The Inside Scoop on Gaming

After discovering Oroborus on the web and liking it, I decided to check out some of the other highly regarded free core RPG rules available online. Since it comes from two well-known companies and seems to have the highest profile of any of the web-based RPGs, I thought it made sense to look at Fuzion next.

How could R. Talsorian Games and Hero Games pool their resources and talents and produce a game this unrelentingly bad? Fuzion has the unique honor of having left me shaking my head in disbelief at the broken mechanics while I ground my teeth in irritation at the offensively bad concepts which lie at the very base of the game.

Here are just a few examples:

The first thing a game presents to the reader is usually a good sign of what the game is all about. The first thing you encounter in Fuzion is the 'lifepath', a set of more than a dozen random tables which you can roll on to generate your character's personality. Admittedly, they do offer the option of picking items from the tables, but the intent here is very clear. No need to think up an interesting character, just roll a few times or pick a random assortment of traits and you can have a character without thinking about it. The traits are what's important here, not the character. Being able to list some odd quirks on your character sheet is what passes for roleplaying here, rather than any exercise of imagination or creativity. I suppose this may be a reaction against games like AD&D which make no effort to encourage players to think about their characters, but substituting random cliches for random stats isn't really a solution.

Character building isn't so bad. You assign points, derive a few secondary characteristics, and then move on to buy skills and powers. But thrown into the system is the option of 'Complications'. The target audience for the game is made clear here when the authors write:

"One way to get more Option Points when creating a character is to take on a few Complications-social, mental, physical, or emotional situations/problems "

This is the old, failed idea of disadvantages, dragged back from the ash-heap of bad design. Like Champions, Fuzion again encourages players to trade off elements of character personality to get more points. And their intent is clear, the don't just say that Complications make a character more interesting, they present them primarily as a way to get more points. This is more than just a bribe to encourage more diverse characters, it's a way to sacrifice the meaningless (character integrity) for the real prize of the game (power). Fuzion is a game made for the power gaming munchkin and it knows it.

Flawed ideas aren't the only problem. Unworkable mechanics are prominently featured in Fuzion as well.

The power system is extraordinarily detailed. You have to admire the sheer number and variety of powers the designers have managed to assemble. As source material for a superhero campaign, this is great stuff. But then it gets complicated. Every single power is a system unto itself. It has its own rules, its own way of working, and there is no system, no logic and no coherence. Nothing works like anything else, and while the powers seem to be relatively balanced, all the complexity and redundancy make it the kind of system that only a power gamer with a calculator could love.

Then there's the skill system. It doesn't work. The first problem is that skill level advancement is radically curved. Each skill level costs its numerical value in points. So to get 5 levels of skill will cost 15 points and the 6th level will cost 6 points, the 7th will cost 7, etc. A skill curve is a good idea, and this is a practical way to implement one, but the severity of the curve in Fuzion is a serious problem. Typically characteristics will average around 4 points. It only costs 5 points to add 1 to a characteristic. This is significant, because skills are resolved through adding the appropriate characteristic and skill together with a die roll to beat an opponent or a set value. Once you get 4 levels of skill it becomes cheaper to increase characteristics rather than skills, plus those characteristics apply to multiple skills, so increasing them is even more valuable.

Basically, there's not much reason to ever get more than 3 or 4 levels of a skill, which renders skills almost meaningless. This becomes even worse in a high-power campaign, where starting characteristics will be higher, to the point where even without spending points to increase them they outweigh skills by more than double the effective value.

Next there is a problem inherent in all stat+roll comparative systems. The system tops-out. A point can be reached very quickly where it is virtually impossible for a character to fail any kind of normal skill roll even under very adverse circumstances. In addition, when making comparative rolls disparity between ability can easily exceed the range of the dice rolled, with the result that in combat one character who isn't numerically all that much more powerful than another will always win. This kind of system can become very discouraging, and the more powerful the campaign the worse this problem becomes.

Did I mention combat? I'm not attracted to a system which offers huge numbers of arbitrary modifiers based on tactics, specific moves, characteristics and situations in addition to skills. Just trying to figure out what you're doing in combat and what its effects are takes longer than resolving an entire combat in most other games. I like the idea of choice, but this hodge-podge of redundant systems isn't the answer.

One interesting aspect of Fuzion is that it tries to address many different levels of power by going into a lot of detail on how to adjust points, difficulties and availability of certain types of ability. This is potentially valuable, but also adds to the overall complexity of the system and puts a lot of responsibility on the gamemaster in preparing for play.

Fuzion comes out of a very popular tradition. Champions is one of the most successful RPGs ever and retains a lot of its popularity even today. When it was new Champions offered some great, innovative ideas, especially in the area of giving players a lot of control over character development, but it did this at the price of complexity and a loss of playability. Fuzion has preserved the problems of Champions and even magnified them, while making character development a mechanistic process of lists and dice, devoid of creativity or meaning.

