What Does Your Favorite RPG Do Best?

[lin_fusan]

Apocalypse World remains my current favorite. It plays fast, has evocative characters (play books), and the system provides a lot of drama. And it's designed for short campaigns so you can tell a comprehensive story in six to twelve session.

I have a soft spot for Mage the Ascension. I think the magic system is incredible but the rest of the system (skills and even advancement) is useless. I would totally run a campaign if I had the right players, but I might eliminate the skill system altogether and only roll for magic...

I really want to like Freemarket. It has a awesome premise but I can't figure out if it does the setting justice 'cause I can't figure out how it's supposed to be played or run...

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I love the d10 versions of Legend of the Five Rings (particularly 1st edition and probably 4th edition, although I've never played it). I love many aspects of the game (the setting, how the feudal Japan setting requires have to think about what your character says AND how you say it, etc.).

But what it does best is force you to make give-and-take decisions about how you craft your character. If you use all of your resources to max out a few skills you'll be great in those skills but your level will be lower and you won't have as many "class features". If you are a more well-rounded character you won't be as highly skilled but you'll have a higher level and more class features.

It's similar regarding physical and mental/social attributes. You can max out on one side or the other but your overall level will be lower.

Lastly, this is probably more GM specific but our L5R games there was always a solid mix of martial and social situations. If you made a purely social character you knew you were going to be in a dangerous spot in combats. If you made a purely martial character you knew you were going to get into social situations that you couldn't handle.

 

[Umbran]

They use essentially the same system...but with tweaks that make them somewhat incompatible.

We didn't find this a barrier. We had werewolf and mage PCs, and had a bunch of vampires created with standard vampire rules as antagonists, and didn't have major problems.

The only real issue with incompatibility we had to patch over was the gnosis/blood point/quintessence conversion - what happens when a vampire feeds off a werewolf that's loaded with gnosis or rage? What ugliness can a mage do to a vampire's blood pool? My GM had to come up with rules for those - in general, they weren't directly compatible, so for instance, if a vampire fed off a werewolf or a changeling full of power, well things went badly for the vampire. Mages with appropriate spheres and paradigms could screw around with things, which ended up as a major balancing point that we liked.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yeah, that was the kind of headache I simply didn't want to deal with.

 

[Celebrim]

We didn't find this a barrier. We had werewolf and mage PCs, and had a bunch of vampires created with standard vampire rules as antagonists, and didn't have major problems.

The only real issue with incompatibility we had to patch over was the gnosis/blood point/quintessence conversion - what happens when a vampire feeds off a werewolf that's loaded with gnosis or rage? What ugliness can a mage do to a vampire's blood pool? My GM had to come up with rules for those - in general, they weren't directly compatible, so for instance, if a vampire fed off a werewolf or a changeling full of power, well things went badly for the vampire. Mages with appropriate spheres and paradigms could screw around with things, which ended up as a major balancing point that we liked.

A long long time ago, I was an admin on a variaty of WoD MU*'s. The biggest rules headaches I had with regard to interactions between characters of different rulesets where in the 'alignment/virtue' systems - humanity, honor, gnosis, banality, pathos, etc. All those things that were specific to each character sheet. Since a creatures virtue was relative, it was almost impossible to translate the virtue of one creature into a meaningful number in another system and no one seemed to have firm guidelines. As soon as you had a mechanic that depended on the target's X, you had a big problem (don't ask me to remember exact examples, as its been years). I remember talking with other admin's about it and getting the answer, "I was told, when in doubt, just pick '7'."

But if I'd ran my own instance, I probably would have made everyone's character sheet include everyone else's 'alignment scale' and defaulted the base alignment of each monster category for each other category in someway just so I would have to listen to players metagame how I should always pick X as a value in their favor (and then X is unrecorded, and can change favorably in the future).

 

[Umbran]

The biggest rules headaches I had with regard to interactions between characters of different rulesets where in the 'alignment/virtue' systems - humanity, honor, gnosis, banality, pathos, etc. All those things that were specific to each character sheet. Since a creatures virtue was relative, it was almost impossible to translate the virtue of one creature into a meaningful number in another system and no one seemed to have firm guidelines. As soon as you had a mechanic that depended on the target's X...

Well, there's some that matter, and some that we never saw an issue with.

Some stats (like gnosis, rage, quintessence, glamour, and blood pool) are "power resource stats", points spent to use powers and abilities. You cold imagine needing to be able to convert from one to another. We had a simple solution: If the target doesn't have that power-resource, your power that affects it does bubkis. You have a power that depends on the target's blood pool? That's great, but Werewolves just don't have blood pools, and the power simply won't function on them. Kind of like how, in D&D, undead don't have Constitution scores - some things just won't work. Typically only Mages could violate that, but they had to learn how in-game, and the workings were complex and difficult.

For the "virture" stats (humanity, honor, and so on), I cannot call a single time when someone tried to use an ability that targetted such cross-species, such that we needed a conversion.

 

[Celebrim]

You have a power that depends on the target's blood pool? That's great, but Werewolves just don't have blood pools, and the power simply won't function on them.

This has the advantage of being simple, but depending on what the power does I can see this as being a counter-intuitive ruling. Werewolves don't have an explicit 'blood pool', but they do have blood and even mortals in Vampire have a blood pool. They may not depend on it in quite the same way as Vampires or even mortals, but there is something wierd about suggesting Werewolves are bloodless.

For the "virture" stats (humanity, honor, and so on), I cannot call a single time when someone tried to use an ability that targetted such cross-species, such that we needed a conversion.

I can remember having an argument between a Changling player, a Vampire player, and a Mortal Hunter where the Changling had some ability to that depended on the target's Banality and the Vampire and the Mortal Hunter were both arguing that the other would have higher Banality than thier character. I wish I could remember the details.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I suppose that adding & calculating every little unique stat is probably the way to go, but I wouldn't want to do it, and I bet most players wouldn't either...not unless they are big fans of the system.

I wonder, though...did Monte Cook's nWoD address cross-compatibility? (I bought a copy, but more out of collecting it than playing it- it got skimmed, not read.)

***

BTW, it just occurred to me that besides Barker's Imajica, the WoD games- esp. Mage- would rock for Gaiman's Neverwhere and Clark's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

 

[Umbran]

Werewolves don't have an explicit 'blood pool', but they do have blood and even mortals in Vampire have a blood pool.

My recollection (it has been a while) is not that mortals have a blood pool, but that if a vampire feds on mortals, they can replenish their own blood pool. A subtle but important difference.

For us, if a vampire fed on a werewolf, he could expect to be forced directly into frenzy, and coming out again before they'd completely screwed themselves was unlikely.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mmmm. Very "Being Human" on a certain level.