There are a lot of great generic (read: setting & genre agnostic) tabletop RPGs out there. Savage Worlds. FATE. Cypher System. Fuzion. Genesys. Open Legend. Tide Breaker. The list goes on. But why aren’t these games dominating the scene? Why have they remained niche, forever runners-up in the hobby? Well, let’s dive into it.
Background
Generic RPGs have existed almost as long as the hobby has, with the earliest being Chaosium’s Basic Role-Playing, released in 1980, and first true generic RPG hit being GURPS in 1989. So there’s a deep history in the hobby. But they never managed to make a splash like more setting or genre focused games like D&D, Pathfinder, Rifts, or Traveller. And the reason, in my opinion, is that they’re often not presented well to the end user. They tend to feel either like a technical manual or a collections of genre mechanics that have been smashed together for the users to sort out. And what made this clear to me was the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide.
Cortex Plus
Back when I was doing the research for the article on Cortex Prime, I got into the history of the system and found that, for a brief period, the previous edition had been huge on DriveThru RPG. It was an early entry into the community content program, and tonnes of people were producing games with it. Not just settings or adventures, but full on games. This struck me as unusual, since generic games don’t usually get that level of love. But Cortex Plus did. And at the time, I had no idea why. Mostly because the game isn’t available anywhere except eBay for exorbitant prices.
That all changes when I, uh, acquired, an electronic copy of the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide. Is it a generic RPG? Yes, with a bias towards TV action/drama style games. But it’s also a how to guide on building your own game using its system. Literally a step by step. The entire presentation was such a departure from what I’m used to in generic games that it left me stunned and I realized why other generic systems struggle.
The Realization
What struck me is that the approach many of us, including myself, have had to generic systems has been preventing them from succeeding. You’re not running your game with the system, you’re building your game with the system. Once that clicked, the floodgates opened. The issue is that to make these systems work, we need to put in the work, and in the past, that was onerous at best. Before the advent of SRDs, to do this meant you were basically on the hook to rewrite massive amounts of content, flag material that was allowed and disallowed, and probably have a literal stack of material (physically or electronically) that the players and you needed to make it all work. For those with the time, money, and dedication? It worked. For the rest of us? Really hit or miss. But now we’re in a new world of possibilities with a lot of systems (2d20, Cypher System, and FATE leap to the front here) offer comprehensive SRDs and often supporting documents that let us build a game.
Building Your Game
Generic RPGs aren;t there to just run a game with. They’re there for you to build your game with. And that’s a big undertaking, even if you’re using an indie system that’s only a few pages to a booklet in size (looking at you Lumen, Breathless and 24XX). It’s understandable that it’s not for everyone, but the results when you match your vision to the right system? Literally can’t be beat. But there’s some things to keep in mind before embarking on this.
Take a hard look at the genre(s) and playstyle you’re looking to have. Not all generic systems are built the same and they all have inherent biases depending on their design intent. So you need to make sure the genre(s), playstyle, and system are complementary.
Go through the material available for the system. If it’s for commercial purposes, pay attention to licences, but if it’s for home, you can draw on more. The point here is to catalogue all the parts of the system that your game is going to use, and how its going to use them.
Create a player facing document. This is the big part that sets this process apart from just creating a setting. Creating a player facing document puts a degree of separation between them and the sometimes literal mountain of content that generic RPGs can generate. It shows them what the mechanics are, character creation, and all the stuff they need to navigate the game.
Create your own guide as the GM. It doesn’t have to be as polished as the player facing material, but it needs to be more than a collection of notes and scribbles. You need to have NPC, opponent, and monster templates, notes on encounter building, and the kinds of quality of life things that will facilitate you actually running the game.
Work on your setting. Now things fall into familiar territory. Build your setting, populate it, map it, and do all the usual things you do for good world building.
That’s a lot…
It is. It really is. There’s no sugar coating it. To get the most out of a generic RPG though, there’s going to be a lot more heavy lifting. More than I previously thought. But the silver lining is that the work is going to be moderated and mitigated HEAVILY by the system you choose. For example, creating a game with Savage Worlds, Genesys, or even Cypher System is going to be a bigger process than 24XX, FATE, or Breathless. So this is one of those instances where even a passing familiarity with multiple systems is going to be a huge benefit to the creator at home.
Final Thoughts
This whole epiphany has me looking at generic RPGs in such a different way now, and it’s a way that can only really exist in the modern hobby. In the 1980s and into the 2000s, there just weren’t options for a lot of systems. Physical copies of everything was the norm. But now? Now it’s so much easier. It’s still going to be a lot of work, again depending on the system selected, but taking the “make a game” approach instead of the “run a game with” approach is one that I think may give generic RPGs a bigger piece of the action in the hobby.
