Better generic RPG

[Zahhak]

Without trying to turn this into a tirade about my hatred of Hero System, I hate Hero System and want a better universal system.

Basically, I don't understand it. After over a year of playing Hero, I still have literally no idea how to make a character. Something about character points, and disads, I don't know. And I barely understand combat. Subtract my OCV from their DCV, and divide by tau, or some other crap. And the combat is insanely clunky. My group just ran through a combat and at the end our GM made a remark "I understand, when this is done you guys are getting a break. This combat has gone on for 3 and a half minutes." Really? I've been waiting for this crap to end for 4 hours! Four hours to simulate less then 4 minutes of combat. It may have been awhile, but I don't remember combat in DND taking this freaking long.

And some of this may be that I'm an idiot. Maybe I don't possess the necessary 150 IQ to understand this game, but I had the game explained to me, read half the freaking book, and had the game explained to me again. I still have no idea what the crap I'm supposed to be doing.

Or maybe, it's because my whole party are idiots. You know them, they're the ones that keep having us play Hero system when I keep saying "I don't like or understand this system, can we use something else?", and after over three years of playing this game, still regularly get into debates about (seemingly) simple things, only to find out half the time that none of the debaters where right!

At this point I'm content to say, not "I don't understand this game" but instead "this game is way the crap too complicated to be anywhere near fun"

At this point I've concluded Hero can eat crap and die, but it has helped me figure out what I hate in RPGs (other than combat), and I was hoping someone could help me out. My overarching thing is that I want to be able to read the rule book straight through, one time, and understand the rules enough that I can explain to anyone, and I wont need to refer back to the book five times during one combat. Some additional points that I think would be nice:

* De-emphasis on dice rolling mechanics
* I want combat to either take so long incredibly long that no sane human will ever do it, or it takes no time at all.

I have more, I'm sure, but I need to leave where I am. I'll expand this soonish.

[Mr Beer]

Sounds like you want FATE.

[Rhynn]

Unisystem (of e.g. All Flesh Must Be Eaten, the free Witchcraft, etc.). IIRC AFMB has instructions for converting into diceless, or at least less-dice-used (all weapons list diceless damages, for instance).

GURPS is marginally less complicated, at least if you stay away from building your own robots/spaceships/vehicles.

Fuzion is about as simple as Unisystem.

[Zahhak]

Sounds like you want FATE.

We tried it once. It went from a Sci Fi Adventure to a Cyberpunk Soap Opera with three characters that were completely and totally useless. At this point, I'm a little afraid to try it again.

[Zavoniki]

I'll throw out Cortex, though it can have some problems modelling complex magic and complex superpowers. Or pretty much anything that's hard to represent with dice rolls.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Sounds like you want FATE.

Indeed, this sounds like the best bet. It has the upside of being free, here (http://www.evilhat.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=79&products_id=223).

If Hero is close enough to a generic system for your purposes (it's actually for supers, isn't it?), then you may or may not like Mutants and Masterminds. It's based off of the d20 system D&D uses, so while there are significant changes in how you build characters you'll at least have a reference point to make things easier. It's not exactly low-crunch, but from what I've heard it's simpler than Hero.



Fuzion is about as simple as Unisystem.

But for the love of God if you're looking at Fuzion, stay away from the DBZ book :smalleek:

Edit:


We tried it once. It went from a Sci Fi Adventure to a Cyberpunk Soap Opera with three characters that were completely and totally useless. At this point, I'm a little afraid to try it again.

That sounds like a problem with the GM and the way they ran the game rather than an issue with the system itself. The whole point of the system is supposed to be proactive, competent people having adventures. Maybe give it another try, because it's a pretty decent system.

[Zahhak]

That sounds like a problem with the GM and the way they ran the game rather than an issue with the system itself. The whole point of the system is supposed to be proactive, competent people having adventures. Maybe give it another try, because it's a pretty decent system.

The problem was I forgot rule 1 of being a GM: players are freaking idiots. I told them exactly what was going to happen ("you're going to be part of a band of refugees crossing territory full of jurassic monsters") and they decided a romance writer was a reasonable character choice. I figured they were trolling me and let them have their little fun. Turns out, nope, players are idiots.:smallfurious:

[Ravens_cry]

The problem was I forgot rule 1 of being a GM: players are freaking idiots. I told them exactly what was going to happen ("you're going to be part of a band of refugees crossing territory full of jurassic monsters") and they decided a romance writer was a reasonable character choice. I figured they were trolling me and let them have their little fun. Turns out, nope, players are idiots.:smallfurious:
Sounds to me like they were going with the idea of a band of refugees. That's going to include people from all walks of life, and not just Slab Bulkhead (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFHlJ2voJHY) clones.

[Mr Beer]

The problem was I forgot rule 1 of being a GM: players are freaking idiots.

A system can't fix that, sorry bro.

[LibraryOgre]

Well, there's always the One Deck Engine (http://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2013/08/ode-one-deck-engine.html)...

I enjoy Savage Worlds, It's easy, straightforward, and adaptable to a lot of different settings, even with the basic book; I've written it for Mass Effect, and run impromptu games set in World War II and a fantasy setting we came up with on the spot. Combat is a little more involved than you're looking for, but not horribly so.

I also like the d6 system, which is no longer supported, but is free and has a lot of variants.

[Necroticplague]

Well, what type of generic system do you want? Are you looking for a system that's generic because it has rules for pretty much everything, or because it has so little rules they can be flexxed in any direction you want?

For the former, you can do GURPS, which despite it's reputation is actually pretty simple (except for a few things, like making vehicles, which is about as complex in game as real life), or possibly M&M (which while made for comic book-type superheroes, easily adapts itself to any genre).

For the latter, try Legends or Living Legends (oddly unrelated to each other) (neither of which I can give too much info on because I'm a bigger fan of crunch-heavy systems).

[CombatOwl]

We tried it once. It went from a Sci Fi Adventure to a Cyberpunk Soap Opera with three characters that were completely and totally useless. At this point, I'm a little afraid to try it again.

