Post your favorite generic system along with what you like and dislike about this system.
I'll start with :
>Savage Worlds
> Pros : It does exactly what it says. It's fast, not too heavy on the rules and very effective when it comes to action and battle
> Cons : You won't be doing much but action with this system, which is not a big problem if it's the focus of your campaign but just to say that you're more likely to play Indiana Jones Cthulhu with it rather than the actual cthulhu.
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>GURPS
Once you get it, fiddling around with its parameters to get what you want is really fun
The problem is that you have to "get it", which is a pretty arduous learning experience that might require several campaigns of experimentation.
>Risus
Pros: Really simple, sessions can be done completely on the fly and it's good for a night of wacky fun. Extensively hackable, with no "wrong" way to play it.
Cons: Takes a little bit of grokking to understand the heavy abstraction in combat. Death spiral isn't fun to some and requires using advanced rules or houserules to mitigate. Not really palatable for long-term games.
savage worlds looks nice actually
What is the most gurps-like system with linear dice rolls?
site:rpggeek.com "Generic / Universal" "Dice (Percentile)" "Core Rules (min needed to play)" intitle:"rpg item"
OR
site:rpggeek.com "Generic / Universal" "Dice (Primarily d10)" "Core Rules (min needed to play)" intitle:"rpg item"
What's Open d6 like? Seems kind of Savage Worlds-y
Strike!
It does what it wants, and what it wants is a light skill system with fun combat mechanics, and that happens to be what I want.
Nice excuse to talk about Open D6, yes it is like savage worlds but with tons of d6 a simple version of it is named minisix
>FATE
Pros: Actually generic enough to be a generic system with mechanics that work towards doing what you want with it
Cons: Expect to do some mechanical work with it to bring it the rest of the way if your idea isn't as generic as they come, fortunately this is rather easy
>Sigil System
>Pros:Easy to learn and play, have enough rules to be crunchy, but not to too much, awesome chargen
>Cons: Most people dislike d%, doesn't have a fully fleshed out magical system
Stop shilling Strike! Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?
>Genesys
Pros: it's open ended like Fate, but it still has enough crunch to keep things grounded. It's actually kind of an in-between to Fate and Savage Worlds.
Cons: It's based off the Star Wars RPG, so it's built around more cinematic games. Which means that doing more traditional hex crawl or slow paced games are not the systems forte.
>GURPS
Pros:
>Elegant dice mechanics which are easy to explain
>Mechanics still give random chance, but still much more competent characters overall
>System explicitly states that rules are meant to be ignored, swapped, or added as needed
>Having a basis in reality to some extent, easy to modify for any given genre.
>Pretty intuitive. Mechanics work the way I expect them to without requiring several paragraphs of justification.
>Worldbooks and genrebooks give fucking amazing advice. Very well written, usually include a bibliography with genre-related material.
>Sourcebooks do a lot of heavy lifting for you.
>Front-loading the work and baking things into the character sheets makes for play with a good pace
Cons:
>I like how modifiers interact with 3d6, but they are quite odd for anyone not used to them
>Cannot be stated too many times that it is a toolkit, not a game in its own right. The sourcebooks are practically a requirement for neophytes, since they provide instructions for this enormous box of legos.
>Basic books are not page-turners. Good for reference, not great for learning.
>Sometimes too terse or sanitary for many people. Because it is built around Infinite Worlds, which is [fill in setting here] the setting, only worldbooks or genrebooks can lean into the tone much, and even then they tend to approach a number of different tones.
>Art. Neither particularly good or consistent. It is consistent only in its inconsistency.
>Front-loading the work makes for agonizingly slow character creation if not using templates.
>with linear dice rolls?
Who the fuck WANTS linear probabilities?
Lots of people, as I've seen on Veeky Forums. Still haven't managed to understand why it matters so much for some people.
There is something to be said of the transparency of linear probabilities. A character sheet that says 70% in BRP is easier to grok than a skill of 10 in GURPS.
GURPS
>Genesys(cont)
Pro: it's Narrative structure makes it easy to GM while still maintaining that sweet spot of crunch for players. Savage Worlds, for as fun and versatile as it is, is quick to jump outside of the GM'S expectations, both because of the exploding dice, and because the players can quickly gain powers and abilities, especially in a Supers campaign. Genesys is pretty tame in terms of progression despite having a similar leveling mechanic to Savage Worlds, and stays easy to GM.
