h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey man,
just stumbled across your posting on ask h2g2. Which role-playing systems have you already tried? AD&D? MERP? I can´t really give any advice without knowing which systems you have already tried... So let me know and I´ll see what i can dig up

Cheers

Chili

Hey Chilli
To be honest, the only published system that I have tried is GURPS lite which seems completley anal with loads of tables and things to work out. It seemed too much like hard work. I have yet to actually see a roleplaying game in a shop here in li'l ol' England.

I started off by using the rules from the 'Fabled lands,' one of those book-gaming things. It sort of worked, but didn't really translate to freeform gaming. Since then I have found a few systems on the internet, nameley SAGA, Slug and Opigs (one page gaming system) And cobbled together a knowledge of D&D from various sources. I am familliar with most game mechanics out there, but it is the details like how to handle magic, classes, races and skills that i get stuck on.

What I really want to find is something that is basically simple to play, perhaps at the expense of realism, whilst retaining the features that make each character unique. I also want something comprehensive without all of these seemingly arbitrary numbers like increases in THAC0 in D&D 2nd ed.

Asking a lot I know.

By the way, Is there a difference between D&D and AD&D?

Thank you very much

Duncan !8 ' D

(behold the mark of the hedgehog: ##'> )

You are yet to see a role-playing game in England? Man, I thought this is the country of all my roleplaying dreams when I first got there... Anyway here is a bit of my experience with role playing systems.

I am not sure if there is any big difference between D&D and AD&D as far as the rules go. I played D&D (that was about 10 years ago) for a while, it is quite easy to pick up, involves very little tables but has a complete lack of realism. What disturbs me about it now, is that there are so many add-ons around that it might have been blown up to GURPS size rules.

The next thing I tried was Traveller, more a bit in sci-fi... not bad, a few tables, a bit more realism. But Character and Spaceship creation can be very tedious. As is space-combat between larger space craft. Just imagine that the party could afford a 100 mega ton nuke and fires it... If I remember right then you gotta roll about 140 dice....and look up the result for each one....

MERP, Middle Earth Role Playing. Well it is Tolkien´s world, love it or hate it... And it has heaps of tables, lots and lots of them. There is a small against large enemy, small against very large enemy and so on table... About half of the book is tables.. very realistic though...

And then I found the solution for me. Stormbringer/Elric... very easy system, relying on percentile chances for doing something. So you would have like a 90% longsword skill.. Combat or doing something reuires no tables at all. It is quite realistic though as parries and ripostes can be done and also a single sword blow could be enough to take out the average person. Magic is not done by spells, but by summoning and binding demons, so extensive spells lists are also not needed. The world it comes with is taken from Michael Moorcocks Elric-saga. Don´t know if you read it, but it is a very dark, moody setting with no elves, dwarfes or anything like that. Just humans and sort of elf like beings called Melniboneans (which I definitely would not recommend as player characters)... Anyway have a look at on www.chaosium.com

Hope this helps...

Chili

At last, somebody talkin sense in a world full of big business and too many dice.

Thanks chilli

Dunc ##'>

At last, somebody talkin sense in a world full of big business and too many dice.

Thanks chilli

Dunc ##'>