Grading the Genesys System

[Doctor Futurity]

I ran a short campaign of Genesys when it came out some years ago. The game lasted around 7 sessions when we bailed and moved over to Cypher System, which fit my GM style and my player group better. My recollection was as follows:
1. I discovered that symbol based dice are actually not intuitive for me (and some of my players) and even using the phone app to roll them was tedious;
2. The magic system was unduly cumbersome for some of my players (it required some time and effort to understand properly) so anytime someone attempted a spell it often degenerated into several minutes of calculations;

Beyond that it wasn't bad. I enjoyed parts of it a lot, but personally couldn't abide the symbol based die mechanic. It's a trivial thing for some, I am sure, but for me I just wanted some real numbers. As it stood, we were looking around for different systems and in the end Cypher won out as the preferred game of choice, it had fewer variables and modifiers in play and moved much more quickly. That said.....I'd consider playing Genesys again in the future with the right group, as long as I have access to the die rolling app. I have kept the books just in case.

 

[Committed Hero]

When he wrote The Yellow King RPG, Robin Laws changed the combat system into one that has the players identify their goal (defeat the foe/capture the foe/run away/et c) and has each participant make a single roll towards it. This would be an interesting use of the Genesys system, in a similar setting where combat isn't the focus of the game (like X of Cthulhu). Of course, it would require some conversion, and make a lot of the combat focused talents less helpful.