Two new links

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I was looking at miniaturewargaming.com this morning as usual and found a pair or RPG items.

Everyone needs to take a look at the "" flowchart.

Some of you might find the steampunk RPG interesting.

...And no one understands Emperor Norton I.

[koipond]

I totally cracked up at

"Do you like point buy?"
"Yes, with fractions!"

[Rob Lang]

Love the flowchart, we should do one for free RPGs.

[misterecho]

like ritualistic murder committed by psycopathic childrens toys, set in a gameshow environment?

[SheikhJahbooty]

For me, the flowchart made me think, "There really isn't such a thing as a universal system, is there. Each of these encourages a particular style of play."

You could potentially tack any sort of rules onto the basic GURPS framework, but it will always be a tactical resource driven game.

FUDGE is more adjective oriented than GURPS, so it's super easy to tack additional rules onto it. Heck if you want to create a game of super heroes battling giant kaiju monsters, what do you need, two extra charts? But then getting the character you want in FUDGE is less of a game, because you can't look at lists of abilities and weakness to somehow get the points to balance.

Because FATE is even more adjective oriented you pretty much just need to decide to play in any particular setting to do it. And Fate points aren't really a resource you need to worry about. They pretty much get tossed around the table. And now non-characters can have adjectives, so if you want to knock over the scaffolding to block the road behind you and thus foil your pursuers, roll for it, and you get to add "blocked" to the road. Very cinematic.

Technically all three of these games would be useful for creating an outer space game, but...

If your playing a game where the characters are space marines battling the bug menace on desolate planetoids, FUDGE wouldn't offer enough detail. FATE would offer too much freedom. Neither of those games can be used to create the kind of tension we're used to seeing from war films. Are we going to get ambushed? Do we have enough ammo left? (Starship Troopers)

If your playing a game of mysteries and conspiracies on a space station filled with weird aliens, GURPS would bog the game down because it would require price tags to be put on all sorts of alien abilities and weaknesses. FATE points make even wimpy characters too powerful when played well. So FUDGE is the best choice. (Babylon 5)

If your playing a game where deeply flawed ex-cons become revolutionary terrorists against a tyrannical system that somehow thinks it is OK to molest children and murder people to get rid of a single acivist, then there really is no way you could use the first two systems. Only FATE offers a concrete reward for bringing up one's flaws and foibles during play. (Blakes 7)

I feel like I could do an infographic just on this. What type of play does ORE support, and why? How does PDQ make a certain setting play more like the source media? What sort of characters are possible in Hero Quest that would require an entire supplement to allow in another system? I doubt I could make mine as funny though. "A fascist could make it for all I care." Golden!

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Potential idea for Free RPG flowchart:
Fantasy - do you like D&D but are too cheap to buy all the books? - which edition? - [Rero-clones]

Potential idea for most generic RPG ever:
All die rolls are based on a 6d6 bell-curve so outlier events almost never happen (and its a big deal when they do) and the setting is similar to THX-1138.
Sleep cycle ended citizen 101001011. Consume (1) nutritional supplement type five and report to employment center North.

The "du/dx = cu+xy" box and its respective answers had me laughing, though I admit, I'm one who would follow the "Huh?" path.

Unlike all the other games, somehow Rifts manages to appear twice on the chart.

Just like the universe is probably "finite yet unbound" game systems tend to be "Universal yet non-generic". As I've stated before - heroism does seem to be one of the dividing factors in how to categorize game systems - what they will or won't let you get away with and how much affect a character has on the universe. I guess we could start that graph by "Save yourself/the city/the world/the universe or more" then split into "Likely to fail/even shot/success almost guaranteed". If its just for universal systems, we have ones that make the characters and systems generic (Fuzion/GURPS - same stats, but GM describes the world) as opposed to chose what stats apply (?) and then chose attributes for characters and world (FATE)

[Rob Lang]

Perhaps we could make one collaboratively using Google Docs? Once we have the main layout then I'll make an infographic.