Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Ginger asks

What?s your favorite game system, and why? What things don?t you like about it? How much do you have to ?jigger? it from published rules and why?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–I am not a game mechanic, never have been, never will be. If a system is playable, I’ll work with it. That said, I like systems that are simple and have a lot of resource material. Two of the simplest ones I’ve encountered are Teenagers from Outer Space and Toon. You can create a character quickly, the mechanics are easy to learn, easy to work with, and very straightforward. Also, both systems allow a lot of room for player and GM creativity. Both are comedy games, and in my experience (YMMV) comedy games really bring role-playing and plot to the fore.

My main complaints are, respectively, that TFOS went all manga in the second edition, and that the source material for Toon is hard to come by. First-edition TFOS was brilliant, and it’s what I use when I run the game. I’ve been to high school in California, and I know of what I speak. The only thing I’ve brought in from 2E are a couple of gadgets (I must admit, I couldn’t resist the popcorn grande) and a couple of the alien powers. As for Toon, I keep hoping that SJ games will put out more and more stuff (a book on settings would be nice–underwater, outer space, etc.) but I can cope.

Because the systems are sufficiently flexible for my needs, I very rarely feel the need to tinker with them. Most of the tinkering that I do is simply adding in skills (Run in Heels and Smile Winningly come to mind), items, traits, and so on. Honestly, I can’t see a simple system working as well in a non-comedy genre, but if anyone manages to come up with one, I’ll be the first to give it a go.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2004 at 9:04 am and is filed under Games & Gaming, Gaming Memes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.