The Gaming Den

I'm looking for a steampunk RPG. Heard about this one. Based on some Fuzion system. Anyone know anything about any of it?

Other than that, anyone know any other (preferably non-d20) steampunk game?

Fuzion is teh bad. That is all.

-Username17

I've heard about Castle Falkenstein, but I don't know if it's good.

FrankTrollman wrote:Fuzion is teh bad. That is all.

What's wrong with Fuzion? I've never really heard anyone talk about it much here.

Falgund wrote:I've heard about Castle Falkenstein, but I don't know if it's good.

I liked the setting, although I don't remember how the card-based mechanics work. It doesn't even try to be balanced, either.

My suggestion: Play SotC with an appropriately steam punk setting (Falkenstein or otherwise).

My exposure to Fuzion was a shit job done with HERO, and Dragonball Z, which was unplayable-level bad.

I have the Dragon Ball Z RPG which was created using a variant off of Fuzion. I think if that's an example of how the Fuzion system is applied after reading it again and a again, it's so unbalanced it's silly.

Savage Worlds has a few self-proclaimed steampunkish settings. Runepunk and Sundered Skies. Savage Worlds is not a system devoid of problems, but I like it more than a lot that are out there. I do not think I have gotten to take a peek at either of those setting books yet though, so I am just going by google searched reviews.

Hollow Earth/Ubiquity system could be used to create a decent steam punk setting/campaign, but their mad science rules are kinda crummy so there's much more work to be done in that case.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Fuzion is teh bad. That is all.

What's wrong with Fuzion? I've never really heard anyone talk about it much here.

I'm interested in learning more about the problems with Fuzion as well.

I don't remember much about Fuzion except for Bubble Gum Crisis.

Fuzion was a half-cocked attempt to make a universal system that was simple, fast, and easy to use. It just happened to fail at making any sense, covering all of the abilities people had in the settings it tried to port itself into, being even remotely balanced, or having interesting combat options.

Basically you bought yourself an attack, and then you spammed it. Depending upon what you bought, your attack spam could easily be worth 2 or even ten times as much as the attack spam from one of the other players. It was like, as bad as Aberrant, but with a 3d6 RNG.

Character are rated in ten stats, which each are rated "from 1 to 10" (and up, for player characters and meaningful NPCs); stats supposedly average 2-3 for mundane characters, or 4-5 for heroic characters. Some of your stats determine how awesome you are, others don't really do anything. You can take disadvantages on your stats to get more points, and the list is clunky, obtuse, and nowhere near balanced.

Skills are rated from 0 to 10, but again you don't actually have to stop at 10. You have Talents and Perks, both of which are essentially D&D style Feats. Roughly, Perks are Feats of stuff you have (like Leadership or Landlord), while Talents are Feats of stuff you can do (like Blindfighting or Improved Disarm). And yes, you can take Talents and Perks that give you numeric bonuses and sometimes this is mathematically superior to buying skills and/or stats and sometimes it is worse.

The basic mechanic is that you roll 3d6 and add your stat, your skill and your bonuses from Talents, Perks, and Powers. Even if you stay within the 1-10 guidelines, which you won't, you'll note that the variance on a starting character's bonus is seriously 19, but the entire RNG is only 16 numbers long. If characters are buying themselves superpowers and shit, it's even more off the hook. Compare to Champions, where the suggested range of OCV and DCV is four numbers long, and thus Martial Artists are expected to be +/-3 vs. Bricks on the 3d6 RNG. That gets a bit stratified, but it works. In Fuzion, the variance in offense and defense combat totals is measured in the dozens and it doesn't work at all.

-Username17