miniatures game with a focus on "a cut above" PC's and no dependency on fluff whatsoever. There's nothing in the mechanics that makes it necessarily fantasy other than the flavor text for powers. Flavor-text is not a system, and doesn't obligate a DM/GM in any way.

You might have a bit of trouble running a game that's high on both Crunch and Heroism, but then again you might be that one GURPSfag who's so adept with the system that he knows the one obscure combination of subsystems from five different obscure GURPS books that begins to make PC's feel truly heroic in GURPS. I've never seen it done, but I don't want to deny the possibility out of hand either.

It would entirely depend on your definition of heroic. Real world heroism? Totally, the game flourishes when the players are Delta Operatives fighting against the clock and a small nation's entire military to secure a dirty bomb about to be sold to Mummahed Bin-Badi, or that scene from Lord of the Rings with Boromir. If it means 'Chinese warrior destroyed entire army dynasty warriors style', then it requires you to nix most of the strengths of the system to get working.

The middle ground isn't too hard either, but you still have to nix a few things that are really shine in GURPS and it's just a shame.

D6 is still the best system ever created

There is indeed something to be said for the fact that Shadowrun 4th was basically just a well playtested D6-system hack. That's a big mark in D6's favor.

Okay if people see rule systems like that, no wonder they think that traveller (CT and MgT1) is very crunchy

So to define your categories, in Heroic systems the PCs have access to mechanical abilities or character creation options most NPCs don't, while in Gritty systems they're built just like most NPCs with nothing special. In Rules Light systems there's very little math and it's easy to make and play characters, while in Crunchy systems there's more math and more complexity with making characters and playing the game.

I think that's an alright 'alignment system'. It's no better or worse than Good/Evil and Law/Chaos from D&D, which is both the best praise and the worst insult I can lay against it.

I've read all of Strike, it's absolutely Crunchy. This table doesn't even list what you get at 1st level and it still introduces four kinds of non-combat merits, a kind of disadvantage (but not really), and four kinds of combat merits. The game's combat section is over 50 pages long and that's not including all the supplemental classes floating around out there. I'd honestly argue that the 4E Player's Handbook is less complicated that Strike!, and Gamma World 7E (which uses a modified version of D&D 4E's rules) is much, much more simple than Strike! (and does tactical combat better too).

Strike! is a terrible first game for anyone, and its simplicity/speed/elegance only emerges once everyone at your table knows the rules inside and out. Which, one can argue, is true of most tabletop games.

Kit and Reputation is an optional track, as both are optional sub-systems that you don't have to use (and imo, shouldn't, they are not very good).

That leaves you with just trick/feat/complication over powers. Feats are in 4e, and tricks are analogous to utilities.

Meanwhile, the game rips out things like stats, the four different types of defenses, or even healing surges, uses a lot lower numbers (if at all, since you could probably count on one hand when you have to use numeric modifiers over advantage/some other method), doesn't even have (or care about) things like equipment lists, the defined skill list etc.

At some point it comes down to your opinion on what you consider or don't consider "crunchy", but the sheer amount of stuff it removes I think makes it hard to argue that it's "just as" crunchy as 4e. There's a lot less to learn if you are absolutely new, a lot less to keep in mind, less roles to make and less numbers to add.

Then again, here we are. I get the impression you were familiar with D&D before playing 4e/Amma World and you simply didn't even consider any of the aforementioned things in there to be "new rules" and accepted them par for course. Then when you looked at Strike!, you were confronted with unfamiliar rules, new things to learn, and hence consider that "more complicated" because, for you, there's more new things to learn than when compared to 4e/Gamma World.

With enough character points you can make absurdly powerful superheroes that don't take shit from anyone in GURPS. It's not even that hard.

>I get the impression you were familiar with D&D before playing 4e/Amma World and you simply didn't even consider any of the aforementioned things in there to be "new rules" and accepted them par for course. Then when you looked at Strike!, you were confronted with unfamiliar rules, new things to learn, and hence consider that "more complicated" because, for you, there's more new things to learn than when compared to 4e/Gamma World.
Your impression is incorrect. Furthermore, I object to your line of reasoning, implying that I think 4E/GW7 is simple because I'm familiar with D&D and that I'm judging Strike! harshly because I have to 'learn new rules'. Don't paint me like a fanboy in his insular cocoon who can't appreciate any game outside his comfort zone.

