Hi RPOL. I'm considering starting up a game sometime. Basically in this game the players would control video game characters in a virtual world. But part of the game would involve restrictions based on the genre of game. Basically, in this game your character class would be based on the video game character genre and would be restricted like this.

RTS game characters can have many people to command but have to keep a main building around so they don't die.

RPG Characters would be slower because of the turn-based combat.

FPS could only have  a limited amount of armor and must move every turn.

 And basically other video game genres would have their own class restrictions. Would any game system be good at working with this? Or only freeform? Thank you.

In reply to Wildcard (msg # 1):

Well, you could use GURPS an set out Lenses of predetermined Advantages and Disadvantages based on setting. It's probably not ideal for all settings, but it has the advantage of being customizable by setting.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:49, Fri 12 Nov 2021.

That sounds like a lot of work to me, you are talking about combining what are essentially 3 different styles/types of games that would have their own different rule sets.  My first question would be how these three different types of genres would even be able interact with each other?

I can see it work with Savage Words with some modifications.

So, just to clarify, are you saying that you'd pick one character whose "class" would be determined by the genre they're from, or are you having characters who will jump between genres/worlds and need to shift class each time?

If I'm assuming the former (because the latter is a whole different kettle of fish), I think you need to ask both how much number crunching you want within the game, and how much of a different feel you want to have between the classes.

Depending on how much that is, you will either be able to fit them into an existing system, or be better off literally homebrewing from the ground up.

Easily :) You just decide what you want to happen and make it happen

Which means you need a system sufficiently flexible to allow you to mould it.

My personal feelings on the suggestions so far


Savage worlds has flawed die distributions so there is very little functional difference between d4 in a skill and d12. Despite that it's lots of fun to play. Just extremely 'samey'. And there are only a few good builds: many choices are 'just better' than the others. (But it is a load of fun to play, so that more than compensates for the poor system design)


Wildcard
Much better die system. the probabilities mostly give the effect you want (which is rare in games) Sufficiently flexible for your needs. But my god the GM needs to know his stuff and stamp back on minimaxing. It's designed for minimaxing during character and given two people with the same character points one can can be 10 times or more better... if that's OK with you its a fun system

Gurps
Is in my 'too boring to play' list. But other people differ. There are 'simple to make, much better choices' so again with the same points some players will be far more powerful than others...that's generally not a good feature.

Mutants and Masterminds (my suggestion)
Is like half way to Wildcards. It is easily flexible enough far far easier to make it so that the resulting characters work the way you want (you have no such control in Wild cards other than GM fiat). It's easy to play (one of it's big benefits) and quite fun. By setting power limits and power points and restricting power choices for the different genres I think you get exactly what you are after. Unlike the other choices there isn't 'this is the best option' as much, and you won't end up with characters ten times as powerful as others which still having a load of flexibility

I don't think the actual die rolling is as fun as Wildcards... but wildcards is aimed mainly at tabletop and some of that die rolling is harder in RPOL. M&M is really easy to GM and play in RPOL.

I've actually played (still am sort of) a 'video game RPG' where people entered the video game and were their favourite game character. We had someone from Portal 2, one from a first person shooter, and another from a RPG game. It all worked superbly. The characters felt like they were supposed to, and each had their time to shine in the game

That's kind of the point of Gurps: rules to cover all genres and let them mix and match with each other.

It would be one rule set with 3 different group of specials (good and bad) applied to different characters. Point values would be the same for each, but what/ they did/could do would differ according to setting origin and any specific 'class' lense also applied.

Yeah, I have to say GURPS or one of the other 'generics' is probably best.  GURPS is the most powerful toolkit system of them, but you could tweak FATE or Savage Worlds or HERO to get it to do what you want.

But no matter what you do, it'll be work on the GM's end.



(And to everyone claiming GURPS is boring, you had a boring GM.  Any system can be thrilling action or excruciating boredom, depending on the GM.  Though I'll admit, some of GURPS core options can lead the unfamiliar into thinking everything needs to be detailed out in exactingly fine minutiae, when in fact it does not.)

