(TFT) Gunpowder/SciFi TFT campaigns

[James Eckman <ronin_engineer@comcast.net>]

Hopefully now that the normal blathering of gun nuts talking about 
weapons has died down, how many people have tried running modern or post 
modern campaigns with ITL?

My friends and I tried it since for generic fantasy, ITL was our 
favorite game system but we were not impressed with our experiments. We 
found that Runequest/Call of Cthulu variants worked better as did 
modifications on the old FGU Daredevils system.

My favorite game systems
ITL - Best generic fantasy, also extensively used as an EPT game system 
by my group. ITL is one of the few complete game systems.

Bushido - Samurai action just like in the movies! Not very realistic but 
then neither are the movies. Clean gameplay that allows for a wide 
variety of effective fighting styles without overcomplicating things. 
Avoid extensive magic use, the magic system works but if used 
extensively detracts from the chanbara. A mostly complete system, 
certainly better than most out there. This eventually turned into the 
Daredevils system which was clean and reasonably realistic.

Call of Cthulu - Perfect for playing, err... Call of Cthulu. We played 
lots of this as well, I wouldn't use it as a generic modern/futuristic 
but you could do far worse. With the exception of one bizarre campaign, 
most are short enough so any holes in the game system don't have any 
long term effects.

Runequest variations - We played with these for futuristic games. They 
were OK but the Daredevil variant was better.

Daredevil variants
We played Daredevil when it first came out. It was a pretty good modern 
system and included the concept of careers somewhat similar to Traveller 
but there was more player control and far more variations. Far better 
than Traveller for combat, task resolutions and skills. My friend and I 
wrote a 300-400 page Science Fiction variant based loosely on this 
system. This system is obscure enough that probably only old farts have 
played it or even remember it!


Other game systems better left in the dust bin of gaming history.
* D&D and all of its current incarnations. D20, etc.
* DragonQuest! phew
* Chivalry & Sorcery, the system, not the backgrounders! Good details 
for ITL games.
* Champions variations for fantasy. Not worth the extra effort, ITL is 
far superior here!
* Space Opera - We played one serious campaign of this, amusing but the 
system is very poorly defined and we dropped chunks out of the rules to 
make it playable. One wonders if the authors ever played it.
* Space Patrol - Gamelet like an SF version of melee. OK but no meat.

I haven't really played most of the later game systems so the rest of 
you would have to fill me in on that.

Jim Eckman
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