Other blogs can be found HERE.
The questions can be found HERE.
18 What is the crunchiest RPG you have
played? Was it enjoyable?
There is good crunch (i.e. rules and
mechanics) and then there’s bad crunch. Palladium crunch is bad because it is
ill-explained (i.e. how AR works) and half-conceived (i.e. the skill system),
but I have heard that Siembieda changes rules and runs things differently in
person. Using houserules I have had a blast with Palladium games, but heaven
knows I couldn’t run or play them RAW (Rules As Written) anymore.
GURPS can have terrible crunch if you have
a GM and players who don’t know where to draw the line, but good crunch if they
do. Honestly, all you need for a decent GURPS game is the free sample plus the
corebook of whatever genre you play and voila, great game with the right amount
of crunchy rules. For us non minmaxers, I made up random roll matrices for the
GURPS games I ran, where players could get one drawback for every two
advantages they randomly rolled.
Good times.
19 What is the fluffiest RPG you have
played? Was it enjoyable?
Sadly, the few homebrew games I have played
in have all suffered from highly detailed worlds in the DM’s mind that never
translated well on the table. I think this is why IP (Intellectual Properties
like movies or books) do so well – players and DMs already have a shared image
of the gameworld and how it works. It is probably why I love Stormbringer so
much, and would play d20 if it were one of the many IP games (i.e. Slaine,
Aliens, Judge Dredd, Predator, etc etc) kicking about.
Interesting observation about good/bad crunch.
ReplyDeleteI think you're spot on when it comes to the IP based games. There's a list of ideas about the gameworld and how it works and it makes things much easier.
That is why we all felt a great disturbance in the force first time we saw Jar Jar
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