Ginger asks: What’s your favorite game system, and why? What things don’t you like about it? How much do you have to “jigger” it from published rules and why?
That's not as easy a question as it seems. Sure, I have some systems I really like, but to choose one favorite system.....easier said than done.
What I'd choose as a favorite depends on the genre. For four-color superheroes, I really like Mutants and Masterminds. For almost any other superhero game, Champions works great. GURPS is a great "universal" system, but in my opinion it only really works when you have an "action-lite" game like a Star Trek, X-Files or Amber setting. Any game where the story involves more problem/mystery solving and interaction works great in GURPS. For games with more action, I like Masterbook (the out-of-print West End Games "universal" system) or Buffy. Hero 5th edition (Champions, but for any genre/power level) can also be a lot of fun for action games.
....and of course there is Amber. I like Amber a lot, but I suspect that this is more because of the players than the system itself. The system is heavily flawed, but thankful it is also easily adaptable. Don't like the powers in the book? Make your own list of powers. Feel the game needs more attributes to describa a character? Add a few. The beauty of Amber being diceless is that changes in one thing doesn't suddenly change how tons of other things are done. Change how initiative is handled in a game like D&D, and you may end up with a whole bunch of other issues to deal with. (In the D&D game I'm running now, I decided that there would be no such things as resurrection spells. I then had to take in to account that the system was built with the ability to resurrect fallen comrades in mind and came up with rules to make characters a little more able to survive once they reach 0 hit points.)
Another system that I really like is Nobilis. I haven't played it enough yet to know how well it works when push comes to shove, but in my one experience with it and my reading of the book it seems to have more structure than Amber while remaining a fun diceless experience.
Currently, I guess I would declare my favorite as Unisystem. I've found it to be both simple and flexible while still having a dice rolling framework if you want. It can also easily be played diceless and I understand that some of the Unisystem books have diceless rules included in the book. (although Buffy sadly did not, I've heard rumours that the diceless rules are in the Angel book. Fingers are crossed.) I'm not sure how well the system will work for some genres but it seems flexible enough to handle almost anything.
When Beyond Human, the Unisystem superhero game comes out, we'll see how flexible it is or isn't. Superheroes is a hard genre to pull off if our system wasn't built specifically for that power level of games. The only system I can think of that was built for another genre and is still able to handle superheroes is Amber, but that goes back to what I said above.
Posted by Nuadha at January 19, 2004 12:43 PM