Universal systems: Differences and Weaknesses

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All I know is San Diego Mexican food is the best Mexican food, and therefor the best tacos. Tortas are a Mexican sandwiches. They are both delicious.
 
Cortex Tabletop Roleplaying Game | Fandom Tabletop (cortexrpg.com) <----link Cortex Prime character creation

Every single character creation option given in Cortex has players select Attributes + Skills. There is a sidebar somewhere about how Attributes and Skills are used in all of the examples because they are the most common for action adventure roleplaying. You can call your attributes and skills (Prime Sets) something else (like, say, Roles and Approaches) but they'll work the same. Changing the name of your prime sets only re-skins the same mechanic, just like changing Skills to Approaches in Fate. <--- Link to Fate doing the same thing

They used Attributes and Skills as an example because they need something to use in the examples of play, not because they are the default.

They explicitly state that they are common but not default. Also Attributes and Skills are Prime Sets, but so are Affiliations, Values, Roles, Approaches, Powers, Relationships, Resources. The default is that you have two or more Prime Sets, but nothing says they have to be analogs to Attributes and Skills.

You could be using Values and Approaches. Or Affiliations and Powers. Or Relationships and Roles. Or Roles and Skills, or Attributes and Values. Or whatever combination of 2+ prime sets work for what you are doing:

Cortex Prime said:
A prime set is one of at least two trait sets, in addition to distinctions, that serve as the core of any Cortex Prime character. There are no pre-defined prime sets, because the trait sets you use in your game are up to you and the decisions you make with your group. The examples in this book use attributes and skills as prime sets, but you might have attributes and roles, affiliations and values, relationships and skills, and so forth.

Emphasis mine.

The character creation section is just one large example, which as they said: They intentionally used attributes and skills for examples because they needed to use SOMETHING for an example.
 
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I've been reading Cortex because of this thread and I'm impressed, as you say it is quite well written too.
Yes. Looking at the portion of my post you quoted, saying something is better written than Aria might sound like damning with faint praise, but that was not my intention. It is actually well-written.
 
I've played HERO. It was my main system for several years. I severely doubt any of the people commenting that it is exactly the same have actually even read Cortex Prime, much less played it.
That not what we are saying. Please quote where I and others said they are exactly the same.
 
Yes. Looking at the portion of my post you quoted, saying something is better written than Aria might sound like damning with faint praise, but that was not my intention. It is actually well-written.
I was just about to ask about that:grin:!
 
I bought a copy of Cortex Prime. I like generic RPGs and buy at least the PDF of the core books (I also have Genesys)

The issue I am address whether there are two classes of RPG one labeled as a toolkit and the other as universal. My view that Cortex Prime is a toolkit and thus similar in intent and overall design to GURPS, Hero System, Genesys, etc.

However they is not the same no more than Hackmaster 4e is the same as OD&D 3 LBBs although both are recognizable as Dungeons & Dragons RPGs. But Generic RPGs fall into a pattern. They have some type of dice rolling convention that applied most if not all the time coupled with a bunch of lists using the dice rolling conventions. The lists are customized for setting and genre. For some the dice rolling conventions are emphasized for others the lists are emphasized.

For me the extremes are represented by Fudge for focusing on dice rolling conventions, and Hero System for lists based approach. The rest fall in-between.

Cortex Prime emphasizes dice rolling conventions over lists. It is more similar to Fudge than it is to Hero System. But throughout its 256 pages it covers the same ground I seen nearly all generic RPGs do.

Cortex does not specify attribute like Hero System does. However it does talk about traits and the dice rolling conventions associated with traits. Found on page 26. It devotes only one page to traits at first which preceded by two pages on how to roll the dice, and eight pages of how to resolve test and contests and what modifies tests and contests.

This part of a section called Prime Core.

1614174443997.png

However later in the book starting on page 44. We get into the implementing the prime core concepts to define characters. And this section breaks down into specifics such as Affiliations, Attributes, Powers, Skills, etc. While each section has suggestions the emphasis is on explaining how to use the dice, task, contests concepts outlined in the core section to implement that type of character traits.