Pro: The support for the game is insane. A massive 40k supplement made by Tom Cruise, Dragonlance, Eberron, Fallout, and Shadowrun, and more all being developed through the Genesys community.
Con: it's a step grittier than 5e, which means it's still fairly Heroic, so it does require some creative GM-ing for settings that should be a bit more threatening to players, such as fallout or 40k.
Con: Specialized Dice. The dice themselves aren't the problem, you can make your own for cheap or use free digital rollers, it's the fact that you have to fight tooth and nail to get anyone to try it, even outside the normal "I only know 5e" crowd. To make matters worse, the dice roll is a piece of cake to perform and arbitrate, but explaining it without showing a visual demonstration is the worst experience I've had to deal with, on or offline.
Overall, I feel Genesys, despite being only a few months old, has the potential to be an rpg with a lot of staying power similar to GURPS or BRP, while still being within that goldilocks technical crunch level of 5e or Savage Worlds.
It's easier to design for and more transparent for the players.
Risus
-simple and easy character creation
-contains many optional rules for campaigns
-no number crunching
-revolves around cliches and tropes, and ones knowledge on them
-can be used with any other game system(ex. creating additional risus rules based on shadowrun, Mutants and masterminds, etc.)
Cortex Plus
I've just resorted to nutkicking contests to resolve conflict. The players now go along with anything! Well, the imaginary players do, Chad keeps bringing his steeltoes.
Post PDF?
of rb
Every hero needs a villain...
The question is, which one am I?
GURPS makes me BURP
get it
because it's trash
What, no MAID?
It's free on DriveThruRPG, go grab it.
No trash.
>Generic RPG thread what you like
>Strike!
>Stop shilling
I WANT BRAINLETS TO LEAVE
>being a memelet
I keep hearing Genesys is just Super-Fate or something, because I keep adding little crunchy parts to Fate Core to make it slightly more tactical (and less cheesy, for Blind Sniper reasons).
I'm wondering if it's worth making a move or not...
>ctrl f gurps
>7 results
One Roll Engine
pro
customizable
versatile
fast resolution
con
nobody fucking talks about it
>nobody fucking talks about it
The bane of a lot of good games.
>transparency
I mean, if your players are actually retarded I suppose. But holy fuck, calculating the probability of rolling under a particular number with 3d6 is fucking middle school math.
>Blind Sniper
What is this? It sounds fun.
It's on the technical level of 5e or Savage Worlds. Does the Specialized dice thing like fate, and works about the same: symbols cancel each other out to get a net result, but it also has a Good/Bad circumstance scale in addition to succeed/fail. So you can "fail forward" or "succeed backward" as it were.
GURPS is the king but it's the king of a dying type of game. All the kids want is easy to learn "rules lite" systems.
I have been gravitating towards easy to play, and I don't think I count as a kid.
It's just that the more I play, the less I think complexity is worth the price of admission.
This so many times over. I want to be able to whip up a character and jump into play in less than ten minutes, max. Any more complex than that and it's just not worth it to me these days.
(And ten minutes is seriously pushing it.)
That's really been the trend of RPGs in recent years. Genesys, Savage Worlds, Ryuutama, and 5e especially come to mind, as does the popularity of the PBTA lineup of games.
I think it's in large part because so many gamers are middle aged now and don't have time for "all dat overly complex nonsense". I know the older I get the less I want to mess with mechanics. Let me just tell a story, damn it. Games like Wushu and Maze Rats are my jam these days.
>I think it's in large part because so many gamers are middle aged now
Gary Gygax was old as fuck when DnD started.
PnPs are just becoming a thing for the successful middle class, and their time is more valuable than that of some grognard.
There's always going to be outliers. And, D&D has always been a middle class thing. The poor have more important things to worry about, like not starving or getting shot, and the rich wouldn't dirty themselves with such low class entertainment.
>Gary Gygax was old as fuck when DnD started.
And D&D started pretty fucking lightweight.
>Pros
Rules are simple and straightforward
Very modular mechanics -- can be used in almost any setting, world or game-type
Not a strict pass/fail system
Character abilities almost always affect or interact with the narrative
Fast skill checks and contests
>Cons
Lacks crunch
Metagame currency is fairly important
Unless you like the worlds the system currenty uses, you will have to homebrew
As much as I don't like it, I have to hand it to GURPS for the breadth and depth of its material. If all generic systems had the same, the winner would be BRP instead, hands down.
