When You Aren't Playing To Level

[Spatula]

Any reason for the dearth of home-brew for Torg? Is it a lack of open-source material and copyright issues? Simply the age of the system? This has probably been discussed in other threads but I guess I'll ask anyway.

Doubt it's been discussed much here, Torg died ages ago and Mustrum_Ridcully is the only person here I see talking about it. It's an interesting game, geared towards emulating action-adventure movie tropes while also accomodating a number of different action-adventure subgenres simultaneously, with a pretty involved meta-plot that explains the clash of subgenres. But the way the game is run demands a certain structure from adventures, in that they are supposed to be split up into acts, and each act is broken up into scenes. Some mechanics recharge at the end of a scene, some at the end of an act, etc. (my memory may be fuzzy but that's what I recall) That presents some difficulties in winging it or in coming up with your own adventures.

As I recall the subgenres were:
Land of the Lost / wilderness survival / dinosaurs
Medieval fantasy
Cyberpunk
Pulp heroes
Near-future industrial intrigue
And there was some strange future biotech thing that came later.

</threadjack>

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Doubt it's been discussed much here, Torg died ages ago and Mustrum_Ridcully is the only person here I see talking about it. It's an interesting game, geared towards emulating action-adventure movie tropes while also accomodating a number of different action-adventure subgenres simultaneously, with a pretty involved meta-plot that explains the clash of subgenres. But the way the game is run demands a certain structure from adventures, in that they are supposed to be split up into acts, and each act is broken up into scenes. Some mechanics recharge at the end of a scene, some at the end of an act, etc. (my memory may be fuzzy but that's what I recall) That presents some difficulties in winging it or in coming up with your own adventures.

As I recall the subgenres were:
Land of the Lost / wilderness survival / dinosaurs
Medieval fantasy
Cyberpunk
Pulp heroes
Near-future industrial intrigue
And there was some strange future biotech thing that came later.

</threadjack>

Good summary. In a way, there are actually two Cyberpunk setting, one with strong religious influence (the Cyberpapacy) and the other a way more chaotic world with cybered-up demons (Tharkold). And it also includes our own world.

I keep wondering why it's me talking about it, despite barely playing it (or even "good" at it). My group loved the game before I became a member, and they played it intensively in that time, but where already into other systems mostly when I was there.
I am just intrigued by its mechanics and the way "fluff" and "crunch" where aligned to create something that manages to combine these genres AND keep them balanced. It's really a shame that a game like Rifts (that also seems to merge many genres) with by all accords totally wonky mechanics seems to have survived while Torg is dead.

 

[Spatula]

I am just intrigued by its mechanics and the way "fluff" and "crunch" where aligned to create something that manages to combine these genres AND keep them balanced. It's really a shame that a game like Rifts (that also seems to merge many genres) with by all accords totally wonky mechanics seems to have survived while Torg is dead.

Well, it's not like Rifts gets talked about here, either. I'm always surprised that it's (apparently) still around given that I never see it in actual game stores, nor hear about it.

From a business standpoint, Torg probably had a much higher overhead than Kevin Siembieda's games. And from a game standpoint, Torg was just weird... the metaplot is really oddball. They could have taken the rules and turned it into a universal systam ala GURPS (1e GURPS was published around the same time, IIRC), but they threw all the different genres together in a jumble and came up with a pretty silly story to tie them together. It's distinctive, it's interesting, but I'm sure it's not for everyone. Then there's the narritivist gameplay elements (which I had never seen before at that time), which require a different frame of mind compared to other RPGs - and not everyone is down for that, either.