1614174542080.png

So while true Cortex Prime emphasizes coming up with your own lists, it is quite specific in what it provide to handle specific categories like skills.

This pattern mirror Fudge more than it does Hero System. However in my opinion it follows the same pattern that I seen other generics toolkit style RPG. It provides a structure on which to construct a RPG to play out a setting for a campaign. The steps it requires to be used is the same. Read through the options, define the options (by creating them or picking them), player makes up their characters based on what options are chosen. The campaign ensues.

Freeform versus Specific
When one looks at GURPS you see lists of specific elements doing specific things. When you look at Fudge, you are essentially told to pick a trait and rate it. Character creation consist of being allocated so many traits and rating them from best to worse. The actual traits is left vague. Fudge works equally well when the players are free to come up with their own trait names, or the referee provides a list of predefined trait names. In this respect Cortex works more like Fudge than it does GURPS or Hero System.

But it nuanced. While Hero System has specific lists for Attributes and Skills. When it comes to power it freeform. Powers are defined by effect not by how they work in a setting. A 5d6 energy blast can be fire, cold, or the cosmos spanking the target in the butt. With the list of advantages and limitations it can cover a lot from vehicles to superpowers.

Magic in Fantasy Hero can be either freeform where the players come up with their own spells using their own backstory to explain why it works the way it does. Or the referee can come up with a specific lists of spells to be used in the campaign. Hero System is silent on which way is preferred leaving it up to the group.

GURPS opts to present list after lists with everything spelled out if it used in a campaign. However scattered here and there are options to handle thing in a lesser amount of detail. For example Combat can be handled as a contest of skills, a detailed theater of the mind, or a tactical wargame with hexes and minis. You can use Wildcard skills instead of the regular skill list.

While lost in the sea of options that are the GURPS core books. The lite version of GURPS is laid out in GURPS Ultra -Lite.

Comments
  • Cortex is far more specific in how it uses the dice and how to structure a campaign than Fudge despite both having similar size core books.
  • You can't sit down with a Hero System to make a character without a referee defining the options for the campaigns first. While Hero System has definite skills and attributes, the meat of the system is the powers systems which is a list of effects devoid of any specific connection to a setting.
 
I'd agree that Fudge is even looser than Cortex when it comes to having a default structure.
 
I'd agree that Fudge is even looser than Cortex when it comes to having a default structure.
Yeah, at some point it almost seems more like an engine than a system, you know, like PbtA...:thumbsup:

When I saw your laughter reaction to my post, I assumed you might be wondering that.
I gave away my hand that much:shock:?

Note to self: never play poker with Baulderstone Baulderstone :shade:!
 
Note to self: never play poker with Baulderstone Baulderstone :shade:!
One of the only times I played poker was one of my first nights in college. We'd been playing for a few hours, so I announced I was going to go to bed after the next hand. I'd been doing about average up to that point. I got a lucky draw on the last hand, and a few other people must have too, or at least were bluffing, as people kept raising and raising until it was the biggest pot of the night. I won it, gathered the pot, and followed through on going to bed, giving everyone the impression I had hustled them.

It gave me the reputation as a master card shark for the rest of my time at college. I steadfastly avoided ever playing again in college in order to keep that reputation alive.
 
Cortex is now more or less presented as a game-building toolkit, by which I provide a big box of LEGO bricks and some general guidelines as to how things fit together and then let people create the games they want out of it. I think in terms of its nature as a system it's a lot more like Fudge (Stephan O'Sullivan's version) than GURPS or HERO, because those two games define how every character looks and feels from a baseline set of stats and derived stats, leaving you to decide specifics about what additional rules you'd like to bolt onto them. Fudge doesn't do that and neither does Cortex. Fate is actually a little more structured than Fudge but in other ways, yes, you can see that it's extensible in similar ways to how Cortex is. I don't think it goes as far, but that's fine. I love the Fate guys, I've been friends with them for over 20 years.