FATE desperately needs the GM to be persuasive and go into the game with a strong sense of vision about what the game ought to be. It's not really a generic system--it's a framework for building a specific system for whatever setting you would like. It works best when you come up with Extras and small changes to the system to reinforce the particular setting you'd like to play. There's a thread about one person trying to make FATE work for their post-apocalyptic game that provides examples of how that works. It doesn't require you to write your own stuff from nothing (the game provides a lot of examples of how that can work), or radically remake the system--the game is explicitly designed to be changed in such a way, and they even have a system toolkit that provides suggestions on what you can do.

But that's about the only "generic" system I know of that fits what you describe. Savage Worlds might also qualify, depending on your definition of generic (since it really only does pulp games well).

[Segev]

I'll chime in with BESM. It's a now-defunct system, so I believe you can find online .pdfs of it and not even have pangs of conscience. 3e is my favorite of them, but 2e is serviceable.

Combat can be difficult if you engage in grappling or really want to pay attention to all of the rules, but for most purposes you can get away with simply using the very basic "attack roll, defense roll, if the former is higher than the latter, apply the flat damage of the attack used to the target's hp."

It still can take a while, but I have grown to learn that this is not the fault of the system so much as of the players. We always have to stop and take stock of the current state before we decide our action for the round, and that just plain takes time.

BESM runs on the TriStat system. That is, you have three basic stats: Body, Mind, and Soul.

You then spend whatever CP you don't spend on those on Attributes, which are a fairly comprehensive list of powers. It's meant to allow you to do just about anything, but you will need to finagle a few niche abilities (and its rules for incorporeality are stupid). Fortunately, if you're willing to be a touch flexible on interpretation, you can adapt or use as guidelines the existing attributes for anything you want to do. (And it's not MUCH you'll need to do this for, in my experience.)



For DIRT-simple, there's Risus. It's free; just google for it. Basic premise is that you have 10 d6s with which to build your character. You assign them to at least 4 "traits," dividing them up to represent how good you are at these traits. It provides some guidelines for how specific traits should be.

When you want to do something, you explain how you use a trait to achieve it, and roll against a difficulty. When competing, you roll against somebody else's trait.

Combat is done by actively describing attacks and defenses (which need not be "physical combat;" an example of a cook-off is given in the very brief manual) of the participants, and then rolling the traits appropriate to them. The losing roll loses a die from the trait used. When any one trait reaches 0 dice, the character who is reduced to 0 dice has lost the combat; what that precisely means is left up to the DM.

[kyoryu]

The problem was I forgot rule 1 of being a GM: players are freaking idiots. I told them exactly what was going to happen ("you're going to be part of a band of refugees crossing territory full of jurassic monsters") and they decided a romance writer was a reasonable character choice. I figured they were trolling me and let them have their little fun. Turns out, nope, players are idiots.:smallfurious:


Generally people aren't idiots, and any summation of a situation that ends up with "they're idiots" is probably *not* particularly useful...

I seem to remember htis thread, actually. And as others have said here, what you've described above could as easily be interpreted as "random people being subjected to this, doing their best to survive" as it could be "pseudo-military guys going into this and kicking ass and taking names."

Also, Fate gives you tools to combat this - specifically, it's kind of presumed that the skill list will be tweaked for the given setting. Any skill on the list should be acceptable as a peak skill - if not, get rid of it.

Anyway, as far as a generic system goes, it might be worth asking what kinds of activities you expect players to engage in on a regular basis?


FATE desperately needs the GM to be persuasive and go into the game with a strong sense of vision about what the game ought to be.

I disagree with this pretty strongly. What it requires is that the players and GM get on the same page, and in fact Fate is pretty strong in its advice that that 'should' mean the GM taking player input as much as the other way around.

Though I do think that's the primary factor in the above-described failure, the players and GM having very different ideas about what the game would be, and not communicating it well.

Even mechanically, this conversation has a few parts - the GM tells the players what the game is like via the skill list, campaign aspects, etc., and the players tell the GM what they want to see by their choices of skills and aspects.


It's not really a generic system--it's a framework for building a specific system for whatever setting you would like. It works best when you come up with Extras and small changes to the system to reinforce the particular setting you'd like to play.

Absolutely, though I'd argue that Extras are kind of optional - but at any rate the skill list should almost certainly be tweaked for just about any game that you run with Fate.

[CombatOwl]

I disagree with this pretty strongly. What it requires is that the players and GM get on the same page, and in fact Fate is pretty strong in its advice that that 'should' mean the GM taking player input as much as the other way around.

I didn't mean to imply that the GM ought to be a dictator, but getting five people to agree on where to go eat dinner can often be a challenge--getting them to develop a shared vision of a campaign setting and story... is orders of magnitude more difficult. At a very basic level, someone has to be responsible for building the details and coming up with a basic framework for what happens. Players don't get enough fate points to fill that role on a level equal to the GM. Mechanically speaking, only the person with unlimited compels gets to do that. Ultimately it has to be up to the GM to do that--and while he should get input from the players, it's the GM's responsibility in the end to put all of that into something coherent.


Though I do think that's the primary factor in the above-described failure, the players and GM having very different ideas about what the game would be, and not communicating it well.

Even mechanically, this conversation has a few parts - the GM tells the players what the game is like via the skill list, campaign aspects, etc., and the players tell the GM what they want to see by their choices of skills and aspects.

I've found that it more often works like this; the GM comes up with something fun to do, the players build characters that optimize around some trick they plan on exploiting every time they have a problem. It doesn't matter that the strategy can be invalidated by the GM choosing to use problems that trick can't solve. Especially if we use your communicative approach to skill selection--what are they communicating with that? That they want a game where they can easily handle any challenge thrown at them? That's not very interesting or fun for the GM--or characters who aren't so well optimized. When one person in the party is an ass and takes Shoot at +4, and all his aspects are related to shooting, and all of his stunts are used for acting quickly and calling shots... is that supposed to be a message that the game ought to be about shooting, even if the rest of the party built a group of college students with no combat abilities above a +1? That's not an example drawn up out of whole cloth. My answer to that is to tell the person with the shooting character to go make something more in line with the rest of the party. Would yours be to make the game partly about shooting, then let the shooting character off important NPCs in that story-driven game you had originally wanted to run?

Sure, in theory the game should be a perfect collaboration between the players and the GM. In practice, the game is about what the GM wants to have happen--with some player input on the matter.


