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Sir_Gabes
2013-07-02, 11:36 PM
Hey guys. I've got a problem and I need your help.

I'm looking to run a game for my group of 4. The concept goes a bit like this. You are the last of a dying race. Your exploring the world (or maybe galaxy) in order to survive. The players ultimately decide their own goals. They could be trying to fix the problems of their people or just live out the rest of their days.

To get to the point. My main problem is I want to let the players as a group create their race. I imagine there would be a variety of traits, such as. Tech level, culture, physical and mental. The race could be psychic or mechanical (like transformers) they could be a vicious warrior race or an intelligent academic race. They could be ignorant of technology or high tech. It is decided mostly by the players as a group. I need a system that is sufficiently lethal. With a host of possibility. I want it to have coherent, but simple rules. I wouldn't mind a race creation tool. I could manage without one if the system is good.

I'm an experienced GM. I would love a system that allows for lethal fights. I don't like statements like. "So what, I have 106 HP." I love simple systems that are balanced in application. I don't want things like dump stating and min/maxing. I want people to hurt if they choose a weakness. I love crit tables like in DH and WFRP. This will be a homebrew setting. If I can fit it into the scope of another setting, I am willing to try.

Any advice or recommendations are welcome.

Sidmen
2013-07-03, 12:21 AM
The first thing that comes to my mind is World of Darkness. With few tweaks it can be made to work with Medieval Fantasy or Science Fiction easily enough, though its default is modern-era.

The Mirrors - The Infinite Macabre supplemental book gives rules for creating various alien races through the addition of new Merits.

The core system is pretty dang simple - a pool-based system where you count successes on dice. (Roll Attribute + Skill + Equipment in 10-sided dice, and everything resulting in a 7 or above counts as a success). And pretty dang lethal in combat - especially when you aren't using supplements that add in supernatural powers. A marksman with a rifle could roll 13-15 dice, about 5 of which would show as successes (on average) - inflicting 5 damage. Most characters have 7-10 health and there is no quick healing.

The merit system lends itself very easily to the "create your own race" stuff, especially when you get a feel for the dot-rating system and create your own merits to fill in niches.

Sir_Gabes
2013-07-03, 01:21 AM
I am relatively familiar with the World of Darkness RPG. I had not heard of that supplement however. I will take a look at it. I would be interested to see more suggestions however.

Mutazoia
2013-07-03, 01:51 AM
There's always GURPS. With the racial templates and race-creation manuals you create characters of any "species," be it science-fictional (GURPS Bio-Tech), fantastic (GURPS Fantasy Folk), or completely supernatural (GURPS Spirits and GURPS Undead) or design something completely unique.

Sir_Gabes
2013-07-03, 02:26 AM
I am not very familiar with the GURPS system. Is the system complex?

EDIT: Also what edition would you recommend?

LibraryOgre
2013-07-03, 02:26 AM
Savage Worlds would also work... flexible system, with race-building rules built into the core book.

dariathalon
2013-07-03, 03:29 AM
I would definitely second the recommendation for GURPS. It sounds like almost exactly what you're looking for. It might be a little more complex than you're looking for, but otherwise the system is perfect.

Really the complexity comes in designing the game you want to play. GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role-Playing System, and to be so generic and universal it takes a lot of options. GURPS takes a toolkit approach to running a game. There are a lot of tools included in the system, but you get to choose what you want to include. Once you've made those decisions and learned the rules relating to them, it isn't too difficult.

I would recommend the current (4th) edition. Unlike D&D, there aren't a lot of differences between the editions. Each edition change basically takes the previous edition and smooths out some of the bumpier rules to make the system more streamlined and easy to work with. So the current edition is probably the best rules set.

They also have GURPS Lite available as a free pdf (http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG31-0004)that includes some of the basic rules. If you want your group to be able to design their own races, you'll probably want more books than that, but it can at least give you an idea of some of the basics.

Arcane_Snowman
2013-07-03, 04:53 AM
Savage Worlds would also work... flexible system, with race-building rules built into the core book.
Seconding Savage Worlds, it's a very simple system and very flexible.