I don't think I'd argue too much about definitions and labels for Cortex Prime, as I'm sure folks can do that all day. I will say the goal was to create something that felt more like a toolkit than a set of rules to apply a thin coat of paint to (like d20 is), but with a few procedural things I personally like a lot holding it together. I love polyhedral dice, for example. :smile:
 
My experiences with Hero and GURPS have turned me sour on universal games.

I ran Fantasy Hero 1st edition, and found lots of problems with the scale of the game. With the average character having Speed 2, variation in Speed was really major. And Speed 1 is almost unable to do anything... I never really resolved the clash of magic items with the birth of the system as Champions where equipment costs points...

Haven't flipped through all the pages of this thread yet, but for reference:
Speed rating (SPD) is on a scale where each game Turn is 12 seconds (Segments) and the SPD number is the number of Phases you get per Turn, so a SPD 2 character gets 2 moves in 12 seconds. SPD 2 is Joe Average. SPD 1 is mobility-challenged, basically. Heroic (non-super) protagonists rate a 3 or 4 cause they're heroes. Real soldiers might rate a 3 after training and veteran status, a Special Ops person would be a 3 or 4. They say that SPD 5 is above human max, but it seems to be the standard for Champions supers. 6 is for super-level martial artists like Batman (where SPD 4 would be in a non-super game). SPD 6 is the minimum you would need to be a speedster.

JG
 
You’re working in the backyard and want something ice cold and refreshing, a standard American style lager, like a Budweiser longneck will do. Sometimes the Hopsbombs and Stouts you eat with a knife and fork are just too much. Michelob Ultra is perfect for that too. Light, refreshing and very low carb.
 
Yeah, there's some really great beers coming out from the American microbreweries. Granted, there's also an overabundance of IPAs, but nothing is perfect.
 
The main thing about American beer is just don't order anything from a major brewery. US has fantastic beer... the major breweries are just garbage.
I agree. My main point wasn't really that all-American beer is bad, but that Fosters isn't even a popular beer in Australia. I tried to convince an American friend of this a couple of years ago when he was was talking about only drinking Fosters for his upcoming trip to Australia. When he returned, he had to admit he never even found Fosters anywhere in Australia during his travels.
 
You’re working in the backyard and want something ice cold and refreshing, a standard American style lager, like a Budweiser longneck will do. Sometimes the Hopsbombs and Stouts you eat with a knife and fork are just too much. Michelob Ultra is perfect for that too. Light, refreshing and very low carb.

Yeah, nah. The characterization of craft beers as "hopsbombs and stouts" is pretty inaccurate to begin with. I'm a craft beer snob and I'm actually not that big of a fan of those styles of beer.

On a hot day give me something like the Creature Comforts Athena (a berliner weisse), or Atalanta (plum saison). Three Taverns Lord Grey (earl grey sour ale), Terrapin Watermelon Gose (a... watermelon gose obviously), Monday Night Brewing Dr. Robot (blackberry lemon sour ale). (Obviously I picked all Georgia beers, as I am in Georgia :tongue:)
 
All I know is San Diego Mexican food is the best Mexican food, and therefor the best tacos. Tortas are a Mexican sandwiches. They are both delicious.

Give me some greasy *bertos at 2am please.

Now, I do think that carne adovada (a New Mexican specialty) is the pinnacle of Mexican food, but man San Diego has the best greasy carne asada. We found a place that claims to do legit SD style carne asada here, I need to try it soon.

On a hot day give me something like the Creature Comforts Athena (a berliner weisse), or Atalanta (plum saison). Three Taverns Lord Grey (earl grey sour ale), Terrapin Watermelon Gose (a... watermelon gose obviously), Monday Night Brewing Dr. Robot (blackberry lemon sour ale). (Obviously I picked all Georgia beers, as I am in Georgia :tongue:)

For sure. For regular drinking give ma a good red, amber, or brown any day.
 
