Your favorite game system you wish had more success?

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He can write for James Raggi...

Tweet was already planning on a project for LotFP, Al Amarja 1630.

But that was many years ago so I don't know if it is still on, I asked Tweet about it online and he said he had other projects to complete first.
 
I like crunchy generic systems and I cannot lie.

So my vote will be generic, too: Any of GURPS, HERO, Masterbook & Fuzion.

We do have a few games these days that could be called "generic", but they tend to be on the simple side (Savage Worlds, FATE, Cypher, OpenD6) and/or exist mostly theoretically with no "core book" at all, which often means that you've got a generic core but with many variations (YZE, 2W20).
 
Do you have a game system you like a lot but doesn't get the love you feel it deserves?

For me it's gurps. I love it, especially 3e, but 4e is fine too, 3e just has so much more stuff. I liked that gurps tries to cover everything, genre settings abd rules wise. You could do nearly any setting with it and sure it wasn'tt perfect for every setting but it usually gave you enough to get by with. I wish gurps had held onto it's status abd not declined so much over the years,I still feel it deserves more gamers than it gets.
Most of the game systems I like don't get nearly the love they deserve:shade:!
 
A new system sees like a bad move - that was more of a selling point than the setting
It's got a fairly light system, even lighter than the previous editions, but I found it to be clunky and unintuitive. It just doesn't feel right to me. They should've just stuck with the WARP System and made a few revisions in my opinion. None-the-less, the book is still nice to have.
 
There's a lot of good stuff already listed so I'm going to avoid mentioning those games and jump in with a few others...

Wordplay (now known as Tripod System): A really nice descriptor-based narrativist dice pool system. It's pretty simple and very flexible. Aside from the generic core (which has been released in 3 versions with Tripod Essentials being the most recent) there's only been 3 games released that use the system. Starfall, Project Darklight, and Gran Meccanismo. The latter is probably the best known and most recent. Personally, I think it would be great for running something like Vampire the Masquerade or Demon the Fallen. Ah, one day maybe.

Other Worlds: Basically like Wordplay but with a D100 mechanic. It grew out of an abandoned idea for the second edition of HeroQuest I believe. There's a sci-fi sourcebook for it but that's all.

Starblazer Adventures: Space Opera for Fate 3.0 and it's my favourite Fate game and a very thorough all-in-one rulebook. There wasn't a lot of support for this other than the Mindjammer setting and a fantasy spin-off called Legends of Anglerre. At one time Cubicle 7 were promoting a 2nd edition but, alas, it never saw the light of day. I would've liked to have seen it streamline things a little bit (ditch Trappings or make them Stunts is one example) and include improvements to layout and organisation.

Action! System: This was a nice, fairly simple, mid-crunch trad system that grew out of Fuzion. It got a bit of support but never really took off. It's solid and easy to hack for different settings so is an ideal generic system really. It lives on, in the form of the Action Heroes RPG, but it has never had the momentum that it could have had.

Thousand Suns: I like this because it uses the 12 Degree System. It's a not-too-crunchy and fairly generic, albeit Traveller-esque, sci-fi game. As some people at the Pub have pointed out to me though, the games in the 12 Degree System family could do with better, and more consistent, explanations of the rules. Personally I'd love to see this get a new edition with some better explanations, a few tweaks to character creation, and a switch to a roll high mechanic (but keeping the stats and skills on the 1-12 scale and not the 1-24 version as implemented in Colonial Gothic 3e).
 
Finally, a hidden gem I like is Ghastly Affair. A very atmospheric rpg of Georgian era gothic horror, it really captures the essence of it all, including the morality and perversity dynamic inherent in the mindscape of the era.
For an indie production, Ghastly Affair is very well done, and I wish it would be successful enough to have a range of resources. It uses a version of D20, which Is clearly influenced by D&D. Not sure what is happening with it at present, it is very much a small press publication.
A new edition is in the works, along with a system-neutral supplement collecting and greatly expanding upon the author's Uncanny Highway blog posts.
 
I also really like Boot Hill 2E, just ran a successful intro for some new players tonight, but I guess I shouldn’t be championing an almost 50 year old game owned by Hasbro.
Don't feel too bad. I plug for Gangbusters whenever a chance arises and that's similar in both age and ownership.

