Conspiracies! RPGs and The List That Was Thursday

Another post pulled out of the archives as I prep for Origins. I've been thinking about this for several reasons. First, conspiracies and secret societies seem all the rage in superhero stuff from Agents of Shield to "Hydra Cap" to Apocalypse to Civil War. Second, the sheer volume of real world conspiracy thinking bleeding through in the election. Third, and most importantly, I've been mulling over spy games. In particular how to do something spy-based with PbtA or Fate. I'm running an Assassin's Creed-esque portal right now which edges into that. But I'd like to do something more modern, especially after reading Demon: the Descent. I could break down and buy the Dracula Dossier, but I'd still have to rework the system. In any case, I've been thinking about the tropes and activities in spy games and how players interact with conspiracies. 

As before I'm leaving this "reprint" post from 2011 intact and relatively unedited. 

Begin Transmission

This week I pulled together a list of rpg material focused on Conspiracies, Covert Societies, Plots, Plans, Hidden Powers, and Secret History. This honors Ken Hite's Suppressed Transmission, a set of columns which beg to be reprinted (or at the very least released electronically). For the list I chose items where The Conspiracy sits at the heart of the game’s theme-- or in the case of supplements, where that item provides a toolbox of machinations. I'm sure there’s some off (feel free to add to the list!).

The list itself can be found here: Conspiracies,Secret Societies & Plots in RPGs

But you know evil is an exact science

Being carefully correctly wrong

Shriekback, Nemesis

Title Classified

Conspiracies ooze cool for GMs, and they’ve changed over time as a theme in rpgs. That’s most visible if you look at how X-Files impacted and infected the kinds of games published. Those concepts obviously appeared earlier than that, however. How conspiracies have appeared in popular culture would be worth tracking. In Victoriana and Pulp material conspiracies end up headed by a diabolical genius, who really stands for the whole (Fu Manchu, Moriarty, John Sunlight). Did the cultural and political shifts in the mid-20th Century influence the wider-ranging, more ideological and stranger conspiratorial fiction of The Crying of Lot 49 and the Illuminatus Trilogy? How did that lead to the endgame for all conspiracy fiction, Foucault's Pendulum? And how, after Eco creates the ultimate commentary and takedown of conspiratorial thinking, do we end up with Dan Brown's writing about exactly the same things and being taken seriously? Can we trace the same kind of arc in films? From Dr. Mabuse to The Man Who Knew Too Much to The Parallax View to Capricorn One to They Live to National Treasure? How about for comics: originally more pulpy approaches to villain groups (Hydra, AIM, Secret Society of Supervillains) in turn produced The Invisibles, Global Frequency and Planetary.

Conspiracies continue to have an impact. Three examples today from my rss feed. They plan to make a Men in Black III film, but have been held up at the writing stage. EB Games finally released some new footage for their upcoming MMORPG The Secret World which has you play as members of rival conspiracies in a modern supernatural setting. Finally in honor of The Adjustment Bureau, i09 has a comprehensive list of all the conspiracies hiding "reality" from the general populace. The question is can we make the things which make conspiracy cool in those mediums work at the tabletop?

Revisionist Secret History

I do love conspiracy and secret history- I was in middle school when I read the Illuminatus Trilogy. At the same time I loved the political machinations and secrets of things like Zelazny (Nine Princes; Lord of Light), LaCarre (Tinker, Tailor; The Secret Pilgrim) and Lovecraft. I have a fairly high tolerance level for revisionist history and weirdness. However, one game line managed to wear away that tolerance and actually make me really hesitant about that stuff. I’m talking about of course, Vampire: the Masquerade and by extension all of the other World of Darkness lines. The first couple of times I read some background material which integrated Vampires with the 'real world' history, I thought it was an interesting approach and a novelty. However very quickly that became irritating: everything had some kind of supernatural source behind it, mostly Vampires. Every really cool, creative or important person in history either was or owed their success to a supernatural. It devalued general achievement, and in some cases had a kind of colonial feel- crediting the "superior" persons. In some cases the rewriting of history bordered on the offensive.

And I think that can actually point us to something about running games with conspiracies, the risk of fatigue. If everything ties back to the conspiracy, players can get burnt out looking for the logical conclusion. If everything's a cover-up, everyone’s in on it and nothings is what it seems, the players end up with no real basis for action. As a player, some of the most irritating moments I’ve had in games have been the "...and this is what was really happening!" GM boast sessions, especially after we’ve hit a brick wall. GMs (and game designers) need to carefully chose their alternate history and curtain-pull backs. That revelation should be a surprise.

Sidebar: Obligatory Warning

As another danger, I think it is worth thinking about the flip side of things: not the actual conspiracies, but the thinking about conspiracies. Made up stories about groups and ideas have for centuries been used as weapons. Conspiratorial thinking can arise out of a variety of mindsets, especially paranoid or fascist thinking. In this day and age, there's a scary sharp edge to these fictions- or non fictions. And people can get tied up in a knot thinking about this. Ironically, a history of conspiracy theories and their dangers I read ended up in the last chapters actually promoting their own conspiracy theories about certain groups. I think its worth keeping in mind the power of these kinds of stories when we start to use them at the table- something we may treat as laughable, others may not find so unbelievable. But, I suspect, the distance of games provides some insulation from these problems.

