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16
Which RPG besides D&D has the best magic system? Give details.
Honestly, I cannot overstate how much I
dislike D&D magic. The levels have no clear taxonomy or power differences –
Charm Person started as a 1st level skill. Add to that the arbitrary
nature of spells (which ones are touch versus gaze; save vs death versus no
save versus save for half; etc etc) and I have a hard time wrapping my head
around them. D&D lovers might see spells as crafted by tinkerers with a
fine eye for balance, but I find them needlessly complicated enough that I have
never played a spellcaster.
When I found the demon summoning rules for
Stormbringer, I knew I was on the right track for me. Using Power points to buy
demon abilities, with just a few subjective limits on how much of those points
you could allocate based on your caster level, resulted in a mix of control and
surprise that I felt emulated how magic should feel and especially how it was
presented in the Elric books. I also had experiences with GURPS magic, but if
D&D was too arbitrary, GURPS by comparison was too logical for me and
sucked some of the magic out of magic use.
17
Which RPG has the best high tech rules? Why?
Although my experience with and memory of the
old Shadowrun game was limited, I found that its simple way of allocating dice
pools for the effects of tech was much more eloquent than trying to nail down
every ability conferred by a technological device. Given that real world tech
develops so fast and every high scifi from a few decades back is laughably
outdated (look at the original Traveller’s computer size rules for example), this
approach of tech-as-bonus instead of tech as a set of descriptions makes much
more sense.
It's funny, I have a BRP player who looks fondly back on GURPS magic specifically for the reason that it was so logical. Her explanation is that the higher-tier spells all had prerequisites you had to take, so (in her example) in order to gain levels in necromancy and raise the dead, you had to take healing magic first.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting take on the system of learning magic, and possibly something I may homebrew into my own BRP games, depending on what appears with Advanced Sorcery when it arrives in my mailbox in the coming days.
I see BRP as GURPS super lite, so I suppose porting in rules wouldn't be that much of a headache. I may have to reread my GURPS Magic - sadly I only have a Japanese copy and no desire to tackle that...
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