On 8/5/2017 at 8:47 AM, DarthDude said:

If Genesys manages to let people play their popular TV shows in a way that works, which, by far not every so called generic system manages like the Cypher System, which is not a iota generic, Genesys might be an interesting alternative. No setting needed but your own ideas you always wanted ti rp.

I can't parse this.

But are you saying Cypher isn't generic? I think Cypher is as generic as Genesys is likely to get.

1 hour ago, CitizenKeen said:

I can't parse this.

But are you saying Cypher isn't generic? I think Cypher is as generic as Genesys is likely to get.

Personally, I think the Cypher system is as much generic than D&D (they can do scifi as well as fantasy, take a look at Esper Genesis) or any other existing system and maybe even less. The spell lists for adepts are tremendously limited, also are traits and skills. It is a fine system for Numenera and very rules light but the options for individual character creation is actually non-existant. If you really want to look at a system, were you can trully individualize chars and emulate different powers, look for example at Open Legend or Cortex Prime or Traveller for any SciFi setting.

No Generic Systems are particularly good at being applied, in their generic form, to an IP, setting or even other RPG's. That's really not how it works. You take GURPS for example, the two core books are not enough to create a Vampire: The Masquerade game or Star Wars game for example. Your missing key thematic elements that need to be defined mechanically, like Vitae, Clan abilities etc... You can take it quite far, but eventually you are going to have to translate the system or create within the infrastructure of that system the missing elements.

The way Generic System work, at least the good ones, is that the System is designed to be easy to adapt, easy to add to, flexible in how its balanced. So whether you use Hit Points, or Health Levels, or wether you use Spell Slots, or Mana slots... all of these sort of minor adjustments must be easy to make.

Then of course the main thing of generic system is the creation of source books, so the publisher either creates or allows 3rd party publishers to create custom content that does this work for us.. aka putting out a Vampire: The Masquerade book or a Warhammer Fantasy source book out there.

It remains to be seen how this will work with Genisys, but I would imagine FFG knows how this work conceptually because it works like this as a sort of pattern of the type of system it is.

I think that the focus of the system (narrative, simulation, etc) is very important in generic system. That system sticks to one, and does it well. Afaik GURPS sticks to simulationistic style and does it well enough. If Genesys focuses to narrative style, as SW rpg does, it may fare well. Personally I wait Genesys with enthusiasm, because I like SW rpg, and Genesys promises to offer me my favourite genres (alternative history, horror, steampunk and scifi), with fairly fast spaced and light game mechanics. I'm hopeful about the new system. And wish all the best for FFG. Every successful roleplaying game is good for the industry.

On 11/08/2017 at 2:44 PM, BigKahuna said:

No Generic Systems are particularly good at being applied, in their generic form, to an IP, setting or even other RPG's. That's really not how it works. You take GURPS for example, the two core books are not enough to create a Vampire: The Masquerade game or Star Wars game for example. Your missing key thematic elements that need to be defined mechanically, like Vitae, Clan abilities etc... You can take it quite far, but eventually you are going to have to translate the system or create within the infrastructure of that system the missing elements.

There's a maxim in generic games, and GURPS in particular: "translate the fluff, not the crunch". So if you wanted to do Vampire with GURPS you would need to create various clan abilities using the GURPS rules, but you shouldn't attempt to port the specific rules or mechanics.

This was less true back in the days of 3e, where there was a tendency to spawn new rules and subsystems as genres or world books required them. But that led to multiple, conflicting options and caused big problems when trying to create your own campaign setting. 4e took the accumulated 3e stuff and integrated it so that the core books provide the tools to do 90% of anything you could want to achieve.

That doesn't mean there aren't new sub-systems out there, especially new magic systems with different aims and mechanisms. But the designers now have a much better understanding of mechanics and so can make things work well together.

So I would say that you could do most campaign worlds out of just the core GURPS books, however it would take time and system mastery to understand all the pieces available in the toolkit and understand how best to deploy them to get the effect you want. The advantage of specific campaign books is that the work has already been done for you. That isn't to understate the importance of this - excessive pre-game setup is one of the main barriers to GURPS wider adoption in my opinion (and currently subject to hot debate on both RPG.net and SJG's own forums).

In terms of Genesys, I hope the core rules provides a fairly comprehensive set of available powers and effects along with modifiers so these can be mixed to produce the specific game any GM is looking to run. But then I hope the genre treatments do a whole bunch of the work for us in a 'good enough' way to support a wide range of games with minimal prep and so avoid barriers.