The Sign of the Three

You can break Conspiracy games three types: Hidden Masters, Behind the Curtain, and Secret Handshake. In a Hidden Masters game, the PCs begin with no real knowledge of the "conspiracy." They become involved through the investigation of a mystery or some strange coincidence or accident. Perhaps they have been used as a pawn and discarded. Keep in mind The Conspiracy, and I’m using the term in a generic sense, can be small (a clique trying to control an apartment board; a group trying to seize ideological control of a university department) or large (the plots of COBRA or the Illuminati) and may be mundane (steal money) or weird (alien invasion). 

Over the course of the adventure, the players uncover the 'truth' and probably decide to fight against or ally with the conspiracy. This can be the work of an episode, an arc or a campaign. There may be multiple conspiracies or multiple levels, with the players digging deeper and deeper with each level showing something new...but let’s be real for a moment. GM’s have to be careful about their spider web of conspiracies. Overcomplication of the story and plot, even if that’s the point of the story, can be a serious killer at the game table. Robin Laws’ in Hamlet's Hit Points makes a trenchant observation about the difficulty of the rpg media: in other story forms players can refer back or have an additional visual set of cues. There’s also a tighter time span typically for the experience. In rpgs, players can get lost in the maze of details (and not in a good way). If only a portion of the group becomes engaged in this complexity, it can divide the group . If that happens, then as the mystery progresses, only certain players will keep up with the ideas. This can work if the mystery’s not at the heart of the game, but if it is the central feature you can count on irritated (and therefore random) players.

The entry point is key in this kind of campaign. One version has players called to what seems like a normal investigation, but one which reveals some broader situation (Hello Fringe!). I like the idea of people being thrust accidentally into things. Here the investigation comes front and center- as in Call of Cthulhu. On the other hand players might find themselves thrust directly into the path of the conspiracy- something like The Prisoner or even Lost. In either case, the GM has to develop a reasonable "excuse" for the game. How is it that the players, over anyone else, manage to put the pieces together? That "excuse" becomes more important the larger and more far-ranging the conspiracy becomes. Most conspiracy games operate as a mystery. Mysteries suggest the ability for the players to solve and logic it out, therefore they require a degree of consistency despite their strangeness. Playing the "It Was Magic!" or "Because They’re Crazy!" card constantly will make players shy away from any kind of thinking about possible solutions.

Before I Kill You, {INSERT NAME HERE}...

And sometimes, players think too much about those solutions. I love my wife dearly, and she’s my favorite player at the table. However when it comes to some things I see as "in genre," she has a more hard-nosed and practical approach. I cringe when, during the villain’s plot revelation, she goes "Wait, seriously? That seems incredibly inefficient. Why would you do that?" (In literature I believe this is formally described as the WTF moment). Sometimes when the players investigate or brainstorm, she’ll say it can’t be X because that doesn’t make sense. And she’ll point out some other reasons why. If I’m lucky, she’s right and has eliminated a possibility correctly. If I’m unlucky, she’s found a flaw in my plotting and now I have to rethink things. I’ll admit to occasionally smiling and nodding when she asks about these things...and then desperately scrambling in my head to create a rationalization or a clue to put things back on track. 

Conspiracies, by nature of their span, secrecy and complexity, are particularly vulnerable to these kinds of GM problems. They require care. Some of them can be justified through genre considerations- in a superhero game, plots have a greater leeway in terms of overcomplexity and stupidity. But in games which implicitly take place in the real world, you don’t want it to feel more artificial and forced. Someone forwarded to me a comment about one of DC’s big event comics, "Essentially this book is fighting, posturing, melodramatic speeches, some torture, leading up to an elaborate plan by Mom, now calling herself Queen Shrike, to get herself back to Earth. I don’t know, it all seems overly complicated and contrived to me." I don’t know if I agree with that assessment, but it does illustrate one possible reaction on your players' parts to overconspiritization*.

Rug Pulling 101

Another common danger facing GMs is the impulse to create vast and overwhelming adversaries. The inclination is to have the conspiracy snatch victory away at the last minute. After all, they have the resources to cover things up, make people disappear, or discredit any revelation. That can be a nice device used sparingly, but the bottom line at the table is that players need to win. I don't mean always win, but they need victories. That'sa point I visited in another post. A GM has to balance downbeats with upbeats (for more discussion of this see Hamlet's Hit Points). 

The problem's at the root of the 'cool' of the conspiracy and secret society trope- but the GM has to make a contract with the players about how that's handled. Mind you the terms of victory may be small. Consider The Prisoner where the protagonist wins by surviving and making small changes in his environment. X-Files stands for me as an example where the delayed pay-off and continual successes of the bad guys wore me out. Even when the alien conspiracy seemed revealed, the big showdown happened without the protagonists' intervention. Consider how players, more immediately connected and less a viewer in the situation would feel after four or five seasons of getting nowhere. Its why I like Fringe- they take the best elements of the "Big Plot" and keep moving them forward.

The Truth- Revealed!