The Champions legacy could have grown into something better than this. They could have preserved the good ideas, stripped away the needless complexity, and come up with a flexible, cohesive system. Why they chose to go in the opposite direction may be explained by a desire to please their already established audience, but there's not much here for anyone else.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Fuzion
Author: Not Clear Category: game Company/Publisher: Hero Games - R. Talsorian Games Cost: Free Capsule Review by Alan Masefield on 12/13/98. Genre tags: Generic	After discovering Oroborus on the web and liking it, I decided to check out some of the other highly regarded free core RPG rules available online. Since it comes from two well-known companies and seems to have the highest profile of any of the web-based RPGs, I thought it made sense to look at Fuzion next. How could R. Talsorian Games and Hero Games pool their resources and talents and produce a game this unrelentingly bad? Fuzion has the unique honor of having left me shaking my head in disbelief at the broken mechanics while I ground my teeth in irritation at the offensively bad concepts which lie at the very base of the game. Here are just a few examples: The first thing a game presents to the reader is usually a good sign of what the game is all about. The first thing you encounter in Fuzion is the 'lifepath', a set of more than a dozen random tables which you can roll on to generate your character's personality. Admittedly, they do offer the option of picking items from the tables, but the intent here is very clear. No need to think up an interesting character, just roll a few times or pick a random assortment of traits and you can have a character without thinking about it. The traits are what's important here, not the character. Being able to list some odd quirks on your character sheet is what passes for roleplaying here, rather than any exercise of imagination or creativity. I suppose this may be a reaction against games like AD&D which make no effort to encourage players to think about their characters, but substituting random cliches for random stats isn't really a solution. Character building isn't so bad. You assign points, derive a few secondary characteristics, and then move on to buy skills and powers. But thrown into the system is the option of 'Complications'. The target audience for the game is made clear here when the authors write: "One way to get more Option Points when creating a character is to take on a few Complications-social, mental, physical, or emotional situations/problems " This is the old, failed idea of disadvantages, dragged back from the ash-heap of bad design. Like Champions, Fuzion again encourages players to trade off elements of character personality to get more points. And their intent is clear, the don't just say that Complications make a character more interesting, they present them primarily as a way to get more points. This is more than just a bribe to encourage more diverse characters, it's a way to sacrifice the meaningless (character integrity) for the real prize of the game (power). Fuzion is a game made for the power gaming munchkin and it knows it. Flawed ideas aren't the only problem. Unworkable mechanics are prominently featured in Fuzion as well. The power system is extraordinarily detailed. You have to admire the sheer number and variety of powers the designers have managed to assemble. As source material for a superhero campaign, this is great stuff. But then it gets complicated. Every single power is a system unto itself. It has its own rules, its own way of working, and there is no system, no logic and no coherence. Nothing works like anything else, and while the powers seem to be relatively balanced, all the complexity and redundancy make it the kind of system that only a power gamer with a calculator could love. Then there's the skill system. It doesn't work. The first problem is that skill level advancement is radically curved. Each skill level costs its numerical value in points. So to get 5 levels of skill will cost 15 points and the 6th level will cost 6 points, the 7th will cost 7, etc. A skill curve is a good idea, and this is a practical way to implement one, but the severity of the curve in Fuzion is a serious problem. Typically characteristics will average around 4 points. It only costs 5 points to add 1 to a characteristic. This is significant, because skills are resolved through adding the appropriate characteristic and skill together with a die roll to beat an opponent or a set value. Once you get 4 levels of skill it becomes cheaper to increase characteristics rather than skills, plus those characteristics apply to multiple skills, so increasing them is even more valuable. Basically, there's not much reason to ever get more than 3 or 4 levels of a skill, which renders skills almost meaningless. This becomes even worse in a high-power campaign, where starting characteristics will be higher, to the point where even without spending points to increase them they outweigh skills by more than double the effective value. Next there is a problem inherent in all stat+roll comparative systems. The system tops-out. A point can be reached very quickly where it is virtually impossible for a character to fail any kind of normal skill roll even under very adverse circumstances. In addition, when making comparative rolls disparity between ability can easily exceed the range of the dice rolled, with the result that in combat one character who isn't numerically all that much more powerful than another will always win. This kind of system can become very discouraging, and the more powerful the campaign the worse this problem becomes. Did I mention combat? I'm not attracted to a system which offers huge numbers of arbitrary modifiers based on tactics, specific moves, characteristics and situations in addition to skills. Just trying to figure out what you're doing in combat and what its effects are takes longer than resolving an entire combat in most other games. I like the idea of choice, but this hodge-podge of redundant systems isn't the answer. One interesting aspect of Fuzion is that it tries to address many different levels of power by going into a lot of detail on how to adjust points, difficulties and availability of certain types of ability. This is potentially valuable, but also adds to the overall complexity of the system and puts a lot of responsibility on the gamemaster in preparing for play. Fuzion comes out of a very popular tradition. Champions is one of the most successful RPGs ever and retains a lot of its popularity even today. When it was new Champions offered some great, innovative ideas, especially in the area of giving players a lot of control over character development, but it did this at the price of complexity and a loss of playability. Fuzion has preserved the problems of Champions and even magnified them, while making character development a mechanistic process of lists and dice, devoid of creativity or meaning. The Champions legacy could have grown into something better than this. They could have preserved the good ideas, stripped away the needless complexity, and come up with a flexible, cohesive system. Why they chose to go in the opposite direction may be explained by a desire to please their already established audience, but there's not much here for anyone else. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 2 (Sparse)