FATE is too niche.
Even if you had the probabilities table printed on the sheet, you probably couldn't be bothered to look it up each time. D100 is much more transparent.
t. math student
t. former math student
I couldn't disagree more. It matters what you have to roll, it matters which odds you face and therefore it matters what stats are in your sheet.
Recent years have seen an over-fetishization of story and while story matters, it's time for a push-back.
>their time is more valuable than that of some grognard.
If their time was so valuable, why would they waste it on some random numbers which only very loosely represents the fiction?
Not story, gameplay. Having a 5% difference in shooting skill and damage potential isn't worth the ink the number is printed on my sheet with. I want differences to be more than numbers, to be interesting gameplay elements. Thing is, the differences something plainly numerical like stats create between characters are simply too boring when I have already played som,e variation of "fighter, but this time I calculate damage from DEX instead of STR! and have like 2 less HP per level but 2 more AC!" like 10 times already.
Your inability to do anything interesting with your statblock is your own failing, don't try and push it onto the wider world of game design.
Any interesting things I can do with a detailed, granular, complex stat block, I can do without. That's the point. It doesn1t add anything I need or want.
Apart from have detailed combat where small differences can mean the difference between success and painful, horrible failure.
>Apart from have detailed combat where small differences can mean the difference between success and painful, horrible failure.
Small differences matter a small amount. Big differences do the same thing, but the impact is immediately felt instead of over time. For a small difference to have the same impact, you have to roll it a lot, which is, again, just wasting time when you could instead have a big difference you roll a few times.
>Having a 5% difference in shooting skill and damage potential isn't worth the ink the number is printed on my sheet with.
It absolutely is when you miss by 5% or less.
>I want differences to be more than numbers, to be interesting gameplay elements.
And I want to feel like playing a "real" fictional character fighting a real "fictional" dragon and not some random statblock fighting a random statblock that is more like a well-armored mage with an abundance of hit points.
>Thing is, the differences something plainly numerical like stats create between characters are simply too boring when I have already played som,e variation of "fighter, but this time I calculate damage from DEX instead of STR! and have like 2 less HP per level but 2 more AC!" like 10 times already.
The numerical stats are a mechanical expression of your characters individual personality and lifestory. In a well-designed system, they are a guarantee that he has the impact on fiction that he was meant to have, based on his personality and history.
If your system does not allow you to stat your character individually and distinctly everytime anew, I would recommend you look for a system that allows for that. Either that or stop playing fighters all the time or play something other than fantasy, for once.
On the mark. But that is of course not the case in newer editions of D&D, where in many games the players are meant to survive and nothing is at stake. Critical Role falls into that category, to some degree.
If people favor that kind of style, then I agree that personal expression in numbers isn't very important.
You don't have to roll a lot, you just have to play a while and it will come up. More importantly, mechanical distinction provides gravity to the distinctions you have made during chargen (and advancement).
These are some of the best moments in gaming: when you know your PC bested the odds because of who he is. Because he just took that extra skill advancement or you chose to make him that good in that skill during chargen. Or even if you fail because you didn't.
It provides distinction from other adventurers.
Otherwise, we might give EVERYONE just average attribute and skill levels as well because, LOL, who cares?
> More importantly, mechanical distinction provides gravity to the distinctions you have made during chargen (and advancement).
My point is that mechanical distinction doesn't have to come from numbers, and especially doesn't have to come from small % value numbers (i.e. what the majority of older games which use d20 or d% do).
You can make characters mechanically distinct without having to count +1 bonuses that you derive from your 1-20 stats. Just having "my fighter attacks two enemies at once and can break through walls and cover" and "my fighter deals one and a half time as much damage on his attacks" is meaningful, distinctive, simple, and don't necessitate a stat block anywhere. The difference between having 50% or 60% climb is way less important than having a feature that says "you can climb half speed without rolling".
Abilities >>> detailed stats in actual play. Detailed stats can be okay for lifepath simulation stuff for very grounded things I guess, but I have just about 0 interest in those. And having simple "blocky" stats and/or skills is still okay to get some baseline for characters so they can be compared to.