The Dark Fiddler
2013-07-03, 08:01 AM
Since your players are all going to be the same race (I assume), I'd say that racial mechanics aren't super important, aside from powerful abilities like a dragon's breath or something like that. I mean, if the race is really strong and that boils down to just a +2 Strength, everybody is going to be getting that, then it's not as important. Granted, it does depend on the system (in a system like D&D that might still have a great effect and be worth modeling), but don't discount a system just because it doesn't have an easy way to model small stuff like that.

And, just because it's my current love (and in the interest of providing you with all possible options), I'm going to suggest Fate Core (or maybe Fate Accelerated Edition) which are currently available on Evil Hat's website for "what you want to pay." It's a bit less crunchy than some other games that have been suggested, but I think it could work decently.

Players following their own goals? Check, that's what Aspects (especially the High Concept and Trouble) are for; gives them a bonus for pursuing their goals, too. Fate Core is very big on creating the setting together, but if you've already gotten a setting then having them creating their race is a natural extension of that.

As I said earlier, it's not going to be very good if you want to model "this race has +2 strength but -2 dexterity and they're vulnerable to this but resist this" and such... although, thinking about it, you could do just that by making a Campaign Aspect of "The Last [Race]s." By doing that, you'd have an Aspect that they could invoke whenever they need a bit of extra oomph in whatever their race is good at, something that you can invoke for anything their race is bad at or something that would affect them all, and a constant reminder that they're the survivors. And if they go for something like psychic races, something with an interesting ability, that could easily be modeled by an extra that everybody gets (something like Psychic Powers: Can use Will to interact with the world).

Now, I wouldn't exactly call Fate Core lethal, but it's definitely not a system in which you'll hear "I have 106 HP." The way health works in Fate Core is that you have two tracks: a Stress Track and a Consequences Track. As you take damage, you can either use your stress to absorb it, or take a relevant Consequence to absorb it. So, if you took 5 shifts of damage you could take a Moderate Consequence (Broken Arm, for example; that takes up 4 stress) that then becomes an Aspect others can invoke against you, and your 1 stress box. Or you could take a Minor Consequence (Winded, perhaps, taking up 2 stress) and your 3 stress box on the stress track. The thing I really like about this system is that it's not strictly "Take damage here and then take damage here once the first is gone," the two are interconnected. If you wanted it to be a bit more lethal, you could make it so being taken out is death, no matter what... though given the rest of your post, I'm not entirely sure you meant deadly-lethal when you said lethal.

There's not really such a thing as dump stats in Fate Core, since everything is at a baseline +0, which is "Mediocre" but definitely not dumped, especially since you're going to end up with several skills at +0 unless you give them a seriously up-sized skill allotment. Choosing a weakness is definitely going to be a thing, though; that'd likely be done by taking an Aspect, and while your Compelling them based on it will give them a Fate Point, it's going to get them into sticky situations. Compelling lets you say "I'll give you a Fate Point if you do this not-good-for-you-thing that I think is something your character would do because of their aspect," so if they take something troublesome like "Quick With a Gun, Quicker With His Temper" then you could definitely take advantage of that.

No crit tables, sadly. I think that's the only thing here that's not going to happen at all, since crits aren't much of a thing. The closest thing is the "Success with Style" mechanic if you do well enough, but that already has associated mechanics. It does give you a benefit though, so perhaps that's close enough for your tastes? Probably not, but oh well. Can't do everything.

