Well, the die is cast. I have just posted 3 adds for some of the “Big Guns” of my RPG collection (Warmachine, Savage Worlds, 13th Age), all bargains (for the buyers), if a bit of a wrench to part with, but the reality is, if I play any RPG’s any time soon, it will be limited and need to fall inside my “happiness zone”.

What is my RPG “happiness zone”?

D100 games in their various forms, represent for me low preciousness, highly flexible and easy to learn/teach systems all running off one core idea, all with largely transferrable mechanics. They are also some of my favourite legacy games and capture the right feel for me (which is not high gloss, mechanically restrictive systems).

I have decided to stick with this single family of systems because they can handle either directly or indirectly any period I have an interest in, or can be applied to others through easy to employ generic rules, cherry picking from any other sympathetic game as needed. Hear a great idea. Do I need to buy a game to suit or do I use my veritable mine of information to sift through to do my own?

This has been coming for some time.

With little time to invest in a variety of games, the only real course of action that is left to me is to adopt one, the one I feel does RPG’s the way I like, allowing me to spend my time designing, writing, playing with that core rules mechanic, modified as needed. I believe all I need from any system is a consistent and realistic foundation to build my gaming on, so lets put that to the test*.

The beauty of this course of action is that I can very easily increase or decrease the difficulty, depth and crunch factor simply by switching which versions of the same I use**. If I want to introduce new players to a lite fantasy game, then Bare Bones Fantasy is ideal. Want more a little later, move on to Magic World, bringing any liked ideas from BBF. If later you want a high detail, deeply immersive, more serious heroic game with maximum crunch, then use the Legend or Mythras systems.

The players can become part of an escalating RPG experience without ever having to learn a totally different gaming system. It is even possible to take dice rolling conventions from one for another.

Wuxia is to me a perfect balance of an immersive world and game mechanics at an introductory level while the soon to be released Destined for Mythras is hopefully going to be a good example of crunch applied to the right genre.

Fear of system boredom comes to mind, but to be honest, if just the mechanics define the game, then you are probably not doing it right. I have been down the other road, where clever mechanics become the game over good role playing and it is a worse road to take. Invisible, logical, simple mechanics are the key.

Within these umbrella systems are a plethora of periods and themes to explore, with more to dig up and new stuff coming. The reality is, anything added to any one of these is a boost to all, which is good as I have succumbed and ordered the Lyonesse, Worlds United and After The Vampire Wars books for Mythras and Frontier Space and Wuxia from DwD. Lyonesse in particular is interesting because it is the original source of the (Jack) Vancian magic system that D&D uses and is credited with being one of the main inspirations for the original RPG fantasy games and The Game of Thrones books.

My only two real “ringers” are the Mouse Guard RPG, which I will not part with for a variety of reasons and the two Warhammer editions, which while D100, are not strictly compatible with the larger family. There are a few other bits hanging around that I cannot be bothered parting with, or have little real value.

So, in summation, is it possible to just game and ignore the mechanical variety on offer? Do a variety of game mechanics keep things fresh, or do they simply distract bored gamers from otherwise bad game structure? Do you only need to concentrate on story and companionship for a good game with the simplest mechanics to do the heavy haulage?

We will see.

*Possible periods of interest, all directly catered for are;

Early 20thc to WW2. Pulp adventure/horror, Renaissance-Pirate horror/weird science, high magic fantasy, low magic historical/fantasy, dark ages historical/fantasy/horror, dark and gritty fantasy, Samurai historical/fantasy, western historical/supernatural, victorian era alternative/horror, modern spec ops/supernatural, supers (street level), hard sci fi, space opera sci fi, far future sci fi/fantasy. Added to this are periods I had not even considered like Worlds United, that add mechanisms and thematic options.

**The single most used line when describing these is “if you have played “X”, then you will be familiar with “Y”.