Post by Chuk GoodinThis made me wonder what he would select as the best RPG (or even the best
in each category). Then it was only a short step to "And what would
everybody else think?"
So, what are people's favourite RPGs? Maybe broken down into categories,
maybe just one for everything. Why is that your favourite? I'm more
interested in hearing about actual published systems rather than just "I
like this home-made mishmash I've been using for twenty years", but if
your mishmash handles something in an innovative way, that might be
interesting, too.
My homebrew (which has been going under the term FFRE for a
number of years now, but which will soon be re-named, with "Free
Fudge-light Roleplaying gaming Engine" as the subtitle) is
largely a hybrid of two published RPG systems, so obviously
there is something in each of those two systems that I like a lot:
GURPS is good because of the basic character creation
philosophy, which is that you can have *any* trait which
*exists* in the *game* *world*, for your character, for a price.
This means that you can dream up a character (*any* character),
and then divide that character into component parts (many of
which synergize - I see synergies in a lot of places in the real
world, so obviously for a game world to feel real, it must have
synergies too) and assign a point cost to each part, and the sum
of those costs is the desirability of the character from the
point of view of a "generalized" or "averaged" roleplaying gamer
- one who apprecites *all* kinds of competence and ability, not
just those that are related directly or indirectly to combat.
Quest FRP is good for different reasons. First of all, it has
many attributes. That's not entirely new to me. The system under
which I learned to roleplay (a licensed BRP/Runequest clone) has
seven attributes, so the four attributes of GURPS, or the three
attributes of BESM, is certainly not new to me. But Quest FRP
has nine. And some of the choices are quite good. For instance,
I like the distinction between Intelligence and Magic Talent - I
think it's boring when *every* potential Mensan is also eligible
to join the Mage's Guild, I'd much rather have a few stupid
mages around, plus a few smart people who are inept at learning
magic. Also the distinction between Agility and Dexterity is
very useful, allowing for some character concepts that can't
work under one-attribute systems. For instance, some years ago I
dreamed up a character concept which was literally inexpressably
under D&D (any edition - except maybe Players Options/Skills &
Powers, or whatever it's called. IIRC it splits each of the six
attributes up into two sub-attributes, although I wonder if it
makes much mechanical difference), because he warranted a very
high Dexterity but an Agility that was only around average. Then
there's the relation between attributes and skills. Pretty much
every other system posits an additive effect of innate talent
upon skill performance. But Quest FRP instead posits a
multiplicative effect, which happens to be both much more
realistic, and much harder (I'd say impossible, unless the
implementation is incompetently done) to abuse. In fact, by far
the primary reason for why I'm not using GURPS is that
high-attribute characters don't work in GURPS. They're *too*
*good*, to the point where even if the GM allows you to actually
play one, the other players will resent you for having optimized
your character to an abusive degree. And raising the cost of
attributes will not solve the problem. Quest FRP showed an
alternative, although unfortunately the implementation failed to
let high-attribute characters actually be *good*. So that's
something I've fixed in my homebrew. The last really neat bit
about Quest FRP is the magic system. I just liked the way magic
was divided into spell lists (Fire, Illusion, Necromancy...),
and also the way it could do religions with differently themed
magic, utilizing historical religions in an extremely flavourful
and atmospheric fashion (Rabbis could create golems, for
instance, Druids could work nature spells, and Norse Priests
could use rune magic).
That's saying one good thing about GURPS and four good things
about Quest FRP, but this doesn't mean that Quest FRP is four
times as good as GURPS. I find it bothersome that Quest FRP
lacks social skills, for instance, and as I said earlier it
fails to let high-attribute characters be good. The skill
learning speed span between a character of average Will (12) and
average Intellect (12), and a character of very high Will (18)
and very high Intellect (18) is only 1.5:1, and that's
unrealistically low. Quest FRP is also largely unconcerned with
non-combat conflicts. Not as bad as, e.g., AD&D, but still
inferior to GURPS in this regard.
Most of you probably already know that Steve Jackson Games will
publish a new version of GURPS very soon, 4th Edition. It tries
to address the possibility of abusive degrees of optimization,
and in fact it does manage to remove it, but at a far too high
cost - by introducing character traits which the characters are
unable to discuss with each other, the same way D&D characters
can't discuss with each other what class(es) they are. In other
words, the naughty eight-letter word: metagame.
But Quest FRP is also about to come out in a new version. The
guys in Wisconsin have been working on a new version for the
last several years, and from what little they've leaked on the
mailing list that I run (QuestFRP on YahooGroups), it sounds
exciting. In fact it also sounds as if they've addressed at
least two of the concerns raised by Brian Gleichman in his
review of the system, posted in here earlier (was it really four
years ago? My memory sucks at finding out how long ago something
was...): The presence of real world religions (IMO a loss), and
the inability of weapons to kill or at least to incapacitate in
a single blow (now, apparently, weapons will do multiple dice of
damage, instead of always 1d6+N). A third neat feature is that
the sequential spell lists (10 levels, and (almost always) only
one spell per level) will be replaced with spell trees. I like
the idea, but am a bit concerned about how it can be graphically
represented (I wish the best of luck to Todd, Gene and the rest
of the designers!).
I'm excited about both these new projects (mostly Quest FRP, but
that's only because I know little about it - the designers are
stingy with info - whereas I have a quite good idea what GURPS
4th Edition will be like). You all know where to find GURPS 4th
edition, but as for the new edition of Quest FRP, I'll link to
it from my new website (URL yet to be announced) soon after I
become aware of its release.
--
Peter Knutsen
knutsen.dk