RPG Toolkit Meme

[bryant]

Unexpected, but here it is.

What follows is a list of RPGs which, in my limited and human judgment, are frequently used as (or maybe just recommended as) rules toolkits: i.e., the mechanics are used or tweaked to run games in genres or settings other than those presented in the rulebook. For some games, like GURPS, that’s sort of a gimmie.

If you like a system, but you just use it for the setting(s) it was written for, italicize it. If you like a system and it’s one of your go-to tools for running games in random settings, bold it. If you like the game world but don’t care much about the system, leave it alone — you wanna identify the systems that you can practically teach from memory.

Copy to your own blog and repeat as desired. If there’s a game you’d bold that isn’t listed, add it. (I like Unknown Armies a ton, but it’s not one of my generic systems, so I wouldn’t add it.)

Amber Diceless
Big Eyes, Small Mouth (and variants)
Burning Wheel
Chaosium Basic Role-Playing (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest)
Cinematic Unisystem (Buffy, Angel)
CORPS
D&D 3rd edition (3.5, any D20 variant)
D&D 4th edition
D6 (Star Wars WEG)
Dogs in the Vineyard
Everway
Feng Shui
FUDGE (or FATE)
Fuzion
GURPS
Hero System
HeroQuest
Legend of the Five Rings (and variants)
My Life With Master
One-Roll Engine (Reign, Godlike)
Over the Edge
PDQ (Dead Inside, Zorceror of Zo)
Risus
Savage Worlds
Sorceror
Storyteller (any version; Vampire, Adventure, Exalted, etc.)
The Fantasy Trip
TORG
Traveller (1st edition)
The Window
Wushu

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

[mneme]

Cool idea.

What out systems that you use as a toolkit, but not intact, stealing subsystems for games rather than the entire system -- frex, my (successful) experiments grabbing Keys from The Shadow of Yesterday/First Quest?

(edit/append): I don't even -know- the entire TSoY system, and certainly couldn't teach it from memory. But the subsystem is now a very useful part of my standard toolkit.

[bryant]

In my brain, that wouldn't count. But it's a fuzzy line. I asked myself the same question about Unknown Armies and Madness Meters.

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

I use systems so infrequently now that most of them are mostly just setting encyclopedia. Everway is the only one we use and that's mostly for the fortune deck. It's only appropriate when challenges are only between a small set of superior individuals.

We used Spirt of the Century at TBR for a pulp space game. One of our 5 games at this year's TBR used ADRPG, the others were SotC, Everway, Kobolds Ate My Baby!, and TfOS. All of those are frankengamed.

Since GURPS, Amber, Everway, DrWhoRPG, etc are intentionally multi-setting, how do you determine that something isn't (for example) an Amber game in some shadow?

[bryant]

Since GURPS, Amber, Everway, DrWhoRPG, etc are intentionally multi-setting, how do you determine that something isn't (for example) an Amber game in some shadow?

Player and GM intent. :)

Well, except GURPS, which is a generic system so any use more or less counts.

[death-by-monkey.livejournal.com]

Hm. I feel like there should be another category in addition to those listed, although this may fall into the "If you like the game world but don’t care much about the system" category. Back in high school, my friends and I played the hell out of the Palladium system. There were some of its settings that we liked, some we despised, but at the time, we found the system to be one that we could convert to any setting we wanted. In hindsight, I now see how abominable the system was, but from a historical perspective, we really used that system for everything. I wouldn't really want to recommend it's use anymore, but it had a place for us at one time.

[bryant]

It's a category, but I don't care about it for the purposes of the meme. I'm more interested in what systems people use as toolkits rather than what worlds are compelling.