If you’re talking about mixing genres, GURPS excels at this, but it sounds like you’re wanting to mix systems instead. The RTS PCs will remain stationary and issue commands. These characters will be able to make actions in real time and are not bound by turns. The RPG characters will move in turns like a D&D/GURPS/Pathfinder/Savage Worlds/etc. character. The FPS characters also are not bound by time and can move based on the player’s reflexes.

It almost sounds like you’d need 3 different systems here. If you want to be realistic about it (does the FPS character really have unlimited move, or is there a certain distance the character can move per turn?) If this character’s move is only limited by the player’s imagination, I’d think a rules light system like FATE would be ideal for this character. The RPG character could use a more crunchy system like Pathfinder or GURPS. The RTS character could probably also use FATE, but you could do a hack of a tabletop game like Warhammer. There’s also Wrath of the Autarch, a kingdom-building tabletop RPG focused on issuing commands and such.

Using multiple systems would get really complex, though. If you want crunch, I’d suggest either GURPS with the mass combat rules for the RTS character and some defined rules around the FPS character. If you’d like something rules-light, FATE would be ideal.

Thank you to everyone who replied. Sorry I've been pretty busy these past two weeks. I'll respond to your questions one at a time.

@deadtotheworld22: Yes, each player would pick a character class would be determined by the genre of the game they are from. I'd want a little number crunching that I am fine with, but I want it to be able to be played without using any more dice than like 5 at most.

@tmagann: Thanks, I will look into GURPS, but other players have commented that it is a bit number-crunchy when I tried to run a superhero game using it.

@CaptainHellrazor: Good question. Essentially, all the Player Characters would have these restrictions, but the NPCs, (especially the villains) would not, thus necessitating them working together to fight these enemies in a way that they could all be useful.

@BFink: Thank you, I'll look into Savage Worlds.

@Siran: Oh, thank you very much. I've heard of Mutants and Masterminds but never knew how flexible it could be. I didn't think that this idea had been tried by RPOL before, but I'm glad to know it has and that you guys had fun with it. Mine would involve no real games,or premade ones, but part of the fun I think would be letting players create their own fictional pop culture and how it effects the "real fight" in the world of the game. Basically they'd enter the virtual world as digital avatars from these games and fight monsters and enemies from all sorts of games.

@evileeyore: Thank you for the input. I hope GURPS would work well with this. What is HERO? I feel like I've heard of it but I don't remember.

@MM: Thank you for the input. I think you might have a point that I may need to mod it with GURPS. But if not it may be a mixed system. That is an issue. To answer the FPS question, I'd want everyone and especially the FPS players to have a move limit and a distance limit, (even if it would be long for super-fast characters). FATE would be good for RTS characters? That sounds cool! Do you know of any way to limit an RTS player's power moreso so that people won't all want to min-max an RTS character? It seems that my limit may not be enough when I look into FATE. Right now I'm leaning into GURPS overall but FATE sounds like something I also want to try.

Something else to consider, there are three periods of number crunching in a game like this, design work, character gen/adv, and gameplay. Players need only worry about the last two, and the last one is the only one impacting speed of play.

My here though, is that if the players find gurps to be too number crunchy, you can still use it as base, build abilities and such, then hide a lot of that number crunch behind abilities that you create, giving you the full flexibility of the system, but simplifying what the players need to deal with. For example, spending points to create an ability with all kinds of numbers for range, damage, area, etc, but then you can just present the final ability and the players never need to see the math you went through to make that ability.

Building Characters in GURPS freeform is very "number crunchy" in that they have to add and subtract numbers, and if Supers especially if they're building their own powers it gets... numbers heavy (and you have to deal with multiplication and percentages!  Teh horrors).  If you're not running a Supers game and you use Profession Templates, most of that goes away.


HERO is another freeform, point build, generic, universal system, it came out roughly at the same time as GURPS (mid 80s† to GURPS late 70s-early 80s), but it's more geared towards running "action" and "Supers", so the system has a lot less fine detail options and is inherently less gritty (those are options you can 'switch off' in GURPS though, but they don't even exist as options in HERO).


