I have made a choice regarding my role playing future and it feels right. To be completely honest, this is a struggle I have been dealing with for a while now. A fait de comple if you will, the one true path (with some side roads).
The games I first clicked with in the early years of the hobby were various d100 systems (Call Of Cthulhu, Elf Quest, Hawkmoon etc). They made sense, seemed completely intuitive and logical to play and housed so many memories of good games had.
These days, they cover every genre and play style possible and are eminently flexible and hackable, relying on the simplest mechanical concepts and common sense. It is telling that decades later, the core concepts have not changed, but they have evolved. As importantly, they still retain much of the “old school” feel that I like no matter what edition they are.
I doubt I will apply any of them as written, because as much as I like the general concept of the mechanics, I rarely like the specifics of their application game to game, but here is the cool part. I can play any of them with my own preferred dice rolling system, basically the best of each and do no harm.
Is that all I will have?
Confession time.
There will be other systems held onto including 13th Age, Mouse Guard, The One Ring/AIME, Iron Kingdoms and a few rare outliers like Traveller, DC Heroes etc, but only because I have them and cannot part with them (yet). It’s nice to have options, but all of my limited time and energies will be channelled into d100 games, because with one basic system learned, a very teachable and logical system, I can play almost any genre conceivable, even convert one like The One Ring fairly seamlessly, because not only is it flexible, it’s logical.
This wholistic approach could be done with a few other systems (Savage Worlds, Hero System, Cypher, Fate), but my d100 collection is sizeable and for the reasons cited above, my favourite, so this is the one.
With the imminent release of Mythras Destined and my intention to pick up Openquest 3e, I feel the loop is nearly closed. I have multiple styles of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, pulp, historical, alternative and generic games at hand, with many more accessible if needed and plenty of slow, but relentless growth in the future.