A Bad Idea: Rifts, Torg, and BESM

[Rob Knotts]

While I'm sitting here waiting for the mailman to deliver my copy of BESM 3rd, I need to get a very, very bad idea out of my head.

If you're not familiar with Torg, essentially it had a lot of things in common with Rifts, but character classes weren't nearly so unbalanced, and in general the whole setting was less "over the top" than Rifts (more mystery/horror than adventure).

If you're a gamer and you're not familiar with Rifts, you have my envy.

Both settings differ mainly in sequence of events - Rifts is post-apocalyptic fantasy where Torg is a fantasy set during an apocalypse with characters trying to stop it. In both cases you ended up with a magical setting with high-technology societies and traditional fantasy monsters and villains. In general, the biggest problem for both games was the settings were so bizarre that the game rules ended up breaking down most of the time.

BESM rules are so lightweight that I doubt they'd break down like that. It would probably be practical to have a storytelling bard, and baby dragon, and giant robot pilot all in the same group and easily give them all an equal amount of attention. In fact, BESM treats character "powers" (magic, weapons, psionics, etc) so generically that I'm tempted to say the rules (such as they are) for social interaction are almost as important as the rules for combat.

My main intention in getting the new BESM book was to run a giant robot game, and an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic setting would work just fine for that. And since the rules for BESM are so idiot-simple, I could probably throw in all the stuff I like from Rifts and Torg without worrying about the rules imploding and ruining the game for everybody.

Besides, BESM is only intended to be taken semi-seriously anyway, and if you've ever taken Rifts or Torg seriously, you were kinda missing the point

As I said, it's a bad idea I just had to get out of my head before it started to fester....

[DomarSaul]

I can see that being quite entertaining! I'm always intrigued when people import existing settings into different rulesystems.

[Pirate_King]

And only now do I understand why the main characters in sluggy freelance have such strange names

[kellandros]

Been playing a BESM 3rd campaign, and I'll have to tell you, it requires a lot of guidance. Without limits imposed by the GM, weapon attacks start to become absurdly convoluted(5 seperate rolls required if hit, 4 different minus effects, repeated effects rounds later, etc). Other powers are rather up to the GM to control, as they give almost no guidance. And custom variables(increase area, number of targets, duration) are almost absurdly cheap for what they can give you.

It could turn out just as silly or badly balanced as RIFTS.