Absolutely, though I'd argue that Extras are kind of optional - but at any rate the skill list should almost certainly be tweaked for just about any game that you run with Fate.

I'm having a hard time thinking of two genres that don't need special treatment above and beyond the skill list. Maybe pulp heroes and modern action heroes? Most sorts of genres can make good use of some sort of Extra or another.

[tensai_oni]

OP - the problem here is something more than just the choice of a system. You have to deliberately TRY to make a useless character in Fate - even if you make a non-combatant romance writer, those skills have to go somewhere.

So either your players are really inept and stupid, or you're being overly critical. Like it was said in the thread already, changing a system won't fix that.


I'll chime in with BESM. It's a now-defunct system, so I believe you can find online .pdfs of it and not even have pangs of conscience. 3e is my favorite of them, but 2e is serviceable.

Whatever BESM can do, Mutants and Masterminds can do better. Both have the same drawbacks (easy to break without game master's supervision over character creation, number of choices intimidating for first time players), but M&M has mechanics that work more elegantly and are simpler. It even does anime-inspired settings better than BESM, which is made to emulate anime and manga.

Only reason why I can think of anyone wanting to play Big Eyes Small Mouth over Mutants and Masterminds is if someone really, really wants to have a system with hit points and "mana" as numerical values.

[Mastikator]

The problem was I forgot rule 1 of being a GM: players are freaking idiots. I told them exactly what was going to happen ("you're going to be part of a band of refugees crossing territory full of jurassic monsters") and they decided a romance writer was a reasonable character choice. I figured they were trolling me and let them have their little fun. Turns out, nope, players are idiots.:smallfurious:

To be frank seems like you're the one at fault here. If you want their characters to be of some specific archetype other than refugee (aka normal civilian person) then you need to tell them. A romance writer might have been a valid choice. I've played RPG where I non-combatant civilians were fine options.

[Segev]

Whatever BESM can do, Mutants and Masterminds can do better. Both have the same drawbacks (easy to break without game master's supervision over character creation, number of choices intimidating for first time players), but M&M has mechanics that work more elegantly and are simpler. It even does anime-inspired settings better than BESM, which is made to emulate anime and manga.

Only reason why I can think of anyone wanting to play Big Eyes Small Mouth over Mutants and Masterminds is if someone really, really wants to have a system with hit points and "mana" as numerical values.

That's...awfully derrogatory towards BESM. I take it you've had bad experiences.

I've played both M&M 3e and BESM, and I actually like both. M&M has advantages for those who want a d20 system's familiarity, but saying one is "more elegant" than the other is really a matter of taste. As for "simpler..." I don't really think so. BESM is actually a lot simpler in chargen, because there aren't so many fiddly bits on rules of what you can and can't have as numeric totals, how defects interact with attributes for points, and (good grief) the items/equipment system.

Note: I am not saying M&M is bad. I'm merely disagreeing that it's inherently simpler/better than BESM. As for in actual play...BESM's most complicated part is if you try to look at "special maneuvers" (e.g. the dreaded grapple rules in ANY system I've seen that has them), and the presence of Shock (which, like D&D's massive damage, I usually see GMs just ignore).

M&M is a lot harder to ignore the rules detritus on when you want to, because it has a rather unintuitive (to most gamers) system for handling "damage." I actually think it's a really neat system, but it's not intuitive and still tracks a pseudo-hp stat because "damage" does build up to make the save harder every time.

M&M does superheroes quite well, and could definitely be used for anime. BESM does "simple" better, in my opinion, because it's just a lot more straight-forward. M&M tries to constrain balance by its chargen rules, and I actually like its method of handling defects on powers more than BESM's.

In the end, I think it mostly a matter of taste whether M&M 3e or BESM is a better choice. I recommend both of them. {{scrubbed}}

[Draz74]

{{scrubbed}}

Not sure that's a significant advantage, since M&M 3e has an SRD for free online.

[The Rose Dragon]

Actually, considering BESM is owned by White Wolf, who sells all the editions and all the books on RPGNow.com, I will say it is pretty illegal to download it without paying them money.

However, Tri-Stat dX, the generic version of BESM (which is an accomplishment, creating a generic version of a generic system to be used in less generic systems later), is freely available on the same site. Not that I'd recommend it. I agree with anyone who says you shouldn't play Tri-Stat dX (and BESM) when Mutants & Masterminds is available.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I've played both M&M 3e and BESM, and I actually like both. M&M has advantages for those who want a d20 system's familiarity, but saying one is "more elegant" than the other is really a matter of taste. As for "simpler..." I don't really think so. BESM is actually a lot simpler in chargen, because there aren't so many fiddly bits on rules of what you can and can't have as numeric totals, how defects interact with attributes for points, and (good grief) the items/equipment system.
M&M's PL limit are quite straightforwards if you actually read them (which, in my experience, not enough players do). I'm not sure what you find confusing about equipment, though.

M&M does, admittedly, tend to be somewhat complicated in character creation-- it's about putting together the desired power from the moving parts, rather than just going down a list and buying what you want-- but it's pretty simple in-play. I've written up pre-gen characters with their abilities described D&D-style and gotten people rolling in under ten minutes.

I wouldn't automatically recommend FATE, though. It's a fine system, don't get me wrong, and I like playing it, but it comes from a very different direction than a lot of "mainstream" games like D&D.

[tensai_oni]

That's...awfully derrogatory towards BESM. I take it you've had bad experiences.

No, not really. All BESM games I played, I enjoyed. But then I discovered M&M and it turns out it can do pretty much the same things, but works out better in pretty much every way.

At least that's my opinion.

[Knaight]

I wouldn't automatically recommend FATE, though. It's a fine system, don't get me wrong, and I like playing it, but it comes from a very different direction than a lot of "mainstream" games like D&D.

Fortunately, that is what Fudge is for. It's essentially the bridge between GURPS and Fate, being written by a GURPS author who wanted to move to a simpler system, and later being picked up by Fred Hicks and modified until FATE emerged. The big differences here are that it doesn't have Aspects, doesn't have Stunts, and does have a more conventional Gift/Flaw system (FATE also jammed a bunch of stuff into the ladder, so the ladder is shorter and more memorable as well).

