What's the most difficult RPG to run of them all...

I played a single game of gurps and after reading through the core book and the supplement relevant to us I found it so tiring to constantly look shit up and ended up improvising most of the rolls. What's a better way to do gurps aside from not playing it. Because I'm already not playing it.

What were you having to look up?

Use the B.A.D. system from Action 2: Exploits. It explicitly exists to replace looking up situational modifiers. A2 also ditches discrete ranged penalties for broader range bands and simplifies a lot of other things.

For the 10th anniversary, the company released a top 10 list of rules they really wish were in the Basic Set. It's telling that like seven of those ten were from Action 2.

I have yet to find a group willing to play Dinghammer by Justin Achilli.

The funny thing is that's a joke image, but this isn't.

The most complex game I've run is probably Ars Magica, but the campaign didn't get far enough to really showcase how complicated that game can get.

Nobilis isn't rules-heavy, but has a reputation for being hard to run. I didn't have much trouble with it, but I think it helps that my group weren't taking things to seriously. If you try to capture the tone and style of the second edition book's writing in your campaign, I can definitely see it being a serious challenge.

This. Basic Set is probably the second worst 'big' GURPS book after Ultra Typo (aka Ultra Tech).
But reading Sean Punch (aka Dr Kromm)'s commentary in said List, you can understand. They had fourteen years of player feedbacjk on 3rd edition, on top of the staff, playtesters and freelancers making suggestions during the development of 4th.

They got swamped, and I think it shows. The Basic set is a mess format-wise. It makes it hard to get into and GM. There's even a book called "How to be a GURPS GM" that contains material that should have been in the Basic Set: Campaigns book, IMO.

Honestly, the best way to /learn/ GURPS is by demonstration; get an already knowledgeable GM to run you through some one-shots and/or "arena fights." Hell, I'd be up for it. It gives me a chance to try out new things and scratch the occasional genre related itch without starting an entire campaign.

Oops, part of was directed at I also want to add that GURPS the system isn't really that bad, I've had players remark on how smooth the game ran.

Ars Magica is a fuckin' clusterfuck.

It really does not help that the books are awfully, terribly laid out.

I know precisely one competent Ars Magica GM. That system is nuts.

It is also the only thing that does what it does well, which is a very specific interpretation of magic in an alternate fantasy history that works "as people at the time thought it worked" when it comes to metaphysics, and then throw in a secret order of mages along with faeries, demons, and God Almighty.

Really not a game for most people, just because of how specific it is. You don't adapt Ars for a new setting or a low-magic game or whatever; you take it as a complete package because for anything else, there is something better.

Players.
Doubt you'll find many first time GMs with the same opinion.

Shadowrun by far. The rules are totally impenetrable, disorganized, and needlessly complicated.

I will say that the setting is easy to learn given that it's cyberpunk with some DND style fantasy and some white wolf angst mixed in.

GURPS 4th edition is one of the best rpg systems ever made. BUT you're totally right that the core book is disorganized as hell. Even if you don't make the rookie mistake of using every rules option, simple systems are often spread out between both basic set books, not cross referenced, and are slipped into the most illogical places (especially the advantages list).

And character creation for GM's is a long slog too. The BAD system nicely wolves that problem.

The most difficult I've run so far is Pokemon Tabletop United. I made the mistake of having 5 players and allowing them a full team of 6. It was a nightmare.

Althoigh, I've recently cut down to two players. And, while the system itself still makes me want to throw a small child out a high window, the game itself is much more manageable.

Fucking Pathfinder. I can run Shadowrun with my eyes closed, but Pathfinder is all derivative stats and feats which makes it very difficult to produce NPCs on the fly.

>5 characters
>30 pokemon
even knowing nothing about PTU, that sounds like a clusterfuck

It was. Trying to plan encounters was a migraine. No matter what I did, one player had one Pokemon with the one ability that ended the encounter on the spot. I just wanted my friends and I to enjoy something we all like together, but it resulted in more arguments and the worst game in my GMing experience.

If you want an idea of how PTU works, think of an autistic manchild trying to translate literally everything in the games, like all the combat calculations that the videogame does invisibly, directly onto the table.

>Shadowrun
>setting is easy to learn
uwotm8

Literally nobody plays the setting properly because it's that difficult to actually know what's going on.

