One of the reasons BRP manages to do supers well is that it doesn't ever try to balance the characters.  In fact the character with the highest rolls gets the most power points so you can wind up with Robin and Superman on the same team.  I think HERO's as close as you can come to balanced supers.  But somehow HERO hasn't worked for me since high school.

Quote from: Simlasa;825511Supers always seems to be a sticking point... I've never seen a lot of agreement on what system does them, in all their various forms, well... and if one did I'm not sure it would be all that good at Horror, where protagonists are usually relatively weak.

This is where FASERIP shines...it's generally acknowledged as one of the best systems for supers. But what I found when I used it for my Cthulhu Mythos games is that removing the influx of Karma points (not because players couldnt earn Karma, but being investigators in a horror setting they werent performing the sort of deeds that rewarded them Karma on a regular basis) meant the game very quickly transformed from a heroic cinematic experience to a gritty, tense game where combat was generally avoided as death was pretty easy.

Adding to that a sanity system based on a draw from a tarot deck ended up netting me my preferred system for horror games over the last 5 years.

Quote from: ravynwinter;825428Ideally I want a system that can handel  7th Sea + Eberron or Pathfinder + Werewolf/Deadlands crossover + WWII Supers + a home made Urban Fantasy.  

Let everyone create a character in their system of choice and be the rules you use to adjudicate their character's actions.  It will be a helluva mashup game.

Quote from: TristramEvans;825525Adding to that a sanity system based on a draw from a tarot deck ended up netting me my preferred system for horror games over the last 5 years.

How does this work? (The tarot system)

Quote from: languagegeek;825566How does this work? (The tarot system)

FASERIP has the attributes Fighting, Agility, Strength and Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche, and then "Health" (hit points) are a pool of points derived from a combination their physical attributes (FASE).

What I did was replace Psyche with "Courage", and then used Psyche as a pool of "mental hit points" derived from a combination of their mental attributes (RIC).

When the characters encounter a creature or situation that tests their sanity, threatens their sense of reality, or induces fear, the players draw a Tarot card. If its one of the minor arcana, they lose however many points of Psyche indicated by the card. Losing all of their Psyche indicates a psychotic break, generally causing them to faint or withdraw into themselves, gibbering like fools until they are removed from the situation. Psyche points are recovered spending time in rest outside of stressful situations, much like Health points. If a player draws a Major Arcana, their mind is permanently scarred by the experience and they acquire a Derangement, as appropriate to the situation. (I keep a long list of various Derangements and apply them based on what causes it combined with an loose interpretation of the card itself).

Each player also has an Arcana rating that in general represents how acclimated they've become to experiencing supernatural events and their resistance to cosmic terror (much like "hardened notches" in UA). Their Arcana corresponds to one of the Major Arcana, or "trumps" of the Tarot deck. A player starts the game either as a Fool (0), a person whose led a regular life with no supernatural experiences, or a Magician (1), someone whose had some limited exposure to the supernatural or is broadly aware that there is a world outside of mortal ken.

These have different advantages. If a player draws a Major Arcana from the Tarot in the game, they can discard the effect if their Arcana rating "trumps" that card. Every Arcana has a number, and if the Arcana drawn is of a lower number than the Arcana rating, the Arcana rating "trumps" it. The Fool is special in that it trumps every card except for the Magician. This is the protection offered by coming from a rational worldview where the mind simply refuses to accept what it encounters and rationalizes it away. The second advantage is that the player can, a number of times equal to their Arcana rating, ignore the effects of a minor arcana drawn. So the Magician (1) can discard one card's reduction to their Psyche, per situation (I don't like to say "per game", rather its from the time that a player is involved in a situation that tests their sanity vs feeling safe at home or in the "real world" far from such concerns). A player's Arcana rating is increased whenever their Psyche is reduced to zero or they resolve a situation involving the supernatural.

Generic systems are awesome for one thing: when you dislike learning/switching rules for each new game, and just want something that works. They are particularly good if, like me, you are a crusty old gamer who is jaded and picky, so that no game is ever good enough not to houserule into submission, and you want to tweak one system to fit your sweet spot and then use it for everything.

