What game mechanic were you after? Bell-curve die rolls or percentile? Hit points? Hero points? Leveling up is allowed?

When someone asks for GURPS or HERO analogs I'd lean towards the qualifications being multi-genre, d6s only, points based, 3-18 stat range, and tactical combat.

Sure you can hit any one or two of those but the more you're hitting the closer you'll be to pleasing the OP.

Fudge is still the best bet for something like GURPS.

If you are looking for a point-build-ish Fantasy RPG, I highly recommend the free game Warrior, Rogue & Mage by Stargazer Games. "WRyM" is surprisingly good, and I am not a fan of point-buy games after we OD'd on Hero back in the 80s.

I sold my playtest copy of Fantasy Hero a few years ago on eBay. Before I sold it, I re-read it again and I was surprised how cool I was with point-buy way back then.

http://www.stargazergames.eu/games/warrior-rogue-mage/

WRyM also has lots of free supplements too.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;808666What game mechanic were you after? Bell-curve die rolls or percentile? Hit points? Hero points? Leveling up is allowed?

All of the above are fine with me, I'm not married to a particular mechanic.

Well, there's Capitan Alatriste, which is a spectacular game, but you'd need to read Spanish for it...

Quote from: RPGPundit;809859Well, there's Capitan Alatriste, which is a spectacular game, but you'd need to read Spanish for it...

As a fan of generic systems but not a reader of Spanish: what makes it stand out?

The D6 System formerly by West end games is simpler than GURPS and all of the core books for Fantasy, Space and Modern are free to take here

There is a ton of support for it as well as several other interesting setting books you can buy.

Quote from: James Gillen;808581It was rather terrible, actually (or maybe I'm just having bad flashbacks from the pseudo-Liefeld art).  The principal issue was that it didn't really have its own power creation system in the corebook, instead obliging people to convert the rules from Champions 4th Edition, which by that point was out of print, thus eliminating much of the point of a new game.

But as others have pointed out, Fuzion had its strengths, notably a target-based rather than penalty-based skill system.  C:NM might have gotten a better reaction if they'd done it right the first time.

JG

You're having flashbacks. It has the same power creation system as HERO, but uses addition/subtraction rather than multiplication/division for power building.

Quote from: Gwarh;808883All of the above are fine with me, I'm not married to a particular mechanic.

Do you want to build powers as in HERO or not? There are plenty of universal systems, not all of them can do that.

Quote from: apparition13;810853Do you want to build powers as in HERO or not? There are plenty of universal systems, not all of them can do that.

Ideally yes I would like some sort of power creation system to make it a true RPG Toolkit. But with that sort of thing comes a tradeoff with complexity and worse, making it overly complicated.

Maybe Mutants & Masterminds 3E would be a good choice as it certainly has power creation in it.

I am hardly the BESM fanboy anymore that I was in 2000s, but this one still stands:



The main difference between GURPS and BESM is that GURPS is firmly in simulation territory while in BESM everything is effect based - the source of the attribute ("feat" in BESM lingo) "massive damage" can be anything the player and GM can agree upon.

Quote from: trechriron;808480Tri-Stat is an older game that powered a supers game and several off-shoot generic multi-setting books. I find it a tad wonky, but it had a decent following. You can't beat free. :-)

It also spawned the Big Eyes Small Mouth (BESM) RPG, the 3rd edition being the newest iteration.

Actually, BESM spawned a super hero game, Silver Age Sentinels, which in turn spawned the generic version, TriStat dX.
The 3rd edition of BESM is a weird case as it changed the basic roll mechanism from 2d roll under stat/skill to 2d+stat/skill vs. difficulty.

Quote from: RunningLaser;808479You can also look into Precis Intermedia's GenreDiversion 3e

I remember checking an earlier incarnation of GenreDiversion, and I was baffled by the fact that the characters have 4 mental/social stats and only 1 physical stat - "Fitness" covers everything from STR to CON to DEX.
Made me think that Fitness would be the über stat for adventurous fantasy games with lots of combat and physical hazards.

(Coincidently, this is what eventually alienated me from BESM's Body/Mind/Soul stats. This, and the fact that monsters had to be built like characters, which was a PITA to prep.)


Another free (and open source) generic system that I very much like but hardly ever hear or read about is Ashok Desai's Myriad.
It has been compared to WEG d6 but I feel it's more a mix of DP9's Silhouette and FUDGE, in as it's a d6 pool, point buy, toolkit system, but a lot more focused than FUDGE.
Also, in Silhouette the skill determines the d6 pool size, while in Myriad it's the attribute, which feels more intuitive.
It has a "SFX" system (powers, spells, psionics,...) that is fueled by rolling 6s ("burning sixes"). I'd very much like to hear from someone who played a longer campaign whether that part is as wonky as it sounds.

Available for free or PoD (Extended Edition).
Review.

Quote from: dbm;809866As a fan of generic systems but not a reader of Spanish: what makes it stand out?

Technically, Alatriste is not generic.  It's a 17th-century non-magic swashbuckling game based on the novels of the same name, that very obviously adapts from GURPS.

Quote from: RPGPundit;811658Technically, Alatriste is not generic.  It's a 17th-century non-magic swashbuckling game based on the novels of the same name, that very obviously adapts from GURPS.

So, is it the swashbuckling support which makes it spectacular, or another aspect?

Quote from: dbm;811940So, is it the swashbuckling support which makes it spectacular, or another aspect?

The swordfighting rules are really excellent, but mostly its how the game is tightly-crafted and careful re-making of the GURPS rules to fit the specific setting.

Quote from: RPGPundit;812393The swordfighting rules are really excellent, but mostly its how the game is tightly-crafted and careful re-making of the GURPS rules to fit the specific setting.

Cool, thanks. Sounds like a classic "specific instance of a generic system".  It's just a shame SJG are adamant that they won't produce such book themselves. The closest they get are the Action / Dungeon Fantasy / Monster Hunters lines.