WISH- Game Systems (concluded)
A system that doesn't work-

Palladium- (Palladium Fantasy, Heroes Unlimited, RIFTS, Robotech, TMNT and more) My first roleplaying game was Heroes Unlimited. I GMed or played in a Palladium game about once a week all through high school. I ran a Heroes Unlimited campaign that lasted five years. You's think I'd have fond memories of Palladium. I don't. The system has a lot in common with AD&D and other earlier RPGs and suffers many of the same flaws. The rules often don't make any sense, (I won't get started on the rules and spare you the lecture) but the thing I dislike most is character creation and advancement. Palladium is level-based. Instead of constantly learning from his/her day-to-day experiences, he/she doesn't learn anything until he/she reaches the next level when suddenly he/she becomes better at everything, tougher to kill, and learns x more spells! What is the source of this epiphany and why did killing 1d6+1 orcs suddenly cause our trusty wizard to understand the spell "Carpet of Adhesion" while also becoming 1d6 HP tougher and 5% better at swimming? Who knows?

So why did I GM a game for so long that I didn't like? Well, my friends and I didn't know anything about the other games out there (a few players had played AD&D and warned me it was worse which after trying I agreed) and we were having fun. I tinkered with the rules enough to make them stomach-able and focused more on the stories. By the time the Heroes Unlimited game ended it was "mostly diceless" anyway and the rules were more mine that Palladium's. I eventually weened my high school gaming buddies off of Palladium with GURPS and we never looked back. Eventually, we even returned to the world of the "Global Guardians" using Champions and I was a happy GM. We were returning to the game world we spent years building and I was able to GM it in a system that added more to the game than it hindered it. Sure I had to tinker with Champions as well but at least I had a solid base.

Games I would love to play or GM based on reading the book:

Nobilis- (No suprise here.) In my opinion, it is a much, much better diceless system than Amber.

Stormbringer- If you know me or have payed close attention to my blog the last couple of weeks, this shouldn't be much of a suprise either. Character creation is simple enough and the system doesn't seem overly complex or simplistic. I just got a copy of the newest version of the rulebook and the Corum supplement. (Corum is another Michael Moorcock fantasy series.) The new edition seems to have improved a lot on the old editions.

D&D Third Edition It's still level-based but it seems to have improved in a lot of other ways. I think it would be a lot of fun as a simple hack-n-slash, orc-bashing dungeon crawl game like the old Heroquest boardgame and would be a good chance for me to get more use out all these fantasy miniatures I've been buying. Still, for "serious roleplaying" I would look elsewhere. To quote my friend Neil, "D&D makes an excellent video game but I wouldn't use it as a roleplaying game."

A game I would never want to play in again:

The Morrow Project- The most rules intensive game I have ever played. A neat setting, but the system actually has charts to see wether you die instantly from getting punched in the face. (There is after all, a one in a million chance....) The Morrow Project goes in to more detail on the types of wounds a character can get than any RPG ever should. "Let me see....you rolled a 46.....that's a sucking chest wound with a 40% chance of instant heart failure from the shock.....you didn't make it! Lucky dog. If you had made it you would have lived for 2d6 more minutes in excruciating pain."