Portal Fantasy: Is there an ideal system for this?

[Michael Cule]

I'm contemplating (very vaguely) the next campaign I'm going to develop.

I'm currently thinking about a portal fantasy, one where people come from our Earth to a different, fantastical universe. (I want never to have to say to a player "Well, as you would already know....")

There's a very good GURPS supplement on the topic by a distinguished contributer to this platform and I'm reading it with profit.

But I'm wondering if there is a better system for this particular thing.

There are games like THE STRANGE that make coming to new universes a major thing and it was built into NEXUS THE INFINITE CITY and to a lesser extent FENG SHUI which was derived from it. But neither of those quite works for me.

Bounce some ideas towards me, please. Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

[whswhs]

Well, portal fantasy is common in anime. Have you looked at Big Eyes Small Mouth? My personal feeling is that the second edition is its best version, and I think you can get that from DriveThruRPG still.

[Anthony]

Really depends on the details of how you want the game to run; portal fantasy is a sufficiently vague concept that you can't really say there's one ideal system. There are of course a plethora of generic systems with variance in game play (you're going to get a much different game if you run it with FATE instead of GURPS, but not because either system has much to do with portals); if you want systems with more things specifically related to interactions between worlds, other than what you've mentioned, possibly consider Torg?

[thrash]

I suppose it depends on how "fantastical" is the universe where your player-characters find themselves. You need a system that handles the unfamiliar aspects alongside the mundane abilities they bring. If the spectrum that creates is too broad, you'll have trouble finding one that scales gracefully.

I suspect any more-or-less universal system, or one with a variety of genres and power levels, will work. It might be easier to identify systems that model the campaign you want to run and then narrow the list by choosing one with a realistic option.

[The Colonel]

Gonna vary depending on whether you want an anime vibe, or Narnia or Stephen Donaldson ... or go fourth wall breaking and assemble an entire party of Lord Hamsters...

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Gonna vary depending on whether you want an anime vibe, or Narnia or Stephen Donaldson ... or go fourth wall breaking and assemble an entire party of Lord Hamsters...

Hamsters need not apply. I wouldn't want you to think I'm prejudiced but...

Yeah, it was a vague question and I need to firm up my own ideas first. (Which are sort of floating around the idea of group of people with no Destiny entering a world dominated by it.)

RISUS floated to the top of my mind when people mentioned anime influences. Perhaps something as ultra simple as that is justified here.

[thrash]

Mechanically, you could represent Destiny in Risus as a double-pump cliche. This would make your UnDestined player-characters more generally competent (minimum two more dice to spend on other cliches), in addition to their access to an array of cliches from their original world (e.g., Detective, when the fantasy world just uses Priests to check the Destiny of the victim and suspects).

On the other hand, Risus doesn't really allow you to use Destiny against the holder, which seems to me a major (comparative) advantage to not having one. Perhaps FUDGE or FATE?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Gonna vary depending on whether you want an anime vibe, or Narnia or Stephen Donaldson ... or go fourth wall breaking and assemble an entire party of Lord Hamsters...

I haven't read any of Erfworld in a long time, but if they were placed in an appropriate setting (like Parson going to one that functions like a tabletop wargame, assuming I'm remembering his real name correctly), an entire party of them would be terrifying.

For the question at hand, it really does depend heavily on the setting the portal connects to, and indeed on the "feel" you want. GURPS works well if the setting functions like a real world with supernatural elements, like Gate, but if you're going somewhere with literal character levels, like My Room is a Dungeon Rest Stop, probably not so much (although you can still have that work, particularly if you intend to give the outsiders an advantage - perhaps the inhabitants just have a "Level" Advantage and attached class-specific wildcard skill that gives general across-the-board bonuses appropriate to their class, while outsiders can get the same but can also improve individual skill levels on top of that).

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

Yeah, it was a vague question and I need to firm up my own ideas first. (Which are sort of floating around the idea of group of people with no Destiny entering a world dominated by it.)

Given other recent discussions (i.e. in the latest Improvised Radio Theatre with Dice) this strikes me as a sort of anti-Celtic Myth. Daibhaeaidhaibh MacAeraith is a grand hero, who can slay an enemy host with one arm tied behind his back… but thanks to his wyrd he never goes within a mile of a beehive, and the Dark Lord knows that and has several with every army. Pete the newcomer from Earth isn't tied into that web of prophecy and counterprophecy, and he could do anything.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

Hamsters need not apply. I wouldn't want you to think I'm prejudiced but...

Well (BOOP) you then! (assuming you got the reference) ;-). Otherwise, as below, it's a shout out to the Webcomic Erfworld.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I haven't read any of Erfworld in a long time, but if they were placed in an appropriate setting (like Parson going to one that functions like a tabletop wargame, assuming I'm remembering his real name correctly), an entire party of them would be terrifying.

Yeah. I kicked it into touch after it turned into psychedelic word salad and more or less gave up on being a webcomic (or anything else known to man). Still, I couldn't figure out the exact genre of portal fantasy involved - had Parson actually been transported, or was he, as he believed, lying in a hospital bed Thomas Covenant style? This sort of impinged on whether his players were actually present or merely represented by the characters he had created for them ... I'm guessing Charlie, for example, was another player, or at least a PC.