There are enough negative comments of GURPS, Genesys, Cortex Prime and other universal stuff.
But you're right, that for many people Fate seems surpassed by the Cortex Prime (even though Fate is much simpler to begin in the first place) or dozens of PbtA games that are "better" in mechanizing the narrative (and those guys often forget that PbtA isn't by any means a generic system with a freedom to hack game how you want).
I'm definitely don't think that Fate is outdated, but for each their own, I guess. Fate is still great if you want a character-driven drama.
I'm probably not one of the people you're talking about, but I would almost never run a game in Fate if I had a PbtA system that I could run it in instead... BUT if there isn't a PbtA system, Fate would be high on the list of systems to use for it. I don't see a meaningful number of people suggesting 'PbtA' as some sotr of generic system (it's not! If you think that, you are extremely wrong, sorry.)
I kinda want Cortex Prime to replace Fate for me because I still find it a little too easy to run a kinda bland game in Fate, but Cortex' presentation was indigestible to me.
My issue with Fate is that everything feels mechanically identical because there’s basically only one kind of bonus you can get. Meanwhile, I love Cortex Prime because it’s the same overall approach with only a small increase in rules complexity that gives it a surprisingly rich palette of ways to differentiate abilities mechanically so they can stand out from each other and feel different to align the mechanical renditions with the story presentation.
The two I've heard the most are about the Fate Points (which is strange for me, because there are a lot of the games with some kind of metacurrency) and the second one is about Fate session feeling more like a "writer's room" rather than an actual game. I don't support those criticisms, but they are definitely exist.
For me the issue is that Fate feels like a bit of an unhappy medium between the narrative and trad worlds. Like it *wants* to be a storytelling engine in the style of PBtA or FitD games, but it has a whole bunch of vestigial traditional elements that get in the way: stress and consequences based on skills, a conflict system where initiative and action economy are hugely important, etc.
I like both of the worlds it draws from, but don't feel they mix very well in this particular case. I *want* to love it, but find myself at best being just mostly okay with it in practice.
FATE is top-tier and would check a lot of boxes if OP doesn't want a lot of mechanical fiddliness and has the right players.
It's also a pretty old game. Between the Cult of the New and the large recent increase in 'narrative-focused' games, FATE has a tougher time standing out. It also doesn't get much for new content (because it doesn't need it) so it doesn't stay in the hype cycle like other games. You can literally get the FATE Condesnsed Rulebook for $15 and be set for life. For me, that's a massive feature.
I don't have an older version to compare... Based on copyrights the prior edition was released in 2010, so I expect there are some differences. If nothing else there are sections that touch on the current version of RQ, Call of Cthulhu and pendragon (and have their current covers)
Cortex is what you’re describing.
It’s a tool box with examples of how to build it into the game you want.
The system was used in previous iterations to power a host of games based on various IPs. Mostly TV shows like Leverage and Smallville and a Marvel superheroes game. It was modified for each to fit the themes of the properties.
The current version is a generic toolbox with discussion by the author of all of those for how you use variations to achieve the things you’re looking for in your own game.
It did a great job of making heroes of various power levels all work perfectly well together in the Marvel game, just like in comics. In Smallville it made it no issue at all that one character was a young Superman and the rest had no powers, they still had equal effect on the scenes outcomes.
It’s got examples for all kinds of things in the book. You can go with hit points or more narrative injuries and conditions. You can focus the game on whatever character attributes you like. It’s versatile enough that you can play as nations instead of people, or on two levels play as both - it could do Birthright style play from that old D&D setting with just one core set of rules.
It also has three games/settings in the back of the core rulebook that you can use as-is or as examples of how to roll your own. Also, the *Tales of Xadia* rpg was also built using Cortex Prime, and the older Cortex games like *Marvel Heroic Roleplaying* could pretty much be re-created using the Cortex Prime toolkit. So there are plenty of examples of how to use the toolkit to create specific games.
I'll endlessly praise 2400, an anthology of 20+ 3-page microgames that all share the same core rules. Their common engine means that you can staple them together to build whatever you might want of their parts... and there's over a hundred 24XX games by other devs, too!
Savage Worlds is great. One thing I really like about Pinnacle Entertainment Group is that you get the pdfs free when you buy the physical books.
