Genesys as a book didn't really provide me as much new content as I was hoping. I can't help but feel like building a Fantasy hack of Star Wars isn't really that much more work than building a Fantasy setting in Genesys. The Magic system is certainly a boon, for sure, but "treat it as a skill and use weapon qualities" is more or less how I'd hack anything into Star Wars.

In the end I probably just had enough experience with Star Wars to not need the Genesys Core to do what I wanted to do, as Genesys turned out to be something of a quick-start Star Wars hacking guide (Years of SWRPG experience not required!).

Whether you see this as a complete game or probably depends on where you fall on the rules crunch spectrum. A rules light person (such as myself) has what I need to start running the game tomorrow. I would just need to to come up with some adversaries since there isn't an exhaustive list yet.

2 hours ago, themensch said:

I guess everyone has a different idea of "complete" - if we were to look at other toolkit systems like Fate Core, GURPs, Savage Worlds, PBTA, where do they rank using the same criteria?

First of all I'd say "complete" should not include "already comes with a setting and fleshed-out NPC's". Few agnostic RPG's do that, or they wouldn't be agnostic. Just wanted to define (for me) what "complete" is not .

I can only speak of Savage Worlds and Fate since I haven't played the other systems.

Savage Worlds is much more "Complete" in that you could build a campaign from the base rulebook without houseruling anything. It's not better, by any means, but it's technically more complete. You have a menu of stuff you could point buy and call the result a character, and the range of edges and hindrances is very extensive and generally agnostic, as is the gear. The magic system is likewise fairly solid out of the gate if you like purchasing individual spells and using spell points to cast them.

Fate is more complete than Genesys because the very structure of stunts is open ended by their nature, but it's very good at delineating how to declare stunts. There's no menu from which to pick abilities when building a character. That's actually part of what most detractors hate about Fate, and what its fans love about it. Specific implementations of it can be far more specific and complete, but then they're setting-specific also and not part of a toolkit. Fate requires more of its players to create the setting on the fly than most other systems, and its feeling of completeness will only be there for a group that understands how it works (my group, myself included, couldn't always grasp this).

I honestly don't know how far you can get using Genesys and not adding house rules. In comparison, you could run both SW and Fate with just the rulebooks.

Again, all that said, I'm building a setting for Genesys, and love writing houserules, so my enthusiasm for the system has nothing to do with how complete the game is out of the box. It'll be complete enough once we get rolling, and we'll tweak as we go. The narrative dice and the backbone of rule mechanics have the potential to be a better system than anything else I've played, so I'm going to work with it to get us there.

Thank you everyone for answering my question. While I don't agree with some of the answers (Ha! We're all like that!), it's good to see a civil discussion that clues me in on what others are thinking.

Thanks for keeping the thread clean!

i think that isn't an incomplete game, is almost say the same for Fate. All the rules are in the book, and the book is more a toolkit than a game as fate. i almost hate generic games, but this book and fate changed my mind.

For the lack of equipment or magic talents, fate hasnt neither .

And i don't see the completeness of fate, although with the stun and extras, i think that both fate and Genesys are more toolkits than a game per se.

Here's my more refined thoughts. I'm absolutely positive that there will be others who won't agree. But I thought that since I now have an idea where others are coming from, it was only polite to do the same myself.

Genesys Core is a hamburger. It's got the meat and buns, but it's lacking all the special sauces, lettuce, tomato, etc. Some people will say that it's not a hamburger because it's lacking those ingredients. But it still a hamburger. A bland hamburger, perhaps. Luckily, it tells you how to make the special sauces and grow the lettuce, tomato, etc.

I did a small, completely unscientific experiment and ran a very simple Fantasy Adventure for two players (granted it was using Discord, but hey. It is what it is.) just using what is in the book and not house-ruling or adding things in. We were able to run the adventure in which a Wizard and Fighter braved an Orc encampment to defeat the evil wizard and rescue the farmer's son. Seems like a complete game to me, but my definition, as has been pointed out to me, is fairly loosey goosey.

It is, however, very shallow in the pre-made options department and does not come with any real in-depth scenarios or worlds. It would and does benefit from more work from the GM. But everything needed to play is in there. It just won't be very deep. And that's why I think some people view it as a complete system and not a complete game.

That's where the settings/expansion books will come into play, I figure.

I wouldn't say that is game, is more like a toolkit, in the same way as Fate, and as toolkit, is complete.

Remember that Fate basic hasn't equipment of any type, vehicles and such are like characters and extras, and magic only in the fate toolkit, but i dont like none of the magic system in fate.

On 12/18/2017 at 2:39 AM, Richardbuxton said:

If your idea of running a game is bashing through pre written adventure after pre written adventure then this system isn’t really ready for you.

If on the other hand you hardly pull a stat block from the core book and only buy supplements for inspiration then this will be a decent system, even if it’s hard work.

If you gm with half a sheet of notes and a creative group of players then you probably know this will be your system of the next 10 years.

Only 10 years? I plan on living a lot longer than that my friend!

Well if the game was that bad and incomplete, it wouldn't have sold out everywhere.