What are your favorite rpg elements?

[warp9]

To add a bit to my previous response to the following. . . .

For example, they listed Batman's Strength as 5, but Nightwing's strength as 3. Therefore, they are saying Bruce Wayne is 4 times stronger than Dick Grayson. Is that really accurate? Say Dick can lift 200 lbs (I'm pulling this out of my hat), can Bruce really lift 800? Is Bruce a gorilla?

There were other oddities to that even. It was a fun game, but the stats they gave were bizzare.

I was looking in my 2nd Edition DC Heroes Boxed set yesterday, and I did notice that they had managed to change Nightwing's strength to 4 by 2nd edition. So he is only 1 point below Batman.

In terms of lifting, a 2 strength is a lift of 200 lbs. And a 5 STR is a lift of 1,600 lbs. That is pretty high rating for Batman, although they do specifically argue that Batman is stronger than pretty much any other human. I should add that I think 200 lbs is pretty high for an average person.

But it partly depends on how "lift" is defined.

Lifting 200 lbs up over your head is a lot different from dead-lifting 200 lbs (which is very reasonable).

And, along those some lines, getting 1,600 lbs up over your head would be more amazing than doing a dead-lift for that weight: according to wikipedia the world dead-lift record was 1100 lbs, set by Benedikt Magnússon. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlift ) . And if we are willing assume that Batman is on the low end of 5 strength, that might not be all that horrible a result.

[NexusX]

It sounds like specifying clearly what that STR truly identifies would be very important. I totally agree, the dead lift is always much higher than lifting over the head.

Personally, I've never liked such simplistic systems as tracking like you just mentioned, for superhero games. I see that a lot on card games, and maybe it's Ok for a card game, but when I see superhero stats, I really don't want to see such small margins. I also hate those card systems that show a bar of color for fighting ability and Strength, etc. So Hulk's power is a bar 7 marks long and the Thing gets 5 bars, Captain America 2 bars or some other silliness, but I apologize - I realize I just shamefully broke the OP theme here. This is supposed to be about our Favorite rpg elements. Drat! Sorry! Now I have to say something positive ... I think Mutants & Masterminds did some things right.

[Pippa]

I'd go and tell my favourite RPG elements, but I've known myself for a lot longer than today and no matter what I say I like, I'll catch myself fancying something I 'd more likely have listed under 'never ever' sooner or later, and avoid the things I listed under 'yes sir-ee!' because they've been done ten times over.

Yeah I know, call me difficult, but that's how I roll, homies.

[nightwing]

Everyone has an opinion - that is the problem with democracy (said Socrates)

My most favorite element of an RPG is being able to escape real life and put myself in the character. To do this, I require a certain amount of "realism" to make it plausible for my puny mind. Therefore I sometimes favor more complexity. The more details the more I can sink my teeth into it. That being said, too much complexity on how to do a task is a real turn off, because I don't want to constantly look up rules on how to get something done.

[warp9]

My most favorite element of an RPG is being able to escape real life and put myself in the character. To do this, I require a certain amount of "realism" to make it plausible for my puny mind. Therefore I sometimes favor more complexity. The more details the more I can sink my teeth into it. That being said, too much complexity on how to do a task is a real turn off, because I don't want to constantly look up rules on how to get something done.

I agree with the points above, and would add that I can always ignore complexity in a system when it is obviously unnecessary. But it may be harder to go the other direction (it is hard for rules that don't exist, to suddenly pop into existence).

[warp9]

I'll also add that I like flexibility in a game.

This is especially true when I'm playing---as a GM I can pretty much change the rules anyway.


HERO System is great because it lets me build exactly what I want as a player.

I'd say that HERO is, in some ways, more of a language for building characters, in the same way that HTML is a language for building web-pages.

In HERO, it is not how magic, or psionics, or anything else, works in the system, it is how I, as a player, want them to work for my character. I can pretty much simulate the magic/psionics/tech from any movie, book, or game system, or make up my own style of stuff.