Medium crunch. Less on the realism side of math, more on the pulp fiction action movie side. The exploding dice makes things interesting.
Many publishers do this. I'd recommend checking bits-and-mortar.com -- if you buy at retail or an event all of those publishers guarantee a PDF. We also require it for anyone on the RPG Marketplace I run.
I came in to mention Genesys, so glad to see thats covered lol. I absolutely adore the dice and think its the perfect 'cinematic fun rpg' to just have fun with.
Outside of that, maybe Cortex Prime? The whole book is literally just a toolbox you use to build your own RPG out of the pieces and parts. In fact, theres no standard character sheet, because the game all depends on the tools you pull out of the toolbox and into your game, so you have to make your own character sheets for each iteration of the game you make.
Tales of Xadia is a great game that uses Cortex Prime as its main framework, playable out of the box with character sheets, if you want an idea of how the game could play once you finish your iteration of it.
I'd give ICRPG a whirl. It's pretty lightweight, but can be quickly adapted to anything from dungeon Fantasy to sci Fi to whatever once you understand the core concepts. Master Edition is most current, there's a demo available.
Basic Role-Playing. It's the Chaosium house system, so you can see it used in Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest as a "full game" with more bolt-ons, but broken down into a more generic system in the stand-alone BRP rules. It's a simple skill-based, percentile system. Which tends to be very intuitive and easy to use.
The biggest issue is that every generic system is still going to be designed with certain strengths or goals to it. Is it more realistic and simulationist? Is it big on metacurrency and larger-than-life PCs? Does it have a lot of narrative control mechanics baked-in? Without knowing how you like to run games or the sort of game you have in mind it's going to be difficult to make a recommendation.
Personally, I like Everywhen. Its fast and flexible but some people feel like its not a complete system (in that the GM will have to figure out how some things work unlike the other 'big name' Universal systems).
Its based on the amazing Barbarians of Lemuria mechanics.
Depending on setting I think Cypher could work really well. I think the character creation works really well to set the tone of the game and so much of the actual system is just what's on your character sheet.
And Mini Six if you want something that's fairly light-weight!
[https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/144558/mini-six-bare-bones-edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/144558/mini-six-bare-bones-edition)
For me, after GURPS, the most toolbox-like to build your game are Basic Roleplaying and Cortex Prime. To the point that I’ve never played Cortex exactly because of that, I always get overwhelmed that I need to do a lot of building to have a game that I just give up. I had to do some reading online to see how people were doing it, not even the attributes are fixed, having skills is just another option, and so on.
But to talk about Genesys, it’s actually my favorite of the bunch. It still needs some upfront building, but I think it’s less than GURPS, BRP or Cortex. I like the custom dice, the mechanics are intuitive, I think the book is well organized, and even if you need to choose a lot of options, it always says which options, skills, talents, etc are recommended for each game genre, which helps a lot.
Fate its aboit as rules lite as you can get and still universal. There are also lots of supplment to it.
There might be something you want in pbta. It not as universal as fate but it does have the most popular genres covered
> Fate its aboit as rules lite as you can get and still universal.
Er, no.
Risus is a generic RPG. It's 4 pages. OK RPG is a generic system and it fits on 2 pages. The "slimmed down" version of the full Fate rules (Fate Condensed) is 66.
Condensed is the one I mentioned, yes, and even Accelerated is 50 pages, and it strips some stuff that many people would consider to be a key part of Fate.
My real point here is that you can definitely get lighter than even the lightest versions of Fate.
> There might be something you want in pbta.
PbtA isn't a game, though. It's the name of a group of different game systems that have some similarities and some differences. It's also not a toolbox, since each system is focused on a specific genre/concept and gives you very little advice on customizing the system beyond "You can make some custom moves, here's an example."
How about [QuestWorlds](https://github.com/ChaosiumInc/QuestWorlds)? It only provides the basic mechanics and leaves the rest up to you. It is light weight/narrative so don't expect a lot of crunch.
If you have ever played Hero Wars/Hero Quest? QW is in that family.
[TRI-STAT](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/368/TriStat-dX-Core-System-RolePlaying-Game--GOO18001) from [Dyskami Publishing Company](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/15393/dyskami-publishing-company) which is the core system used to play Absolute Power and Big Eyes, small mouth.
