Back from the dead edition.Welcome to /usgen/It is dedicated to discussing universal TTRPG system that are to small to have its own general.We discuss Basic Role-Playing, Fudge, Genesys, Open D6 and Savage Worlds, but other systems are also welcome./usgen/ rules:1. We discuss only universal systems and related settings, which didn't have its own general. (So no D&D and no GURPS)2. If you talk about specific system write its name down to avoid confusion.3. Player-made settings for existing systems are encouraged.4. We only discuss universal systems that were published. So ask about your "WIP system".5. Try to limit off-topic discussions to minimum.Player resources (so far):Fudge - https://pastebin.com/R4gk2t95Genesys - https://pastebin.com/VnMDzUGa and https://pastebin.com/7knE7KSvThread question: What system is the best for playing undead characters (ghouls, zombie, vampires, etc.)? Previous thread: >>92951660
I fucking loved AMAZING Engine back in the day as a universal system, even if it only had about six settings they were absolutely ace. Metamorphosis Alpha, Bughunters, Magitech, The Galactos Barrier, a futuristic Arthurian setting I forget the name of, For Fairy Queen and Country, Tabloid! and my personal favourite, the biopunk Kromosome.The premise was that you would create a Player Core that emphasised 1 of 4 particular stats, then generate characters off that core, so you were always playing beefy characters, smart characters, social characters or the nebulous lucky/magic/psychic types. XP could upgrade a character, OR go to enrich the Core and enhance future characters.Sure, the rules were a little threadbare, the settings were different enough that it was hard to port across weapons, it needed some errata and I could have really used a toolkit that helped me build my own setting after the product line dried up... But the books were extremely easy to read and understand, they had beautiful TSR era artwork and they did an excellent job of hinting at a much bigger world with just enough detail that you could get creative and fill in the gaps to make it your own.Great little game, but I never met anyone else who played it.
Anyone here played Risus?
>>93393659No, I've never even heard of it.Gives us the elevator pitch, anon, let's bump a Dear Dairy thread off the board.
>>93393483What is the gayest universal system? In general of course.
>>93394197The gayest "universal" system I ever encounter is FAPP System. It was literally made by band of gay furies. Even looking at covers makes me feel unclean.
I have a question. I'm working od Sci-fi setting for Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. I get Science Fiction companion because I needed rules for spaceships. The problem is that they were destined for older Deluxe Edition.That edition didn't use handling rules so I don't know what to do with it. Anybody have some ideas?
>>93393483Is there a good generic for Blades in the Dark without the gay Döúskvăllê shit?
>>93393659I got filtered by character creation
>>93394151I'm looking to hear from someone who has actually played it. I just thought the having the characters being a bundle of job levels with each level worth 1 die at related challenges was p interesting, versatile and easy to get into.
>>93393483Give it to me straight about GURPS. Is the game just a meme or is it memed because of its good quality? And how is the learning curve compared to 5E?>t. 5e baby wanting to move on
>>93400872The best thing about BITD is the mechanics, idiot. >>93402488It's good. The learning curve is variable. Grab GURPS Lite and run something set in the modern day to get a tutorial on it before going further.
>>93393483My friends and I have been working on designing a universal system for a bit. Those in the /gdg/ threads may have seen postings for SATTAR. It was inspired by Genesys, and bit by Don't Rest Your Head and PbtA. It uses standard dice (d6 and d10), has layers of resolution past pass/fail (advantage and disadvantage), and supports grids n minis combat (but doesn't require them). Characters are created by spending skill points (to roll more dice) and picking talents (special abilities and character resources).Would this be a good place to post a pdf of the beta rules? A link to the Google drive either wayhttps://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_6LIS5pNmsUW9GE4poleOmNLudZ3PKNh
>>93402488GURPS is best there is. Basically build your own system. Start out with lite so you'd have training wheels.
I've been trying to learn SWADE. My plan was to make a low-fantasy Greek mythology setting. The plan was to primary use the Core rules, and Mythos supplement for fluff. I don't want demi-god and heroic characters and such. I use the Adventurers edition. But for combat and gear, do I want to use the core rules, or Mythos? For example a round shield gives +1 parry in Myth, but +2/+3 (medium/large) in core. Javelins are weaker but can be thrown further Mythos. And armour seems more in-depth in Mythos. I have no experience with SWADE, but it looks pretty fun, or suited for my playstyle
>>93405714Savage Worlds Mythos have 2 edition. First edition was made for Deluxe edition, and second edition was made for Adventure edition. Check what edition are you using. You should use SWADE version.