Strike! is a crunchy and complicated game. To say that it's overall less complicated than 4E D&D is true but misleading, it's like saying that cardboard tastes better than dirt - technically correct but only due to what you're comparing it against.

I don't hate Strike!. I think it has some good ideas and can be fun to play every now and then. But to be honest, it's people like you who spoil my feelings on the game. I can't have a reasonable and critical discussion about a game -I like- without someone telling me how Strike! is great and I'm wrong and dumb and don't get it. You're making yourself, and the game, look bad by taking such an adversarial approach. Chill out, listen to constructive criticism, and keep an open mind.

Speaking of constructive criticism, one way to present Strike! in a much simpler manner would be to reformat the book. Colours are often jarring, language and tone varies wildly, and some stuff is just poorly laid out. A lot of information is spread out over a large space when it really should be condensed and explained in two facing pages. A lot of my friends whom I showed the PDF to had trouble navigating the book and finding what they needed, and they're not stupid people.

And NPC's are built off of the exact same chassis, and the adversary-creation-guide specifically tells you to ignore the PC's points total and instead look at their outward values and match/exceed them.

What's your point?

By the definition given, a game about superheroes, where the adversaries are just as super, and there's nothing built into the system that makes you more, or even differently, super from what your facing, would still be "Gritty" and not "Heroic." Heroism =/= Powerlevel. Heroism is PC exceptionalism. If the new rules are just "capeshit" and the PC's are in no way exceptions to the rules, that's still grit. If you need to imagine a high-powerlevel supers game that maintains a gritty tone, I direct you to Pic-Related.

Crunchy should be on the left and light on the right. That way it mirrors the standard lawful/chaotic alignment box instead of being backwards.

>in Heroic systems the PCs have access to mechanical abilities or character creation options most NPCs don't,
Basically, though what you described would, at-least on the chart, be "neutral," though coloquially I'd probably call it "lightly heroic." In all 3 of the "full heroism" row, the PC's are fundementally different on a core construction level, rather than just having access to extra abilities.
>In both Lasers and Feelings non-PC's don't even have true stats, and just functionally environmental difficulty checks and hazards, even when those hazards are representing adversarial combatants.
>In 4e the PC while built on compatible math (well compatible post-MM3) the statblock/abilities of the PC and the Monster are fundementally different, with the Monster only having mechanical representations for the ways in which a PC is likely to interract with them. Heck, 9/10 times, 1v1, without party synergy, the Monster actually outperforms the PC in all respect, but the PC is granted access to much greater synergy.

However, yeah you get it, and I'm just nitpicking as an excuse to bump my own thread and possibly spark discussions about mechanics, which I always enjoy.

>Your impression is incorrect. Furthermore, I object to your line of reasoning, implying that I think 4E/GW7 is simple because I'm familiar with D&D and that I'm judging Strike! harshly because I have to 'learn new rules'. Don't paint me like a fanboy in his insular cocoon who can't appreciate any game outside his comfort zone.

My bad. It was the impression I got, because your arguments (as I read it) didn't stack up with the facts about "things to learn" between the two games. Hence I assumed that you made it based on something else.

>Strike! is a crunchy and complicated game. To say that it's overall less complicated than 4E D&D is true but misleading, it's like saying that cardboard tastes better than dirt - technically correct but only due to what you're comparing it against.

I guess this is where the subjective part comes in, because I think it is definitely less complex than, say, Savage Worlds, which OP puts in the middle category (Of course, you may make the argument, that neither is 4e, which is again, up for debate).

I don't care if you like or hate Strike!, I just don't want to have it misrepresented. And I guess I just fundamentally disagree with the conclusions you came to.

Also, yes, book is shit, it's the one criticism everyone agrees on I think, including the guy who made the layout.

>In both Lasers and Feelings
I meant to say
>In Both Lasers and Feelings AND Apocalypse World

Damn, I need to proofread my shit.

Yeah, that makes sense. If the thread is still up when I wake up, or when the subject of universal systems' limitations in the kinds of play their mechanics inform comes up, thus giving me opportunity to use the picture again, I'll have a properly flipped one.

Finally, if anyone has a suggestion for "Gritty Rules-Light" other than boffer-larps, I'd love to hear it, because, as many have pointed out, it doesn't fit.