Truthfully, I would personally hack the heck out of the system given a chance. I like it more for the bootlegger empire building play more than the system (or the cop/investigator play).
 
Cortex Prime. Not to say it hasn't had some success. But it keeps getting passed back and forth between companies and just... it never seemed to achieve the stability it needed.

(Yes, it had earlier Cortex games, but on top of the whole thing of Prime being my favorite iteration, almost all those older games were licensed games which means they do not exist now basically (unless you already own it or can forage the seedier parts of the internet)).
I thought they were going to do a Masters of the Universe RPG? Is that off the table?
 
Tweet was already planning on a project for LotFP, Al Amarja 1630.

But that was many years ago so I don't know if it is still on, I asked Tweet about it online and he said he had other projects to complete first.
People have done a great job of running Raggi out of the industry, I’d be surprised if Tweet ended up working with him these days.
Don't feel too bad. I plug for Gangbusters whenever a chance arises and that's similar in both age and ownership.

Truthfully, I would personally hack the heck out of the system given a chance. I like it more for the bootlegger empire building play more than the system (or the cop/investigator play).
i was looking at my copy of Gangbusters earlier this month for the character challenge and had forgotten how similar it is mechanical to Boot Hill, at least you can see Boot Hill’s DNA there. I haven’t played Gangbusters since high school, I need to get it back to the table. Since WotC doesn’t own the rights to it I wouldn’t feel bad promoting it but new players are stuck trying to find a used copy or a pirated scan.
 
People have done a great job of running Raggi out of the industry, I’d be surprised if Tweet ended up working with him these days.

i was looking at my copy of Gangbusters earlier this month for the character challenge and had forgotten how similar it is mechanical to Boot Hill, at least you can see Boot Hill’s DNA there. I haven’t played Gangbusters since high school, I need to get it back to the table. Since WotC doesn’t own the rights to it I wouldn’t feel bad promoting it but new players are stuck trying to find a used copy or a pirated scan.
I thought Mark Hunt had gotten permission from Krebs (Ray is his first name I think?) to republish it.

I'm pretty sure that Mark has also did a B/X-ified Gangbusters, if that at all helps.

There's also Mad Dogs with Guns, which is a lite 1920s minis skirmish game with a bootleg-empire-building campaign system wrapped around it. No PC cops in it, however.
 
Alternity. Some of the original writers took the trademark after it lapsed and tried to remake it with kickstarter funding, but this quickly fell apart. Fans were angry because they felt like they were being lied to, since the new game wasn't a revival of Alternity but a clone that couldn't actually use the copyright. Eventually the writers went silent and it died.

There are quite frankly tons of old games I could name.

Ultimately, all of these problems are linked to ridiculously long copyright terms that don't make provisions for orphan works. These old games are owned by dead people, corpos that have forgotten about them, people who just don't care and have moved on to other things, etc. It's completely unfair that fans aren't able to sell their own revivals out of fear of being sued by a copyright troll.

Unless a game is being continually supported, then the community around it will decline and vanish. Such is the fate of all these old games. They have countless interesting ideas that nobody will ever play with again. This applies even if you release your game under CC license and say it's free to distribute, much to my frustration when I found an amazing game that did so but never developed a community so far.
 
I thought Mark Hunt had gotten permission from Krebs (Ray is his first name I think?) to republish it.

I'm pretty sure that Mark has also did a B/X-ified Gangbusters, if that at all helps.

There's also Mad Dogs with Guns, which is a lite 1920s minis skirmish game with a bootleg-empire-building campaign system wrapped around it. No PC cops in it, however.
I’m not sure if Mark has permission to reprint the original or just to do B/X Gangbusters. I have not seen any legal PDF or reprint of TSR era Gangbusters.

B/X Gangbuster is a neat work in adapting B/X to the setting but I vastly prefer the original rules. There are plenty of games that would work fine if you want to run a Gangbusters game today so we don’t really need a reprint of the TSR era rules but I’m old and I like playing the older systems.
 
