Your thoughts on Generic versus Bespoke systems.

[Reynard]

Let's talk for a second about the truly generic systems: Hero, GURPS, FUDGE/Fate, Cortex (I gather; I have never seen it).

What most "universal" or "generic" RPGs bring to the table is a rule set that establishes what amounts to a "physics engine" -- that is, a set of rules about how the world and the people in it work. Now, they aren't without stylistic input -- GURPS makes a bunch of assumptions about tone that are different than Fate's assumptions, for example. But by and large what they are trying to do is establish a baseline for interpreting the "reality" of the game space and thereby giving the GM and players a common language from which to build the story of the game they are playing. This, by the way, is why I put D&D in the broadly "generic" category: it is all about providing a common language from which a wide variety of game styles can emerge (as someone said previously, you can run Greyhawk and Spelljammer in D&D; it can't be that bespoke).

I used to be really into the Hero system, but that was mostly because of Champions. So Hero wasn't, for me, a truly "universal system." Even so, i read enough comics to know there were many different styles, tones, themes and even genres under the umbrella of the "superhero genre." So, by that definition, even Champions (as opposed to hero) was a generic system. You could build it to do a very specific thing, and then re-build it to do a different thing.

 

[James Gasik]

Let's talk for a second about the truly generic systems: Hero, GURPS, FUDGE/Fate, Cortex (I gather; I have never seen it).

What most "universal" or "generic" RPGs bring to the table is a rule set that establishes what amounts to a "physics engine" -- that is, a set of rules about how the world and the people in it work. Now, they aren't without stylistic input -- GURPS makes a bunch of assumptions about tone that are different than Fate's assumptions, for example. But by and large what they are trying to do is establish a baseline for interpreting the "reality" of the game space and thereby giving the GM and players a common language from which to build the story of the game they are playing. This, by the way, is why I put D&D in the broadly "generic" category: it is all about providing a common language from which a wide variety of game styles can emerge (as someone said previously, you can run Greyhawk and Spelljammer in D&D; it can't be that bespoke).

I used to be really into the Hero system, but that was mostly because of Champions. So Hero wasn't, for me, a truly "universal system." Even so, i read enough comics to know there were many different styles, tones, themes and even genres under the umbrella of the "superhero genre." So, by that definition, even Champions (as opposed to hero) was a generic system. You could build it to do a very specific thing, and then re-build it to do a different thing.

Even a truly universal system is going to have problems tackling some things. GURPS Lensman comes to mind.

 

[Reynard]

My favourite system is FATE Accelerated and before 3e I mainly enjoyed GURPS, so I’m definite on the generic/universal end of things. That said I do like BitD and Pendragon for what they do as bespoke games too. Currently looking at Ironsworn which also looks good.

FATE and GURPs and PbtA as engines that allow for custom builds on a generic chassis and probably thats they style I like, rather than truely bespoke games.

I like Worldbuilding so being able to do that system agnostic works for me.

Fate is very interesting as a "generic" system because its power of generality is entirely based on terms. You can run 2 Fate games and if you curate the Aspects correctly they can be absolutely different in genre, tone, style and theme with essentially no rule changes.

 

[Reynard]

Even a truly universal system is going to have problems tackling some things. GURPS Lensman comes to mind.

Sure. I do not believe there is a truly "universal" system -- or, at least, I have never seen one. The closest is a game like Fate which relies on narrative definitions for a lot of game elements, but there are still articulated mechanics which may not be in fact universal.

 

[The Shadow]

Fate is very interesting as a "generic" system because its power of generality is entirely based on terms. You can run 2 Fate games and if you curate the Aspects correctly they can be absolutely different in genre, tone, style and theme with essentially no rule changes.

Totally!! I love Fate to pieces for this - it's become my group's favorite game. The power of Aspects to reinforce the campaign premises simply cannot be overstated.

Nevertheless, one issue is that if you do want to introduce crunch beyond aspects and stunts, you're pretty much on your own. The Toolkit books help, as do the Worlds of Adventure (which usually have rules tweaks), but still.

That's one reason why I'm intrigued by Cortex Prime, which somebody here pointed me at. It seems to have a more organic way of tweaking how things work by choosing your "prime set". I think I see ways to tweak Fate skills to get a similar effect, now that I've seen Cortex.

Sure. I do not believe there is a truly "universal" system -- or, at least, I have never seen one. The closest is a game like Fate which relies on narrative definitions for a lot of game elements, but there are still articulated mechanics which may not be in fact universal.

It's pretty much axiomatic that no system, no matter how generic, is good at everything. Fate, for example, is designed to work with highly competent, proactive characters. You can certainly try to relax those constraints to play zero-to-hero or horror, but the system will tend to fight you. Like, I don't think starting with a +2 skill pyramid would be much fun at all.