>>93403621>The best thing about BITD is the mechanics, idiot.Yes, and? That's what I was asking for, genius. A generic Blades without the dumb setting. Can you read?
>>93410955It's not what you asked for, at all. But seeing as you have now asked, try Forged Worlds.
>>93410807Oh, I didn't know that, I've only used /tg/s secret book collections, and I don't think the Savage World section got any Adventurers edition, unless I'm missing something. Thanks!
>>93394197PbtA if you count that
Question for the Genesys crowd. How do you hint at hidden advantage options? I'm going through the SotB adbenture "a night on town" right now and was wondering about how the PCs discover the memchip specifically.It says if they fail to check on their own you could just spend advantage from a later check. Now since spending advantage is the players responsibility you would have to give them a hint beforehand. I thought about just telling them there's a mystery option to spend advantage on whenever the chance arises, but I was wondering if there's a more elegant way?
>>93416903I have handled this situation in the past. Everyone at the table figured the GM would only ask us if we wanted to spend Advantage if we missed something he had up his sleeve earlier. This left the PCs with the initial use of Advantage creatively without the GM throwing away secrets or fun bits.
>>93419191Not sure if I got this correct.So you just cued them by asking?
>>93421449Sort of. A clue or hint prior would be more helpful to the PCs to potentially use Advantages in a more creative manner. As you can tell from the adventure module, some options are particularly difficult for the GM to telegraph or the players to deduce. When that sort of thing happens, my group decided it would move things along if the GM justs asks us, "You have excess # of Advantages from this roll, do you want to spend them to learn/find something?" It's been effective at giving the group ideas on what creative Advantage might look like and it makes it so the game doesn't stall from analysis paralysis.
does it really fix BRP, or did he just say that to get in my pants?
Is Open D6 still the gold-standard of open generic systems?>Doesn't seem tied to any specific play style / genre, so genuinely generic>License is nice and permissive>Rules are simple, but functional
>>93426529Mini Six is probably the best current iteration of it but yes.
>>93402488GURPS is one of the few serious generic (universal) games, in the sense that it genuinely tries to cover multiple genres while keeping things compatible. This is actually a pretty big deal because it lets you shift the tone of your game when things don't go according to plan. In my experience, good players will surprise you and having a system which can handle the entire premise of the game being modified on the fly really makes that a lot more fun. I wrote a claustrophobic survival horror game, but my players turned it into a 4X grand strategy one. GURPS handled that easily. I wrote a gritty spy-thriller, but they turned it into a comedy of manners. GURPS made it simple. Planned gritty base-building survival, players made it into a gonzo road-trip. GURPS just worked fine.It isn't a flawless system, but it is the best at what it does.There is complexity. I don't know what 5e is like, but GURPS is certainly comparable to 3e/3.5e. In terms of just the base books, probably worse. It 'front-loads' the complexity too, so you can't start at 'level one' and build up to it.I wouldn't recommend starting with Lite. It's simpler, but you lose a lot of what make GURPS good (options, detail). Just put the effort into actually reading the books. A lot of people seem very resistant to that and look for 'shortcuts' which don't involve reading. They want videos, or ask questions in forums, and get replies from people who also haven't read the books. Don't do that. Read the fucking books. They are pretty clearly written and well-indexed. Almost everything you need to know is in there.In terms of editions, 3rd and 4th are both fine.4th ed reading list: Basic Set. Basic set again. Low-Tech. High-Tech. Powers. Thaumatology. That covers most stuff.Don't use the basic magic system. Good magic systems are Divine Favour, Path & Book Magic, Chinese Elemental Powers, Sorcery (look up Enraged Eggplant's blog for spell builds).
>>93426529Well! It is universal and have good licence, but I don't think it is popular. I rarely see people talking about it. Did anybody actually play it?
>>93402488GURPS is high quality. It just takes a good deal of work by the GM to manage.Pros>endlessly moddable with huge amounts of content and tools available>can be very granular and tactical if desiredCons>working outside the scope of a tailored book can be incredibly tedious and time consuming>tons of opposed rolls slows down scenesYou kinda get out what you put into it.If you're just looking for DnD alternatives I'd suggest Fantasy AGE or SotDL instead.If you want a universal system then Cypher is a bit more digestible.