I thought they were going to do a Masters of the Universe RPG? Is that off the table?
Pretty sure it is. When it changed hands from Fandom to uh, whoever it is who owns it now, Fandom was the one with the Masters of the Universe IP, so its dead in the water because now the company that owns the license for the IP and the company that owns the game aren't the same company.,
 
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Against the Darkmaster.

It's early days for the game, though, so perhaps it'll become more popular over time.
MERP was quite popular back in the day but that probably was in large part thanks to the Middle-earth connection.

I loved the MERP system -- it seemed to include the best parts of Rolemaster but without the needless complexity and surfeit of charts. I have long wished for a "de-Tolkienized" version of the game, and Against the Darkmaster delivers.
Isn't there an upcoming/recently released campaign? Not a marker of success in and of itself, I grant you, but it's something.

A 3rd edition was successfully kick-started about 4 years ago. Updated background, new system, shiny hardback book. I backed it, and there's some good material in it, but I didn't like the system and think 2nd edition is superior.

A book of adventures came out about a year after the core book but I don't know how good it was. It has a very nice cover though.

There hasn't been any other support for it. I'm not sure if that was because Jonathan Tweet made an ill advised tweet (no pun intended!), that got him briefly cancelled, or if it's because the KS was a one-and-done (with the supplement a KS add-on) deal.
Aside from the above Tweet, he also made some Gygaxian comment about girls and gaming that was equally well-recieved.
Tweet was already planning on a project for LotFP, Al Amarja 1630.

But that was many years ago so I don't know if it is still on, I asked Tweet about it online and he said he had other projects to complete first.
The scuttlebutt seems to be that OtE 3rd is dead. It didn't seem to do very well financially, or at least not well enough to justify further material. Which is a shame. I heard chatter of a supplement set during the 1960s, and Justin Alexander had been working on stuff about The Terminal.
It's got a fairly light system, even lighter than the previous editions, but I found it to be clunky and unintuitive. It just doesn't feel right to me. They should've just stuck with the WARP System and made a few revisions in my opinion. None-the-less, the book is still nice to have.
OtE 3rd was a fair bit lighter than 2nd, though it would be trivial to substitute the WaRP rules for the baked-in system. Alas, I think they'd have been better off sticking with the old rules. Me, personally, I actually like the new rules better, though I am in the distinct minority there. I also like the reboot of the setting as well, so what do I know?

Did Boot Hill ever get a retroclone?

Shootouts & Showdowns is, I believe, a BH clone, released into the public domain.
There's also Print the Legend, which isn't exactly a retro-clone, but shares some DNA with Boot Hill 3rd Edition.

For content, I really wish The Tricode System from 1e Prime Directive had gotten more love. I think the rules would make an excellent sci-fi sandbox game, if you excised the Star Fleet Battles stuff. And added starship combat rules.
 
The SAGA system in general was really good. Dragonlance 5th Age is one of my favourite systems, I'm just not sure what to do with the setting it came with.

Dragonlance: Fifth Age is at the top of my list for this topic, with a system and setting ruined by bad tie-in novels, internal politics, and a fanbase that didn't appreciate it. :smile:
 
Waste World: I would have loved to see the remaining factions get their book and have a 2000AD-styled fantasy rpg using the same system.
Oh yes, I love the system.
I'd like to see a Waste World 2, where they go away from that 90s-ish D&D-classes-via-Vampire-clans setup and have more than a handful of core cities, toward all out post-apocalyptic Talislanta.
 
I'd consider Savage Worlds to be a moderately successful system, but I wish it was more successful so that I could run it as a library program. When I tried, usually nobody showed up, except one guy who would sometimes show up because he's a personal friend of mine.

Now that I've switched the library program to D&D, I routinely get players. Which is still a fun thing to get to do as part of my job, but I'd much rather be running Savage Worlds.
 
I'd consider Savage Worlds to be a moderately successful system, but I wish it was more successful so that I could run it as a library program. When I tried, usually nobody showed up, except one guy who would sometimes show up because he's a personal friend of mine.

Now that I've switched the library program to D&D, I routinely get players. Which is still a fun thing to get to do as part of my job, but I'd much rather be running Savage Worlds.
That's a bit sad, because as far as RPGs go, Savage Worlds is stunningly successful.
 
