Does anyone run just one system anymore?

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TJS said:
I'd be running more savage worlds if it wasn't for this damn pandemic.

To me it just doesn't feel like the best game for running online.
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Why? (Honest question, as I feel it’s extraordinarily apt for online games)
 
I've been running it online for nearly a year now and it's going fine.
 
AsenRG said:
Yeah, I've never agreed with the "too swingy" argument, either:smile:.
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You're also a BRP guy. Given that a lot of the damage swing in SW represents the sort of things BRP games do with critical hits, you're already comfortable with some intermittent gusting. People who don't play games with strong critical hits are liable to find it more disconcerting.
 
The Butcher said:
Why? (Honest question, as I feel it’s extraordinarily apt for online games)
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I suspect it depends on whether, when talking about running online you're thinking of mostly TotM play or using a VTT. It absolutely works fine for the latter, but I'm not sold its a good choice for the former.
 
Lunamancer said:
I really just run two systems on the regular. I don't see how I could possibly play 50 gazillion different games and get anything beyond a shallow play experience. I also believe a good RPG is one that can remain fun and interesting after 20 years of weekly play, and probably has little correlation to whatever I might think to be a neat rule or concept in a given moment.
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I used to have severe gamer ADD. Now, because of this thought, I'm a lot more hesitant to run or even play a zillion different games. That said, I did add to my list recently, deciding after very much enjoying playing in an L5R game to reach out and dive into Bushido. We haven't got very far (play by post) but I'm glad I'm giving it a spin. But that's an exception. My go to list is:

Early D&D and OSR clones (all of these run close enough that it feels like it would be easy to drop into any of them)
Cold Iron
RuneQuest 1st edition
Burning Wheel (but this is getting much less likely) and maybe Torchbearer
Classic Traveller (but my current campaigns are starting to remind me why I so rarely run SFRPGs)

In my, gee, someday I'd like to give it a try list:
Bushido (live play)
Chivalry & Sorcery (1st ed)
Talislanta (this is a real maybe, I'm beginning to feel that too outlandish settings are just not going to fly for me)
Empire of the Petal Throne (another outlandish setting makes this a real maybe)
Thieve's Guild
Warhammer Fantasy Role Play
Bunnies & Burrows (I actually ran this a few times back in the day, it would be cool to give it another go)
Maybe Stormbringer (though I'm not sure I could stomach the changes from RQ and why am I playing RQ-lite in some other setting which is based on books I've never read...)

I dunno, I think that's about the end of my list...
 
Paragon said:
You're also a BRP guy. Given that a lot of the damage swing in SW represents the sort of things BRP games do with critical hits, you're already comfortable with some intermittent gusting. People who don't play games with strong critical hits are liable to find it more disconcerting.
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...so is Savage Worlds what the RoleMaster players have migrated to:grin:?
 
Paragon said:
I suspect it depends on whether, when talking about running online you're thinking of mostly TotM play or using a VTT. It absolutely works fine for the latter, but I'm not sold its a good choice for the former.
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Again, I've been running Savage Worlds online for nearly a year. My group is entirely TotM and it's working fine.
 
My personal experience is that the more systems I play, the better I get at all of them. The rulebooks keep the rules straight for me.

I’ve also played Savage Worlds online, both TotM and Battlemap. Both work fine
 
TJS said:
The cards and the poker chips are very tactile and you lose that element in online play.
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Any reason you can't keep the cards physical with each person drawing from their own deck. You could keep the poker chips physical too, but obviously you can't pass them (does SW use passing of chips or cards?) and you can't see folks pile (unless you have cameras that can be aimed at your table).
 
ffilz said:
Any reason you can't keep the cards physical with each person drawing from their own deck. You could keep the poker chips physical too, but obviously you can't pass them (does SW use passing of chips or cards?) and you can't see folks pile (unless you have cameras that can be aimed at your table).
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You could. But what's the point? The benefit of the cards is that everyone at the table can see everyone else's cards.

It's not that I think it couldn't work online. It's just that it loses a lot of its appeal. It's also that most of my current group don't know the rules very well - we only played one session before lockdown - and teaching a game online is just painful.

Online games I prefer to be light (and SW isn't quite light enough for a new game online) - and it's better if they use a single die mechanic so a single macro can resolve all die rolls.
 
The Savage Pathfinder kickstarter had various online platforms as stretch goals, so once those become available it might be easier to use Savage Worlds.
 