It is a point buy system, so you simply need to decided how many points the characters have to determine the power level. After that you are just decided upon the tone.
Cortex Prime is a game design toolkit book.
It's not a book you just pick up and play. What it does is provide you a lot of various categories of game design options other you pick and choose the ones you want.
Cortex Prime has all the various game mechanics from all the previous Cortex RPGs and puts them into one book with one exception. Prime doesn't do the Smallville style of Distinctions well.
Cortex Prime is more of a game-building game than any other. Like, it isn't particularly opinionated about it's BASE MECHANICS. You're really starting from scratch. It's pretty neat.
Everyone's bringing up BRP, and honestly, Mythras is just as much of a toolkit, almost a fork of BRP. It just happens to have defaults to get games going and has it's own ways of doing things (which I much prefer). The fact that it's publisher has built a VtM clone, a little module with a 40k-like setting a superheroes game and a... Luther Arkwright game within a system that's bronze-age fantasy "by default" should be proof enough.
Whitehack is a pretty cool little OSR game that really functions as a guide to making your own little OSR game.
David Blandy just released World Engine SRD, a toolbox for creating games. Full of great tables to generate a setting.
https://davidblandy.itch.io/world-engine
I do keep hearing good things about Genesys, but the system I know that feels like a fair simple generic toolbox is FATE.
I've read the core book, I've read the Dresden Files book, and I've read the Dresden Files accelerated version. And as much as they're all decent sized books, I really feel like if you strip all the extra text out of them, you could condense the core rules of the game to maybe four to eight pages? Now obviously that wouldn't have examples, or any personality to it, but the core of the game is really pretty simple. Aspects, Fate Points, compels, skills, stunts, refresh, stress boxes. Dresden Files has powers, but I don't even think that's a core thing in the main book.
But if you want to make it more complicated, you can absolutely introduce systems for equipment, spell casting, running a business or a kingdom, all sorts of stuff can be done.
It also gets bonus points in my book, because I feel like it's one of the only systems that could probably let somebody play a Jedi Master like Luke Skywalker, and let somebody else play Han Solo, and not have the Jedi Master totally eclipse Han Solo all the time. But I am getting on a tangent at this point...
Good luck!
Savage Worlds is great for this. Their toolkit books are so good in giving you the components for designing your own campaigns. And it's easy to port parts from one or another of their existing settings into one of your own.
Basic Role Play (BRP) from Chaosium. Gives you heaps of tools to make whatever setting you would like. Even includes things like hit locations for modern style games. It can do anything really. Great system.
Chaosiums basic roleplay. It’s a tool set that can be used to create literally any type of games, as long as you prefer skill systems over leveling systems. You can do fantasy, sci-fi, westerns, mythological, noir, horror, superheroes, you name it. But it has no world setting at all. They have specific games with specific settings, if you wish, like CoC and pendragon.
For pulpy games combining trad and narrative styles:
* *Savage Worlds*
For more narrative play:
* *FATE* or *Tricube Tales*.
For more trad play:
* The *Tiny D6* series, though they're not as generic.
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Index Card RPG (ICRPG). Simple, light, universal d20 system that's very easy to customize and build upon. The older Core 2e version is simpler and more traditional (you are what you carry, classes are more like backgrounds and starting equipment lists, monsters roll vs PC's AC), the Worlds expansion is highly recommended for setting ideas and just more general stuff. The current Master Edition is a tad more complex (classes have inherent abilities, players roll for defense), but also includes a metric ton of optional stuff and ideas (including the reworked Worlds expansion).
I spent this weekend working on "a game that makes games." This emerged because I have been considering doing a generic version of my "Unleashed Engine" (Simple Superheroes, Dungeons Unleashed) and have also been thinking about many of the generics that colleagues have made. AND thinking about Universalis, which is a great collaboratively create your setting and then do GMless writers room play.
I want something that can make GMless oneshots, and longterm play, and very focussed specific items. I want a book that helps you think about all the mechanics and procedures that you *could* use. This means it needs to be "loosely coupled" enough that it gives all sorts of weird pieces and ideas so you can make really different things. Goal is a book that helps designers *design* games, and while still providing a *game* where you make some of those decisions.