The other two kinds of campaign frames start with the players in the know. In a "Behind the Curtain" conspiracy campaign, the players know definitively that the conspiracy exists. They're fighting against these secret societies or trying to stop their plots. Esoterrorists, some Call of Cthulhu and Hidden Invasion all begin this way. Players often have some kind of organization supporting them, but may also be independent. This kind of campaign requires the GM to establish a key detail: why can't the conspiracy simply be exposed? Is it a question of evidence? Is the matter too fantastic to be believed? Would the revelation cause panic? Would exposure set off some kind of danger? 

To take the Esoterrorists as an example: the enemy here gains power from increasing paranoia and fear-- by bringing people into contact with the other side. Exposing them might have some benefit, but at the same time would lend them great power. The show Earth: Final Conflict (or was it Dark Skies?), IIRC, kept the threat that if the enemy actually uncovered how much the protagonists knew, the aliens would set their brutal plans in motion. Feng Shui has the "powers that be" involved, meaning that there's no good means to expose it and no benefit from doing so. The GM should consider how much that logic will shift during the course of a campaign, and how will the players react to it. Some players can become frustrated by these kinds of restrictions, especially if they don't "buy in" to the genre.

Become the Mastermind

One way to invest the players in this can be to take that "Behind the Curtain" structure one step further, to what I call the Secret Handshake approach. In this version, players have become active members of the conspiracy. Conspiracy X, Discordia and some versions of GURPS Cabal take this approach. Typically this gives the players access to information and also additional resources. For example ConX has the "pulling strings" feature where players can access contacts, equipment and talents from their previous work. Men in Black's probably the prime example of players on the inside. Once players get in there they have to deal with a whole set of new issues: bureaucracy, conflicting agendas, recruiting, and battling other groups on top of carrying out the "mission." But most importantly, they also have to maintain the secrecy which creates a whole set of conflicting issues. If players don't have access to mental powers or a "flashy thingy" then how do they handle leaks? With ultimate sanction? A game which evolves or moves through these levels can be interesting; the last season of Angel, for example, played this out. Its also worth mentioning an rpg which flips this on its head: Covenants.

Last Thoughts

OK, I'm trying to keep myself from going too much past 2K words. I'd be curious about others' experiences with conspiracies in games: for bad or good. I've had them work well and I've had them end up falling flat on their collective secret faces.

*Not a word

Mean Streets: RPG Cities

I'm posting some of my favorite archive pieces for the next few weeks as I prep for Origins. I'll be running Games on Demand sessions at least Thursday and Saturday night, so please stop by to say hi if you're at the convention. I wrote this post on cities almost exactly four years ago. In the time since, I've written a few other pieces thinking about cities and rpgs.

• Three times we've used a variation on Microscope to build a city for a campaign. Grey Reign, Abashan, and Askelion.
• I've put together some geeklists collecting city sourcebooks of various kinds: Inexorable Cities: City Sourcebooks for Fantasy RPGs, Iniquitous Cities: City Sourcebooks for Historical and Modern Settings, Infinite Cities: City Sourcebooks for Sci-Fi, Near Future and Post-Apocalyptic Games, and Incomplete Cities: Sourcebooks for City Building. Plus my overview post.
• A few city sourcebook reviews: Umbar, City of Lies, Otosan Uchi, Second City, Kaiin Players Guide, Warhammer City.
• Cities of Steel: Superhero Urban Sourcebooks and Superhero Metroplexual: We Built this City on 250 Points

Outside of that I'm leaving the post intact hoping it will spark some ideas.

NOW LEAVING THE CITY
I've finally finished my reviews of Flying Buffalo’s Citybook series (spoiler: Citybook VI: Up Town's my favorite.). Going through reminded me how much good play material I’d gotten from those books. In the end that's my scale for a product's success- how well it informs or assists actual play at the table. In the case of the Citybooks, the best led to great adventures. Those entries shared several characteristics: interesting NPCs; a small twist; a basic premise shifted in a novel way; and several suggestions for different directions to take the material. With that in mind I have a few more thoughts on the series as a whole and on urban sourcebooks.

MAKE MINE GENERIC
I’ve had a love/hate relationship with generic RPG sourcebooks, especially for fantasy games. In the early days companies put out waves of alternate, additional, or variant products. Most of these boiled down to house rules, homemade monsters, and overly complicated new systems for niche areas (i.e. The Compleat Alchemist). Even when they presented world and setting material, it lack flavor or filled out with random tables. I ended up burned by too many early Judges Guild products. As a result I ended up avoiding many good product lines, for example Mayfair’s Role Aids line.

Instead I bought materials from particular settings and worked to adapt those (the Gazetteers, Warhammer Fantasy, MERP, Shadow World, Hârn). And by adapt I mean steal and rework anything interesting. Those books had distinct character, but at the cost of requiring serious conversion. I suspect my continual move away from detailed system mechanics over the years has come at least in part from my not caring about the details in those books. They got in the way- I wanted the premises, cultures, plots, puzzles, and characters from them. Most of the time that didn’t require knowing the stat blocks; monsters I could make up. I didn’t need the crunch of their write ups.