TJS said:
The cards and the poker chips are very tactile and you lose that element in online play.
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Actually you raise a good point. Are there “online decks” one can draw from, and keep track of which cards have been drawn, and reshuffle? Or maybe a card deck bot for Discord?
 
The Butcher said:
Actually you raise a good point. Are there “online decks” one can draw from, and keep track of which cards have been drawn, and reshuffle? Or maybe a card deck bot for Discord?
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Probably.

I just keep a physical deck of cards on my end. My players don't have any trouble remembering what cards they've been dealt.
 
The Butcher said:
Actually you raise a good point. Are there “online decks” one can draw from, and keep track of which cards have been drawn, and reshuffle? Or maybe a card deck bot for Discord?
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Roll20 has one - but's it pretty awful and I wouldn't want to use it.

Supposedly Fantasy Grounds has really good support for Savage Worlds and that almost certainly includes cards.

But...part of the reason I'd rather work with light systems with a single dice mechanic is that it keeps houseruling on the table. I suspect if I was to try and use Fantasy Grounds I would have to buy the book which I already own again and then I'd be stuck - making any changes or add ons of my own would be a massive pain in the ass.
 
Coming in a bit late, but ... except for running supers (which I did with Champions, and not in nearly 30 years), and for convention runs (which I did with TFT, and not since 1993), I've GMed nothing but GURPS since 1985. It suits me. Any deficiencies in, or differences I had with, the system were handled by an arcane mechanism known as "house rules."

Not having Gamer ADD, nor subscribing to our culture's corporate-driven fetish that anything that isn't New! And! Improved! is substandard, this has never bothered me. I believe strongly in rules mastery, which more than offsets any putative "better flavor" other systems supposedly have. I look to my skill and expertise as a GM to impart "flavor" to my gaming, not to the toolkit I use to adjudicate it. Since I've never lacked for players, I've never seen a valid reason why I would ditch all that investment in time, headspace and $ for the latest in Noo-N-Kewl.

As a player? Well ... about 15 years ago, I got talked into a startup Mage game. Bought the corebook, bought a couple splatbooks, boned up on it, did my homework. Aaaaand ... the "campaign" was one-and-done. Several months later, a friend of my wife's was starting up a new Mage game. Fair enough, did my reviews, set up character in advance, as directed. First session rolls around -- after two months of dancing around schedules, with a ST deeply unwilling to just go with "Look, guys, I'm playing a week from Saturday at NU from 1 PM to 5 PM, either work it out so you can show or no hard feelings." Two-thirds of it is spent in character creation for the blokes who didn't think "Have your characters ready in advance" applied to them. Aaaaand ... the "campaign" was one-and-done. And nine years ago, got talked into a Savage Worlds campaign. Bought the corebook, boned up on it, did my homework. Aaaaand ... the "campaign" was one-and-done.

Hey, Noble Knight bought those books from me, at about 20% what I paid for them, at least!
 
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Ravenswing said:
a friend of my wife's was starting up a new Mage game. Fair enough, did my reviews, set up character in advance, as directed. First session rolls around -- after two months of dancing around schedules, with a ST deeply unwilling to just go with "Look, guys, I'm playing a week from Saturday at NU from 1 PM to 5 PM, either work it out so you can show or no hard feelings." Two-thirds of it is spent in character creation for the blokes who didn't think "Have your characters ready in advance" applied to them. Aaaaand ... the "campaign" was one-and-done.
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Well, this is sort of another thing. One of the strange contradictions of RPGs is that most players truthfully have no interest in playing.
 
Ravenswing said:
Coming in a bit late, but ... except for running supers (which I did with Champions, and not in nearly 30 years), and for convention runs (which I did with TFT, and not since 1993), I've GMed nothing but GURPS since 1985. It suits me. Any deficiencies in, or differences I had with, the system were handled by an arcane mechanism known as "house rules."

Not having Gamer ADD, nor subscribing to our culture's corporate-driven fetish that anything that isn't New! And! Improved! is substandard, this has never bothered me. I believe strongly in rules mastery, which more than offsets any putative "better flavor" other systems supposedly have. I look to my skill and expertise as a GM to impart "flavor" to my gaming, not to the toolkit I use to adjudicate it. Since I've never lacked for players, I've never seen a valid reason why I would ditch all that investment in time, headspace and $ for the latest in Noo-N-Kewl.

