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You get to have ONE RPG made...


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You find the magic dice pouch, open it and the RPG genie appears. (Think Lee Meriwether in "that which survives) She tells you that you can have ONE RPG made to your specs. You get to pick the source material and the system.

 

What setting do you want and what system do you want it made in?

 

I would pick Masamune Shirow's Appleseed manga series. A lot of people think it's just another "cyberpunk" series but it's far from that. Appleseed has cyberpunk and transhumanist elements but it also has a setting where there is an alternative to the usual clichéd dark hopeless evil corporate dominated future. There are some positive power blocs in it working for a better world, not just their own profit. You can be a good guy and not automatically get screwed over. I'd like to see that do e as a good RPG.

 

As to the system, Appleseed is a very technical setting where gear is important. It also features a lot of tactical combat, so a game with lots of crunch, technical detail and tactical combat options is necessary.

 

If HERO could get the rights to it and advertise it enough, or someone decided to do it and use the HERO system, at least a trimmed down version of it I'd be OK with using hero.

 

If HERO isn't able to do it, I'd be ok with gurps doing it as long as they could keep SJ's politics out of it.

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What setting do you want and what system do you want it made in?

 

Shadowrun by Catalyst Games. Not just the Rules, but the feel of Shadowrun Magic, Matrix, and Rigging.  

 

One setting is very difficult for me, as my mind is constantly wandering through a vast number of them. If I had to put a name to the setting for the purpose of meeting the rules you laid out, I would choose Torg or Rifts. I don't know that much about either setting, but they are both examples of cross-worlds, cross-genre games and that is what I want. Technically, I want to run a series of annual campaigns. Year one starts in Colonial America and mixes a bit of the Golden Age of Piracy in the mix. Year Two references back to Year One, but takes place roughly around 1870 in the Wild West.  Year Three is a Pulp Mystery Men/Globetrotting Adventure setting that, again, references back to the actions of the characters and NPCs of the previous two "seasons." Year Four is Spy/Espionage in the modern age. Yup, the metaplot is still in place.  Year Five is Shadowrun or something very near to that.  Year Six would be Alien Wars-ish. Year Seven would be something akin to Mass Effect. It is technically one campaign that is spread across a vast gulf of time. I might even go back to earlier time periods for the early seasons and bump the more recent timeframes into later years. I've been wanting to run something from the later Mesolithic or early Neolithic time periods, something from the Bronze Age, something from biblical times and something about the time of the Inquisition in Europe. Sheesh, if I started that today, it'd take more than a decade at the planned rate.

 

As to the rules, I want the essence of Shadowrun distilled into a more generic system. I don't think it could handle true super-hero characters too well, but I think that it can run the gamut for lower power levels. I even think that Street-level Dark Champions characters can be faithfully represented by the system. My favorite variant is 4th edition but I love a lot of the nomenclature from 1st-3rd (namely Light, Moderate, Serious, Deadly instead of x number of Damage Boxes). The latter rules are very clear, but they lack some of the flavor. So the RPGenie can reference back to those older things. Still Shadowrun and not pulling other systems into it. Just different versions. 

 

So, sorry to twist the intent a little bit, but if I had one wish from the RPGenie, I would not waste it on a singular, narrowly focused product. I want it all.

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Barsoom for me, although generic Burroughsian planetary romance would be fine as long as there wuz fencing involved (in Pellucidar - not so much) :)

 

By extension a system that actually makes sword fighting feel like it works in swashbuckling fiction. I've yet to see it done to my satisfaction, though I was toying with a heavily modified version of the Pendragon rules. It would definitely be some kind of opposed contest with a high chance of a draw-per-round between skilled fencers and a back and forth of advantage, instead of I-attack-you-attack. HERO definitely doesn't work so well as Chaosium or GURPS in that regard. In some ways it could work a bit like a Tennis tie-breaker - maybe each fencer needs a certain number of advantage points based on the other guy's skill, so a Master can dispatch a novice with a simple win, while the novice might need to get to Advantage level 4. Have to think on that. 

 

The obscure gem Lace & Steel came fairly close but needed a card game to do it with which made things tricky for the GM who needed to bend the rules unseen to make things happen. Hidden dice rolls allow this easily (you just lie), but when you actually have to lay cards down it's a lot harder, and if the player has a truly hopeless hand and the GM's is all strong attack cards, you may not be able to do much more than kill 'em. (Nonetheless, I'll always recommend Lace & Steel - a pretty unique background, quite well fleshed out and chock full of Donna Barr artwork. Non-human species based mostly on Classical myth instead of Tolkien, too, which is always refreshing. Including her beloved half-horses.)

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A game that accurately, simply, and entertainingly simulates sports and martial arts well.

 

Blood Bowl does a damn good job of a team sport boardgame. You could lift some of the mechanics it uses, such as sudden turnover and limited rerolls to cover training.

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You find the magic dice pouch, open it and the RPG genie appears. (Think Lee Meriwether in "that which survives) She tells you that you can have ONE RPG made to your specs. You get to pick the source material and the system.

 

What setting do you want and what system do you want it made in?

 

I would pick Masamune Shirow's Appleseed manga series. A lot of people think it's just another "cyberpunk" series but it's far from that. Appleseed has cyberpunk and transhumanist elements but it also has a setting where there is an alternative to the usual clichéd dark hopeless evil corporate dominated future. There are some positive power blocs in it working for a better world, not just their own profit. You can be a good guy and not automatically get screwed over. I'd like to see that do e as a good RPG.

 

As to the system, Appleseed is a very technical setting where gear is important. It also features a lot of tactical combat, so a game with lots of crunch, technical detail and tactical combat options is necessary.