COLLAGE, MOSAIC, REMIX
I believe anything can be adapted- I based a fantasy campaign on Masks of Nyarlathotep and ran The Enemy Within using GURPS. Some materials, obviously, offer more hurdles than others. Different settings and systems have vastly different assumptions. Consider the ultra-low magic and brutality of combat in Hârn. I loved some that setting's details, especially the various fighting chapters of the war gods Agrik and Larani. I crammed that into a corner of my campaign world where I was already using ideas from the high mythic of Runequest and Glorantha. I’m still trying to patch and bandage that particular combination. Sometimes the assumptions arise from the presentation. Anything from ICE (for Rolemaster or MERP) tended to crazy overpower when you examined the stats. Magic items, high sorcery, and cosmic-level demons rules the supplements. For RM so much ended up represented abstractly, with numbers everywhere. There are no interesting traps or locks- they’re defined only in terms of numbers to disarm, difficulty to spot, and effects dealt. I love RM for the neat maps and cool treasure, but so much of it is useless, except for the rare setting that brings something new to the table (Gethæna: Underearth Emer).

Ironically the strength of these items lies in their specificity. Those constraints give rise to more interesting concepts IMHO than most totally generic supplements offer. That may be why I appreciate the Citybooks so much. They have limits in theme and scope which makes the entries interesting. They also give the ideas enough space to grow, making them more generally adaptable. That’s one of the huge flaws in Citybook VII- valuing quantity over quality and depth. I haven’t yet written up my reviews of the generic products Eureka and Masks, but they share some of those problems. Other generic books take a broader, almost meta-approach. I don’t need to know the population of a city broken down into hundreds of categories. I don’t need to know all of the shops. I do want a map of the city, but I don’t want/need to know what every business is. I want to be able to paint a rich picture of the place with the minimum of brushstrokes and effort.

I want to be the Bob Ross of gamemastering.

CITIES ON THE LOST HORIZION
While I like Citybook I, I really love the later volumes with strong themes. Most of these strike the right balance between focusing the material and offering ideas open enough for most games. I think more Citybooks could be produced. Certainly we’ve seen many new urban sourcebooks over the years (for example products on this list Incomplete Cities: Sourcebooks for City Building). Maybe it could be done without the “Citybook” name- perhaps as web or Kickstarter project. I still think there’s a need for strong generic projects that don’t feel generic. I’ve gotten so much excellent use out of the CB materials, I’d love to see more.

My suggestions for additional volumes:

Citybook VIII: Hub of Industry: Sourcebook focusing on the manufacturing and industrial parts of the city, bordering on steampunk in its execution (workhouses, mudlarks, the Vats, the Plant, robotics factory). These kinds of themes have grown since the CB series came out. You could consider waste disposal systems, mad scientist supplies, social welfare in the city, perhaps the Calculational Engine underground.

Citybook IX: Ivory Towers: This would contain establishments dedicated to teaching and training of all kinds. You’d begin with entries dedicated to different kinds of classic academies (Universities, Schoolhouses, Magic Colleges, Religious Schools). Next you’d have narrower and more specialized kinds of training (Thiefly Schools, Duelist Training, Hidden necromancy, Underground Medical Training, etc.). Finally you’d cover all of the secondary establishments serving those schools (Professional Plagiarists, Magical Cram Tutors, Secret Libraries, Youth Hostels, and so on). These kinds of academies are a staple of fantasy fiction, from Harry Potter to The Name of the Wind to Rats and Gargoyles.

Citybook X: Distant Places: This would be a more broadly conceptual sourcebook. Each section of the book would focus on unique establishments for different regions (desert cities, arctic cities, mountain cities, jungle cities, flying cities, etc). You would pick a couple as the most common and then have a catch-all section. Perhaps the last grouping could include high magic cities, those filled with wonder. Or you could have one covering cities catering to adventurers, the "dungeon entrance" city. These lie outside of major ruins and serve those who plumb the depths (Pavis, Parlainth, Lesserton & Mor). These would have unique establishments to aid explorers (trap smiths, map makers, item diviners, artifact counterfeiters).

Citybook XI: Otherlands: Sourcebook split into sections, each covering establishments from the cities of different races: Orcs/Goblins, Elves, Dwarves, Haflings, misc. This might be too narrow an approach- or at least it wouldn’t be useful to all GMs. It would require the editor to be really careful. Entries would have to straddle the line between being specific to that culture and also adaptable elsewhere.

CONFESSION
For the most part, the Citybook series works for me. I want ideas and plots I can easily use and reuse across a variety of games. On the other hand, I also understand gamers who need to have all of the details and mechanics laid out. The citybooks have maps for nearly every establishment, offering specifics of the layout. But honestly in the two decades+ I’ve been using these books I have never referred to or used the maps. Never.

TOMORROW’S CITIES?
One question has been nagging at me while I’ve done this review series: could you do Citybook-style material for another genre? On the one hand, it ought to be possible. You ought to be able to create the same kinds of businesses for a Supers, Horror, Modern, or Sci-Fi game. More easily you could do that for narrower genres like Wild West, Steampunk, or Cyberpunk. On the other hand, my gut tells me that wouldn’t work. You need hooks into the actual premises of the specific game. Delta Green is very different from Buffy the Vampire Slayer despite both being horror. Ashen Stars and Diaspora are vastly different sci-fi beasts. Urban entries for one probably wouldn’t work for the other. There’s also the question of how characters interact with the urban backdrop in the different settings.

