What should I buy for GM's Day?

[Celebrim]

I'll suggest my candidate for The Best Thing Since Succeed/Fail: Modos 2 (on DrivethruRPG). By leaving the basic resolution roll open to interpretation, it encourages GMs and PCs to be creative even when they roll low. And the rules are laid out discretely in a catalog, which should facilitate rules-smithing.

It's a cheap/free one, though. It might not scratch your spending itch.

I'm really not into systems that require large amounts of fiat by the GM. "Basic resolution roll open to interpretation" sounds like a nightmare. Like right now some of my biggest gripes against systems are when I can't determine whether or not the difficulty of something should be "moderate" or "hard" and it's not something I thought about beforehand so I don't have a written guideline and I let the players roll hoping they'll beat the hard check or fail the moderate check and make my ruling irrelevant, only for them to beat only the moderate check and me now forced to make a judgement call. That for me is a bigger failure of the system than adding up eight modifiers to get a firm idea of difficulty. So coming from that, it's not so much that I wouldn't chip money toward free rules as much as I hate trying to run a system that is fiat with a gloss of fortune.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not opposed to a generic system. One thing I feel I vaguely need is a generic system to apply to game concepts I don't have a system for.

How in your opinion does it compare to a system like Savage Worlds, that feels like it could do a decent job of being a universal system albeit with some pretty low granularity?

H&H is less cinematic than SW, and a bit less grainy; it also is set up to handle somewhat higher powered games (though that's with toggles, its not a default).

I don't know that I'll do anything with it because it might be a bit too gritty, but it looks interesting.

(To make it clear, I've read but not played it).

 

[GMMichael]

I'm really not into systems that require large amounts of fiat by the GM. "Basic resolution roll open to interpretation" sounds like a nightmare. Like right now some of my biggest gripes against systems are when I can't determine whether or not the difficulty of something should be "moderate" or "hard" and it's not something I thought about beforehand so I don't have a written guideline and I let the players roll hoping they'll beat the hard check or fail the moderate check and make my ruling irrelevant, only for them to beat only the moderate check and me now forced to make a judgement call. That for me is a bigger failure of the system than adding up eight modifiers to get a firm idea of difficulty. So coming from that, it's not so much that I wouldn't chip money toward free rules as much as I hate trying to run a system that is fiat with a gloss of fortune.

I totally understand something not being your cup of tea.

I'm not sure I fully understand your reply, though, because it sounds like you're looking for a system/adventure that a) lists a difficulty for everything, and/or b) doesn't require or determine outcomes based on character skill / task difficulty. The only solution I know of for (a) might be GURPS (since there's so much material for it), and for (b) might be Fate or Powered by the Apocalypse (since they tend to abstract things a bit more).

An example of Modos 2's "open to interpretation" contests:
A PC is an acrobat with (at least) professional skill in Movement. She wants to cross a fountain to quickly intercept someone on the other side, and the fountain has a number of statues in it that would make springing across, instead of going around, a reasonable activity. The PC rolls a sadly low result, while the GM rolls much higher. The low result isn't a "failure," it's a "Con" with an unfavorable outcome. This means that a professional acrobat doesn't have to look like an amateur (or worse, untrained) by "failing," so much as something undesirable happening from the attempt. The interpretation can fall on PC or GM, though the GM gets the final say.