...

Cthulhutech is pretty dense

>Really not a game for most people, just because of how specific it is.
As someone whose favorite system is Ars, this is 100% correct. Ars Magica is
>rules heavy
>poorly formatted
>highly specific
>historical fantasy
>which is very heavy on fantasy elements
which is a really small niche. It's really impressive that it's lasted for 3 decades and an attempted murder by White Wolf, considering. This competent GM isn't doing an online game, are they?

Of games I've actually run and played, Legends of the Wulin is a real fucking slog. An absolutely fantastic system once you get past the shit, but it takes a lot of work to get there.

My ultimate example would be Nobilis 2e though. It's an utterly beautiful game, with clever design, fascinating fluff and so many cool ideas, but it's utterly goddamn impenetrable. It's often called the best game you'll never play.

PTU's individual systems are not much more complex than DnD 3.5. The out-of combat stuff is okay and on your first look most features read pretty simple, especially when you are familiar with TTRPGs.
The true horror unfolds in practice:
Where it becomes a clusterfuck is a) the granularity with levels, capabilities, combat stats etc. Imagine doing a D&D character level-up, but 5 levels at a time, for a whole party of seven characters PER PLAYER, sometimes once or twice PER SESSION.
In addition, due to the fact that it is so granular, GM prepwork is a ton of work. There is no way to quickstat things or grab a profile from a supplement. You have to build stats for every pokemon and trainer your party faces along the way from the ground up, and improvising is very difficult. And run a cohesive world and story at the same time.

tl,dr: On the first glance a solid game that does nothing new, but drowns itself in all the bloat.

Does it get better if you restrict your players to having only one pokémon at a time, and always out like Ash's Pikachu?

>And character creation for GM's is a long slog too.
Eh, even before I read the BAD system I was doing what it does for NPCs. GMs shouldn't totally stat out every NPC except for really plot relevant ones.

Otherwise yeah, I agree with you. You're basically repeating what I said in one of the GURPS generals a while back.

Might be a lot faster in play I guess, though I have no experience with playing it like that.
I imagine it playing more like 3.5 with heavy grid focus.

It might be very suitable if you want to play a fantasy campaign for example, where pokeballs simply don't exist and each pokemon interaction is more akin to interacting with a creature in a D&D game. It might require trainers to take a focus on weapons and combat skills themselves, because they can't rely on a full team then.

>tfw i have all of this books AND MORE

Can you two anons try and give me a summary of the setting? I want to see if what I have in my head is even close to what other people have.

It's not the intended way to play. The way the game works, it's way too easy for something to show up that completely counters your one pokemon. That's why you keep six and spec them all differently.

I GMd PTU for 2 years, and it was a massive waste of time and effort. The system fights you every step and is generally not worth it.

Also I heavily suggest you to ignore the "experience training" rule. It just makes everyone sit around and jot down numbers on their sheets, and if it triggers a level up you need another 5 minutes to resolve that. Award EXP only for encounters and story progress, or in big bunches for large timeskips/training montages.
Make people tally up EXP earned during the session and only resolve level ups in betweeen sessions and make sure everyone has his own shit ready as quick reference. Otherwise your game evening will be interrupted all the fucking time.

I knew a girl who admitted to using the exp training rule to cheat. She'd just add double the exp to her pokemon and trust nobody would check.

Do you mean the rules or the content? Because it's YES for both.

Phoenix Command, if you want to go the autistic but not idiotic route.

I can confirm it is more complicated than SR (any edition) or Ars Magica or GURPS or RIFTS. Alternatively Gary Gygax Mythos because of his retarded terminology.

pleb

Real life

I dunno... is Ars Magica really that hard or is it just how different it is from everything else that makes it tough?

Mechwarrior 1st ed.

>the best game you'll never play.
It's also called that because it's fucking impossible to get a copy anymore, out of print and the original artist refuses to reissue copyright for the art used.

Its magic rules are ridiculously detailed. It has in-depth rules for crafting your own magic items that tie into the existed spell creation rules. It has dedicated "character creation" for your Covenant (basically, home base), à la Mutant: Year Zero or Blades In The Dark, complete with a sourcebook if you want to go really in-depth. There are rules for designing and joining mystery cults, which give a character access to more magical secrets. The game is a bit unusual, but it's also quite rules-heavy on top of that. It's also nowhere near as off the beaten track as a lot of modern designs. It is does date back to the eighties, after all.