I strongly gravitate toward generic systems in preference to purpose built systems, with the single exception of D&D. Well okay and DW. My favorite game systems, in order (as of this moment), are (OSR)D&D, Dungeon World, Fudge, Fantasy Hero, Savage Worlds, and GURPS. Yep, generic down the line. I'm not so fond of Fate because I'm not a fan of drama systems (possibly excepting DW, I'm undecided if that is narrative or not) and because I feel it muddies the purity and elegance of Fudge. But that's a matter of taste. I don't include BRP because I have no real history with it, and a knee-jerk dislike of percentile dice.

The reason I like multiple generic systems is that each has a strong flavor and certain strengths. No game is truly generic, except maybe Fudge, which is damn close to a non-system.

Savage Worlds has strong pulp sensibilities. Heroes are capable and durable, the entire system is weighted in their favor, but yet they are also very two dimensional. Not as cardboard as D&D but still very four color. This is awesome when you want a beer-n-pretzels, laid back game that focuses on the action not the immersion. I love the tabletop wargame tactical experience and the paucity of detail that keeps the action chugging forward like a freight train set at run 8. My frustrations with SW are that it is two dimensional, lacks detail (especailly in the magic system which is super generic), can't do "gritty" to save its life, and seems inextricably tied to its weird crossover settings which I can't seem to acquire a taste for.

GURPS is very strong on detail and "realism" to my thinking. I can't really describe what I mean by realism. It's not the lack of fantasy, its a certain type of fantasy. It's the perfect system for Ethshar, Recluce, a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Beyond the Burning Lands (Christopher White), that sort of thing. As opposed to Greyhawk, Tolkien, and so forth. I think Yrth is a brilliant setting in this vein. I also find GURPS overdetailed, heavy, and slow (if you use all the optional rules, which I find myself compulsively doing)... so I almost never use it. My GMing style is lightweight and somewhat freewheeling. Maybe one reason I like GURPS is that it was my first generic system in 1985 and it made a positive impression at a time when I had nothing better to compare it to. But it is still the best at what it does.

Fate is too narrative and loosey-goosey for me. I like a strong dose of simulation in my games, and my simulation I don't mean the oddball Forge/GNS hijack of the term to mean story immersion, I mean the game system directly simulates the physical world and story be damned. I also really dislike the expanded trait ladder, and the fate point economy is too meta for my tastes. Beyond that I cant' really speak to it either positively or negatively, I just avoid it.

Fudge hits my sweet spot in several ways. It provides the simulation setup of GURPS, the easy to ad-lib mechanics of Fate, and the simplicity of Savage Worlds. It occupies a nice middle ground and is super adaptible. My main complaint (and also praise) is that it lacks any real flavor out of the box and the GM has to (gets to) impose his own vision on the game. That is a lot of work, requires experience, and takes a lot of playtesting which can stretch your gaming group's patience. My other complaint is that the softness in the resolution system -- which makes it easy to ballpark when you have a clear idea of what you want -- also makes it very hard to ballpark when you have NO idea what you want. There are no real training wheels, unless you self-impose a default rule like "difficulty Fair when in doubt".

If you are trying to decide between GURPS, Savage Worlds, and Fate... which one is not like the others? Fate. You have two simulation games and one story game. That suggests to me you may really want a simulation game, and are attracted to the freeform nature of Fate but don't know what to make of the story aspect. In that case I encourage you to consider Fudge against GURPS and SW, at least you're comparing like against like. Fate 2 is a lot more like Fudge than Fate 3, so that is another thing to consider. But a problem with using Fate 2 is it may be misleading to potential gamers who see "Fate" and don't realize its a very different version than they are used to. If you want to use Fate 2 it would almost be better to advertise it as Fudge, then potential players KNOW they are getting house rules and they are fairly open to whatever you throw at them.

"OSR" D&D games, by which I specifically mean classic D&D clones and not the more general "OSR" which includes things like DCC or BRP or DW, are also something of a generic system these days, as they are all 95% compatible. Just tossing that out there.

