This is a combination post and announcement, as POCGamer moves forward with its first themed year! That’s right, there’s going to be a theme to a lot of the posts this year! And that theme? Generic RPGs. Read on to find out more!
So, for years, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of the Generic RPG. The idea that, right off the hop, I can have a system that is built to support different genres in an equal manner has been the sort of thing that I dig. Why? Because right from the get go, my formative experiences in the RPG world were across genres. I could try to list all the games here, but suffice to say there were a lot of systems and a lot of games played in a lot of genres. Which could be fatiguing, so when I encountered Generic RPGs for the first time, I was excited. GURPS was a bit of a damp squib (and will not be covered this year), but Big Eye Small Mouth and its development, TriStat dX? That was a winner.
So over the last year or so, and thanks to the support from my great readers and fans, I was able to afford the largest RPG purchase I’ve done in a long time. And this year is going to see coverage of (but necessarily in this order) Genesys, FATE (Core, Condensed, and Accelerated), Open Legend, Cortex (of Into the Mother Lands fame), and Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. Suffice to say, I have an alarming amount of reading to do this year.
Why all these Generic RPGs? Aren’t they all Generic? Well, that’s the trick. Over the years, I’ve found that “generic” is kind of a moving target, and that there’s a number of factors that need to be explored about each game in terms of what they do, how they do it, and how that can affect the sorts of games that you’re going to be able to play and how the stories in those games develop. A world and game played in a FATE environment is going to be very different from one in Cortex or Savage Worlds.
So there it is! This is going to be a challenge to do, but I’m looking forward to it and both the posts and videos that it’s going to generate. So keep your eyes peeled for this deep dive into the world of Generic RPGs!
Sorry to hear you didn’t like GURPS, but glad to hear you tried it and found some you like to play.