>Finally, if anyone has a suggestion for "Gritty Rules-Light"

Mini6? Pretty sure it uses same stats for everything and the only rules are "roll more d6".

>Oh people use 4e to run non-fantasy games so it's generic
Painfully retarded sentiment.

No edition of DnD belongs on a universal/generic list, you cringy autistic fanboy.

>>Oh people use 4e to run non-fantasy games so it's generic
I mean you worded it in a super simplified way to try and make a straw-man, but basically yeah. A generic system is one that can be run in lots and lots of genres/settings.... so... yes?

>A generic system is one that can be run in lots and lots of genres/settings.... so... yes?
Except that's not what a generic system is. A generic system is DESIGNED to run in lots of genres and settings. DnD is the opposite of generic.

So if a system isn't designed to run lots of genres and settings, but can be used to do so anyway without significant problems, what is it?

Hackable. B/X D&D can be reskinned in tons of different ways (just look at stuff like Stars Without Number, Mutant Future, and Go Fer Yer Gun) but I absolutely would not call it a generic system.

I'd argue 3.x/PF is a generic system because both use what used to be called D20 system and has generic form. Other D&D editions I wouldn't count as generic.

3.PF is already one hack of an existing generic system: OGLd20... a generic system already included in the chart specifically.

So the difference is a one that has nothing to do with how it plays, and entirely what the authors intended, regardless of whether they succeeded at that intent? That seems like a silly and semantic.

>I explicitely said that Grittiness/Heroism isn't necessarily lethality, it just often implies lethality. Grittiness/Heroism is the degree to which the PC's are fundamentally different from the non-PC elements of the world.
That is a bizarrely narrow definition. Why not just go with high power/low power?

>Heroism is PC exceptionalism.

Of course you win every argument when you make up the parameters of the argument. That is a bullshit definition of heroism. By your definition, literally all of the heroic poems we have aren't actually heroic. It's fine though, you know better than the people who invented western literature. Homer was a hack.

>By your definition, literally all of the heroic poems we have aren't actually heroic
By anyone's definition, literally all of the heroic poems we have aren't RPG systems.

>Why not just go with high power/low power?
Well the big reason is that the chart was designed to focus on the things that differentiate one universal/hackable system from the next, or to put it a different way, the things a universal/hackable system CAN'T change about itself. Almost every universal/hackable system can switch back and forth between low powerlevel and high powerlevel. This is much less true for the amount of PC exceptionalism is baked into the system.

TLDR: I defined Grit/Heroism that way, not to win arguments on a weeb message board, but because it was directly applicable to the question at hand.

Finally, the reason I chose the word "heroism" to describe the trait is because I would argue that the amount of PC exeptionalism has more to do with how "heroic" you feel than the powerlevel/lethality. If there were two games: one game of Wuxia Kung Fu, in which the PC powers were limited to reasonable but exceptional martial arts, but the system bent over backwards to remind you that they are the heroes of destiny through PC-exclusive mechanics -- one game where the PC's play literal worldshaping gods, but all the NPC's and enemies are equally godly, built using on the exact same god-chassis as the PC's with access to the exact same mechanics, leaving nothing special about the PC's relative to the setting. The latter certainly is more high-powered, and I would probably have a blast playing gritty backstabbing god-politics (in-fact I did when playing an intentionally Janky game of Scion that reached God-Tier... good times), but that's not the "heroic" one out of the two.

Well now I'm more confused. How is PC exceptionalism not their power level relative to the rest of the setting? How is something that can be changed by choosing a different range of adversaries more baked in than the range of actions and abilities the system actually has mechanics for, and how the combat resolution system handles damage? Why use very general terms normally related to tone to mean something so specific and mechanical? How is how easily you die compared to a "basic" enemy like a goblin not a major part of the very definition of "PC exceptionalism?" For that matter, if you're making a 2 axis chart, why make one of the axes something something obscure that no one uses as a selling point/dealbreaker for systems?

>Well now I'm more confused. How is PC exceptionalism not their power level relative to the rest of the setting?
It basically is, but that "relative to the rest of the setting" is very important. In particular, it's not FLUFF power, but MECHANICAL power relative to the things that the system is designed to throw at PC's as obstacles.

