Proximately caused by the Sengoku thread, but this is something that comes up every so often - Fuzion does not seem to have many fans; in fact it seems to get a lot of hate. Why is this?

I have a core book for Fuzion that I think I picked up free off drivethru and it seems like a fairly bland but serviceable rules-medium RPG ruleset. I have never run or played it.

I think it was supposed to be a mashup of Interlock (Cyberpunk) and HERO. It looks pretty similar to Cyberpunk to me; I don't know HERO.

I personally dislike point-buy character generation where you get points back for disadvantages, with all the metagaming crap that can lead to, but a lot of people don't seem to mind that sort of thing.

There is a weird "choice" of D10 or 3D6 for task resolution, which radically changes the probabilities of success given there is no suggestion of changing the task success target numbers, but that seems easily fixed or ignored.

I have no axe to grind here. I doubt I'll ever play it and I don't have a strong wish to. I own Sengoku and enjoyed reading the book but Feudal Japan isn't a setting I'm particularly excited about.

Maybe it is just the case that Fuzion is so deliberately bland that people decided to hate it?

I ran a couple of fantasy adventures with Fuzion.  I don't hate it, but it also does absolutely nothing for me.  "Bland" could be part of it, but for me the mechanics are just off--not much in any one place, but pervasive through the rules.  Maybe I don't get what they are trying to do.

Fuzion was indeed a mashup of HERO and Interlock, and intended to replace both. Thus you had a system that, to fans of each of its predecessors, was neither fish nor fowl, and which constituted the next edition of both.

And you thought D&D 4e generated controversy...

Quote from: RandyB;1141403Fuzion was indeed a mashup of HERO and Interlock, and intended to replace both. Thus you had a system that, to fans of each of its predecessors, was neither fish nor fowl, and which constituted the next edition of both.

And you thought D&D 4e generated controversy...

  Champions: The New Millennium exacerbated the issue by coming when fans were chomping at the bit for a 'real' Champions 5th Edition, looking like some of the worst excesses of 90s comics, and not having a solid Power creation system, which is arguably the heart of Champions.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1141405Champions: The New Millennium exacerbated the issue by coming when fans were chomping at the bit for a 'real' Champions 5th Edition, looking like some of the worst excesses of 90s comics, and not having a solid Power creation system, which is arguably the heart of Champions.

Yep. Lots of bad moves made.

Quote from: RandyB;1141419Yep. Lots of bad moves made.

For me, Fuzion seemed like a rushed job that was poorly edited and clearly didn't have a lot of playtesting. With any system, it's attention to detail and functionality that's the key. Fuzion had a lot of stuff that was just cut and pasted from either Interlock or HERO, and didn't seem to work very well.

The whole concept of "dials and switches" seemed to me to be declaring "Here's some stuff we didn't playtest, but we're giving you permission to change the rules." But I can always change the rules. The reason I would go with a new published system in the first place is for the work that goes into editing and playtesting it.

EDITED TO ADD: I can't think of specific examples of unplaytested design offhand, but I remember there were a lot of points that stood out to me at the time.

It's a soulless mishmash of two systems that has no real identity of its own. Also, what jhkim said about "dials and switches".

More than that, it was so modular that it was incompatible with other books.

I really wanted to like Fuzion but it really let me down.  It's a sad thing when GURPS does superheroes better than your superhero game.

As a shameless slave to RTG, and someone who's purchased, new, everything they've ever published, I have played and run Fuzion.

I didn't find it soulless, and it was certainly better than some of the alternatives that Mike P. came up with at the time (looking at you, Dream Park, and a hard stare for CP 3.0 as well...), but I have to agree that there's a lot of onus left on the GM to create the feel for the specific game. I really liked the implementation in Bubblegum Crisis, and, as they stated, it worked directly with MZ+. But I think that the lack of a specific feel for the game in a given setting really put it out of competition with either a) games what had been built for a specific feel, or 2) games which hadn't, but had already developed a serious following that transcended that need for a feel (Hero System and GURPS are the best examples of that).

It's like a very bland suit. You have to make it work yourself, otherwise everyone will wonder why you're wearing it.

I like Fuzion. It works fine as long as you (1) don't use it for superheroes, and (2) don't expect it to replace Hero or Interlock. It's no more boring than any other generic system. We ran many successful games with it, including anime stuff, an old west game, an X-files type thing, and Babylon 5. The latter took a bit of work, since we had to create everything ourselves, but that was part of the fun. My main complaint is that it doesn't have a functional magic or psi system. The one in black/yellow book is an afterthought (I heard it was from Dreampark?)

Quote from: MarchandThere is a weird "choice" of D10 or 3D6 for task resolution, which radically changes the probabilities of success given there is no suggestion of changing the task success target numbers, but that seems easily fixed or ignored.

Yesh, the d10 idea didn't work, mathematically. Not sure how that made idea made it in.

Sounds like someone was shooting for a generic system that simply didn't rise above the competition.

Quote from: Dropkicker;1141504Sounds like someone was shooting for a generic system that simply didn't rise above the competition.

Basically. I remember looking at it long ago and scratching my head wondering why it was so damned boring and uninspiring. I get not pretty to look at games, many fine games came out like that, but this game...blah, it's one of the worse I ever saw. The two different dice methods turned me right off. It would have been easy to just pick one and then make the game.

Quote from: Aglondir;1141503Yesh, the d10 idea didn't work, mathematically. Not sure how that made idea made it in.

Backwards compatibility with Interlock.

The thing is that Fuzion was too modular.  It's basically a game design menu.  But when you don't have the same stats between your settings they can't be mixed and matched anymore.

Quote from: Marchand;1141397Proximately caused by the Sengoku thread, but this is something that comes up every so often - Fuzion does not seem to have many fans; in fact it seems to get a lot of hate. Why is this?

I have a core book for Fuzion that I think I picked up free off drivethru and it seems like a fairly bland but serviceable rules-medium RPG ruleset. I have never run or played it.

I think it was supposed to be a mashup of Interlock (Cyberpunk) and HERO. It looks pretty similar to Cyberpunk to me; I don't know HERO.

I personally dislike point-buy character generation where you get points back for disadvantages, with all the metagaming crap that can lead to, but a lot of people don't seem to mind that sort of thing.

There is a weird "choice" of D10 or 3D6 for task resolution, which radically changes the probabilities of success given there is no suggestion of changing the task success target numbers, but that seems easily fixed or ignored.

I have no axe to grind here. I doubt I'll ever play it and I don't have a strong wish to. I own Sengoku and enjoyed reading the book but Feudal Japan isn't a setting I'm particularly excited about.

Maybe it is just the case that Fuzion is so deliberately bland that people decided to hate it?

It was a bad system that tried to mix the lethality of Cyberpunk 2020 with the four-color sensibilities of Hero System.  This is like making chocolate & salmon swirl ice cream.