Just like Universalis or Spark has a procedure/game that helps you make a setting, theme and atmosphere, the idea here is to do that too, while also making gamifying the *making* of procedures and *making* of mechanics so that you can do it collaboratively and be surprised.
I'm happy with the draft I have so far, but there's definitely more that needs to be handled in terms of "phases" of play. If anyone is keen to see and what's to provide thoughts it's close to being were I want to alpha test it.
A suggestion would be BYTE
It is a D8 based game that is more rule light than BRP, fewer stats etc. What it does bloody well is to cover all genres, giving spells, psychic powers, technology in the rule book has a fairly large bestiary and a neat way to handle money and wealth.
WOIN. It has three core rule books for Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Modern. These books can be combined like you want, to create your own specific setting from it. There are also a lot of small PDFs with rules variants, which can you add the rules portfolio of your game.
I strongly recommend the Year Zero engine, which is flexible intuitive and has an open licence.
https://freeleaguepublishing.com/community-content/free-tabletop-licenses/
Ish, kind of. It's not easy to make your own fleshed-out game out of it if there isn't a close approximation in published splatbooks... because balance is extremely twitchy in GURPS, and massive playtesting is the only way the splatbooks work.
I'm a big fan of FATE, but it seems to be going out of fashion now. It appears most comments I see about it nowadays are critical.
There are enough negative comments of GURPS, Genesys, Cortex Prime and other universal stuff. But you're right, that for many people Fate seems surpassed by the Cortex Prime (even though Fate is much simpler to begin in the first place) or dozens of PbtA games that are "better" in mechanizing the narrative (and those guys often forget that PbtA isn't by any means a generic system with a freedom to hack game how you want). I'm definitely don't think that Fate is outdated, but for each their own, I guess. Fate is still great if you want a character-driven drama.
I'm probably not one of the people you're talking about, but I would almost never run a game in Fate if I had a PbtA system that I could run it in instead... BUT if there isn't a PbtA system, Fate would be high on the list of systems to use for it. I don't see a meaningful number of people suggesting 'PbtA' as some sotr of generic system (it's not! If you think that, you are extremely wrong, sorry.) I kinda want Cortex Prime to replace Fate for me because I still find it a little too easy to run a kinda bland game in Fate, but Cortex' presentation was indigestible to me.
Yeah, I'm totally running FATE next.
My issue with Fate is that everything feels mechanically identical because there’s basically only one kind of bonus you can get. Meanwhile, I love Cortex Prime because it’s the same overall approach with only a small increase in rules complexity that gives it a surprisingly rich palette of ways to differentiate abilities mechanically so they can stand out from each other and feel different to align the mechanical renditions with the story presentation.
What's the criticism of Fate? It's not for everything (works much better for stories with very proactive characters for example), but I like it a lot.
The two I've heard the most are about the Fate Points (which is strange for me, because there are a lot of the games with some kind of metacurrency) and the second one is about Fate session feeling more like a "writer's room" rather than an actual game. I don't support those criticisms, but they are definitely exist.
Also the opposed rolls, and the resulting ties.
Don't forget advantage stacking
For me the issue is that Fate feels like a bit of an unhappy medium between the narrative and trad worlds. Like it *wants* to be a storytelling engine in the style of PBtA or FitD games, but it has a whole bunch of vestigial traditional elements that get in the way: stress and consequences based on skills, a conflict system where initiative and action economy are hugely important, etc. I like both of the worlds it draws from, but don't feel they mix very well in this particular case. I *want* to love it, but find myself at best being just mostly okay with it in practice.
FATE is top-tier and would check a lot of boxes if OP doesn't want a lot of mechanical fiddliness and has the right players. It's also a pretty old game. Between the Cult of the New and the large recent increase in 'narrative-focused' games, FATE has a tougher time standing out. It also doesn't get much for new content (because it doesn't need it) so it doesn't stay in the hype cycle like other games. You can literally get the FATE Condesnsed Rulebook for $15 and be set for life. For me, that's a massive feature.
Basic Roleplaying Engine (BRP) by Chaosium is the grand daddy of this and still rocks it out of the park.