 

If HERO could get the rights to it and advertise it enough, or someone decided to do it and use the HERO system, at least a trimmed down version of it I'd be OK with using hero.

 

If HERO isn't able to do it, I'd be ok with gurps doing it as long as they could keep SJ's politics out of it.

 

GDW House System (I.e. Twilight 2000/Traveller New Era) might be your ticket there. But I could see it working well with HERO too. Or some other flavour of Traveller.

 

And yeah, Appleseed isn't particularly cyberpunk at all. It's straight science fiction with a SWAT flavour dealing with artificial intelligence and transhuman themes in a budding utopia. Ghost in the Shell continued some of that in a different setting, but is much more in the Cyberpunk camp and definitely much more dystopian.

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Yeah but that's on a board game tactical level.  I mean on the basic level of "swing a bat and hit a ball" or "throw a ball and reach a receiver before the defender gets to him" kind of thing.

 

Yah, I get that. I was just throwing it in as a possible source of game mechanics. And even then it doesn't so much match up for sports where the game is played out as a series of one-to-one skill contests, such as Tennis, Cricket or Baseball (the latter two have some team play in the fielding phase, but it's still mostly individual fielder catching or fielding the ball and attempting to run out the batter, with pauses in the action), or where it's a case of individuals competing in parallel (Golf, Athletics, Archery etc).

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Only if they ban Green Apple Quicksteps.  Jesus god I hated that card.

 

 

My RPG would be an interdimensional mythic fantasy that drew from all myths--Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, Celtic, Gothic, Russian, Indian, Native American, Central American, Polynesian, Chinese, Japanese, African, etc., and merged them into an Elric- or Planescape-like multiverse. 

 

Or Shadowrun too, everyone likes Shadowrun (despite the mechanics).

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Or Shadowrun too, everyone likes Shadowrun (despite the mechanics).

 

And I am the odd ball because I like the mechanics a lot. I admit that they need to have somebody like Steve Long or another Hero author give them the once over to make sure that they are balanced, but overall I think that they are pretty decent. I also love the "present" time in the earlier Shadowrun editions more than the later ones. I do not like the socio-political conclusions that the authors made on how they got there, but I am able to easily overlook them and just enjoy the show.

 

On a separate Shadowrun note, I found my Shadowrun 1E rule book not too ago. I don't want to play with those rules, but that was a nice little surprise. I just wish that I had found the Street Samurai Catalog so that I could convert my Elf Street Samurai to 4th Edition. I mean, my character was even further upgraded with all sorts of Beta cyberware so I could probably just re-interpret the character. Any, I digress and risk pulling the thread away from its intended course. Sorry about that.

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I lost track of the mechanics after 2E, the edition I played under and abused the hell out of.  There were things I liked about them, like the dice pools and the interplay between cyberware and magic, but you could also get some really counterintuitive results as well.

 

The 3E mechanics were much like 2E. Many things changed in 4E. I think for the better.

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I think I answered this question in another forum but I'd enjoy a Marvel Cinematic RPG with stats for the movie versions of the characters. I was watching Winter Soldier on cable today and if that Cap is normal human Stat Max I'll eat my dice.

At the begining of the big fight at the end of the film Cap jumps from a top level down about four stories to a three point landing and then runs off to do battle.

Thor and Hulk are also much lower power level than the comics.

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I made drops like that as s kid, but onto sand piles and muddy grassy yards. Don't ask me why

 

In the military I survived a drop from the Jump Tower (accident) unharmed (Total luck), rappel dropped 3 stories, and jumped off the roof of the H-Hut barracks multiple times.

 

Somebody call Mr. Glass, stat!

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I think I answered this question in another forum but I'd enjoy a Marvel Cinematic RPG with stats for the movie versions of the characters. I was watching Winter Soldier on cable today and if that Cap is normal human Stat Max I'll eat my dice.

At the begining of the big fight at the end of the film Cap jumps from a top level down about four stories to a three point landing and then runs off to do battle.

Thor and Hulk are also much lower power level than the comics.

 

Depends on what your system sets as human maximum and how it deals with falling.

 

Call that 4 story drop about 16m. In HERO Cap makes a breakfall roll at -4 to take half damage from an 8d6 falling damage roll. Even without counting his armoured costume or the shield, he'd not expect to take any BODY and at worst a minor amount of STUN. Most super-acrobats in HERO would be able to match the feat.  

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I think I answered this question in another forum but I'd enjoy a Marvel Cinematic RPG with stats for the movie versions of the characters. I was watching Winter Soldier on cable today and if that Cap is normal human Stat Max I'll eat my dice. 

 

 

Yeah well he's the Ultimate universe version, where he's much more than human max strength and durability.  And yeah both Hulk and Thor have been tuned down.  Iron Man is pretty much like the comics, though.

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Futurama The RPG

 

Welcome To The World Of Tomorrow!  I envision a template system like the original Star Wars RPG, with a large assortment of possible characters, such as Starship Captain. Starship Crew, Old Scientist, Young Scientist, Grad Student, Janitor, Bureaucrat, Space Soldier--and of course, Delivery Boy.  The catch is that instead of the players choosing a template, they roll on a table for one.  (Skills and talents can be customized according to the players' whims, however.)  For many of the characters, adventuring in space would be their weekend gig, as they try to seek a life beyond "Ya Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do." 

 

Then there's all the other good stuff--spaceships, ray guns, rocket packs, hovercars, alien worlds, alien life forms, adventuring in four, five, and even two dimensions. (And Zoidberg.  Can't forget Zoidberg.)  And of course, the robots.  You could have a supplement for the game devoted to robots alone, as player characters, helpers, and adversaries.

 

Sounds like fun to me.

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