Edit: Oh, and if you choose Fate Accelerated Edition instead of Fate Core, know this: they're pretty much the same game, except for skills. What FAE does instead of having skills, is giving characters Approaches. Rather than being good at Fighting or Computers or Deceit, they're good at doing things Quickly or Forcefully or Carefully. It's an interesting take on it, I think.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-07-03, 08:45 AM
Seconding Savage Worlds, it's a very simple system and very flexible.
Thirding Savage Worlds. It's fast, and it's also nicely lethal, between exploding dice and some nasty injury charts. (It's got rules to make it even nastier)

The Rose Dragon
2013-07-03, 09:01 AM
I'm gonna suggest, like I usually do, one of Mutants & Masterminds, Unisystem or GURPS. My experience is that anything Savage Worlds can do, these systems can do better. GURPS is more detail-oriented, Mutants & Masterminds is more action-oriented, while Unisystem is somewhere in between. Unisystem requires far more books than the other two to reach their flexibility, on account of being a skill-based system instead of an effects-based one, but if you can afford the books, it is my preferred system for a variety of genres. GURPS and M&M can both handle a lot of things with just the core rulebooks, but for the kind of game you want to play, I suggest getting Mastermind's Manual and Agents of Freedom for Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition, and be prepared to house rule certain things to make the game more lethal for 3rd Edition.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-07-03, 09:41 AM
To make M&M 3e more lethal, I recommend making the toughness penalties cumulative-- if you get one degrees of failure on a toughness check, you take a -1 penalty. Two degrees, a -2 penalty and you're dazed for a turn. Three degrees, a -3 penalty and you're staggered. And so on. You also might drop the recovery time to one damage condition per hour of rest.

I do love the system, though. As a bonus, M&M 3e has a free SRD (http://wwww.d20herosrd.com).

Autolykos
2013-07-03, 06:02 PM
I am not very familiar with the GURPS system. Is the system complex?You bet. It's by far the most frequent criticism you hear about it. A lot of the complexity is optional, though. It just requires quite a bit of work by the GM to pick which materials to use and which not. It has point-based rules for building pretty much everything, including races, that are (mostly) balanced, but it's understood that the GM should still look over it and veto stuff that doesn't make sense or won't fit the setting. Just because the option is in the rules doesn't mean the players can have it.
If you want GURPS, I'd suggest 4th Edition. It only has small differences compared to 3rd, but the rule books are way better organized, and the "core" books include lots of stuff you had to scrounge together from dozens of obscure source books and settings in 3rd Edition.

Kaun
2013-07-03, 06:28 PM
GURPS would do this easily but setting up a game for GURPS when you lack experience in it can be time consuming and a little frustrating.

And before the GURPS fans jump on my back about this, the main issue i am referring too is; Even though you don't need to use a lot of the rules in GURPS if you don't want to, you still have to sift through them all and decided what you do and don't want to use. It can be a very time consuming process for people new to GURPS, it also can lead to potential pot holes for unprepared GM's. I would recommend if you want to go down the GURPS path play a short run game in a pre made GURPS setting to get a feel for the mechanics and the game. This will make the game you want to run.

also +1 for savage worlds. I am a fan of the system, some find it a little to lite but hey different strokes for different folks.

Raum
2013-07-03, 09:39 PM
Take a look at Unisystem. There are two versions - Classic and Cinematic. Both have had free rules published on the web (Witchcraft (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/692/CJ-Carrellas-WitchCraft?it=1) and a Buffy quickstart (www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/buffystuff/roleplaygame/rules/index.shtml)), though I'm not sure the Cinematic version is still available. Both versions have rules usable for creating races (in books you'd need to purchase) - zombies for Classic and demons for Cinematic.

What do you want from the system other than lethality? Are you looking for something light such as Risus or as detailed as d20? Or something in between?

Sir_Gabes
2013-07-04, 05:42 AM
I'm enjoying the detailed answers I'm getting. I might look at the gurps lite rules. (Not a concrete decision.) Fate Core seems alright. Does anyone have any experience with Cortex?

Totally Guy
2013-07-04, 06:54 AM
I'm playing in a game about a colony of settlers looking for a planet in Cortex+ (it's mainly a Smallville hack).

I am playing a Simulacrum human and the way it does it is with some heritage abilities. I have just enough precognition to screw myself over, but one of the other players has a some adaption ability. We can use abilities like that when we describe how it's relevant and if there are no other abilities that would be more relevant.

