Do you have a "litmus test" setting for generic rule sets?

[Thomas Shey]

Supers of some kind because supers needs to cover everything from lowly normal human with some disposable income all the way to God level beings. It's part of the reason why I think the only systems that could be universal must be extremely abstract, because the only supers systems that cover the whole range of supers stuff are very abstract.

I think that requires a particular definition of "cover the whole range" to be true.

It's also part of the reason why I am a fan of purpose built systems over generic ones. Generic systems suffer the "jack of all trades, master of none" thing. I would much rather learn ten different systems that do ten different things well, than one system that does a not great job at anything.

I suspect for a lot of people, "does a decent to good job at everything" is fine, all the more if you don't think there's any system that covers Specific Genre or Setting X great (which I think is true about a number).

 

[Thomas Shey]

My Holy Grail for superheroes is the Green Lantern Corps. Not an individual Green Lantern on the Justice League... an entire campaign where every PC is a Green Lantern, and they all feel individually satisfying and satisfyingly individual to play.

I'd suggest that's going to primarily be an issue of players who are much more interested in the personalities and interactions than the capabilities; GLs sometimes have some areas they're a bit better at than other members, but there's just not a big gap in their power or even flexibility.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I think that requires a particular definition of "cover the whole range" to be true.

That's why I said the "from normal person to god" part. I kinda figured that would cover pretty much everything, doesn't it?

I suspect for a lot of people, "does a decent to good job at everything" is fine, all the more if you don't think there's any system that covers Specific Genre or Setting X great (which I think is true about a number).

Good for them. As I stated in my previous post, I myself prefer purpose built systems. As always, when dealing with something like TTRPGs it's mostly a matter of personal preference. I mean, many (if not most) TTRPG players think D&D is good for "generic" fantasy, whereas I think D&D does a really bad job for any kind of fantasy because it does a really bad job emulating any form of fantasy media I have encountered, including emulating D&D novels. Then again maybe it's just because I enjoy learning new things in general, and new TTRPGs specifically. I also enjoy seeing how different mechanics define and inform play. For most people I suspect, learning things, especially marginally complicated things like a TTRPG system (ignoring really "light" systems) is an activity they do not enjoy. At least that's my anecdotal takeaway from the numerous times I've recommended to D&D fans that they should try a different system for a different experience and got told that they don't want to go through the trouble of learning a different system because of the difficulty and time consuming process that they had to endure to learn D&D in the first place.