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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8272783" data-attributes="member: 82106">I will have to take your word for that, but again, the question of 'popular vs good' is a complex question. I don't even know what 'based on' means, nor is 'sci-fi' a very narrow genre (IE Gamma World is called a Sci-Fi RPG, but it is nothing like Traveler, and the same system would definitely not work for both, not in 1000 years).I disagree. TSR, or any other game designer which is seriously in it as a business, designed its games to be successful games. There were clearly game design reasons why D&D was not turned into a 'platform system' like BRP or GURPS.See, again, you seem to be insensitive to the MASSIVE differences between Alternity and D&D. They are completely different beasts! Alternity is sort of a cross between a straight up skill-based system and the 'shift' system that TSR employed in the Marvel game. It features multiple levels of both success and failure, though the way it achieves the equivalent of shifting is via different types of dice. The 'toughness' of characters is much less variable than in a D&D game, and depends somewhat on which game you are playing, since Alternity itself is simply a core system (interesting how TSR actually DID PRODUCE a core system, but it is nothing like D&D). Beyond that, I think I would say that, even for its time, Alternity was a bit behind in terms of sophisticated process mechanics. I haven't played any of the Alternity-based games myself, but I don't see where they introduce things like metagame resources or a more structured approach to setting odds and putting checks into a bigger mechanical/procedural/conceptual framework. I could be wrong though, my familiarity with the system is limited.</blockquote>

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