As a player? Well ... about 15 years ago, I got talked into a startup Mage game. Bought the corebook, bought a couple splatbooks, boned up on it, did my homework. Aaaaand ... the "campaign" was one-and-done. Several months later, a friend of my wife's was starting up a new Mage game. Fair enough, did my reviews, set up character in advance, as directed. First session rolls around -- after two months of dancing around schedules, with a ST deeply unwilling to just go with "Look, guys, I'm playing a week from Saturday at NU from 1 PM to 5 PM, either work it out so you can show or no hard feelings." Two-thirds of it is spent in character creation for the blokes who didn't think "Have your characters ready in advance" applied to them. Aaaaand ... the "campaign" was one-and-done. And nine years ago, got talked into a Savage Worlds campaign. Bought the corebook, boned up on it, did my homework. Aaaaand ... the "campaign" was one-and-done.

Hey, Noble Knight bought those books from me, at about 20% what I paid for them, at least!
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Your post is unreadable in the Dark Mode black background.
 
E-Rocker said:
Again, I've been running Savage Worlds online for nearly a year. My group is entirely TotM and it's working fine.
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I'm always a little surprised people can get good results out of SW in TotM, given how important movement and position can be in it. I guess other people have much better spatial imagination and memory than I do.
 
AsenRG said:
...so is Savage Worlds what the RoleMaster players have migrated to:grin:?
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Naw. Part of the appeal there was the variety of critical hits from what I understand, where, like most BRP variants, SW damage dice explosions just add up to that "you're never really safe" feeling you generally have with BRP.
 
Gabriel said:
Well, this is sort of another thing. One of the strange contradictions of RPGs is that most players truthfully have no interest in playing.
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I honestly don't know what I'll do if the number of long time players I have ever drops below the critical threshold, because my tolerance for this sort of thing as a GM approaches nonexistent.
 
What's you critical threshold, though? Because my critical threshold is 1 player and 1 GM, and if GMless games somehow improve even more, even that might change:grin:!
Paragon said:
Naw. Part of the appeal there was the variety of critical hits from what I understand, where, like most BRP variants, SW damage dice explosions just add up to that "you're never really safe" feeling you generally have with BRP.
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Well, it's trivially easy to make a critical table for BRP. Actually, Maelstrom (which is a d100 variant) already has such tables for different kinds of weapons:devil:.
 
Paragon said:
I honestly don't know what I'll do if the number of long time players I have ever drops below the critical threshold, because my tolerance for this sort of thing as a GM approaches nonexistent.
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Nor mine. I require regular attendance from my players: period. I don't negotiate a time to play: we do 2nd and 4th Saturdays, 12-6 PM. Those who can make that time slot are good. Those who can't, I wish them well. For the last nine years, the only one of my players living closer than an hour's drive away has been my wife, and somehow they all manage all the same. I've never believed that people lost the ability to commit to regular times after college. It's more a matter of motivation, and a plethora of handy excuses: oh the job, oh the spouse, oh the kids, oh the yardwork, oh I'm tired.

(Alright, gaming over Discord makes that easier, and I now have at my metaphoric table an old player from the 1980s. She lives in Indiana.)
 
AsenRG said:
What's you critical threshold, though? Because my critical threshold is 1 player and 1 GM, and if GMless games somehow improve even more, even that might change:grin:!
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Four players in addition to myself. Below that level I find its hard to support the kind of game I like to run.

Well, it's trivially easy to make a critical table for BRP. Actually, Maelstrom (which is a d100 variant) already has such tables for different kinds of weapons:devil:.
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Yeah, but its not the default approach BRP based systems take.
 
Ravenswing said:
Nor mine. I require regular attendance from my players: period. I don't negotiate a time to play: we do 2nd and 4th Saturdays, 12-6 PM. Those who can make that time slot are good. Those who can't, I wish them well. For the last nine years, the only one of my players living closer than an hour's drive away has been my wife, and somehow they all manage all the same. I've never believed that people lost the ability to commit to regular times after college. It's more a matter of motivation, and a plethora of handy excuses: oh the job, oh the spouse, oh the kids, oh the yardwork, oh I'm tired.
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I'm a little flexible, but once we've worked something out, I expect people to attend the majority of the time. I actually get that some people's lives are too busy for that, but at that point, they're too busy for me to consider them as a player.


(Alright, gaming over Discord makes that easier, and I now have at my metaphoric table an old player from the 1980s. She lives in Indiana.)
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Two of my players have been playing remotely via Skype and Maptool since well before COVID. Its not an overhead-free process but I consider it no more problematic than some of the face to face issues.
 
EmperorNorton said:
Also, I always love when a "big" scary enemy just falls over dead from one hit. I know a lot of people find it anticlimactic, but to me it just enhances the experience.
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Me too. I share in my players' victories and when a deadly fight is a pushover because of sound tactics or dumb luck I am happy for them.
 