The core .pdf is also free, and you can play with just that. I did for years, though I can say that I'm glad I eventually switched to the 10th Anniversary Edition.

[SimonMoon6]

GURPS is an okay system. It's easy enough to learn and play, but you really really can't do any kind of high fantasy heroics with it, and the less said about its superhero system, the better.

I always recommend trying a game based on superheroes first, because if it can handle superheroes, it can handle anything (unlike GURPS which is designed for low powered humans and does not do anything else very well). My favorite system is the DC Superheroes RPG published by Mayfair and long out of print.

[The Cat Goddess]

GURPS is an okay system. It's easy enough to learn and play, but you really really can't do any kind of high fantasy heroics with it, and the less said about its superhero system, the better.

I always recommend trying a game based on superheroes first, because if it can handle superheroes, it can handle anything (unlike GURPS which is designed for low powered humans and does not do anything else very well). My favorite system is the DC Superheroes RPG published by Mayfair and long out of print.

Wait, what?

While I don't know 4th edition GURPS that well, I can categorically state that GURPS 3e did high fantasy just fine when you added in the "cinematic" rules. If you want really high powered magic, throw in the Technomancer spells. Knacks are an often-overlooked way of allowing characters to do amazing things as well.

While I agree the system doesn't do comicbook superheroes well, it actually does to the TV & movie style superheroes well... what with the consequences of having dangerous powers in a normal world and guns still being a danger to most "supers".

[SimonMoon6]

Wait, what?

While I don't know 4th edition GURPS that well, I can categorically state that GURPS 3e did high fantasy just fine when you added in the "cinematic" rules. If you want really high powered magic, throw in the Technomancer spells. Knacks are an often-overlooked way of allowing characters to do amazing things as well.

While I agree the system doesn't do comicbook superheroes well, it actually does to the TV & movie style superheroes well... what with the consequences of having dangerous powers in a normal world and guns still being a danger to most "supers".

It's been about 20 years since I looked at the system, so I could be wrong. But what I remember is allowing players to make high powered characters (one with ridiculously high Health). And then when battles happened, they would take tons of damage to the point where if they failed a trivial die roll, they would die, but if they didn't, then they would stay conscious and capable of fighting forever. So, heroic fights never ended in unconscious heroes, making it hard to challenge them.

I remember some rules in the superhero rules that tried to adjust this a little, but it didn't seem to work for me.

[kyoryu]

I didn't mean to imply that the GM ought to be a dictator, but getting five people to agree on where to go eat dinner can often be a challenge--getting them to develop a shared vision of a campaign setting and story... is orders of magnitude more difficult. At a very basic level, someone has to be responsible for building the details and coming up with a basic framework for what happens. Players don't get enough fate points to fill that role on a level equal to the GM. Mechanically speaking, only the person with unlimited compels gets to do that. Ultimately it has to be up to the GM to do that--and while he should get input from the players, it's the GM's responsibility in the end to put all of that into something coherent.

I view it as slightly more shared than that - the version I usually see with Fate goes something like

GM: "Hey, let's do a game kinda like xyz!"
Players: "Cool!"
<collab world building ensues>
Players: "Hey, here's some cool elements, including our characters!"
GM: "Awesome! I'll integrate these things into the game!"

So, the GM is usually responsible for the initial high-level concept (which is often super-vague), the group as a whole comes up with a bunch of details, and then the GM ties it all together and fleshes out as necessary.


I've found that it more often works like this; the GM comes up with something fun to do, the players build characters that optimize around some trick they plan on exploiting every time they have a problem. It doesn't matter that the strategy can be invalidated by the GM choosing to use problems that trick can't solve.

Well, in general I've seen that behavior less with Fate than I have with late versions of D&D, or a few other more build-heavy systems.


Especially if we use your communicative approach to skill selection--what are they communicating with that? That they want a game where they can easily handle any challenge thrown at them?

No, they're communicating that they expect the 'trick' they're using to have high utility. If that's a combat trick, they're telling me that they have an expectation that there will be a lot of combat.


That's not very interesting or fun for the GM--or characters who aren't so well optimized. When one person in the party is an ass and takes Shoot at +4, and all his aspects are related to shooting, and all of his stunts are used for acting quickly and calling shots... is that supposed to be a message that the game ought to be about shooting, even if the rest of the party built a group of college students with no combat abilities above a +1?

That's a message that the Shooter player expects a lot of combat, and the others don't. I think character creation is a perfectly valid time to align those expectations in one way or another, and settle on exactly what the tone of the game will actually be.


That's not an example drawn up out of whole cloth. My answer to that is to tell the person with the shooting character to go make something more in line with the rest of the party. Would yours be to make the game partly about shooting, then let the shooting character off important NPCs in that story-driven game you had originally wanted to run?

Not at all - I'd be with you, and explain that the overall tone of the game, by group consensus, appears to be less combat-focused, and that the character should either change his character to be in line with the overall group preference, or he should get used to having a lot of scenes where he's marginalized.

OTOH, if everybody comes up with combat monsters and the GM initially imagined a more investigative/political game, that shows that the players' expectations and the GM's are not aligned, and one way or another, everybody needs to get on the same page.

But for situations where the expectations clash less, then yes, I think that the skills the players choose should impact what the game is. A game where a number of people get higher levels in Lore will play out differently than a game where everyone picks high levels of combat ability.

Aligning expectations doesn't mean that everyone gets exactly what they want - but it does mean that everyone has a clear idea of what the game *is*.

As far as killing important NPCs - eh, how the players react to the world is their decision. If there's a bunch of flat-out murder, then actions have consequences.


Sure, in theory the game should be a perfect collaboration between the players and the GM. In practice, the game is about what the GM wants to have happen--with some player input on the matter.

I disagree to a great extent. *Especially* with Fate, where to a great extent I believe in presenting problems and not solutions. The Aspects that players choose and their actions in-game will determine what happens as much or more than the GM's desires. But that's just how I play.


I'm having a hard time thinking of two genres that don't need special treatment above and beyond the skill list. Maybe pulp heroes and modern action heroes? Most sorts of genres can make good use of some sort of Extra or another.

Eh, I've run fantasy games very close to the default skill list, and I've actually argued for running them *with* the default skill list.