I don’t know and I need to think about what other genre Citybooks would look like. The excellent Damnation City offers a possible approach. Though it is pretty deeply steeped in Vampire, it has useful material and entries not unlike those of the CB at the back. Creating Citybooks for a particular line or setting would be easier- for example, I’d love a CB-style urban sourcebook for Changeling the Lost…

CITYBOOKS IN REVIEW

Citybook I: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker

Citybook II: Port o' Call

Citybook III: Deadly Nightside
Citybook IV: On the Road
Citybook V: Sideshow
Citybook VI: Up Town

Citybook VII: King's River Bridge

History of Universal RPGs (Part Two: 1994-1997)

YOU GOT YOUR DINOSAURS IN MY SPY STORY

This cartoon sums up the universal vs. specific argument. 

Do I believe that’s true? Will a generic system always be weaker than a dedicated one? I hesitate because that slides into the battleground of “Does System Matter?”. That’s a conflict I’ve been in before. I think different games make it easier or harder to get what you want out of them. That can come from the system, writing, or even presentation. I think what you want at the table shapes this even more. 

For example, I have a couple of JRPGs I love despite how terrible they are: Cross Edge and Chaos Wars. They’re crossover videogames, blending characters from various publishers in one place. The more recent Project X Zone does the same thing, but combines characters across games and genres (Phoenix Wright, MegaMan, Tekken, and Sakura Wars). I’m a sucker for that kind of thing. I remember my excitement when DC & Marvel released X-Men vs. Teen Titans in the ‘80s and the Amalgam line in the ‘90’s. I bought these for nostalgia and What If-tude. I love mash ups and multi-dimensional hodge-podges. 

Or rather I love them in theory. In practice they’re not that good. They’re working for too many bosses and lack focus. They offer a weird compromise. But I think that’s not the point. There’s another goal here beyond excellence. I like just like the concept those characters together. Just like I approve of the idea that we could port rpg characters from one game to another. Or more importantly that we could seamlessly port rpg players from one game to another. We have other goals beyond excellence with Universal RPGs. I’ll come back to that next time

I have a Patreon for this project. If you like it, consider becoming a backer or resharing these lists to spread the word.

TWO GREAT GENRES THAT DON'T WORK TOGETHER

I only include core books here. I’m also only listing books with a physical edition. I might include an electronic release if they’re notable and of significant size. At the end you’ll see some miscellaneous entries, covering borderline or similar cases. Some selections came down to a judgement call. I’m sure I missed some releases. This is a fertile time for Universal rpgs; the rate of publication drops off after this. If you spot something Universal which came out from 1994 to 1997, leave a note in the comments. 

History of Universal RPGs (Part One: 1978-1993)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Two: 1994-1997)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Three: 1998-2004)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Four: 2005-2007)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Five: 2008-2009)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Six: 2010-2011)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs

History of Steampunk & Victoriana RPGs

History of Superhero RPGs

History of Horror RPGs

History of Wild West RPGs

Samurai RPGs

1. Fudge (1994)

I am not a clever man. I only realized today that "Fudge" can mean to obscure or devise a substitute. That’s more likely the reference the title's going for than a confectionery-based one. Which is what I thought. For years.

Fudge first appeared in 1992, but didn't see a physical edition until '94 so I placed it here. That's a rule I'll break later in this list. Fudge offered a unique and light but robust system GMs could adapt to settings. It is the ancestor of Fate and the originator of the Fudge dice (with +, -, and blank sides). You can find much of Fate's DNA here: the trait levels, skill stacks, margins of success, and an overall simple approach. Some things differ, like Fate's use of aspects, elemental stunt system, handling of damage, and lack of attributes. Fudge originally stood for Freeform Universal Do-It-Yourself Gaming Experience. Like Fate's acronym that dropped away in time.

Fudge offers a toolkit, a simple resolution system GMs can adapt in many different ways. Rather than a core engine with small notes for options, Fudge embraces variant rules throughout. The first edition provided the basics necessary to play and create new modules. That was followed by short printed and electronic supplements adding new options. Probably the most notable use of Fudge has been as the basis for the The Deryni Adventure Game. The Fudge 10th Anniversary Edition offers the most definitive take on the system, including a simple out-of-the-box version ("Five Point Fudge"), Fantasy Fudge, magic mechanics, superhero rules, equipment systems, and martial arts options. It’s a solid book and worth picking up. Homebrew designers and Fate gamers might find useful material there as well.

2. Masterbook (1994)

West End Games always had a strange stable of games. Star Wars gave them mainstream access and cred, but they paired that with strange and wonderful games like TORG, Paranoia, and Shatterzone. Masterbook followed Alternity's path, a smallish core book followed by larger setting books. Rather than use the d6 mechanics from Star Wars (which they'd turn to eventually), Masterbook followed TORG’s mechanics: d10 resolution but with card-based modifications (called the MasterDeck here). The game seems caught between aiming for a lighter, more accessible approach and the desire for complete mechanics. That's a struggle we'll see throughout these generic systems. Masterbook tried to split the difference but didn't succeed.

