What system would work best for having races that behave so mechanically different they are unrecognizable to eachother?
Example would be like:
>humans level up
>mutants level up slower but learn inate magic abilities
>robots don't level up and stats are reflected by current equipment
>monsters don't level up or get equipment, but eating meat of other monsters can transform them into another monster
Early D&D frames everything in terms of "classification" for this reason.
Stellar Adventures. Humans and aliens use xp, robots use money and if you're feeling really Hispanicy you can throw in demons who have that whole essence thing going on.
I miss the feel of the older SaGa games, I had so many hours burnt on the game boy releases.
Mine. You can even have different list of attributes between each races.
>Mine. You can even have different list of attributes between each races.
Sounds cool. You finished your system? Put it up as a PDF somewhere?
I, too, played that gameboy game who's name escapes me, and its leveling up system WAS sick.
I'm not sure why you replaced humans with robots and made humans mutants lite, though.
Because that's what the second game did.
there was a SECOND one?
This is suddenly rather high priority, excuse me.
There are 3 on the gameboy, though SaGa III plays more like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (Mystic Quest Legend for you Europoors).
There was also a really good SNES trilogy but none of them have a playable translation patches so you need to have passable understanding of moonrunes and a lot of patience to play them.
Once you hit the PS1 series, the games change so much as to be unrecognizable.
SaGa Frontier had IIRC the mechanics in OP, and also made one of the characters a transforming hero. His hero form was more powerful, but in order to maintain his secret identity he couldn't transform with other characters in the party (unless they were unable to see him due to being KO'd/blinded/etc.); defeating enemies in hero form also didn't grant XP.
Yes, well stuff that works in a video game doesn't always carry over to a pen and paper game
Something race-as-class, I guess. I've had a similar idea for homebrewing.
Slightly different character advancement isn't "so mechanically different they are unrecognizable".
I wouldn't call that 'so mechanically different they are unrecognizable' especially to the extent you probably wouldn't have to bend most systems very far to implement.
It does bring to mind games like:
Eclipse Phase: some characters will refuse technology while other's are shooting their brainwaves at the speed of light across the galaxy, transferring their mind into new statblocks or changing their nature and body with psychosurgery or exotic bodies
A lot of sci fi games have hackers, mechanics and everyone else playing different games that frequently struggle to interact
In nWoD mage, there are branches of mechanics almost entirely uninteractive outside of their respective domains, so you have goetia and astral worlds (who interact with Mind magic), made up of thought and mind, ghosts and the twilight (interacting with death magic), the spirits and the shadow realm (interacting with spirit magic) and prime essence and supernal realms (interacting with prime magic, the metamagic domain)
When I thing mechanically different to the point of unrecognizable I think one race rolls dice, one spends poker chips to make true statements about the story that they get back whenever they witness happiness, one just has a single stat, one uses a deck of cards instead of dice etc
that sounds like a pain in the ass to keep track of for no real benefit beyond pretending to be unique.
In the SaGa games I think the idea was to emphasise that all the characters have their own lives and concerns rather than there being a single protagonist and their followers. Since one of the gimmicks of the series is that you choose which member of the cast to play as, and they each have their own storyline which reduces the other characters to supporting players who come and go.
Get rid of the idea of "leveling up". Stop being brainrotted by d&d.
Having a mechanical progression to represent your character's growth is fun. Please top being a joyless cockmongler.
dumbfuck retard
that doesn't require levels
useless shitposter who brings nothing to this board
yeah, that's you
Alright, now I know that d&d hate is a meme, I fail to think of an RPG system that doesn't have some form of experience point equivalent. Yes, even le precious GURPS with character points.
And gurps is such a shitty system really.
Only shit games can come from a game with no premisse.
Does BRP/Runequest have it
This is literally AlphaOmega. It had a dice pool system & pretty much every race advanced differently, from magic powers, to stat increases, to cybernetics, to mutant abilities. It's obscure as fuck but you might be able to find it. It's like a cross between Shadowrun & the movie Legion
It was a GB classic RPG, wasn't it? Which one?
Also, post other vidya/boardgames with similarly super-different races. The only ones that come to mind are the Vast boardgames where switching characters requires you to relearn the game entirely.