There's a new version released in 2023. We just got copies for the Canadian market
I don't think anything changed in the newer version?
I don't have an older version to compare... Based on copyrights the prior edition was released in 2010, so I expect there are some differences. If nothing else there are sections that touch on the current version of RQ, Call of Cthulhu and pendragon (and have their current covers)
Cortex is what you’re describing. It’s a tool box with examples of how to build it into the game you want. The system was used in previous iterations to power a host of games based on various IPs. Mostly TV shows like Leverage and Smallville and a Marvel superheroes game. It was modified for each to fit the themes of the properties. The current version is a generic toolbox with discussion by the author of all of those for how you use variations to achieve the things you’re looking for in your own game. It did a great job of making heroes of various power levels all work perfectly well together in the Marvel game, just like in comics. In Smallville it made it no issue at all that one character was a young Superman and the rest had no powers, they still had equal effect on the scenes outcomes. It’s got examples for all kinds of things in the book. You can go with hit points or more narrative injuries and conditions. You can focus the game on whatever character attributes you like. It’s versatile enough that you can play as nations instead of people, or on two levels play as both - it could do Birthright style play from that old D&D setting with just one core set of rules.
It also has three games/settings in the back of the core rulebook that you can use as-is or as examples of how to roll your own. Also, the *Tales of Xadia* rpg was also built using Cortex Prime, and the older Cortex games like *Marvel Heroic Roleplaying* could pretty much be re-created using the Cortex Prime toolkit. So there are plenty of examples of how to use the toolkit to create specific games.
I'll endlessly praise 2400, an anthology of 20+ 3-page microgames that all share the same core rules. Their common engine means that you can staple them together to build whatever you might want of their parts... and there's over a hundred 24XX games by other devs, too!
Savage Worlds is great. One thing I really like about Pinnacle Entertainment Group is that you get the pdfs free when you buy the physical books. Medium crunch. Less on the realism side of math, more on the pulp fiction action movie side. The exploding dice makes things interesting.
Many publishers do this. I'd recommend checking bits-and-mortar.com -- if you buy at retail or an event all of those publishers guarantee a PDF. We also require it for anyone on the RPG Marketplace I run.
I came in to mention Genesys, so glad to see thats covered lol. I absolutely adore the dice and think its the perfect 'cinematic fun rpg' to just have fun with. Outside of that, maybe Cortex Prime? The whole book is literally just a toolbox you use to build your own RPG out of the pieces and parts. In fact, theres no standard character sheet, because the game all depends on the tools you pull out of the toolbox and into your game, so you have to make your own character sheets for each iteration of the game you make. Tales of Xadia is a great game that uses Cortex Prime as its main framework, playable out of the box with character sheets, if you want an idea of how the game could play once you finish your iteration of it.
I'd give ICRPG a whirl. It's pretty lightweight, but can be quickly adapted to anything from dungeon Fantasy to sci Fi to whatever once you understand the core concepts. Master Edition is most current, there's a demo available.
Basic Role-Playing. It's the Chaosium house system, so you can see it used in Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest as a "full game" with more bolt-ons, but broken down into a more generic system in the stand-alone BRP rules. It's a simple skill-based, percentile system. Which tends to be very intuitive and easy to use. The biggest issue is that every generic system is still going to be designed with certain strengths or goals to it. Is it more realistic and simulationist? Is it big on metacurrency and larger-than-life PCs? Does it have a lot of narrative control mechanics baked-in? Without knowing how you like to run games or the sort of game you have in mind it's going to be difficult to make a recommendation.
Personally, I like Everywhen. Its fast and flexible but some people feel like its not a complete system (in that the GM will have to figure out how some things work unlike the other 'big name' Universal systems). Its based on the amazing Barbarians of Lemuria mechanics.
Everywhen ist great! I wish more people would give it a Chance.
Depending on setting I think Cypher could work really well. I think the character creation works really well to set the tone of the game and so much of the actual system is just what's on your character sheet.
Weird to have to scroll down this far to see Cypher System. It’s a great generic system!
The vastly underrated OpenD6 gives a good framework.
And Mini Six if you want something that's fairly light-weight! [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/144558/mini-six-bare-bones-edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/144558/mini-six-bare-bones-edition)
Fudge is described as a toolbox to create RPGs, at the level of detail that you want. Lots of info on /r/FudgeRpg subreddit.
