Re: more RPGs

From: Sandy Petersen <sandyp_at_idgecko.idsoftware.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 95 10:22:10 -0600


Chris Pearce wrote to mention some other gaming systems that I'd forgotten to mention. So, Roy, here's a few more capsule reviews.

ROLEMASTER/MERPS: Way too many charts, heavily combat-oriented, and the magic system seemed very vanilla. The huge pile of charts is what put me off. If you're not disturbed by the thought of sorting through them, you may like the system. I know lots of folks do. But it leaves me cold, doubtless because of my bias of system vs. charts & tables. MERPS, to me, is better than ROLEMASTER. It's basically Rolemaster lite, so not as complex and bulky. I bought some of the MERPS stuff to use the cool maps but I used a different system.

EVERWAY: Chris mentioned this, but I ain't never heard of it.

ARS MAGICA: it came highly praised, so I browsed through it in high hopes. In the end I didn't even want to use the magic system. Maybe if I gave it a real try (I only read it, not played it) it would turn out good. It didn't read well, and often (not always) that's a sign of a game that doesn't play well, either.

PALLADIUM: a very primitive system -- sort of a reverse evolution back to the olden times. If you want to play Palladium, I figure you may as well play AD&D. They're equally realistic, and AD&D is better-supported.

AMBER DICELESS ROLEPLAYING: this is a fascinating idea to many people. The whole concept here is that there are no dice. Instead, there is a rather fun bidding system before play starts to determine who's the strongest person, who's the smartest, etc. It works well if you're playing in Amber, or in a similar type of game where most of the action is between the PCs or between them and highly individualized foes with lots of personality (e.g. superhero games). If your characters do a lot of exploration or meet up with generic monsters on occasions (dragons, etc.), it becomes less easy to use. I have also found that if your players have any tendencies to dispute rules, these tendencies are exacerbated hugely by a diceless game. The authors have the idea that it is obvious to all that having no dice is clearly superior to using dice. I find a randomizing unit pretty handy at times. Diceless roleplaying also (in my experience) leads to highly story-oriented campaigns. If you are more interested in other aspects of RPGs this may not be for you.

CHIVALRY AND SORCERY: real complex, the good historical parts are reputedly plagiarized, and very hard to run. I tried for years. Probably out of print nowadays.

BUSHIDO: a great little game, comparable to Pendragon in complexity, and related to RuneQuest. It's only Japanese stuff, but it's great, and it's much easier to adapt to other universes than Pendragon.

Sandy


End of Glorantha Digest V2 #230


WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html

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