I'm not saying that Extras aren't ever appropriate, but rather that I think the necessity of them is overrated, and that a lot of times I think people jump too quick into "we need extras for that!" rather than figuring out if they really do.

I mean, for something like a cybernetic arm, I think you can do just as good of a job with standard skills and an aspect, possibly a stunt, as you could with a whole Extras setup.

[Rhynn]

It's been about 20 years since I looked at the system, so I could be wrong. But what I remember is allowing players to make high powered characters (one with ridiculously high Health). And then when battles happened, they would take tons of damage to the point where if they failed a trivial die roll, they would die, but if they didn't, then they would stay conscious and capable of fighting forever. So, heroic fights never ended in unconscious heroes, making it hard to challenge them.

Simple mistake there: they shouldn't have high Health (HT) - that's ridiculously expensive anyway. They should have decent HT (12-14, whatever), and a lot of Extra Hit Points (whatever is appropriate to your style; the GM should probably set an upper limit or maximum total of hit points). Hit points don't help with HT rolls to stay conscious and alive.

[Mr Beer]

GURPS is an okay system. It's easy enough to learn and play, but you really really can't do any kind of high fantasy heroics with it, and the less said about its superhero system, the better.

I always recommend trying a game based on superheroes first, because if it can handle superheroes, it can handle anything (unlike GURPS which is designed for low powered humans and does not do anything else very well). My favorite system is the DC Superheroes RPG published by Mayfair and long out of print.

What? GURPS works extremely well for fantasy heroics. Also, I rarely play superhero games, but just because a game runs superheroes well does not mean it does anything else properly.

[kyoryu]

Simple mistake there: they shouldn't have high Health (HT) - that's ridiculously expensive anyway. They should have decent HT (12-14, whatever), and a lot of Extra Hit Points (whatever is appropriate to your style; the GM should probably set an upper limit or maximum total of hit points). Hit points don't help with HT rolls to stay conscious and alive.

IIRC, consciousness also has to be rolled every turn as well, while HT rolls are only rolled when you cross a new threshold.

So if you're taking a lot of damage very quickly, yeah, death might be a higher possibility - but that also means that the character is staying in harm's way, which is a deliberate choice on their part.

[SimonMoon6]

Also, I rarely play superhero games, but just because a game runs superheroes well does not mean it does anything else properly.

Here's my reasoning for saying that a good superhero game does everything well: a superhero universe contains every kind of character. You have your magicians of every power level, your sneaky guys without powers, your fighting guys without powers, your deity-worshiping spell-casters, your historical characters, your futuristic characters, your gods, your wimps,... and, oh yeah, actual guys with powers, including guys who can push planets around with their bare hands (or with their super-breath or TARDISes or whatever).

Any game that can do all those things well can do *anything* well because anything you can imagine is something that's in a standard superhero universe. Now, not every superhero game *does* superheroes (meaning everything imaginable) well, but the ones that do are sublime.

[Black Jester]

Actually, Gurps isn't that bad for high power games if the GM knows what to expect and sets a good framework fr powers and abilities. You cannot play Gurps with the mindset that everything in the books is a viable option; you need to make a preselection beforehand and eliminate powers and character builds that are unsuited for the campaign. This is a mandatory part of the game preparation. If you do so halfway carefully, a campaign with superpowered characters is not much of a problem or any problem at all. Superheroes is not a genre I am particularly interested in, but we played a mini-campaign once (I think with about 800 to 1,000 CP characters) as super-heroes and it run smooth and without issue.

Gurps is hands down the best generic system without any competition in this regard.

[Arbane]

I also like the d6 system, which is no longer supported, but is free and has a lot of variants.

Just so you know, RPGnow.com (http://www.rpgnow.com) has a lot of d6 system book PDFs (http://www.rpgnow.com/index.php?filters=0_0_10020_0_0) available for free. (Although you do need to make an account to download them.)

[The Rose Dragon]

Gurps is hands down the best generic system without any competition in this regard.

I disagree, because...


You cannot play Gurps with the mindset that everything in the books is a viable option; you need to make a preselection beforehand and eliminate powers and character builds that are unsuited for the campaign.

This goes for most generic systems, but it is especially true for GURPS, because it has so many options, so many of them mutually exclusive, that trying to play a game takes more work than any other system I can think of. It might be very comprehensive, but comprehensiveness is not necessarily to its advantage. That is not to say GURPS is a bad game; in fact, GURPS is my third go-to game for any kind of genre. But considering the first game is either Unisystem or Mutants & Masterminds, both also generic games, that doesn't mean much.

[Mr Beer]

Any game that can do all those things well can do *anything* well because anything you can imagine is something that's in a standard superhero universe. Now, not every superhero game *does* superheroes (meaning everything imaginable) well, but the ones that do are sublime.

My (limited) experience with superhero games is that they model real life, low to medium type people badly. However, if you say otherwise, I'll take your word for it.

[The Dark Fiddler]

My (limited) experience with superhero games is that they model real life, low to medium type people badly. However, if you say otherwise, I'll take your word for it.

I've found that most games are bad at modeling "real life" normal people. It's just not what game designers look at when making their game about superheroes, or vampires, or god-killing.

[Scow2]

I've found that most games are bad at modeling "real life" normal people.Very, very true. How many commoners does it take to kill a cat, again?

[SimonMoon6]

I should add that despite my criticism of GURPS, I still ran a fun game with it. I had a strange multiversal multi-genre game that was initially inspired (loosely) by Philip Jose Farmer's Dungeon series (the series that he inspired rather than wrote).

One player had a tiger-man character (his name was Shere Khan and he had a sister named Chaka). One played a Scotsman who was incredibly skilled with his claymore (two handed sword). A third played a vampire starship pilot who had some skill with light sabers, I think. It's been over 20 years, so I don't remember it all very well.

But I found the whole "the tiger man can never be KO-ed because he's very healthy" issue to be a severe flaw in the game of the sort that made it not suitable for my purposes. And the Scotsman was so skilled with his claymore that *every* attack was a called shot to the brain, which got old really fast, making the game feel rather one-note at this above average power level (which is still far below a decent superhero power level).

