One System To Rule Them All!

[jdrakeh]

But it DOES meet your criteria

No. It doesn't.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

No, just some stats for generic vehicles and rough guidelines.

However, for World War II, you will want the excellent GURPS WWII which, while written for 3e, does have vehicle construction rules (and those should be easily convertible) which IIRC do cover legged vehicles. Note that both this book and the other GURPS WWII books are currently available at vastly reduced prices at Warehouse 23 ($10 each). I especially recommend GURPS WWII: Weird War II, which covers all sorts of supernatural and other strangeness you can throw into the mix...

Also, GURPS Mecha has rules and suggestions for cross-genre mecha design and implementation.

 

[jdrakeh]

I can get my friends to play d20. Good luck trying to talk them into anything else. It was like pullling teeth to get them to play DC Heroes (3rd Ed) with me supplying all the books, but even after that the game wasn't much fun.

GURPS and Hero are both pretty popular around here, actually.

 

[jdrakeh]

Mutants and Masterminds, for anything but low levels (and that might change when I get my 2nd Ed.) Easily the most elegant/easy and balanced game I've ever seen or heard about.

I like 1e, but they've dropped the tool-kit approach in the 2e core book (the bulk of the options from 1e will be in the Mastermind's Manual) and the system really isnt' very balanced (it has a lot of loopholes if you know where to look for them). And, like you said, it really breaks down for low-powered characters - which is a deal breaker for me in this instance (I want a system that will allow me to cover as much ground as possible, including low-powered campaigns). Thanks for the suggestion, though.

 

[Greg K]

There is also fuzion which was originally a joint venture between Hero Games and R.Talsorian. It is no longer supported and was kind of a Hero Lite that is very customizeable. I would recommend taking a look at version 4.4.3 which includes the powers for superheroes, psionics etc. It is free and the link is

http://www.mecha.com/~conkle/fuzion/

 

[jdrakeh]

There is also fuzion which was originally a joint venture between Hero Games and R.Talsorian. It is no longer supported and was kind of a Hero Lite that is very customizeable. I would recommend taking a look at version 4.4.3 which includes the powers for superheroes, psionics etc. It is free and the link is

http://www.mecha.com/~conkle/fuzion/

Actually, Fuzion is still supported, but not in an official capacity (that is, the company that owns it no longer supports it). Somebody actually mentioend this further up the thread, but as I said earlier, I dislike Fuzion due to mechanical balance issues and think that its combat system is unintuitive. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

 

[smilinggm]

I would say go with the D20 System. With D20 you have an excellent set of core rules that handles Fantasy, Past, Present and Future Rules very well. I have not seen a setting that cannot be handled well by D20.

 

[Desdichado]

I seem to reecall that the author of Grim Tales itself recommends that it be used with d20 Modern and, as that's how it was marketed, that's the bottom line for this thread. It doesn't meet the criteria that I laid out in the first post. Period. So, thanks for suggesting it, but it isn't being considered. Please, if you want to argue its merits, start another thread.

Really? I thought Grim Tales was standalone, being built primarily on the d20 Modern engine? Maybe I'm mistaken. However, since the Modern SRD is available online, you don't actually need to buy any other product than Grim Tales even if there is a dependency.

 

[Shayd3000]

Torg

I voted for GURPS, but I would like to mention tri-Stat dx is a generic system.

Also, Torg while not marketed as a generic system, is in all actuality, a multi-genre system, so I think it would qualify. Counting Torg, it would be a tie between Torg and GURPS for me.

I also think M&M would make a very nice generic system - probably the best way to do this if you want to play d20-style.

George

 

[jdrakeh]

Really? I thought Grim Tales was standalone, being built primarily on the d20 Modern engine?

It's standalone much like Spycraft 1.0 is (i.e., 98% standalone), but the introduction of Grim Tales suggests owning d20 Modern in order to get the most out of it. But that's only one issue. The other is that it only covers a handful of genres and time periods by design, much like d20 Modern does, thus failing to meet my criteria in two areas.