Paragon said:
Its not an overhead-free process but I consider it no more problematic than some of the face to face issues.
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Yep, and while I prefer face-to-face, definitely, there are some considerations. First off, one of my players had been traveling from north of Boston to the runs. He's seriously diabetic, hasn't been able to drive for at least a dozen years, and was taking the train the night before to Worcester (halfway between), where he and another player would come out the next day. He's immunocompromised (multiple organ transplants), can't take the COVID vaccine, and is himself caring for elderly parents. Whether he'll ever be able to do face-to-face again is at issue.

Secondly, my own health isn't great. I've had to wave off a couple sessions in the last six months because I was feeling too poorly to GM. That sits a great deal better on my conscience than when players traveled from all over the state to get here.
 
Paragon said:
Four players in addition to myself. Below that level I find its hard to support the kind of game I like to run.
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Four players is more like my upper limit these days, and is slowly sliding to become out of the acceptable range (for long-term games).
I guess it would be harder with such a requirement, yes.

Me? I don't care if anyone can't join us today. I actually assume about 40% of players would skip any given session for "life reasons", so I recruit 5 when I'm aiming to get 3 consistently:grin:!
Then I run them in what would be called "S&S rotating cast" or "Westmarches" approach, and it all works fine for me...
Maybe you could do the same? I mean, you'd get 7 players, but then even on a standard deviation, you'd have 4-6 at any day. Just, maybe, not the same ones as the previous week - which I find not to be much of a problem.

Funny enough, I also don't think "I'm out of college" is a good excuse. But I'm not planning to change people's minds, so reliable players just get priority if there's ever (hopefully never, only happened once IME!) drama that might involve one of them or an "irregular" leaving.

Yeah, but its not the default approach BRP based systems take.
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Err...depends? I mean, Maelstrom has had those tables since the first edition in the 80ies, AFAICT!
 
AsenRG said:
Four players is more like my upper limit these days, and is slowly sliding to become out of the acceptable range (for long-term games).
I guess it would be harder with such a requirement, yes.
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Eh. Too many games I prefer require a bit too much ground covered for one or two characters to do it. It could be handled by more than one character per player (but a lot of people don't like that) or NPC add ons (but that's often clumsy).

Me? I don't care if anyone can't join us today. I actually assume about 40% of players would skip any given session for "life reasons", so I recruit 5 when I'm aiming to get 3 consistently:grin:!
Then I run them in what would be called "S&S rotating cast" or "Westmarches" approach, and it all works fine for me...
Maybe you could do the same? I mean, you'd get 7 players, but then even on a standard deviation, you'd have 4-6 at any day. Just, maybe, not the same ones as the previous week - which I find not to be much of a problem.
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Limits the kind of campaigns I'd have as options too much. Most I run can't easily have people swap in and out that way.
 
Paragon said:
I don't see how a couple of exceptions counter my general point.
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Which is what, "if it's not used in CoC it doesn't matter"? To me, Maelstrom and Warhammer are as much in the d100 family as BRPGB, and both have fun criticals:tongue:!

Paragon said:
Eh. Too many games I prefer require a bit too much ground covered for one or two characters to do it. It could be handled by more than one character per player (but a lot of people don't like that) or NPC add ons (but that's often clumsy).



Limits the kind of campaigns I'd have as options too much. Most I run can't easily have people swap in and out that way.
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Different touches for different people, then. Though I've been running all kinds of campaigns with this set-up:thumbsup:!
 
Speaking of different systems, last year due to pandemic lockdowns and such, my group did some rudimentary VTT using Skype and a free program called DungeonZ Dice Calculator. It was occasionally glitchy, but cost us nothing. It was basic, but more or less did the job we needed.

We temporarily moved our games to VTT, which was okay as we predominantly play TotM anyway

We found that games like D&D and BRP to be a little cumbersome due to trying to keep track of different rolls and such. Not too bad, but not ideal.
However we found other rpgs that had one-roll resolutions worked out really well, due to the simplicity.

So we played several pulpy Fate Core games, and things flowed really well. We also played a few HARP Fantasy games, which also went really well. This was quite a surprise, as HARP is really a more streamlined version of Rolemaster. As such it has quite a lot of reference tables, and can be a little overwhelming in this respect at times, depending upon one's gaming style.

However it was surprisingly ideally suited for VTT, as it has a one-roll resolution. The GM just used the player's result to look up his Damage/Crit Tables and read the descriptions outloud to us. Things flowed really well, and surprisingly we felt the system worked much better as a VTT than it does doing traditional face-to-face gaming.