But I think the magic system and the superhero rules were both huge disappointments due to the "you must have tons of weak powers before you can have a strong power" aspect of both systems, making it virtually impossible to accurately model characters from various genres.

And I'm never a fan of a game where a genius can never be less than incredible at any INT-based skill. If he so much skims a book, he's more of an expert than an average person who's spent years studying the subject? I don't like that, but YMMV.

[Mr Beer]

I've found that most games are bad at modeling "real life" normal people. It's just not what game designers look at when making their game about superheroes, or vampires, or god-killing.

Hence, GURPS which models real world power levels very well.

[Mr Beer]

I should add that despite my criticism of GURPS, I still ran a fun game with it. I had a strange multiversal multi-genre game that was initially inspired (loosely) by Philip Jose Farmer's Dungeon series (the series that he inspired rather than wrote).

One player had a tiger-man character (his name was Shere Khan and he had a sister named Chaka). One played a Scotsman who was incredibly skilled with his claymore (two handed sword). A third played a vampire starship pilot who had some skill with light sabers, I think. It's been over 20 years, so I don't remember it all very well.

I keep wanting to run something like that, tell everyone they can make whatever character they like and just throw a few loose limits in there.


But I found the whole "the tiger man can never be KO-ed because he's very healthy" issue to be a severe flaw in the game of the sort that made it not suitable for my purposes.

The thing is, if you pay for HT, you are paying for "damage saves" and "poison resistance" and "stamina". It's comparatively expensive to buy high stats, when you pay for really high end stats you are buying the ability to be naturally good at an entire class of things.

If you want someone who can be KO'd but not killed easily, you pay for less HT and more Hard To Kill advantage, this is cheaper. The desired result is very easily modelled in GURPS.


And the Scotsman was so skilled with his claymore that *every* attack was a called shot to the brain, which got old really fast, making the game feel rather one-note at this above average power level (which is still far below a decent superhero power level).

OK, but in order to hit the brain every time, he paid a lot of points for that, either DX or skill or both. Again, this is a GM issue, when you have a character that can one-shot some but not all opponent types, you mix up the encounters. Some of the enemies should be skilled themselves and thus able to parry his attacks or they should be Homogenous like golems or they should have distributed intelligences or otherwise not have vulnerable brains.


But I think the magic system and the superhero rules were both huge disappointments due to the "you must have tons of weak powers before you can have a strong power" aspect of both systems, making it virtually impossible to accurately model characters from various genres.

There are no such superhero rules. If you want the ability to zap someone with a power bolt, there's no rule that says you need other, weaker abilities.

There are prerequisites for complex and powerful spells e.g. you can't magically enslave someone's mind unless you are already capable of influencing someone's emotions. Which is logical. That doesn't stop you specialising in one or more powerful spells if you like.


And I'm never a fan of a game where a genius can never be less than incredible at any INT-based skill. If he so much skims a book, he's more of an expert than an average person who's spent years studying the subject? I don't like that, but YMMV.

You don't get a skill by skimming a book, you need 200 hours of proper teaching to acquire 1 point in a skill. But a genius will be a better accountant than a normal person with a lot less training, which I'm fine with. Same as a supernaturally quick person will, with minimal training, beat a normal soldier in a sword fight, even though the soldier might know more about swordfighting, but that doesn't make up for excellent DX. Again, this is reasonable.

[SimonMoon6]

The thing is, if you pay for HT, you are paying for "damage saves" and "poison resistance" and "stamina". It's comparatively expensive to buy high stats, when you pay for really high end stats you are buying the ability to be naturally good at an entire class of things.


And to me, that doesn't excuse things. Now, granted, I gave everybody more points to spend than the usual build total because I didn't want everybody to be stuck with a totally average ordinary character. So, the cost wasn't important. To me, the idea of having an 18 HT (or whatever it was) break the game is a serious flaw, though I understand that to someone else it might not seem like a flaw when there are workarounds (even though the game doesn't exactly tell you what you need to do). And those workarounds may not have existed at the time I was playing.



OK, but in order to hit the brain every time, he paid a lot of points for that, either DX or skill or both.

And again, I'm not too concerned about the point cost.



Again, this is a GM issue, when you have a character that can one-shot some but not all opponent types, you mix up the encounters.

That's not the issue. Even 20 years ago, I had enough GM-ing experience to handle combats and make them fair all around. The issue is not "this is too powerful" which would be an absurd complaint when trying to make powerful characters. My complaint is "this is boring" and "this is silly".

It's like how people complain about 3.x D&D fighters having no options but walking up and hitting someone. This is a more extreme case because 3.x D&D fighters can still decide how much expertise or power attack or whatever to use. But here, he had one good option, every single time. And every character he'd fight would end up with a wound in the exact same place.

And, yes, a weak little can't-do-anything guy won't ever experience this problem. But my problem with GURPS has been the idea that once you get beyond the can't-do-anything average ordinary normal guys, the game breaks down badly. And, to me, this is just another example.




There are no such superhero rules. If you want the ability to zap someone with a power bolt, there's no rule that says you need other, weaker abilities.


Okay, I was misremembering. In the 1989 Supers rules (yes, you made me go look them up), you have to buy skill in a category of powers. So, you might buy skill in Ice powers and then buy each ice power separately. It's not as bad as I was remembering, but it's still pretty lame if you want to have two completely unrelated powers, as you have to buy skill in two different categories. It's still pretty lame but not terrible. Flipping through a later Supers book, I see that that changed, but by that point I wasn't playing GURPS anymore.



There are prerequisites for complex and powerful spells e.g. you can't magically enslave someone's mind unless you are already capable of influencing someone's emotions. Which is logical. That doesn't stop you specialising in one or more powerful spells if you like.

This still seems lame to me. First, if you're only going to use Fireball, it seems like such a waste of time to have to scribble down ten or fifteen (or however many) stupid useless spells on your character sheet that you're never going to use. Especially since my focus in running a game would be on high power levels, where people might have tons of awesome spells... meaning they'd have an exponentially greater number of useless spells on their list of spells that they theoretically could cast but never will, so why bother?

And to me, it's not much of a "universal" game system if you can't have a guy who can only cast one awesome spell. GURPS can never have a guy who can only cast a Fireball spell or only cast a Mind Control spell. And that, to me, is a weakness, though I understand that others might not feel the same way.