>It basically is, but that "relative to the rest of the setting" is very important.
To clarify, it's more "relative to the rest of the system" than "relative to the rest of the setting" because the setting is specifically something universal/hackable systems can change.

I'm honestly not trying to be a dick, but the more you try to clarify your terms the less clear I am what they actually mean.
You used wild dice as the reason why Savage Worlds isn't gritty, but the proportion of wild card enemies is easy to change, and very likely to change from setting to setting whether the GM even consciously intended them to. On the other hand, wounds and exploding dice are a big part of what defines SW, and they mean that no matter powerful or experienced you get and how many bennies you have on hand, an extra with d4s in everything armed with a slingshot can still kill them in one (highly improbably, unbelievably unlikely, but still mathematically possible) shot? If that's not gritty, then what is? How is that on the same level as Fate, where you can usually curbstomp anything with a fight skill two points or so less than yours?

>You used wild dice as the reason why Savage Worlds isn't gritty, but the proportion of wild card enemies is easy to change, and very likely to change from setting to setting whether the GM even consciously intended them to. On the other hand, wounds and exploding dice are a big part of what defines SW, and they mean that no matter powerful or experienced you get and how many bennies you have on hand, an extra with d4s in everything armed with a slingshot can still kill them in one (highly improbably, unbelievably unlikely, but still mathematically possible) shot? If that's not gritty, then what is?
Maybe SW is on the wrong place on that chart. Honestly, from what you describe, it does in-fact sound a lot grittier than I remember it. TBQH while I've played all the systems on the chart SOME, there's only so much time in a lifetime, and some of them I've played less than others. SW and L&F are two that I've only played a few sessions of to get the feel for. I've played a lot more D6, 4E, and GURPS than anything else on that chart.

One of the reasons I posted it was to get criticism/clarification, like that.

Heroicm/Grit, as I intended it, is basically, in the simplest terms I can put it, the degree to which PC mechanics are exceptional relative to the rest of the mechanics. If, generally speaking, if someone ran a game where the majority of opponents were also Wild Cards in SW... yeah, that'd basically be pure Gritty on my scale, I just didn't know people did that because they didn't do that the two times I played.

However, high-exceptionalism can still totally be highly lethal. Apocalypse World, and a number of the PBtA systems (Monster Of The Week for Example) are heavy with PC exceptionalism, to the point that PC's are really the only things that get a true statblock at all, despite being EXTREMELY lethal (people die all the time in certain AW and MoTW.)

High crunch and high heroism? You just described the Hero System.

>In a Heroic game, the PC's are built on a fundamentally different chassis to the rest of the world, and with fundamentally different rules; the mechanics primarily represent how the PC's interact with the world rather than emulating the world itself.
Wouldn't this make every single narrative focused game heroic?

>Wouldn't this make every single narrative focused game heroic?
Calling Heroism/Grit Narativism/Simulationism instead would not be completely inaccurate. It's just that the words Narativism and Simulationism are even bigger SKUB than some of the games I included in the chart, so I avoided them on purpose.

I sorta enjoy the idea behind the chart, so bump.

You probably need a better moniker for "heroism/gritty", though I get what you are going for.

This is true, Heroism/Grit doesn't QUITE get the idea across. Maybe just "PC Exceptionalism" with Ordinary _______, Neutral _______, and Exceptional _______. Granted, I will still have to explain that that Ordinary means onrdinary relative to likely PC threats, because someone looking at that will come along and say "GURPS can do supers" when I classify GURPS as Ordinary Crunchy.

>Any variation of D20
>Apocalypse World
>Universal
Might as well put FATAL in there too as you could also use it to play something else badly.

The D20 system was literally so ubiquitous in the early 00's that the literal majority of games were "something"D20. That doesn't make it good, but at the very least, that makes it an attempt at a universal system.

>Apoc world not rules light

How fucking thin is the book for lasers and feelings? World engine games are "roll at most the same number if dice as yatzee and Win this much?" For players. Never GMd but the got mad when my character said f it and tried to steralize the surrounding 100 miles with a knockoff brain scorcher. (Had the parts, was given time to make and power it. He just didn't think that was the end goal.)

>How fucking thin is the book for lasers and feelings?
pretty sure its a single page. It might be double sided though

Thin enough to share with you in right now.

Along with some of the hacks

...

...

Nice. Thanks a ton annons. I'll have to grab this all when I get home