†  It was originally released as Fantasy Hero, a generic fantasy game; then as Champions, a generic superheroes system; then others came out using the same "core heroic system", Danger International, Justice Inc, Star Hero, etc.  By the end of the 80s GURPS "popularity" as a "true generic" system caused the designers to redo the "core heroic system" as HERO, and instead of having a slightly different 'core' system for each 'sub-genre', you can now just pick up HERO‡ and run "anything", but can pick up the genre treatments for NPCs, power's examples, and extra minor rules tweaks.

GURPS literally operates the same way, just grab the two core Basic Set books (Characters and Campaigns) and then whatever genre treatments you want.  Both systems have some landmines though, like HERO can go highly lopsided quick if you don't watch a few key easy to "min-max" abilities and in GURPS it's easy to get lost in the weeds of "building things the hard way" when there is an easier way that might not be immediately obviously (the biggest one is not looking at what an ability actually does and relying solely on the name or fluff description).

‡  Don;t hold me to this, I haven't looked at HERO since the like 98, so... I honestly have no diea what they are doing now and I was never very deeply into the system, but one of the guys in my group back then like to run Champions every so often, it wasn't a bad 'supers' system.  It's not what I'd run, but it wasn't bad.




I'm going to tell you right now, I don't see how you'll be able to mix those game styles into one game where different 'genres' are playing together at once.  Like how would a 'Turn Based' PC and an 'FPS' PC interact?





GURPS has no more 'numbers crunch' than any other system once you're done making characters.  But that's the rub, chargen is the first thing everyone does so it tends to color people's perspective.  But using Professional Templates strongly mitigates that (it's not quite "character classes", but it's character classes for GURPS).

Games that are built around the notion of characters being videogame avatars ought to use rules that are built for that purpose. Something like Save Game (using FATE), on the lighter side of rules crunch, or Splinter (using DicePunk), on the medium side.

FATE abstracts a lot of things, so for an RTS character, you could do things like "Superior battlefield tactician" and "Eye for detail" to describe what the character can do. Same with the FPS character - "Instrument of Destruction" and "Fast as Lightning" would be suitable.

Do look into GURPS Mass Combat rules, though. They're very suitable for commanding units in battle.

I'm concerned that using GURPS for an FPS and a turn-based character would have issues. The two characters would either not be too distinct, or the FPS character would be far more effective than the turn-based character.

I'm not too sure on Move speeds, but I see that DOOM Guy runs at around 55-60 mph, and Master Chief can hit speeds of around 60 mph, though that speed results in a torn Achilles tendon. 60 mph is Move 29 in GURPS. The average starting move is 5 yds/sec in GURPS, so the FPS character would be super fast. Even if the average speed is 30 mph, that's still Move 14. (I'm not 100% on that math.)

Someone did a GURPS DOOM conversion back in the 90s using 3rd edition: http://www.identicalsoftware.com/rpg/gurps/doom.txt. You'd need to convert it, though, like changing Super Running to Enhanced Move (4 levels sounds about right).

Fate (not originally all caps, though that seems to be the accepted way to write it) would work well for this because the traits of the different genres could be Aspects, rather than complex rules that would be difficult to mesh. If something about the genre is a downside in a situation, the player gets a fate point, which then helps power the character when circumstqnces are more on their side. And it encourages players to help each other out by removing obstacles for each other and giving heach other benefits.

Good luck!

Jumping in late here but do you want the PCs to pick up genre-specific powers whenever they enter a world with these different rules? If so, you may want to look at the Cypher System RPG by Monte Cook.

It has a setting (darn it, can't remember name) that is made for PCs to jump into different worlds and dimensions. The characters skills, abilities and even items automatically are adjusted to the new location's 'parameters'. A jet pack in a super-science world becomes magical wings in a fantasy world etc.

THE STRANGE! By Monte Cook Games

^That sounds cool. But I intend to let the players have those genre specific powers the whole game. Just one though, they don't get to change it unless they play a new character.

Thank you for the recommendation of THE STRANGE! though, that looks cool!