I skipped Masterbook when arrived amidst a glut of sourcebooks. I'd looked at TORG, but its gonzo craziness felt like a weird stepchild of Rifts. As a result, I didn't even realize the game used cards until much later. Ironic given that we gravitated to a card-based system for our own homebrew. But it would be the licenses West End Games selected that really kept me from trying Masterbook.

It isn't that they didn't have some good ones. Or a good one: The World of Indiana Jones. The rest left me cold: The World of Necroscope (1995), The World of Aden (1996), The World of Species (1995), The World of Tales from the Crypt (1996), and The World of Tank Girl (1995). I'd heard of all of them save Aden. As for the rest, I can safely say they weren't things that made me say: “Wow, I need to play a game in this setting.” Not at all. Precis Intermedia currently has the rights to Masterbook and they've re-released that as well as Shatterzone.

3. Via Prudensiae (1994)

A Danish rpg. According to RPG Geek the designers aimed it for use with convention scenarios. The 126-page core book includes setting material for a fantasy and cyberpunk world as well as scenarios. It uses multiple dice combined with a point-buy system. Via Prudensiae also used a tick-based initiative system (like Exalted 2e or Feng Shui). The combat system takes up about a third of the book, suggesting serious crunch. If youread Danish you can check out the back cover which likely has more  info. On the other hand, if you know rpgs and Danish you probably know this game.

4. CORPS (1995)

BTRC has been one of the overlooked workhorse rpg publishers. It gets only passing mention in Designers & Dragons despite three decades+ of publications. Beginning with 1983's Timelords, the company has built a catalog of lines and developed several core systems. Greg Porter continually releases the games he wants to have out there. They usually haven't been on my wavelength or taken the world by storm, but they've included interesting products like Macho Women with Guns, WarpWorld, and Guns! Guns! Guns!. The latter's how I first found their products. In high school any weapon & equipment book seemed awesome with a capital AWE (The Palladium Book of Contemporary Weapons, The Armory Volume One, Q Manual). I came from a liberal, gunless family, but I thought all of that stuff was sweeeeet. That's not my headspace now. Anyway…

CORPS is actually the second edition of the game. Originally it had a world action and espionage setting. This volume took the core system and made it universal. The name stands for Complete Omniversal Role-Playing System. CORPS uses a point buy system, with separate points given for buying the six attributes and buying the many skills (and sub-skills). There's an interesting mechanic which translates attributes into a lower aptitude rating. You buy associated skills starting from the aptitude level as a base, effectively offering a discount. Tasks have a difficulty. You only roll if the difficulty is higher than your skill. In that case you roll a d10, trying roll below (11-(2*the difficulty difference).

Overall, CORPS feels mechanical and crunchy to me, even more than GURPS. I'm not sure why that is. More than anything else it reminds me of Aftermath. CORPS has a host of numbers and modifiers, appealing to those who want simulationist play. The core book has a ton of options in it, but it isn’t that long or dense. Yet a GM picking this up would need some heavy reference charts to keep things straight. In 2002, BTRC introduced another universal system EABA. At that point CORPS dropped out as the company shifted everything over to that.

5. Goblin World (1995)

It seems to me that maybe, just maybe if you create a universal rpg, you don’t give it a name (and a cover) that makes me assume it’s a weird fantasy indie game of goblinoid life. Because that’s not what this is. Instead Goblin World’s a set of universal LARP rules, which “spans across cultures and technology from Aztec to high-tech.” The book offers basic rules and information for handling different genres. Goblin World also has costuming and prop ideas and guidance. Beyond that, I have no clue. I know that it was spiral bound, always a mark of quality in rpgs.

6. MAGIUS (1995)

aka Multiple Assignable Game Interface for Universal System. MAGIUS is Japanese rpg, which I've seen described both as universal and aimed at fantasy. The system was used as the basis for various manga and anime adaptations (not unlike BESM). These include The Slayers, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Saber Marionette J, and Tenchi Miyo. On RPGGeek a user mentions that while MAGIUS looked like a lighter version of GURPS, "the different modules of MAGIUS weren't inter-compatible. What you used was just the MAGIUS start book and one module of your selection. So it wasn't a system that you could gradually expand with each module. In fact, it was the supplements that were the main book, the start book was just an extra. Once you knew the basic rules of the start book, you could actually do well with just a supplement." Here's the Japanese wikipedia page for more information.

7. Storyboard (1995)

I'm not sure which game first used descriptive phrases in place of stats and numbers. Some, like Fudge, hybridized that. Others like Storyboard shifted to diceless resolution and negotiation. It’s the only game from Magus Creative and a slim 32-page universal system. At first I assumed Storyboard had flared briefly and burned out, like other heartbreaker efforts. But Magus Creative still has a web presence. At their page you can order copies. They also offers services for role-play gamers: character consultation, world development, game systems/instructions, custom game accessories, and game running. I'm unsure if that's still operation; the last date on the site's 2007.

8. The D6 System (1996)

Here's West End Games yanking the steering wheel in the other direction. As Masterbook started landing in discount bins, WEG shifted back to the popular d6 system- still the basis of their most successful line, Star Wars. In fact the materials for Indiana Jones had stats for both systems. Newer licenses moved exclusively to d6: Men in Black, Hercules & Xena, the Metabarons, and DC Universe. Weirdly it would be several years before WEG truly embraced this as a generic system. In 2004 they finally produced genre books including d6 Space, d6 Fantasy, and d6 Adventure.

d6 is one of my gaming blindspots. I understood the basics, and appreciated how well it sold in the store. But I can definitively establish what kept me away from it: the fans. I still remember the screaming match in the back game room between two enormous Star Wars d6 enthusiasts. The topic?

