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This month, Roger (with reduced nasal resonance) and Mike look at time
travel and ponder the simplest and most complex possible role-playing
games.
We mentioned
Timeship),
Timemaster,
Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories,
Doctor Who,
Timelords),
GURPS Time Travel
and
Time Travel Adventures,
Continuum),
Feng Shui,
The Man Who Folded Himself,
1632) and
Island in the Sea of Time,
Time Riders (the Iron Crown supplement Roger couldn't remember),
Time Changer,
HeroQuest,
Paranoia),
FATE),
WaRP and
Roger's adventure for it,
the
Arkham Horror
and Firefly
boardgames,
Burning Wheel,
Dangerous Journeys,
Hillfolk/Dramasystem,
Rolemaster,
Battlelords of the Twenty-Third Century,
and the
Amber RPG.
Music by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com.
- Posted by Phil at
10:49am on
04 June 2015
First edition Champions didn't have a single unified resolution mechanism, I'm afraid, though it was far less messy than some games of the time. Determining whether attacks hit was handled a little differently from non-combat skills, there were two different damage mechanisms in play - "killing" and "normal" damage - and a lot of non-damaging effects, including Presence Attacks (impressing people into compliance, pausing, or fleeing) were handled by a general class of mechanic somewhat resembling normal damage.
Runequest/BRP probably had as unified a system as any back then - most things resolved with percentile dice, plus a fairly simple damage mechanic.
- Posted by RogerBW at
10:52am on
04 June 2015
Fair point; some special cases, mostly dealing with magic, but most things in RQII were covered by either a skill roll or a resistance roll.
- Posted by Chris at
10:32am on
24 June 2015
There is also Time and Time Again by Timeline where the PCs are there to protect the time travellers. They also published the Morrow Project.
http://index.rpg.net/display-search.phtml?key=system&value=Time+and+Time+Again
In terms of simplest/most complicated games I believe it comes down to each person's preference for play style. As rpgs grew out of Wargames they followed the simulationist approach of wanting to model everything in the world. That framework makes sense to people and so we see the success of GURPS, BRP, etc.
It took many years to develop Narrative gaming which has been taken up by many people. They prefer that style over simulation.
I play Serenity (Cortex Classic) and the GM considered moving over to Cortex+ which is narrative. He came to the conclusion that it was too complicated. It was too much for him to mentally parse.
Having just taken delivery of Heroquest Glorantha this morning, it looks lovely but I'm not sure I will play it. It's style of social/historical roleplaying requires insight into adventure design and narrative structure that often seems beyond me but joy for the English graduates and writer/actors.
This leaves us with two groups of gamers who point at each others favourite games and say that seems too complicated.
- Posted by RogerBW at
12:37pm on
24 June 2015
Yeah, it makes sense that there's a subjective consideration of cognitive burden. The sort of game that relies on every player being inventive all the time seems to me like a gaming pathology, because I've known or been the gamer who's not quite as quick off the mark as the others, but in a group of spontaneous improvisers (all of whom are on form) I could see it working very well.
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