Another big consideration for me is if the system is FREE. Not free as in beer, but free as in Free. Open source free. Dungeon World, Fudge, and Fate are all free; GURPS and Savage Worlds are certainly not free, despite liberal licensing policies. If I am going to invest myself into a game I like to know it is Free, not just to use but to contribute and publish. (D&D didn't use to be free, but the OSR games I favor are. So yay!)

(Huh. Guess this is my first post on this site...)

You guys have been awesom and have giving me much to digest. The reason I mentioned the three games I did was because I did not know all the games you mentioned. I have been role playing since 1978 but still missed a lot of these games.

When I bought a game in the past it was always the settings that lured me in.  Back then I would just make my group and myself learn five sets of rules.

Now people are busy and its hard to get a group that can meet in the first place. SO I need a game that is easy to learn then gets out of the way. IT sounds like gurps may be to chrunch and fate may not be cruchy enough.


I am looking at all the games people mentioned or at least the ones I can get PDFs on. Alcamtar Metioned OSR D&D. This is interesting game you name some specific games here.

Also is there a 3.5 compatible supers game, or horror game?

http://www.classicmarvelforever.com/cms/downloads.html

The entire FASERIP library is available in pdf for free download, if you decide to try that route

Quote from: ravynwinter;825617I am looking at all the games people mentioned or at least the ones I can get PDFs on. Alcamtar Metioned OSR D&D. This is interesting game you name some specific games here.

Also is there a 3.5 compatible supers game, or horror game?

Funny you should mention that, as it had just occurred to me that, if you like OSR-flavored D&D, you might want to take a look at Kevin Crawford/Sine Nomine's products.  He's best known for Stars Without Number, which is sort of a Traveller-style sci-fi game done with OSR D&D-like rules.  Aside from that, he's also published:

• Spears of the Dawn (African-themed fantasy system/setting)
• Other Dust (high-tech post-apocalyptic)
• Silent Legions (Lovecraftian horror, complete with a system for creating your own mythos instead of using Cthulhu and the gang)
• Exemplars and Eidolons (a tutorial on OSR-style page layout and typesetting which also just happens to be a playable supers RPG)
• Several assorted supplements and add-ons for the above, most of which are free

All of these use the same core mechanics, making them highly cross-compatible.  The only exception is Exemplars and Eidolons, which includes some slight adjustments to make PCs way more powerful than normal monsters/NPCs. (Silent Legions includes a one page "Luchadores Against Cthulhu" writeup which also uses these same tweaks.)

The core rules for Stars Without Number are free, as is Exemplars and Eidolons, so they're definitely worth checking out if you think this might be an interesting option.  Even if you don't use his system, all of these products (except Exemplars and Eidolons, since it's not a "complete" game) include a ton of excellent resources for running sandbox games if you're into that style.

Quote from: The Butcher;825325Has anyone done a real comparison of sandwiches.
I am interested in BLT, falafel on pita and Reuben. How do they stack up to each other.

I could go for a BLT/falafel/Reuben stack.

Quote from: RPGPundit;825844I could go for a BLT/falafel/Reuben stack.

Does your jaw unhinge for 12" high sammiches?

Quote from: RPGPundit;825844I could go for a BLT/falafel/Reuben stack.

I'd feel there's too much going on there. Falafel just ain't the same without a nice zahtar sauce that, done correctly, will acidify the Muenster and piss all over its texture, not to mention the bacon stealing the corned beef's thunder or vice versa (too much salt and umami together vying for tongue real estate).

I can see BLT/falafel working, though.

In GURPS you can play that sandwich!

Quote from: trechriron;825850Does your jaw unhinge for 12" high sammiches?

I do like a good big sandwich.

Quote from: The Butcher;825401In any case, I think Tristram and Jeremy were very clearly tongue-in-cheek.

For my part, I don't do "tongue-in-cheek" when a newbie is asking for facts on games with which he's unfamiliar.  If I despise a game so rabidly that all I have to offer are bloated insults (hell, I don't "hate" D&D that much), then I'm just not going to bother, because I know I'm biased beyond rational discourse.