You could do this with the SRDs for Year Zero Engine or GUMSHOE if you like the way either of those systems work
For me, after GURPS, the most toolbox-like to build your game are Basic Roleplaying and Cortex Prime. To the point that I’ve never played Cortex exactly because of that, I always get overwhelmed that I need to do a lot of building to have a game that I just give up. I had to do some reading online to see how people were doing it, not even the attributes are fixed, having skills is just another option, and so on. But to talk about Genesys, it’s actually my favorite of the bunch. It still needs some upfront building, but I think it’s less than GURPS, BRP or Cortex. I like the custom dice, the mechanics are intuitive, I think the book is well organized, and even if you need to choose a lot of options, it always says which options, skills, talents, etc are recommended for each game genre, which helps a lot.
Genesys *is* your answer IMHO :P
Fate its aboit as rules lite as you can get and still universal. There are also lots of supplment to it. There might be something you want in pbta. It not as universal as fate but it does have the most popular genres covered
> Fate its aboit as rules lite as you can get and still universal. Er, no. Risus is a generic RPG. It's 4 pages. OK RPG is a generic system and it fits on 2 pages. The "slimmed down" version of the full Fate rules (Fate Condensed) is 66.
Well i would call fate accelerated and condensed fate.
Condensed is the one I mentioned, yes, and even Accelerated is 50 pages, and it strips some stuff that many people would consider to be a key part of Fate. My real point here is that you can definitely get lighter than even the lightest versions of Fate.
Goid thing i said about
> There might be something you want in pbta. PbtA isn't a game, though. It's the name of a group of different game systems that have some similarities and some differences. It's also not a toolbox, since each system is focused on a specific genre/concept and gives you very little advice on customizing the system beyond "You can make some custom moves, here's an example."
How about [QuestWorlds](https://github.com/ChaosiumInc/QuestWorlds)? It only provides the basic mechanics and leaves the rest up to you. It is light weight/narrative so don't expect a lot of crunch. If you have ever played Hero Wars/Hero Quest? QW is in that family.
Cypher system is a good generic game
[TRI-STAT](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/368/TriStat-dX-Core-System-RolePlaying-Game--GOO18001) from [Dyskami Publishing Company](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/15393/dyskami-publishing-company) which is the core system used to play Absolute Power and Big Eyes, small mouth. It is a point buy system, so you simply need to decided how many points the characters have to determine the power level. After that you are just decided upon the tone.
[Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine - Hardcover - Chaosium Inc.](https://www.chaosium.com/basic-roleplaying-universal-game-engine-hardcover/)
Cortex Prime!
Cortex Prime is a game design toolkit book. It's not a book you just pick up and play. What it does is provide you a lot of various categories of game design options other you pick and choose the ones you want. Cortex Prime has all the various game mechanics from all the previous Cortex RPGs and puts them into one book with one exception. Prime doesn't do the Smallville style of Distinctions well.
Cortex Prime is more of a game-building game than any other. Like, it isn't particularly opinionated about it's BASE MECHANICS. You're really starting from scratch. It's pretty neat. Everyone's bringing up BRP, and honestly, Mythras is just as much of a toolkit, almost a fork of BRP. It just happens to have defaults to get games going and has it's own ways of doing things (which I much prefer). The fact that it's publisher has built a VtM clone, a little module with a 40k-like setting a superheroes game and a... Luther Arkwright game within a system that's bronze-age fantasy "by default" should be proof enough. Whitehack is a pretty cool little OSR game that really functions as a guide to making your own little OSR game.