Who would win in a fight: Boba Fett or Darth Vader.

Red-faced, yelling, close to tears.

In any case, d6 has stood the test of time. It has a dedicated fanbase, especially those players who came into gaming via Star Wars or one of its other iterations. It has an approachable simplicity. Assign 18 dice to attributes and seven dice to skills. Dice have a series of steps so you can have 1D, 1D+1, 1D+2, and then 2D. On paper it seems a little wonky to calculate on the fly, but I bet it becomes second nature. Players resolve tests by rolling those dice against a target number, with one of the dice potentially exploding (on a 6) or causing a fumble (on a 1). The d6 system presented in this corebook tacks on a few other universal elements: history, quirks, fate points, and advantages & disadvantages. Other systems like magic and psionics are lumped together as supernatural powers here and expanded in sourcebooks. The corebook's decent and complete, but held back by weird page frames and uneven art.

9. Fantasy Workshop (1996)

Another Danish rpg, though the RPG Geek entry suggests it came out in both Danish and English. It's an odd presentation, only 40 pages and square. It appears to be a freeform, diceless game and the only product from these designers. The generic name for this generic game works against me. I wasn't able to track down more info, but I'll keep hunting.

10. Infinite Domains (1996)

I'm sometimes struck  by the ambition of these early universal systems. Infinite Domains, a single corebook with vaporware expansions, clocks in at only 110 pages. It jumped into a crowded marketplace, with a generic cover reflecting the generic system. It went for random stat generation, as opposed to the general point-buy trend. Players chose careers which affected their skills which they then purchased with points. It used an action resolution chart and contained a decent magic system. Beyond that I've found little about this game. A positive review on the Noble Knight site shows that at least a few gamers dug it.

11. La regola del gioco (1996)

aka "The Rule of the Game." An Italian system for covering any setting, but through the lens of movies. Players define their characters via adjectives. Players and the GM define the limits of abilities at the start. That then becomes the framework everyone has to play within. The diceless resolution comes through conversation. A small game, 32-pages saddle-stapled. Here's an Italian review of the game. 

12. Big Eyes, Small Mouth (1997)

MAGIUS looks like the first universal "anime" rpg, but Big Eyes, Small Mouth's the first I encountered. I debated including these games. I've excluded a few rpgs offering universal mechanics combined with a setting or narrowed space for play. I don't think that's true for Big Eyes, Small Mouth. It has an anime & manga feel, and definitely tilts that direction. Instead of locking down the story, it simply expresses a style (unlike Everway or Lords of Creation).

BESM uses point-buy and three base stats, hence the name Tri-Stat system. Body, Mind, and Soul are rated from 1 to 12, everything else is covered by attributes which can be normal or special. Players buy levels in those. A skill system compliments this- with variable rank costs depending on the genre. Like Hero System BESM includes the ability to modify powers, shifting their costs or gaining back build points. By the time it reached a third edition this had become pretty elaborate. In the second edition, character creation and abilities take up almost the first two hundred pages of a 289 page book. The actual resolution mechanics are simple: 2d6 plus relevant values against a target number.

BESM did well, spawning supplements, many covering anime mainstays (like Big Robots, Cool Starships and Cold Hands, Dark Hearts). Guardians of Order also used BESM as the basis for several licensed games and sourcebooks. These first arrived as full games (The Sailor Moon Roleplaying Game and Dominion Tank Police). Later they shifted to "Ultimate Fan Guides" for things like Hellsing and The Slayers. GOO also bit hard at the d20 apple, producing d20 versions of BESM in several forms. The Third Edition of BESM arrived just before the company started heading down a sketchy road (problems with payment, potentially ripping off George R.R. Martin). That's too bad since it’s a solid game especially in that edition.

13. Fuzion (1997)

Fuzion began its life as a purely electronic product. When this came out I hadn’t heard of games being created and developed on the internet. We'd had fan material come out of forums and alt.rec groups, but it wasn’t a publisher tool. Fudge began online, but Fuzion embraced that approach. Of our group, Barry, who had run Interlock and Hero System, avidly followed the development. Fuzion supported an active webring, using that for design and playtesting. Eventually Barry convinced the group to try it out, since they’d played the two “parent” games. They hated it. While Fuzion might have been solid, it didn't satisfy players who’d enjoyed Cyberpunk and Champions.

I wasn't in that play group. When I tried to read the rules, the dense and weird layout put me off. Fuzion split strangely between player build and random generation. You worked through an elaborate die-roll generated lifepath for character creation. Then you had to buy characteristics. Ten of them, unless the referee tweaked the game and removed some. But some of those stats generated the five fixed and six optional derived characteristics. So if you made changes you had to consider the downstream effect.

