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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7871840" data-attributes="member: 996">Oh, I purchased them, looked at them, and despaired for the game.Yeah, we're looking at the same things, not even from terribly different perspectives, it sounds like (40 years vs 30), acknowledging the same problems, but seeing different underlying causes.It happens.I have never dug into Rifts, I know it had a pretty awful reputation as a monstrous, utterly broken thing, so maybe if I had been exposed (and survived) it's bloat issues would make those of 2e or 3e or GURPS seem trivial by comparison. There might be a place for design elegance, if not minimalism.It's sales really told that story:  from 4th (when it became a universal system) on, the core rules would sell well, the supplements that merely used them to adapt to different genres would not.  You just didn't really need them.  Sure, like just about every other RPG, Hero never had the market dominance of D&D, but, within it's own niche, it displayed that issue.  A robust enough core system kills demand for supplements.  A line based on a fragile/baroque system can sell better than one based on a robust/elegant one, because it needs to be constantly touched up, there's utility, if potentially declining marginal utility, in each new product, because that utility simply wasn't delivered up-front. Hero Systems PCs have been the best-realized, most flavorful I've seen.  Because you start with the concept - any concept you want - and adapt the system to it.Only if you start with the system and try to build something on a mechanical basis, and fit it to a concept later, do you end up with something generic... and usually mechanically pretty poor, too, ironically.  Even though Champions! always had generic archetypes like 'Brick' and 'Energy Projector' you couldn't just start with one like it was a class.Classes are good when you're stuck for a character concept, that way - you can just pick class, race, &c, and have a generic character that might evolve into something, but will at least go through the motions of it's role and contribute until you do (or even if it never comes together).  Pregens, sample characters, and pre-builds are also good that way.</blockquote>

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