Isn't there an upcoming/recently released campaign? Not a marker of success in and of itself, I grant you, but it's something.

Yes, there's Secrets of the Golden Throne which looks awesome! I backed its Kickstarter with great enthusiasm.

I hope that it does get more people interested in the game. Right now Against the Darkmaster lacks its own distinctive setting. An Avalon-esque dark-ish fairy pseudo-Britain would do nicely.
 
Hero System (Champions). More than once it was right on the cusp of real success, but never quite got there.
It was just north of "too fiddly" to capture many fans, imho. An amazing engine for modelling supers, but too much for those used to FASERIP, M&M or even the old DC system. And the Ron Edwards version, while a step in the right direction conceptually, was also a big bag of shite. Also, I think it's been proven that comic/movie superhero fandom does not translate over into superhero RPG fandom, which is a big shame. Maybe the new Marvel game will fix that, but the Magic Eightball says "Probably not".
 
MG yes it was. That man cannot write!
I read it a few times (quite enjoyed the opening wank about the development of comics and comics rpgs) then read it through with a couple of friends while we tried to play it. Our feeling was that he wrote as much as his fee allowed for, and the rest was either paraphrased or just left out entirely. Half a game, and twice the effort to read and play!
 
I've been hoping the proper Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder would get a proper shake of the stick ever since 1982, but it was not to be. My hope for it died in 2014 together with my expectations for nuChaosium (I scanned and OCR'd my boxed set for them then). It'll stay vapourware no doubt, though wouldn't be interested now even if they got around to putting it together.

The real humdinger was Task Force Games' Delta Force, my favourite ever modern combat system wrapped up in a terribly niche anti-terrorist game. It did get one supplement, but that was it. I converted all of Classic Traveller over to it, and ran it that way until the big folder of rules got thrown out when I was out of the country, the 5 1/4" floppy discs with all the tables didn't work any more, so I moved on to GURPS Traveller as the next best thing. But that system was a thing of beauty for any self-respecting gun freak.

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I've been hoping the proper Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder would get a proper shake of the stick ever since 1982, but it was not to be. My hope for it died in 2014 together with my expectations for nuChaosium (I scanned and OCR'd my boxed set for them then). It'll stay vapourware no doubt, though wouldn't be interested now even if they got around to putting it together.

The real humdinger was Task Force Games' Delta Force, my favourite ever modern combat system wrapped up in a terribly niche anti-terrorist game. It did get one supplement, but that was it. I converted all of Classic Traveller over to it, and ran it that way until the big folder of rules got thrown out when I was out of the country, the 5 1/4" floppy discs with all the tables didn't work any more, so I moved on to GURPS Traveller as the next best thing. But that system was a thing of beauty for any self-respecting gun freak.
I see a nice sighting table. Any chance you could talk about Delta Force's spotting rules in this thread:


Maybe even share that table?
 
I've been hoping the proper Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder would get a proper shake of the stick ever since 1982, but it was not to be. My hope for it died in 2014 together with my expectations for nuChaosium (I scanned and OCR'd my boxed set for them then). It'll stay vapourware no doubt, though wouldn't be interested now even if they got around to putting it together.

The real humdinger was Task Force Games' Delta Force, my favourite ever modern combat system wrapped up in a terribly niche anti-terrorist game. It did get one supplement, but that was it. I converted all of Classic Traveller over to it, and ran it that way until the big folder of rules got thrown out when I was out of the country, the 5 1/4" floppy discs with all the tables didn't work any more, so I moved on to GURPS Traveller as the next best thing. But that system was a thing of beauty for any self-respecting gun freak.

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That makes me curious, are there currently any Heavy-Sim RPGs being published? We got a few in the 80s, but I can't honestly recall seeing any since, like, Phoenix Command
 
I like the system, and really liked it in Marvel, but the background... not so much.
Same here. Honestly, it would have made a great Fantasy game with tweaks a bit closer to Marvel with a 2E and stripping out Dragonlance that wasn't really the Dragonlance people wanted. (I liked it as a setting but I was not a DL fan previously.)
 
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