Yes, but stats come in when there is a matter of degree involved and not a binary can do/can't do.
Also
>my fighter deals one and a half time as much damage on his attacks
involves quantitative properties again.
>"you can climb half speed without rolling".
What is the unmodified damage or the unmodified speed? Where is it derived from? Does it make you hit harder/faster than someone who is just naturally strong/fast?
As I've said in my last line, I'm not against statistics en bloc, only statistics that are too granular.
>Yes, but stats come in when there is a matter of degree involved and not a binary can do/can't do.
I mean, PbtA manages this with bonuses that go from -1 to +5, and you probably don't even need that much.
>involves quantitative properties again.
>What is the unmodified damage or the unmodified speed?
I'm not against all numbers, I'm just against pointlessly small or largely meaningless ones. If the game decides movement speed is meaningful enough to deserve a number, sure. Or maybe it just denotes it in what size of vaguely defined zones you can cross with your speed, whatever works.
>Where is it derived from?
Your character sheet?
>Does it make you hit harder/faster than someone who is just naturally strong/fast?
Depends on the system, if it isn't part of an ability package that does that, I'm not sure why it should.
I'm also not sure what delving into the specifics matters here.
>As I've said in my last line, I'm not against statistics en bloc, only statistics that are too granular.
Alright, I got you now. Nothing wrong with that, although the conversation has got me into thinking. Among the standard attributes in games, the only one's where fine graduation might be called for are strength and speed. Because in both cases you can have individuals are are roughly in the same ballpark but who should have a clear winner. 100 m sprint finals are probably all about the same category, still there are (consistent!) differences in a direct contest.
With other attributes, you don't have such an obvious, fine-grained measure for consistency in performance.
It has nothing to do with Fate and it's a VERY different Rpg.
Of all the generic systems I've played, I haven't really gotten into them (unless you count things like Phoenix Command or Song of Swords generic) granted I've only played the fluffy story focused stuff like MAID or FATE so far. I've never been one for a lack of crunch in my games and getting cotton candy instead of hard candy isn't really appealing to me. I find the games more limiting than a set list of feats/abilities.
I mean, that's fine if your game is about the olympics (i.e. extremely controlled conditions), but I feel that for the majority of games the differences between characters (be they player or non-player) tend to be more obvious.
...
Thinking about it, for such a "contest-centered" game, the worst possible thing you could do is have 1 stat determine the victor; you'd want to scope your game so there's some sort of meaningful interaction there aside from the physical capability, like in sports movies or something, and have stats and skills that are otherwise important fall to the wayside as purely fluff.
Contests of strength or speed can always come up spontaneously and then it helps having a fine-graded attribute present. Completely worth the negligible effort of having two fine grain stats desu.
>the worst possible thing you could do is have 1 stat determine the victor;
Nah, in a sprint race or in an arm-wrestling match (or wrestling for possession of that runestaff), that's exactly what I would want. That's what these attributes are for.
Not generic
Can I run a wild west game?
A Silent hill game?
What about a pathologic game?
Birthright? Planescape?
GURPS is objectively shit
> Bell curve dice roll
> Need to read at least 3 books if you want to play a genre that is not low fantasy / modern (Even then you usually have to at least take a peek in other books for certain items)
> Skill bloat to an extreme (Having 3 different skills for looking at shit, useless things like "Handling materials")
> Shit art
>System has barely changed since the 80's
>Starting to die (Yes there's still the occasional PDF release on their website, but they literally needed a kickstarter to release a physical version of their DFRPG box because they're doing so poorly)
>B-but it's a toolbox
It's supposed to be a RPG, if I wanted a toolbox I would just take from the RPGS I want and make my own system
>Bell curve dice roll
Good, unless you're a d20 fag, in which case you should do the world a favor and kill yourself.
> Need to read at least 3 books if you want to play a genre that is not low fantasy / modern (Even then you usually have to at least take a peek in other books for certain items)
Buying more than one book for a major system is normal and fine. D&D has 3+.
> Skill bloat to an extreme (Having 3 different skills for looking at shit, useless things like "Handling materials")
It's a problem but the ad/disad bloat is even worse. Otoh, it makes the game flexible and allows for mechanically distinct characters.
> Shit art
Pretty much.
>System has barely changed since the 80's
Logical fallacy, thus irrelevant.
