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Old 07-20-2020, 09:23 PM   #7
SolemnGolem
 
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: The Hall of Fallen Columns
Default Re: Alternatives to GURPS? Other tabletop RPGs to try?

Like many folks, I started off on DnD, and then wanted to try something more customizable, and found that GURPS scratched the itch very well.

Aside from GURPS, I tried TriStat dX by Guardians of Order. The game system was offered for free, and the company charged for supplements. This model maybe didn't work out so well and the company is out of business now. But TriStat dX is even more abstract of a generic system than GURPS. GURPS takes (mostly) reality-based effects and then calculates based on that, with a clear humanocentric, Earth-centric bias (for logistical reasons that should be pretty obvious).

TriStat dX makes far fewer assumptions about PC size and even things like local gravity. I have heard that the system was first used with the Big Eyes Small Mouth campaign setting. The PDF is available for free on DriveThruRPG.

In other generic systems, I've bought the rulebooks for Genesys, more just to support the RPG writers at FFG (with doomed outcome, they've dissolved their RPG wing and mostly rely on freelancers now). I also bought Amazing Engine from TSR in the 90s, Basic Role Play system, and HERO System, though none of them impressed me as much as GURPS' realworld checking and supplements, and TriStat dX's mathematical abstract purity.

I have also tried Street Fighter: The Storytelling System wherein somebody actually licensed the fast-paced beat-em-up Street Fighter game and then for reasons unknown tried to make it run as a character-driven brooding "ember of defeat in your eye" narrative game. Also, the combat implementation was leaden and dull.
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