#RPGaDAY2023 Number 18 Favourite Game System:

Wow - least favourite #TTRPG game system might be clearer for me - I’m looking at you #SLAIndustries - as with many things in life, it’s pretty to look at but deeply flawed and guaranteed to break your heart.

So, what is good in Game Systems? One where you can crush your enemies? See them driven before you? Hear the lamentations of the Players/GM?

Systems are hopefully playtested, and they should work. Most do! Many end up with odd idiosyncrasies due to a collision between probabilities of dice rolls and designer’s intent. How can a system be a favourite of someone? It’s just meant to work, right?

Anyway, let’s get back to SLA Industries - cute world but bad system. It’s about gun combat and one thing it doesn’t do well is gun combat. And they added all these ammunition types! You can fire like 5 different types of bullets from (almost) every gun and they all have different effects and it doesn’t really make sense!! I have no particular interest in guns and would NEVER own one and have fired a few, but as the GM, I decided that I had better learn something about them, their ammunition, and how it affects people and armour and objects and on and on… This is not a good game system.

I needed a shooting system that was flexible enough to add some powers and other cool stuff, so I chose Dream Pod 9’s Silhouette system from their #HeavyGearRPG system. It has sensible armour and weapons and it’s easy enough to modify with different ammo types. It’s not too complex, uses d6’s, and it suited its purpose. I even ran some sessions of Heavy Gear RPG as well, and they have a new edition coming out, which is kinda cool. So, that’s my favourite system. It helped me where others could not; beauty is not everything, sometimes you need to follow your head and choose the one that can make you happy, like many things in life.

P.S. I pulled out the SLA rulebook and took a photo of the ammo table and I was reminded that the rule book fell apart and I had to get it rebound 🙄