You don't get a skill by skimming a book, you need 200 hours of proper teaching to acquire 1 point in a skill.

Well, slight exaggeration. I was imagining the whole "spending half a point" as being something that doesn't take much effort.



But a genius will be a better accountant than a normal person with a lot less training, which I'm fine with.

But the genius can never know a little but not a lot about a skill. And that seems lame to me. And again, I know others may feel differently. It's like how for GURPS Wild Cards, they had to completely revamp the Language skill to avoid this issue, if I remember correctly. And that's funny because languages aren't *that* big a deal in the Wild Card novels. To me, this is just such a glaring flaw that the game almost becomes unusable as a "universal" game. It becomes no more universal than D&D with its straightjackets on how things work.

[Rhynn]

And to me, that doesn't excuse things. Now, granted, I gave everybody more points to spend than the usual build total because I didn't want everybody to be stuck with a totally average ordinary character. So, the cost wasn't important. To me, the idea of having an 18 HT (or whatever it was) break the game is a serious flaw, though I understand that to someone else it might not seem like a flaw when there are workarounds (even though the game doesn't exactly tell you what you need to do). And those workarounds may not have existed at the time I was playing.

You can break any game by using it wrong. You can not make a game that is unbreakable (unless it's just incredibly simple, I guess; hard to break Cthulhu Dark!). The GM of GURPS has to understand what works and what doesn't, and use the system right. It's that simple. (Indeed, I'm pretty sure things like super-high HT are explicitly advised against in several places...) And my experience is from 3rd edition...


And to me, it's not much of a "universal" game system if you can't have a guy who can only cast one awesome spell.

There's an advantage that does just that: they're called Knacks in 3rd edition (page 96 in GURPS Magic). I assume this was carried over to 4th edition in some form.


But the genius can never know a little but not a lot about a skill. And that seems lame to me.

If we're talking about an IQ 18 genius, that's literally comicbook level: they're supposed to study a book (well, study material for 200 hours, technically; 100 hours for a half-point in GURPS 3E I guess) and then be awesome at the subject. If you've got IQ 18s in your game, you've intentionally taken it to four-color superhero or demigod-fantasy levels. A "regular" IQ 14 genius is at a "mere" skill 11 in a Very Hard skill with that 1 point, which is just average (and really not enough to tackle hard tasks with the skill).

[Black Jester]

With IQ 18, a character would be significantly smarter by Gurps standards than Archimedes (IQ 16) or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (the man who was by his contemporaries called a universal genius). In Gurps 4, the general assumption is, that every 4 points increase in any one ability score basically doubles the capacities of that abilities. With an IQ of 18, a character would about as smart as three average people combined.


And to me, it's not much of a "universal" game system if you can't have a guy who can only cast one awesome spell. GURPS can never have a guy who can only cast a Fireball spell or only cast a Mind Control spell. And that, to me, is a weakness, though I understand that others might not feel the same way.

Of course you can. The prerequisite ladder is one concept for the magic system among many,many others. You can just as well built any such 'spell' as a unique power as well:
Fireball (Innate Attack. Burning (5 CP/level), power Mod Magic ( 0 or -10%), area effect , (or, alternatively, explosion), Increased Range (if needed), perhaps cost fatigue or other limitations, depending on the exact nature; extra time or recharge might be recommendable.
Mind Control is, well the Mind Control power. Modify at your pleasure.


It becomes no more universal than D&D with its straightjackets on how things work.

Depending on your expectations what D&D entails, Gurps is better at D&D than most D&D editions.

[Rakaydos]

If the Cardinal engine had a generic system, instead of 3 different setting specific RPGs (Ironclaw, Nogglestones, and Myriad song) that each cost 30-60 USD, I'd reccomend looking them over. The only free "preview" they have posted is here (http://www.sanguinegames.com/download/Ironclaw%20-%20Squaring%20the%20Circle%20Preview.pdf), but most people are scared off by the furries on the cover. It's a good system, IMO.
Page 8 of the preview shows the flexibility of the system with a small sample of how the attribute system works.

[Black Jester]

If the Cardinal engine had a generic system, instead of 3 different setting specific RPGs (Ironclaw, Nogglestones, and Myriad song) that each cost 30-60 USD, I'd reccomend looking them over.

That's basically the same problem with Unisystem. I really like the rules (Gurps I can worship, Unisystem I can love), but many of the useful rules are distributed over so many different splats, that it isn't even funny.

[Mr Beer]

And to me, that doesn't excuse things. Now, granted, I gave everybody more points to spend than the usual build total because I didn't want everybody to be stuck with a totally average ordinary character. So, the cost wasn't important. To me, the idea of having an 18 HT (or whatever it was) break the game is a serious flaw, though I understand that to someone else it might not seem like a flaw when there are workarounds (even though the game doesn't exactly tell you what you need to do). And those workarounds may not have existed at the time I was playing.

Points cost is always relevant in GURPS, that’s how characters are made. It’s relevant like stat rolls are relevant in D&D.

HT: 18 doesn’t break the game at all. It does mean that you bought, amongst other things, an extreme resistance to being knocked out.

I think your real complaint here is that GURPS has a steep learning curve and thus you were unaware of the implications of buying amazingly high HT. That’s what happens when you build a simulationist system that can cope with everything. It’s a feature, not a flaw.



And again, I'm not too concerned about the point cost.


Per above, points cost is always relevant in GURPS. Big points buy big abilities.




That's not the issue. Even 20 years ago, I had enough GM-ing experience to handle combats and make them fair all around. The issue is not "this is too powerful" which would be an absurd complaint when trying to make powerful characters. My complaint is "this is boring" and "this is silly".

It's like how people complain about 3.x D&D fighters having no options but walking up and hitting someone. This is a more extreme case because 3.x D&D fighters can still decide how much expertise or power attack or whatever to use. But here, he had one good option, every single time. And every character he'd fight would end up with a wound in the exact same place.

And, yes, a weak little can't-do-anything guy won't ever experience this problem. But my problem with GURPS has been the idea that once you get beyond the can't-do-anything average ordinary normal guys, the game breaks down badly. And, to me, this is just another example.


