Quote from: Spike;267427But I am curious, as my collection of games does exceed my ability to actually play them all, where exactly Guardians/Justifiers fell down on actual play?

I never ran Guardians, but in actual play the Justifiers system was so swingy that characters were incredibly unreliable at their areas of specialization.  I remember that being a serious issue.

It's been 17 years since I ran Justifiers, so my memories are hazy at best, but I remember it relying heavily on GM Fiat and handwaving, with almost no structure to determine the difficulty of even the most basic and commonplace tasks.  Like many poorly thought out systems, it seems to rely on a presumption of illusionist GMing to actually work.

The combat system also tended to break down if the group attempted anything more complex than a simple shoot-out or sword fight.  Running battles, ambushes, difficult terrain, and other factors were hard to account for and most combats seemed to require a lot of on-the-fly adjudicating.

Ah. Of course, compared to Hero I can see where a simple resolution system with few actual systems to provide framework would look 'broken'.  When I picked Justifiers back in the day, and with Guardians a few years later, I was coming at them from a DIY style of GMing stuff, having played games that were needlessly complex and even incoherent, but having started with AD&D, and GMing because none of the older players had time for my age group... so all I often needed then was a basic task resolution.  Roll under yer skill? You hit, do damage...  

That probably explains why I've often scratched my head when people complain about the 'broken-ness' of Palladium's house system.

Quote from: Spike;267393I've yet to see a super game that didn't have some sort of weakness mechanic.

Golden Heroes, now called Squadron UK, does not have weakness mechanics.

Quote from: Spike;267433Ah. Of course, compared to Hero I can see where a simple resolution system with few actual systems to provide framework would look 'broken'.  When I picked Justifiers back in the day, and with Guardians a few years later, I was coming at them from a DIY style of GMing stuff, having played games that were needlessly complex and even incoherent, but having started with AD&D, and GMing because none of the older players had time for my age group... so all I often needed then was a basic task resolution.  Roll under yer skill? You hit, do damage...

Like I said, the issue was swinginess.  It would take many long hours of gameplay before "Roll under your skill." wasn't synonymous with "You fail."

QuoteThat probably explains why I've often scratched my head when people complain about the 'broken-ness' of Palladium's house system.

For me the issue was always "What order do all these fucking attacks come in?"