I guess if we find ourselves deep in extended lockdown again we may look at something like Fantasy Grounds or Roll20, but at this stage we can just go back to one-roll systems like Fate and ICE (HARP, Rolemaster, etc) and go with them over VTT.
 
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Mankcam said:
Speaking of different systems, last year due to pandemic lockdowns and such, my group did some rudimentary VTT using Skype and a free program called DungeonZ Dice Calculator. It was occasionally glitchy, but cost us nothing. It was basic, but more or less did the job we needed.

We temporarily moved our games to VTT, which was okay as we predominantly play TotM anyway

We found that games like D&D and BRP to be a little cumbersome due to trying to keep track of different rolls and such. Not too bad, but not ideal.
However we found other rpgs that had one-roll resolutions worked out really well, due to the simplicity.

So we played several pulpy Fate Core games, and things flowed really well. We also played a few HARP Fantasy games, which also went really well. This was quite a surprise, as HARP is really a more streamlined version of Rolemaster. As such it has quite a lot of reference tables, and can be a little overwhelming in this respect at times, depending upon one's gaming style.

However it was surprisingly ideally suited for VTT, as it has a one-roll resolution. The GM just used the player's result to look up his Damage/Crit Tables and read the descriptions outloud to us. Things flowed really well, and surprisingly we felt the system worked much better as a VTT than it does doing traditional face-to-face gaming.

I guess if we find ourselves deep in extened lockdown again we may look at something like Fantasy Grounds or Roll20, but at this stage we can just go back to one-roll systems like Fate and ICE (HARP, Rolemaster, etc) and go with them over VTT.
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You should consider ORE as well, then:devil:!
Unless you mean something else by "one-roll", that is.
 
AsenRG said:
Which is what, "if it's not used in CoC it doesn't matter"? To me, Maelstrom and Warhammer are as much in the d100 family as BRPGB, and both have fun criticals:tongue:!
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I can probably name 20 BRP descendents and derivatives where nothing other than a simple maximum damage or armor bypass rule is used. I think that makes me willing to call outliers just that.
 
Well, we'd have to discuss what's a "BRP descendant or derivative" first. Then we'd have to decide whether all systems count for themselves, or have weight depending on their share of d100 players...:shade:

Let us skip the whole exercise, and say that you would indeed be right, if we don't account for popularity and/or if we don't consider Warhammer a "descendent or derivative". However, if both answers to those are positive - and I'd argue that they should be - then you're counting one of the most popular d100 system with the "outliers":thumbsup:.

Of course, if you disagree with the premise, I'll grant you that there aren't many other popular d100 systems which feature a critical chart like this. Actually, there was a critical chart in BRP Gold Book, but IIRC it was only rolled on when the PCs are out of HP, and wouldn't by itself mean an end of the combat, unlike Rolemaster.
 
AsenRG said:
Well, we'd have to discuss what's a "BRP descendant or derivative" first. Then we'd have to decide whether all systems count for themselves, or have weight depending on their share of d100 players...:shade:

Let us skip the whole exercise, and say that you would indeed be right, if we don't account for popularity and/or if we don't consider Warhammer a "descendent or derivative". However, if both answers to those are positive - and I'd argue that they should be - then you're counting one of the most popular d100 system with the "outliers":thumbsup:.

Of course, if you disagree with the premise, I'll grant you that there aren't many other popular d100 systems which feature a critical chart like this. Actually, there was a critical chart in BRP Gold Book, but IIRC it was only rolled on when the PCs are out of HP, and wouldn't by itself mean an end of the combat, unlike Rolemaster.
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And for what its worth, I really didn't; I don't know quite the detail to say that in particular, but from what I remember of the one version I owned, other than using a D100 (and by itself that isn't enough or every D20 game would be classed as a D&D derivative) I didn't see much else that showed a relationship. I'm mostly counting things (when outside Chaosium games) like OpenQuest, Mythras, Revolution and the like.

And yeah, the wounds consequence chart in the non-hit location Chaosium gritty games is more like the wound consequence chart in SW in that regard.
 
And honestly, even if I was--just being popular isn't enough for me to not count something as an outlier if other games of similar design don't use that design element. There are things in D&D that are not outliers just because D&D uses them, but because a whole bunch of other games do; they've cast a long design shadow. Rolled-table critical hits don't seem to land in that category; if anything they seem less common than hit location, and that's not exactly a majority design choice.
 
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