RPGaDay Day 23: Perfect Game for You

I wasn't exactly sure what this question meant, so I am going to assume that it means which game I would want to play if I could always get enough people. For me, the answer is GURPS. For all the time I spend talking about, and running, rules-lite games, I actually prefer crunchy games with a high level of granularity to skills and mechanics. I think this is because, if I could run any kind of game, I would run hard science fiction games. I prefer that kind of game to have several different kinds of physicists and chemists, not just a generic "Science" skill.

And it isn't just in hard scifi that granularity matters to me. I love Savage Worlds, but I have some problems with the system in long campaigns or back-to-back campaigns. Savage Worlds does not have a very high level of detail in its skills, this is great, it is what makes it so fast and easy, but it can make everything start to feel the same after a while. I have found that two Savage Worlds campaigns in a row can feel very much the same, even if they have very different themes, because of the simple mechanics. It is also hard to keep things mechanically fresh over long campaigns. I do not think this is an actual flaw in the system. The game was designed to be "Fast, Furious Fun" and mechanical granularity is going to be one of the trade-offs for that. GURPS, on the other hand, takes a while to get up and running, but offers many ways to make things feel very different due to its detailed, modular nature.

I like long campaigns. I like spending a lot of time working on the game world, and campaign specific rules before the first session. I want to distinguish this from something that requires lots of prep time every week before play, like Pathfinder. GURPS requires a lot of work setting up the campaign, but very little on a weekly basis. GURPS gives me the ability to make a very realistic world, and to fine tune the game systems to get the feel I want.

Comments

Hex Crawls

Those of you who have been reading this blog know that I have never run a megadungeon before. I have always used more realistic dungeon settings, keeping all underground areas to a minimum and keeping the over all size of castles and the like fairly small. There is another style of gaming I have never indulged in: the hex crawl. I have never seen hexes as discrete chunks of the map. I always just used them as a guide to find distance if they were present and not worrying about themif they were not. I have always taken a more continuous view of overland maps. This is another streak that will be ending with my upcoming OSRIC game. I will be using James M's Outdoor Map as a starting pont in my campaign. I will be heavily modifying it for my purposes but most of the features will stay the same. I will be adding my own versions of Castles Blackmoor and Greyhawk to the map. I have been struggling with how a hex crawl works. How do I know if they find features in the hex and isn't 5 m

Traveller: Session 5

This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar. This session was run on October 27, 2022. This session contains secret communications between me and the individual players. This means that these recaps do not cover everything that happened in the session. I will be reporting only the information that all players had access to. 131-1116 After the council meeting ended, Nashu, Archduke Ishuggi’s chief of staff, pulled him aside. Following the revelation that Yuri Lang, the emperor’s would-be assassin, had been a member of Archduke Adair’s intelligence service and had been involved in a combined operation with Gateway Intelligence, she had the staff run overlap checks on all recent contacts. The goal was to determine if there were any more unexpected connections between people that could be a threat to Ishuggi or the emperor. She learned that, in 1113, Yuri Lang (“Baron Pazi”), Zurzi (Archduke Bzrk’s chief of st

Wilderlands: Session 36

This session was run on May 1 st , 2023 They continued heading east towards the beach with the rock rolling along beside them. They were not sure where they had washed ashore with respect to the various port cities on the coast, so the best plan was to reach the beach and then decide how to proceed from there. Around noon, the skies darkened and white flakes began to fall from the sky. As it was around 85 degrees, they realized that it could not be snow. It turned out to be ash. The ashfall was quickly mixed with a moderate rain. They discovered that the rain stung when it hit unprotected flesh and raised small red welts. Drex found shelter in a hollow beneath the roots of a large tree and they waited out the acid rain for a couple of hours before resuming their journey. They reached the water as it was getting dark and spent an uneventful night camped just off the beach. In the morning, they could see masts on the horizon to the north, but nothing to the so

Circle of Dar Janix

Search This Blog