>>93393483AFMBE is zombie survival done well. Absolutely not universal, but technically it can do other stuff, but in the same way zombies operate computers.>>93432640>GurpsAs expected.>Cypher is better than DnD Terrible b8, no one believes that you believe this. How would Cypher system stat a (frog on the internet) who (is autistic) and (enjoys starting shit)?
>>93393589I wanted to play the Music Jedi game, or Magitech. The rules were very clean and consistent. The critical mechanic is the best d100 add-on imho. Shame that it’s neither generic nor universal.
Hack100 is my new obsession.
>>93438437Never said Cypher was better than DnD, tho it arguably is.I said it is a DnD alternative that has a universal system.
>>93439151Despite my invective, Cypher is fast and action oriented. It’s still worse than the Evil Hat mad-lib gaem. The range set is 5, the total parameters are narrow (relative to most TTRPGs). Therefore producing a solvable combinatorics space — but they didn’t even bother with that degree of universally enumerated follow-up. Nope, reams of unparameter-linked listfaggotry — in what is clearly a mechanical effect system. I’m insulted but not sure if it’s a deliberate insult, or the side-effect of being produced by a S-rated oral-fondling penis enthusiast. Hiding behind obscurity for the sake of the proprietary is antithetical to my world-view, regarding games at least. Lazy opportunists, s m h.Though it’s a fast-play game you can easily drag people into enjoying, shit’s mid and half-assed for the GM-side — very rough incrementation due to a deep defect. Player level is decoupled from the standard difficulty scale. The 10-pt standard diff scale explicitly uses a mundane rating. This has no context whatsoever for the adjectivenounverb fuckers churn out. You can smack anyone up with the easiest auto-attack NPCs this side of diceless or “intrude” by using a fumble cache, but it feels either floppy or disappointing to execute. Playing as a sentence sounds nice, but then it gets implemented in an unsatisfactory way. Also the die is used in a retarded way. Speed is a retarded pick as a Pool stat, it’s handled better by different mechanics.
Every time I looked at Cypher it felt incredibly restrictive.
>>93432479Yes. Plus a LOT of people played d6SW.
>>93432479Yes, but no. D6 ain’t a monolith. It’s fragmented into several editions that look similar, but aren’t. Legends is cleaner, until it suddenly isn’t etc. P&P and Mythic are probably better yet.
>>93438437>AFMBE is zombie survival done well. Absolutely not universal, but technically it can do other stuff, but in the same way zombies operate computers.It's based on Unisystem, which is kind of a generic system (although never released in universal form, but instead a bunch of different games using similar mechanics).
>>93445881Yeah, it was stretched pretty far from its roots with every sufficiently different game — and with good effect. Conspiracy X let you do very bizarre X-Files/Stranger Things shit with the system, but the extension beyond normal limits wasn’t scaled or ordered. The lack of a base frame terminology (a la GURPS) or a universal set of game stats (a la HERO) is lacking in a system with the mechanical flex to build so wildly. Still, as you note, the stretches to make it fit genres made the results incompatible.Maybe we’re being too autistic on system inter-compatibility? Asparagusfags can play non-compatible games using shared terminology to compare vastly different results (but with similar base mechanics), Conversely HERO is the exact same basic structure across genres — the variance is solely on the extension from normal using the same common structures. What’s universal, really? Endpoint or method?
>>93442952In what way?
>>93393483Can you guys recommend me a good universal system besides Fudge, FATE, GURPS, and Genesys?
>>93426529I'm definitely interested in the second edition, but>Kickstarter>Won't be out until next year at the earliestHopefully it'll be something I can replace Savage Worlds with. I don't mind it, but it's a lot more cubersome to run over VTTs, and my players hate the swinginess.
>>93450169Try a search engine
>>93450169Open D6 and its derivatives (probably the best option if you want something less complex than GURPS or a permissive license, some 'assembly' required, similar to FUDGE)BRP (in many ways similar to GURPS, only without the support, and not as good outside the gritty-realism genre, but maybe a little simpler to use)HERO (like GURPS but more complicated and better balanced, able to handle supers more easily)Year Zero Engine SRD (bare-bones rules framework, like FUDGE, rather than a ready-to-go game, but has some neat features from a rules-lite game)Savage Worlds (only really does 'wacky heroism' genre; suitable for lowbrow pulp, action-hero, hack & slash, etc. Good point is that it's pretty quick and handles lots of characters in combat without slowing down too much)EABA (probably the best system in terms of well-thought out resolution mechanics, but very much a hobbyist project rather than a polished product)