The relationship map grows out of character creation and it pretty much assures messy situations that the characters can act with. Each of the players stats are things like Truth, Ethics and Authority and the player has to write a statement about each one. The statement are considered when the character takes an action. This ought to encourage a goal.

We've not done much fighting in the smallville hack but I know from Marvel that injuries and stress award their die to the pools of those who oppose you and explain how they exploit your stress.

neonchameleon
2013-07-04, 06:59 AM
I'm enjoying the detailed answers I'm getting. I might look at the gurps lite rules. (Not a concrete decision.) Fate Core seems alright. Does anyone have any experience with Cortex?

Cortex (Blue Book/Supernatural/Serenity) or Cortex+ (Leverage/Smallville/Marvel Heroic/the upcoming Firefly)?

I can't think of anything you could do with Classic Cortex you couldn't do better with Unisystem. Dice pools where you simply add everything up and you can get stats of d12+d2 are annoying.

Cortex+ is a framework rather than a game - the three current Cortex+ games are more different than D&D 3e, D&D 4e, and Mutants and Masterminds. But the basic structure behind Cortex+ is that you stat the things that are important for the game you are trying to play on a scale from d4 to d12 (so for Leverage it's a classic Skills/Abilities, for Smallville it's Relationships/Values, and Marvel Heroic it's teamworking, powers, and skills/contacts), and roll your dice pool. Best two dice matter. All three games work really well and character creation in Smallville is worldbuilding. But I don't think that's what you are after.

Which means my recommendations are GURPS and Fate Core depending how crunchy and detailed you want. (GURPS being the high crunch option and Fate Core being the narrative and fast flowing one).

The Dark Fiddler
2013-07-04, 07:03 AM
Fate Core seems alright.

If you're still considering Fate but aren't entirely sure yet, you might want to check the Accelerated Edition I mentioned, which is also available as "pay what you want." It has the same rules as Fate Core, except with a slightly streamlined character creation that suggests coming up with the details of your character during play and using Approaches instead of skills, but significantly cut down. And I mean significantly. Fate Core is over 300 pages, Fate Accelerated Edition is 45 if you count example characters and a handy dandy rule summary sheet. Should give you a good idea of the rules without taking the investment of reading Fate Core.

neonchameleon
2013-07-04, 08:26 AM
Fate Core is over 300 pages

This is deceptive. First Fate Core is paperback size rather than the classic D&D Tome sized so those 300 pages are much smaller than they appear. Secondly, a lot of that is guidance and showing how to play and GMing/playing advice. The biggest difference in the rules is that Fate Core uses skills and FAE approaches - meaning that only the skill pages are that different.

The Dark Fiddler
2013-07-04, 09:37 AM
Secondly, a lot of that is guidance and showing how to play and GMing/playing advice.

Exactly. It's nice the first few times, when you're trying to understand the system, but it gets to be a bit much very quickly, especially for somebody who isn't new to roleplaying games and doesn't need the "This is a game where you play the role of a character" spiel that every game seems to need to give. It's a bit of a pain to slough through.

Bling Cat
2013-07-04, 09:44 AM
It might not fit some of your criteria, but have you heard of Riddle of Steel? It doesn't really cover the racial mechanics (I mean, it can, but not more so any other system), and it is fairly complex (Although not as complex as it first appears), but if you want dynamic, lethal combat this is the system to go to.
Another issue might be the availability of books, by which I mean they're barely available. You can generally find a second hand one if you look, but otherwise you're restricted to certain extra legal means of acquisition.

Also, it's purely medieval fantasy , and the system doesn't lend itself to other time periods. Except possibly like Star wars. Actually that sounds awesome.

Alejandro
2013-07-04, 01:04 PM
Savage Worlds.

Sir_Gabes
2013-07-05, 07:45 PM
A lot of people are calling for savage worlds. There are some really solid options. Once I decide on a system and get this game off the ground, I was thinking of doing a detailed thread on my experience and the in game events that take place. Would anyone be interested in reading it and what category should I post under.