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Open-Licensed WOIN Starter Set Coming in 2023
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<blockquote data-quote="RareBreed" data-source="post: 8902561" data-attributes="member: 6945590"><p>I'm with you. Ironically, I like detailed and crunchy games, but nowadays the vast majority of RPG systems is just narrative bloat.</p><p></p><p>Take for example the recently released Avatar RPG. I haven't played any Powered by the Apocalypse games before, but the rules are buried in paragraph after paragraph of exposition or explanation. And that's supposed to be a "rules lite" system where you just have a bunch of "moves"? I'm finding it weary reading the almost 300 pages of rules, not to mention the character playbooks which describe the moves each type gets. Another example is the Fate Core rulebook; another supposedly rules-lite game where the book is 300 pages and that doesn't even come with a standard setting! Give me a flow chart with precise actions over reading Tolstoy to figure out how to play.</p><p></p><p>Contrast this with the 1987 game Living Steel RPG from Leading Edge Games. It used the infamous Phoenix Command Combat System that was supposedly insanely difficult (or at least cumbersome). The core book in the 1st edition was just 115 pages (including background fluff). Including the data tables and weapons, the total was 190 pages. The last 75 pages was basically reference material. Once you got the hang of a few key things, combat was nowhere near as bad or slow as people made it out to be (yes, you had to reference several charts, but it wasn't that time consuming). Combats were actually faster than pretty much any game I played, because one hit usually rendered the target out of combat.</p><p></p><p>I mean, how did we go from the 98 page Call of Cthulhu 2e rulebook, to the 449 page 7e? BRP hasn't changed <em>that</em> much over the years.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RareBreed, post: 8902561, member: 6945590"] I'm with you. Ironically, I like detailed and crunchy games, but nowadays the vast majority of RPG systems is just narrative bloat. Take for example the recently released Avatar RPG. I haven't played any Powered by the Apocalypse games before, but the rules are buried in paragraph after paragraph of exposition or explanation. And that's supposed to be a "rules lite" system where you just have a bunch of "moves"? I'm finding it weary reading the almost 300 pages of rules, not to mention the character playbooks which describe the moves each type gets. Another example is the Fate Core rulebook; another supposedly rules-lite game where the book is 300 pages and that doesn't even come with a standard setting! Give me a flow chart with precise actions over reading Tolstoy to figure out how to play. Contrast this with the 1987 game Living Steel RPG from Leading Edge Games. It used the infamous Phoenix Command Combat System that was supposedly insanely difficult (or at least cumbersome). The core book in the 1st edition was just 115 pages (including background fluff). Including the data tables and weapons, the total was 190 pages. The last 75 pages was basically reference material. Once you got the hang of a few key things, combat was nowhere near as bad or slow as people made it out to be (yes, you had to reference several charts, but it wasn't that time consuming). Combats were actually faster than pretty much any game I played, because one hit usually rendered the target out of combat. I mean, how did we go from the 98 page Call of Cthulhu 2e rulebook, to the 449 page 7e? BRP hasn't changed [I]that[/I] much over the years. [/QUOTE]
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