You’re working in the backyard and want something ice cold and refreshing, a standard American style lager, like a Budweiser longneck will do. Sometimes the Hopsbombs and Stouts you eat with a knife and fork are just too much. Michelob Ultra is perfect for that too. Light, refreshing and very low carb.

I've never understood the drink a beer when you are hot a sweaty other than the cold bit. That is what water is made for, maybe a cold lemonade or mint julip. Last thing I'd want is a beer.

Then again I hated beer for most of my life because everybody was pushing lagers and IPAs in my face. I can choke down lager, but most IPAs are undrinkable to me. It wasn't until I tried some brown ales, porters and stouts that I began to intentionally drink beer (still very infrequent, a 6 pack will easily last me 3-6 months). I have become particularly fond of bourbon barrel aged stouts. My friend and I were debating lager vs stouts, his view is if you drink 3 or 4 stouts you will be on your ass, my view is why would you drink 3 or 4, I'm only going to drink one so I want it to actually be good.

As far as US beer not being good, I found nothing in Europe to compete with the beers I can get just in my home county. There were some decent ones, but I didn't find one that was worthy of being bought twice instead of trying another.


Give me some greasy *bertos at 2am please.

Now, I do think that carne adovada (a New Mexican specialty) is the pinnacle of Mexican food, but man San Diego has the best greasy carne asada. We found a place that claims to do legit SD style carne asada here, I need to try it soon.



For sure. For regular drinking give ma a good red, amber, or brown any day.

I am a fan of Mexican food, and am always amazed at how much regional difference there is between California, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. Most of which has only a passing similarity to actual Mexican food which also has regional variations.

Then you have Cuban and Puerto Rican food which is completely different, but also delicious.
 
You’re working in the backyard and want something ice cold and refreshing, a standard American style lager, like a Budweiser longneck will do. Sometimes the Hopsbombs and Stouts you eat with a knife and fork are just too much. Michelob Ultra is perfect for that too. Light, refreshing and very low carb.
You have GOT to be kidding. Why not just drink water?
 
Then again I hated beer for most of my life because everybody was pushing lagers and IPAs in my face. I can choke down lager, but most IPAs are undrinkable to me. It wasn't until I tried some brown ales, porters and stouts that I began to intentionally drink beer (still very infrequent, a 6 pack will easily last me 3-6 months). I have become particularly fond of bourbon barrel aged stouts. My friend and I were debating lager vs stouts, his view is if you drink 3 or 4 stouts you will be on your ass, my view is why would you drink 3 or 4, I'm only going to drink one so I want it to actually be good.

Not necessarily true - Guinness, as an example, is almost a light beer if you look at its calorie/alcohol/etc. stats.

But yeah, one good beer > 3 bad ones.

I am a fan of Mexican food, and am always amazed at how much regional difference there is between California, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. Most of which has only a passing similarity to actual Mexican food which also has regional variations.

Then you have Cuban and Puerto Rican food which is completely different, but also delicious.

The only answer is "yes, they are all different, and all delicious, and you should learn to appreciate them all because they are all delicious".
 
I will fight you.
More for you.

source.gif
 
Haven't flipped through all the pages of this thread yet, but for reference:
Speed rating (SPD) is on a scale where each game Turn is 12 seconds (Segments) and the SPD number is the number of Phases you get per Turn, so a SPD 2 character gets 2 moves in 12 seconds. SPD 2 is Joe Average. SPD 1 is mobility-challenged, basically. Heroic (non-super) protagonists rate a 3 or 4 cause they're heroes. Real soldiers might rate a 3 after training and veteran status, a Special Ops person would be a 3 or 4. They say that SPD 5 is above human max, but it seems to be the standard for Champions supers. 6 is for super-level martial artists like Batman (where SPD 4 would be in a non-super game). SPD 6 is the minimum you would need to be a speedster.
I'm quite aware of what SPD means. At least in the original Fantasy Hero, a PC who didn't optimize for SPD was SPD 2. Therefore I put zombies at SPD 1. Zombies were useless. I think we also had one PC who wound up with SPD 1. With most folks at SPD 2, SPD 4 is getting twice as many actions per round.