That is also one of the reasons I like the Amber RPG. (Although, as a system it is very simple, which makes it different from most of my other favorite systems. )

The base premise of Amber is that there are infinite worlds, and all things exist somewhere in that unlimited infinity.

And almost all the PCs have the ability to travel among these worlds, and find what they desire.

Example: if I want a Star-Wars type world, but where all the jedi are the 8 foot tall blue skinned guys from Avatar, my character can go and find it (or any other type of world he can imagine).

[NexusX]

Game systems that are complex enough and just realistic enough to help me suspend disbelief, but no so complex that I feel the constant need to look up everything would be my sweet spot. Of course this differs for many people, I'm sure. I don't want to have to sort through a wide array of rules and diagrams just to cast a cone of cold - I'd rather use a different form of attack that is easier to mess with. I like not having to figure out where on the body I hit someone (though I don't mind that for ship to ship combat), and I like a game that uses the same die type when you can (D&D would give a DC that uses a d20 and then would say 20% chance in a different area when they could have just used a d20 for both). I like games that don't make me use a calculator for figuring out my latest experience point total. I like a game with a huge setting - not a game system with lots of campaign settings - that's not quite the same thing, though it's better than those games with only 1 world to play on. I also like lots of options - from what world I play on or what genre. I like lots of options for character creation and advancement - not necessarily lots of classes, but lots of options within individual classes. When there are lots of books with different classes and feats, it all gets very muddled to me and loses something. I don't think having endless classes and feats is the answer, but I do like variety.I especially like magic systems with personality and flexibility. I like games that don't get so bogged down in the math and weights and such that I feel like I'm in Math or Science class, but don't ignore those issues either. I like games that let me make up some stuff - like how I want my spell to look when I fling it at the bad guy. I can get all that and more in Cosmothea (well, I can't get all of that yet - I have no superheroes in this latest version yet or completed scifi stuff, but it's coming).

[warp9]

I like a game with a huge setting - not a game system with lots of campaign settings - that's not quite the same thing, though it's better than those games with only 1 world to play on.

It would be interesting to hear a bit more on your take concerning this topic.

Do you mean "one huge setting" in the way that Amber lets the PCs wander around infinity to any world they want to find? Or did you have something else in mind?

I don't think having endless classes and feats is the answer, but I do like variety.

How about game that don't use classes at all?

[buzzxf]

How about game that don't use classes at all?

Well then you have the lists of qualities or traits to choose from. Seeing how most of these games are a bit more cinematic in flavor I suppose some things have to change.

[NexusX]

I like to be able to travel to and explore wherever I want. You will be able to do that in Cosmothea. Obviously we won't be able to go into tons of detail on hundreds of worlds or even dozens of worlds. We will provide information on several and lots of detail on at least 2 initially (1 Xanadu and 1 Udanax), but back to the topic at hand - this sort of versatility is the type of thing that appeals to me. Not that I won't stay on one world and adventure for a long time, but I like the ability to leave, the grander sense of a larger universe and the cohesiveness that is in Cosmothea that I can travel half way across the galaxy and find new cultures, but the same feel of the universe.

The mechanics and way magic and other things may have variations across the galaxy, but there will be a feeling that everything is tied together. That's very cool and I like that. It will be up to GM's to drop in some of their own homebrew worlds as well, and I'm sure they'd be happy to do it. In fact, I might even hold some contests to include a brief overview of certain homebrews in the game itself, but that's getting off topic. Of course I'm trying to make Cosmothea meet my favorite rpg elements, which is why I keep coming back to Cosmothea, but there are elements I like in other games too. It's just that for me anyway, Cosmothea naturally has more of them. I'm hoping many others will feel the same way.

As for having classes, I definitely prefer them (as long as they are pretty versatile and cover my interest areas) for a number of reasons. Classes in Cosmothea are called careers and they are very versatile. I've gotta jam, but I'll post some of the reasons I prefer classes shortly.