Recent content by johndesmarais

My multi-decade love of Hero made this question a little difficult to answer until I really thought about. I like the high-crunch games that I already know, but am reluctant to learn new high-crunch games. Most of the games that I’ve added to my “will run” or “will play” libraries are low to...

Lands of Mystery for Justice Inc by Aaron Allston. Aside from being a cool campaign supplement, it taught me a lot about the type of GM I want to be.

It’s as expensive as you let it be. For many people, the core rule book for the one game they play is the only expense they really need - while I have an entire wall of built-in shelves in my office loaded with RPGs books.

Time to break the shrink wrap on that…

In general, I like C&C a lot - it’s what I’m using for my current Forgotten Realms campaign. My biggest complaint with it is how they want to math to work regarding rolls using Primary stats. As written, the game expects the Target Number to be changed, but I think the game flows better if TN...

I don’t know if it qualifies as weird in todays rpg industry, but Everway seemed pretty weird at the time.

This is why my next ‘Shadowrun‘ game will use Cities Without Number as the system.

Hold on there. You can’t just drop something like this without additional detail…

It was done. Midnight at the Well of Souls Role-Playing System - Wikipedia (it was really really bad)

Fantasy Trip: In The Labyrinth is more than just combat. It uses the core system of the old micro games Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizardray as a base, but expands it out to full (albeit minimalist) rpg system.

Generally, I preferred 2E (ignoring the splat books) but 1E had some difficult to quantify feel about it that just screamed “D&D” in a way they 2E didn’t quite have.

If GURPS is to much, have you looked at The Fantasy Trip? Same DNA as GURPS, but a lot less mechanics.

Looks like it.

I did a lot of modern set games in the (late) 80s. Mostly modern urban fantasy with a dash of light horror. Hero System was my rule system of choice.

Been using the system for years, and it’s still the system I’m most likely to turn to - particularly if there is not a bespoke system for whatever game I'm planning. Although it’s history is in superheroes, pulp-style adventure is what I’ve done the most with it.