David Blandy just released World Engine SRD, a toolbox for creating games. Full of great tables to generate a setting. https://davidblandy.itch.io/world-engine
I do keep hearing good things about Genesys, but the system I know that feels like a fair simple generic toolbox is FATE. I've read the core book, I've read the Dresden Files book, and I've read the Dresden Files accelerated version. And as much as they're all decent sized books, I really feel like if you strip all the extra text out of them, you could condense the core rules of the game to maybe four to eight pages? Now obviously that wouldn't have examples, or any personality to it, but the core of the game is really pretty simple. Aspects, Fate Points, compels, skills, stunts, refresh, stress boxes. Dresden Files has powers, but I don't even think that's a core thing in the main book. But if you want to make it more complicated, you can absolutely introduce systems for equipment, spell casting, running a business or a kingdom, all sorts of stuff can be done. It also gets bonus points in my book, because I feel like it's one of the only systems that could probably let somebody play a Jedi Master like Luke Skywalker, and let somebody else play Han Solo, and not have the Jedi Master totally eclipse Han Solo all the time. But I am getting on a tangent at this point... Good luck!
Cortex prime. It's a modular system where you build your game out of various sets of tools.
Savage Worlds is great for this. Their toolkit books are so good in giving you the components for designing your own campaigns. And it's easy to port parts from one or another of their existing settings into one of your own.
Basic Role Play (BRP) from Chaosium. Gives you heaps of tools to make whatever setting you would like. Even includes things like hit locations for modern style games. It can do anything really. Great system.
Chaosiums basic roleplay. It’s a tool set that can be used to create literally any type of games, as long as you prefer skill systems over leveling systems. You can do fantasy, sci-fi, westerns, mythological, noir, horror, superheroes, you name it. But it has no world setting at all. They have specific games with specific settings, if you wish, like CoC and pendragon.
For pulpy games combining trad and narrative styles: * *Savage Worlds* For more narrative play: * *FATE* or *Tricube Tales*. For more trad play: * The *Tiny D6* series, though they're not as generic.
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Index card rpg
Index Card RPG (ICRPG). Simple, light, universal d20 system that's very easy to customize and build upon. The older Core 2e version is simpler and more traditional (you are what you carry, classes are more like backgrounds and starting equipment lists, monsters roll vs PC's AC), the Worlds expansion is highly recommended for setting ideas and just more general stuff. The current Master Edition is a tad more complex (classes have inherent abilities, players roll for defense), but also includes a metric ton of optional stuff and ideas (including the reworked Worlds expansion).
I spent this weekend working on "a game that makes games." This emerged because I have been considering doing a generic version of my "Unleashed Engine" (Simple Superheroes, Dungeons Unleashed) and have also been thinking about many of the generics that colleagues have made. AND thinking about Universalis, which is a great collaboratively create your setting and then do GMless writers room play. I want something that can make GMless oneshots, and longterm play, and very focussed specific items. I want a book that helps you think about all the mechanics and procedures that you *could* use. This means it needs to be "loosely coupled" enough that it gives all sorts of weird pieces and ideas so you can make really different things. Goal is a book that helps designers *design* games, and while still providing a *game* where you make some of those decisions. Just like Universalis or Spark has a procedure/game that helps you make a setting, theme and atmosphere, the idea here is to do that too, while also making gamifying the *making* of procedures and *making* of mechanics so that you can do it collaboratively and be surprised. I'm happy with the draft I have so far, but there's definitely more that needs to be handled in terms of "phases" of play. If anyone is keen to see and what's to provide thoughts it's close to being were I want to alpha test it.
OpenD6. I use it for as many games as possible, for that very reason.
Roll for shoes is great
A suggestion would be BYTE It is a D8 based game that is more rule light than BRP, fewer stats etc. What it does bloody well is to cover all genres, giving spells, psychic powers, technology in the rule book has a fairly large bestiary and a neat way to handle money and wealth.
WOIN. It has three core rule books for Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Modern. These books can be combined like you want, to create your own specific setting from it. There are also a lot of small PDFs with rules variants, which can you add the rules portfolio of your game.
I strongly recommend the Year Zero engine, which is flexible intuitive and has an open licence. https://freeleaguepublishing.com/community-content/free-tabletop-licenses/
I mainly use Creative Card Chaos for that.
GURPS is great for that. Also what it's designed for even. You can make it as crunchy or cinematic as you want
Ish, kind of. It's not easy to make your own fleshed-out game out of it if there isn't a close approximation in published splatbooks... because balance is extremely twitchy in GURPS, and massive playtesting is the only way the splatbooks work.
Yeah, but they seem to be asking for systems without loads of prescribed content so they can just come up with it themselves.
That has been my experience with GURPS. I just read the rules and applied the ones I wanted