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PDF is an open format, so you will always be able to use the material. Proprietary formats are subject to the whims of the corporate entities who own them, and could be shut down at any time. Consider all the services that Google has created, run for a while, then dropped for how this can play out.

The 2d20 games use a lifepath system, where the life events you roll for your character influence their stats. Some games like GURPS have an un-constrained point-buy system where your pool of points can be spent on stats or other aspects of your character. Some other games have a point-buy with...

I’m another person who was a huge GURPS fan but would rarely run it these days. ‘Too fiddly for me’ is probably the easiest way to summarise how I feel about it now. There is amazing granularity to the system, and huge customisability that that permits. But I don’t personally find that the extra...

I haven’t used it personally, but there is an entire WWII line for GURPS 3e. I would agree that 4e is marginally better than 3e, and I seem to remember that guns in general got quite a bit of clean-up with the edition change so that might be beneficial. Running 3e stuff with 4e rules is pretty...

‘Templates without miniatures’ is on p97 of the SWADE core book or p129 in the Savage Pathfinder rulebook.

Some more RPG-related print news that people may be interested in: Loke Battlemaps has new Big and Giant entries in their map book series, this time ‘wilds, wrecks and ruins’. This is going straight to retail, no crowd funding. I have most of their existing books and find them a great addition...

It definitely requires a realigning of expectations on both sides of the equation. In D&D you might be fighting a monster with 50HP and your first five or six hits might do nothing in terms of degrading the monster’s combat ability but you can see the HP whittling down and feel like you are...

It definitely matters in my opinion and in the games I run. The context of the world is really important, too, in shaping how the NPCs will react. This can be really tricky if the players haven’t gotten their head around the campaign world yet. For example, I have recently started running a...

It is a swingy system to be sure, but the meta currencies for the GM are a key balance to that. If your main villain is going to be one-shoted then try to soak that wound. It isn’t guaranteed and it’s all above board. Similarly, if you villain’s big attack wiffs then re-roll the attack. As long...

A couple of things I have seen in our groups when it comes to advancement and niches. Characters will often start out fairly similar, especially if the range of ‘important’ skills in a campaign is small. If all that matters is fighting, notice, stealth, and ranged then all characters can afford...

Personally I would say it supports long campaigns very well. The characters are pretty resilient if the players are not ridiculously gung-ho. Bennies are a great safety net and as the GM you can choose to be generous in handing those out. Character development is pretty solid. The rank system...

I ran a short campaign of about 6 sessions using the new SPC and it was great. The characters were tier 3, which is ‘city level’ of power. One of the interesting things is that, since the power system runs on a different set of points to other aspects of character creation, character powers...

We find the initiative system a positive. It makes combat more unpredictable which we like. And having the cards visible makes it pretty easy to see who is going next which my group always seems to struggle with in D&D initiative unless we have some clear visual record. Savage Worlds doesn’t...

The system is definitely comparable in overall ‘crunch’ to 5e, however I personally feel that it makes better use of that crunch. It’s a quite permissive system and you can bring in elements of narrative permission without moving too far from being a ‘traditional’ role-playing game. For...

Hi @AK81 I have been playing D&D for over 40 years and played 5e since it was released. My wider RPG tastes moved to genre-flexible systems like GUPRS in the 90s and these days Savage Worlds is my favourite system by far. So hopefully I can help you get an impression of how Savage Worlds feels...

It is definitely the case that assembly is required, but it is assembly rather than whole-cloth creation. And it doesn’t need to be super time consuming to add the labels that you want to the typical elements of a Cortex Prime implementation.

It’s a very different game system in my opinion. I love flexible systems: GURPS, Savage Worlds, Fate. But Cortex Prime can handle different games to any of those with aplomb.

I would use Fate or Fate Accelerated if I was doing someone like that. It is a simple system and leans in to narrative logic which a I find people new to gaming can tap into more naturally than game-thinking like 5-foot steps and so on. Make simple characters with a few traits, leverage the...

That sounds like a premise that you could game with Cortex Prime, building a set of themed abilities or portfolios (like being the angel of butter fingers…) and using them to overcome varied challenges in different ways. Cortex Prime is a very flexible engine for made games with ‘weird’ high...

This interview has more on the reclaiming of TFT.