Hero (which I played A LOT in the 90's) was originally developed for superheroes, and it shows. I'm not saying it can't do other things - it certainly can - but it comes across as comic-book versions of those things. (This is doubly true for Mutants & Masterminds.) Which can be great fun! But isn't the best feel for everything.

I played several campaigns of GURPS back in the day too, and it also isn't good at everything. They've made valiant attempts at it, to be sure! I personally think that our modern Psionics game was pitch-perfect, but that a medieval fantasy game we tried didn't seem to quite hit the mark somehow. (I'm prescinding here from what are, for me, some glaring design flaws in GURPS and concentrating simply on how things felt.)

I'm sure Cortex will likewise have things it doesn't do as well, but I won't know what until I've actually tried it.

 

[James Gasik]

Just to pick on GURPS a little, when I first started playing it, we tried to emulate D&D style adventuring. And then we realized just how busted ranged combat was, and for the rest of the campaign (until we gave up), most fights were us filling enemies with holes from a distance.

Though there was the fight where our GM, just to be a jerk, made a 20 point NPC with wealth enough to afford full plate armor, and it took us forever to actually beat the guy (we often joked it wasn't the NPC that was foiling us, but his armor!).

 

[Faolyn]

This sounds as if you're getting Blades playbooks confused with Apocalypse World playbooks.

Perhaps. It's been a while since I've read them. And thanks for the info! I don't know if/when I'll run in the BitD world, since my group and I are still a bit more interested in Root and MotW, but it's good to know.

 

[MNblockhead]

Let's talk for a second about the truly generic systems: Hero, GURPS, FUDGE/Fate, Cortex (I gather; I have never seen it).

Cortex Prime is more of kit to build your own bespoke system. It has some core mechanics that make it familiar but there are so many bits and bobs you can play with that by the time you put together a system, it can feel quite different than from another your put together or one of the published TTRPGs that use the Coretex system.

 

[Blue]

Here's the thing. We (the tabletop community) often makes the case that a game like Mutants and Masterminds is less specific and more generic than something like Masks, but I don't think there's much in actual play to back up that people are effectively using games like Mutants and Masterminds to explore the same sorts of conceptual space that games like Mask operate within. It might be theoretically the case that one might explore teenage superheroes finding their sense of identity in a more 'generic' game, but a culture of play focused on group problem solving makes the chance you will encounter that sort of play in the wild basically nil.

But that's the point: if you can duplicate the theme of bespoke games and do other types of play as well, it's more of a big tent game. And M&M out of the box does not have the mechanical tools like Influence, shifting Labels, and the like. Heck, the playbooks in Masks are "what types of troubles do I want to have to overcome" more than classes. That doesn't exist as mechancial support in M&M.

And it does have things that Masks doesn't want to spend time and mechanics on. Can you pick up a car? That's something not mechanically defined in Masks because it should be obvious to the player and GM if the character can (or perhaps it's pushing their power but that's a corner case fore something as heavy/light as a car), and there's no check or roll because it's not interesting to succeed or fail at it since it doesn't advance the questions the game is about.

Look at the combat systems - I wouldn't expect two different RPGs to give the same results, but here they aren't even along the same axis.

Can a good GM do all of this without mechanical support? Sure. Can they do it in spite of mechanics that push in other directions (without changing those rules)? Possibly, but it will be an uphill battle. Does that mean the systems mechanically support the same things? No, not at all.

 

[Blue]

This sounds as if you're getting Blades playbooks confused with Apocalypse World playbooks. And while I agree that Apocalypse World playbooks are more art than science Blades ones are pretty easy and mostly almost identical. All you need are:

• A playbook name
• A list of half a dozen playbook special abilities to pick from. This is the only even vaguely challenging part.
• Five random pieces of playbook equipment that might come into play
• Five random NPCs (each being just a name and a couple of words of description so "Marcellus, an Apothecary" or "Jack, an urchin")
• Which skill to give a starting two dots to and which to give one
• The "playbook behaviour" for end of session XP

The setting can be dumped in a heartbeat - and to not base the system round crime you need to just drop the flashback system and change the crew sheets for what the game is to be based round (probably dropping the turf system in the process).

Sure. We can houserule and kitbash anything out of any system. That has literally nothing to do with how broad a system is natively. I present that unlike D&D, dumping the setting is a house rule for BitD - it has mechanical support in terms of named NPCs, it terms of playbook features and equipment that only makes sense if certain things, exist in it. D&D on the other hand has no mechanical connection to any specific setting in the base game.

So, since we're talking about the game, that means natively and not houseruled. So BitD is single setting, and D&D is not. Now, that does mean that base D&D can't handle settings like Dark Sun or Eberron - settings that actually change the rules and add in new races or features and require mechanical support.