I think the solution for non-heroic games would be to change the SPD calculation so SPD 4 was "average" and then I think you could even have zombies at SPD 2 and they could still function (SPD 1 is awful because you don't get an action until phase 2 and you probably have the lowest DEX, so everyone else has gone twice or more before you get to go at all).
 
(SPD 1 is awful because you don't get an action until phase 2 and you probably have the lowest DEX, so everyone else has gone twice or more before you get to go at all).
Then start combat on segment 1. Starting combat on segment 12 was a later addition to the rules arriving in 3rd edition Hero System.

Or take advantage of "Unless the GM rules otherwise" found in several editions.

1614629862110.png

Also it clear from the wording of when to start combat is that the intent is to give every character a turn then a post 12 segment recovery. It pretty consistent started with 3rd edition. So you could rule that everybody including Speed 1 gets a turn, then recovery, then the normal speed order. You can justify this that the Speed 1 character is delaying their phase until the start of combat.

Fantasy Hero 1st edition, page 66
1614629747333.png

For what it worth it is still ambiguous in 6th edition.
 
Yeah, nah. The characterization of craft beers as "hopsbombs and stouts" is pretty inaccurate to begin with. I'm a craft beer snob and I'm actually not that big of a fan of those styles of beer.

On a hot day give me something like the Creature Comforts Athena (a berliner weisse), or Atalanta (plum saison). Three Taverns Lord Grey (earl grey sour ale), Terrapin Watermelon Gose (a... watermelon gose obviously), Monday Night Brewing Dr. Robot (blackberry lemon sour ale). (Obviously I picked all Georgia beers, as I am in Georgia :tongue:)
A Georgian Beer Snob. That’s cute.

Come to the West Coast, where “craft” beer is so plentiful it’s just beer, and we’ve been over the Beer Snob thing, for over a decade at least. :devil:
 
Then start combat on segment 1. Starting combat on segment 12 was a later addition to the rules arriving in 3rd edition Hero System.

Or take advantage of "Unless the GM rules otherwise" found in several editions.
Yea, maybe something like that would have fixed it. In the end, I abandoned Fantasy Hero as being just as complex to run as other games I was running and didn't come close to giving me the results I wanted. And in too many places it just didn't feel suited for lower power games. Now I don't know if it's a better situation now, but in the end, between my experiences with Hero System and GURPS I've decided universal systems just aren't for me. If I felt like trying something super heroic again (actually pretty unlikely) I would consider pulling out my old Champions stuff, but otherwise I'm leaving these systems behind.

Edit to add:

So in the end, in my view, the weakness of universal systems is they really aren't universal. They work for some subset of gaming interests, and for some folks, they may work for all or much of their gaming interests. For me, they didn't work. Note that though I run a game in the BRP family, I don't run BRP. I run RuneQuest 1st edition...
 
A Georgian Beer Snob. That’s cute.

Come to the West Coast, where “craft” beer is so plentiful it’s just beer, and we’ve been over the Beer Snob thing, for over a decade at least. :devil:

I brought up where I lived because I was naming beers from that were from this area because you know, while I have experience with the craft beer industry all over the place, the ones I drink on the daily are you know, from this area. I travel a lot for work (though not in the last year because of COVID), so I've had craft beer from pretty much all over the country, and a couple of other countries as well.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, cause being from the West Coast you don't get constantly hit with negative stereotypes of where you are from, maybe you aren't as aware of this, but honestly the whole "oh how quaint" bullshit about where I live is honestly not fucking funny. You know how annoying it is to be treated like a fucking country bumpkin because I grew up in the "Deep South". Despite the fact that I grew up in a major college town, and near Atlanta.

So yeah. No. I don't have patience for that kind of shit.
 
"Bless your heart"
"How quaint"
"Lighten Up Francis"

Pick your euphemism. I'm with Frank, it's much more utilitarian and funny.
 
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