The rules suggest GM’s will adjust and modify those tables. So the they're caught between an unsatisfying default and spending time reworking the mechanics. That's unsatisfying for a game that pushes fast turnaround and ease of getting to the table. Fuzion, like Fudge, is more toolkit than out of the box rpg. Fudge works because of its inherent simplicity. Fuzion isn't simple; it has a ton of working parts. Plus it doesn't have the transitive game logic of Fate Core or even Hero System.

But people dug Fuzion and it had legs. On the back of the 2002 softcover, R Talsorian cited Cyberpunk, Dragon Ball Z, Sengoku, Shards of the Storm, Lightspeed, and Heresy as games built on Fuzion. Plus there was the weird and poorly received Champions: New Millennium. Beyond that you could find a host of fan-made settings and genre sourcebooks online. Fuzion boomed in the late 90's but died down as R Talsorian went into stand by mode and Hero Games shifted back to Hero-only projects. Gold Rush Games and a few others would keep the system alive for a little while with Victoriana, Artesia, Guardian Universe, Cybergeneration, and a few other games.

14. Sherpa (1997)

Another universal game from the designer of Fudge, Steffan O'Sullivan. It's a slim volume with a diceless resolution system: a stopwatch. Sherpa’s designed to be played by groups on the go: hiking, riding on a plane, by the vacation pool. Character sheets fit on a business card. The back cover notes that "Sherpa is a freeform game for experienced RPG gamemasters only. (Novice players are fine.) The GM will need to make many judgement calls while playing- if you're not used to that, you may wish to read FUDGE...for hints on running such a game." Sherpa is universal by virtue of being so loose and has an interesting hook. I've seen situational and environment-based games in the Game Chef contests. I’m also reminded of Moe Tousignant’s fun 24-Hour RPG A Fantasy Trip, which uses a trip-based "I Spy" mechanic.

15. Soothsayer (1997)

Coming from Australia, Soothsayer only released a Player's Guide, one adventure, and a character sheet/reference pack. It has a striking cover featuring a dragon chasing a car with an urban cityscape behind it. Soothsayer uses multiple d10s, but sometimes d12s and d20s to mix things up. It calls itself a Narrative Adventure Gaming System, but I'm unsure if that's just a fancy way of saying rpg. You get options across the board, from fantasy to sci-fi gaming. The publisher blurb excitedly proclaims the game’s large numbers of skills (140) and psionic disciplines (120). Claims to awesome by volume always amuse me. The few forum comment reviews I've seen indicate Soothsayer has a decent general idea and excellent art, but the poor execution, bad writing, and general incompleteness killed it.

The back cover does have one of my favorite blurbs: "Soothsayer's explicit, fast paced combat system makes for plenty of danger and excitement. Whether it's unarmed, melee or ballistic combat, Soothsayer ensures you will get sweaty."

Okaaaaaay.

16. Tinker's Damn (1997)

Another anime-skinned universal rpg, complete with sexy cat-girl rules-clarifying mascots. What does the title, Tinker's Damn, have to do with the game? I have no clue. Perhaps it’s meant to reflect the oddness of manga titling? In any case it uses a stat plus skill approach, with points divided among those. Tinker’s skill list 32 options is odd, moving from highly general (Style and Knowledge) to weirdly specific (Cooking and Guerrilla Warfare). It offers many options, calling itself a "flexible" gaming system. Yet the mechanics seem to only support weirdly hodge-podge paratech settings. It covers Magic, Computer Hacking, and Cyborgs. But it doesn’t talk about how to adapt the game to various genres. Tinker’s Damn comes with three super-sketchy settings "Hod Rod Apocalypse," "Allied Patrol," and "Warbird Unlimited." These consist of a few pages of background followed by a larger number of highly detailed NPC sheets. The whole thing comes off as uneven and underdeveloped. The character sheet's done as a hand-written page torn from a three-ring binder, complete with coffee stain. Why? Once again, I have no clue. For an uncomplimentary video review, check out this.

17. Miscellaneous: Universal Adjacent RPGs

Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth (1994): Maybe not a universal rpg, so much as an rpg about building a universe. Players take the role of multiple characters tracing stories of a setting over generations and centuries. It’s an interesting concept which could make a fun indie game today; Microscope Explorer feels like the closest modern parallel. But Aria presents a dense, terminology-filled, slog. I had high hopes when I bought it years ago but it defeated me every time I read it. I don’t use the term pretentious for games often, but Aria borders on that.

Everway Visionary Roleplaying (1995): A diceless game with card-based resolution and artwork-inspired character creation. Everway feels like a labor of love, but didn’t get much traction. It came out from WotC at the height of collectible card game madness. Disappointed card-players thought they might be getting the Magic: the Gathering rpg. CCG-hating roleplayers steered clear. Everyway’s system is open enough to handle many settings and realities. But it isn’t universal- instead there a core conceit that the players running Spherewalkers travelling from world to world and a central “city” location (ala Planescape, Sig, or Cynosure).

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History of Universal RPGs (Part One: 1978-1993)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Two: 1994-1997)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Three: 1998-2004)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Four: 2005-2007)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Five: 2008-2009)

History of Universal RPGs (Part Six: 2010-2011)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs

History of Steampunk & Victoriana RPGs

History of Superhero RPGs

History of Horror RPGs

History of Wild West RPGs

Samurai RPGs