I gravitated towards games like Traveller then GURPS because they tended to be crunchier than AD&D.
Traveller was science fiction and reasonably internally consistent; with a huge body of fans poking holes (and patching them as fast as they poked).
GURPS introduced the reality check to the rules. If the rules and reality disagree, go with reality.
The appeal of the reality check really comes from one player.
We were playing Twilight 2000 and I decided that I'd attempt to railroad one player to contrive a scenario where the other players would rescue him.
It required that he be overwhelmed by the opposition by sheer numbers once his rifle had run out of ammo or jammed. He rolled a critical failure and his gun jammed.
Thinking things were going well, I get ready to tell him about his capture... and he says he takes out his other gun.
Did I mention that both his jammed gun and the other gun are M16A2s?
I grumble a bit, but we continue the fight. I have unlimited mooks so I can wait him out on ammo. He gets another jam and again draws a fresh M16A2!
You can't do that, I attempt to rule.
"Show me the rule that says I can't," he replies.
Putting aside the "The GM is always right" Rule Zero... with the rules as written, he's well within the constraints of the encumbrance system (even with the FIVE M16A2s he's packing).
We stopped playing T2K right after that.
I started out in D&D3.5 and Shadowrun, fell in love with GURPS on my first experience with it (3e). In D&D and Shadowrun, I was constantly running into situations where I'd want to something, only for it to be completely not in the rules, or locked behind class/level restrictions despite being fairly straightforward things to do.
ReplyDeleteAlso, very few games I've ever been in actually used the encumbrance rules. Simply wasn't dealt with, in some cases justified but in most not. I was usually the guy with several equipment setups lashed to my pack (giant repeating crossbow, axe and shield, boot knife just because, etc). In Shadowrun I was always the only one with A) a gun capable of suppressing fire (which is itself questionable; if a smartgun system can allow a gun to fire without the trigger being pulled, what's to stop a simple pulse generator program from turning anything semi-auto into full?), and B) the only one to have a holdout gun. I did, however, always make sure that my gear was within the encumbrance rules, even if nobody else was bothering.