Well, there are other locations to one-shot kill a guy, it doesn’t have to be the brain, it’s just what this player chose every time, apparently. He also apparently chose to kill his opponents instead of striking to cripple or subdue them or whatever.

But sorry, this is a GM issue. The guy built an extremely skilled swordmaster. An extremely skilled swordmaster who can one-shot his enemies by striking vulnerable locations.

If you want him to not kill every opponent like that, they need to be skilled enough to duel him or have good armour, or tough skin or be immune to brain hits or be flying or be good at dodging or any one of a million other choices to make it challenging and change things up.

If you took the decision to match the hero up against human or human–like opponents in melee situations with inferior weapon skills, well guess what, he’s going to stab them somewhere vital and kill them. That’s on you, the GM.



Okay, I was misremembering. In the 1989 Supers rules (yes, you made me go look them up), you have to buy skill in a category of powers. So, you might buy skill in Ice powers and then buy each ice power separately. It's not as bad as I was remembering, but it's still pretty lame if you want to have two completely unrelated powers, as you have to buy skill in two different categories. It's still pretty lame but not terrible. Flipping through a later Supers book, I see that that changed, but by that point I wasn't playing GURPS anymore.


So you might buy an Ice theme and have a suite of powers that relate to that or you might pick up powers on an-hoc basis, if you’d rather? Yes, I can see how that would be frustrating :confused:



This still seems lame to me. First, if you're only going to use Fireball, it seems like such a waste of time to have to scribble down ten or fifteen (or however many) stupid useless spells on your character sheet that you're never going to use. Especially since my focus in running a game would be on high power levels, where people might have tons of awesome spells... meaning they'd have an exponentially greater number of useless spells on their list of spells that they theoretically could cast but never will, so why bother?
And to me, it's not much of a "universal" game system if you can't have a guy who can only cast one awesome spell. GURPS can never have a guy who can only cast a Fireball spell or only cast a Mind Control spell. And that, to me, is a weakness, though I understand that others might not feel the same way.

It makes total sense. If you’re going to cast Fireballs from a traditional, we-learned-this-from-a-book -magic-system, you should be able to magically start a fire or ignite a candle. Gandalf could barbeque batches of goblins, but he could also light his pipe. In this respect (and many others) GURPS makes a great deal more sense than D&D.

Furthermore, the precursor spells are not useless at all. Every one of them does useful things, unless it’s just wall to wall combat all day long.

Really though, that’s all irrelevant, because if you don’t like the above approach, just buy Fireball as a power and call it a spell. Like it explicitly suggests in the books. That’s two approaches to magic and there are several more available in GURPS.




But the genius can never know a little but not a lot about a skill. And that seems lame to me. And again, I know others may feel differently. It's like how for GURPS Wild Cards, they had to completely revamp the Language skill to avoid this issue, if I remember correctly. And that's funny because languages aren't *that* big a deal in the Wild Card novels. To me, this is just such a glaring flaw that the game almost becomes unusable as a "universal" game. It becomes no more universal than D&D with its straightjackets on how things work.

What kind of genius are we talking about here? A genius has IQ: 14. Put a point into Mathematics, he has skill: 12. That’s good enough to be a high school teacher, congratulations, that’s…well pretty realistic actually. Yes, a genius who spends a couple of months studying up textbooks can teach children how to pass exams in that subject (assuming he learns Teaching as well).

If you mean a once-in-a-generation ultra-genius with IQ: 18 is good at everything he spends time learning, well yes he is. Since he has comic book level smarts, that’s how it should be. That’s why GURPS can model a ”normal” prodigy or Batman.

To me, these objections come down to the fact that GURPS takes some time to learn. It’s not a buy-and-play kind of system (although GURPS Lite comes some way towards that) but then an extremely broad strongly simulationist system is going to be like that.

I recently played a couple of games using FATE, now I’m not complaining that it’s fluffy and not strongly simulationist, because that’s the design choice. You pick the right tool for the job. GURPS is a great product because it's the right tool for the job for any setting, it only becomes the wrong tool if you don't like all the crunch. I personally stopped using D&D rules 20 years ago because I prefer D&D worlds with GURPS rules. It models fight scenes so much more satisfyingly.

[tasw]

Sounds to me like they were going with the idea of a band of refugees. That's going to include people from all walks of life, and not just Slab Bulkhead (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFHlJ2voJHY) clones.

Okay a band of refugees will have lots of types.

But lets not RP the freaking useless ones who need someone else to keep them alive.


As a generic system is like World of darknesses basic human humans book. its easy to adjust for some non humans on the stat building and the system itself is very fast with very lethal combat that can go by fast.

[CombatOwl]

Here's my reasoning for saying that a good superhero game does everything well: a superhero universe contains every kind of character.

Genres have conventions that often need to be mechanically supported by a system to reinforce their particular tone. Just because a superhero game can support any kind of masked vigilante does not mean that it does a great job of supporting a game about political intrigue in medieval times. I can tell you from personal experience that while Heroes Unlimited makes for a great superhero game, it's a lousy system for running a World War II game.


Any game that can do all those things well can do *anything* well because anything you can imagine is something that's in a standard superhero universe. Now, not every superhero game *does* superheroes (meaning everything imaginable) well, but the ones that do are sublime.

You're wrong for this reason alone: superheroes are supposed to be able to shrug off damage, heroes in a lot of other genres are supposed to be more fragile. Any system that handles health well for superheroes won't handle it well for games with fragile heroes... with the possible exception of Fate, since it kind of relies on a fundamentally different mechanic for scoring damage. OTOH, I don't think Fate would be a great choice for a superhero game...

[Rhynn]

You're wrong for this reason alone: superheroes are supposed to be able to shrug off damage, heroes in a lot of other genres are supposed to be more fragile. Any system that handles health well for superheroes won't handle it well for games with fragile heroes... with the possible exception of Fate, since it kind of relies on a fundamentally different mechanic for scoring damage. OTOH, I don't think Fate would be a great choice for a superhero game...

What is your definition of "well" ? I find that many RPGs can do exactly that: GURPS, for instance, where you have a lot of different options for making superheroes tougher (PD, DR, HT, hit points, Hard to Kill...), or RuneQuest/BRP, etc.