>>Starting to die (Yes there's still the occasional PDF release on their website, but they literally needed a kickstarter to release a physical version of their DFRPG box because they're doing so poorly)
Sounds like another fallacy, argumentum ad populum, iirc.
>B-but it's a toolbox
Yeah, like every generic system.
>It's supposed to be a RPG
It's supposed to be whatever their designer's wanted it to be.
>if I wanted a toolbox I would just take from the RPGS I want and make my own system
Way too much work to recreate all the things GURPS has already done for you. At least if you require a generic system for playing in a variety of very different settings under one ruleset.
More transparent, yes. Because rolling, say, 48 or lower with 1d100 is exactly a 48% probability. Rolling 10 or lower with 3d6 is 108 out of 216 possible outcomes, however, or 1/2. That's math you can fucking do in your head.
This is the current state of Veeky Forums. This is what we have to deal with.
>Can I run a wild west game?
Yes. You are working in a salon. Sometimes you need to fight off bandits.
>A Silent hill game?
Monster-chans who need to please the town by tormenting, and ultimately absolving its victims?
>What about a pathologic game?
Hmmm... okay, that's tough, not sure.
>Birthright? Planescape?
Yes and yes.
PS.: Universal doesn't mean that it can run everything equally well, only that it is not setting, and to some extent, genre dependent.
>Contests of strength or speed can always come up spontaneously and then it helps having a fine-graded attribute present.
I disagree. I think in most stories, media, etc. that deals with exceptional people you basically almost never see granularity. At best, you see a scale. Hercules doesn't wrestle lions into the ground because he has +50% strength; he does so because he's the demigod son of Zeus with incredible strength and the lion simply isn't. When Hulk fights someone, in any good story it doesn't come down to which one of them is stronger; either it is established early on that one of them just is, or maybe they are evenly matched; either way, Hulk needs to find an edge somewhere else.
Even if you are trying to do some very specific scenario where, say, a football team is assaulted by zombies and their subtle differences in strength actually matter, you can just zoom in on it, and set up a relative strength scale.
The only reason you'd want generic stats that are also very granular, is if your game has absolutely no focus and hence just wants to have the ability to stat out everything to be able to handle everything; making the majority of stats in any given point of time (possibly including chargen) largely pointless.
>Nah, in a sprint race or in an arm-wrestling match (or wrestling for possession of that runestaff), that's exactly what I would want. That's what these attributes are for.
My point is, that I may not be expressing well, is that that would make for a shit game.
"Let's play a game about athletes!"
"okay, let's roll dice a bunch times to have the guy with the higher number (who achieved that higher number by rolling higher numbers during training or chargen) come out on top unless there's an upset I guess"
It's equivalent of having a single fighting stat and then devolving combat into rolling it a few times until somebody wins. Works, yes, simulates some reality, yes, but not very exciting and doesn't make for a good game.
Well, we have to agree to disagree then. In the TV show Flash, you see Barry Allen running with other speedster and being faster or slower than him by only a nudge. Not by orders of magnitude (although those exist too). You see the same in many real world sprint races.
And if we take arm-wrestling, you need the capability to have opponents who are just a touch weaker or stronger than you, not just competitors who are equals, much weaker or much stronger.
The same does not apply as much to other attributes imho.
>"Let's play a game about athletes!"
To be fair, I never said that. I said the situation might come up at any time in a game and having an adequate representation on your sheet helps. You seem to think it's not worth the effort, I think it's not much of an effort at all in the case of those 2 attributes. Also, I cited struggling for possession of an item or a race (if necessary Flash/Speedster-style), not a contest-style game. Contests can happen in about any game though.
Barry's case is exactly what I mean with focusing your scope, like with the footballer example above. Because he has a series full of other speedsters, his relative speed matters (even then, it's not the exact speed, just his speed relative to others; you could easily have some other type of tiebreaker, say, a generic powerlevel of some sort, instead of having a speed stat, a strength stat, a ).
But if he was in a crossover event, what would matter is that he's the fast dude, while Batman is the rich dude, and Green Arrow is the archer dude.
And the point of a generic system is that it can handle both the competition between speedsters and the crossover event, so you need the higher granularity.
But you probably aren't playing a solo campaign with speedster dude and a crossover campaign with multiple people at the same time, so that granularity is largely wasted.