Also, and are right. It's an amazing system for doing exactly one specific thing, and absolutely useless at anything else. Kind of like Pendragon, I imagine. (I've not played Pendragon, but I really want to.)

>What's the most difficult RPG to run of them all?

>GM since 1987. Off the top of my head for context: D&D, AD&D, d20, D&D 4e, SR1-5e, Pendragon, 7th Sea 1e-2e, L5R 1-3e, DragonQuest 3e, Earthdawn, Call of Cthulhu, RIFTS, GURPS, SW Edge of the Empire, Ray Winnenger's Underground, DC Heroes, Mutants & Masterminds, WFRP 1-2e, oWoD, Savage RIFTS, Burning Wheel

The worst for me have been these new-ish "narrative dice" systems like 7th Sea 2e, or FFG's Star Wars. If only because the dice can come up with completely bizzare results (occasionally mutually exclusive results) which then have to be shoehorned into the current in-game situation.

In EotE, for example, between Success, Failure, Advantage, Threat, Triumph, and Despair, you get IIRC 18 possible qualitative results. It's a tremendous burden on the part of the GM to adequately prepare for this, as compared to the vast majority of systems where it's either a binary outcome (pass/fail) or a slightly more granulated binary system (Pass EXTRA HARD/Pass/Fail/Fail EXTRA HARD).

Basically, interpreting the tremendous range of dice results on the fly in these narrative dice systems is both very difficult from a technical perspective, and it's mentally fatiguing the more dice rolls you have in a game session. Then you have the inevitable arguements with players who interpret a specific dice result slightly differently, and that's logical because there's a ton of room for interpretation of the various dice.

So while these systems certainly aren't as "mechaically complex" as something like GURPS or FATAL or SR5 (in that there aren't a bunch of special-case rules or tiny modifiers or giant charts everywhere), actually RUNNING these games is immensely irritating and, I would say, difficult.

It might just be a style thing. I only ran the first of their systems, WHFRP 3e, and I actually found interpreting the dice pools really fun, narrating events based on the results giving me cues as to what aspects I should emphasise and such.

>It's a tremendous burden on the part of the GM to adequately prepare for this
That's the basis of your entire problem with it: you don't prepare for those kinds of games.
If you want to have carefully prepped stories for your players to experience, go with another system. Games like EotE and Fate are supposed to be pulpy, spur of the moment improvisational romps.
EotE is surprisingly fun to run and requires very little GM prep beyond general locations, NPCs and situations.

> interpreting the tremendous range of dice results on the fly in these narrative dice systems is both very difficult from a technical perspective, and it's mentally fatiguing the more dice rolls you have in a game session
You don't have to create incredible situations for every single roll.
It's much less of a slog to narrate than something like D&D, with its dozens of hit-and-miss rolls in between anything interesting happening. "You miss the gnoll. The gnoll misses you. You hit him with your sword, roll damage. Alright, it was a glazing cut, you draw some blood, but he's still standing. He misses you." You can always embellish the rolls, but since 90% of the time it's going to be hit and miss results in combat, it gets old pretty quickly.
EotE is much more lethal in contrast, with enemies going down in one or two hits from the get go. The amount of possible results is the way to make combat more interesting while still being pretty lethal. "You hit him, but also an electrical panel behind him in the process, making sparks fly in out directions. (target gets some penalty on his next turn)." "You avoid fire by dodging into cover, but give the enemy freedom to press forward (target gains a free maneuver)". "You hit him dead center for maximum damage (activate weapons' critical hit)" "You miss widely, and get hella mad (player gains 1 strain)" "You hit him, but fail to notice his ally moving to flank you in the process (opponents gain one free maneuver)"
There's no real trick to you, you don't have to make every roll into a verbose creative discription. It just adds a lot more depth and adventure to every conflict.

With that set of games run, you have absolutely no reason to feel bad for not "getting" EotE or the other dice pool systems. The huge majority of things you've run are completely antithetical in style to the way EotE runs. It's unsurprising that if you're an experienced D&D or Pendragon or Shadowrun GM, you're going to have big problems running something like EotE.