Grade the Silhouette System

[The Myopic Sniper]

Is that the worst percentage of any of the systems you done one of these threads for? I guess the "never heard of it" category is pretty irrelevant anyway, given that there must be many folks who'd vote that way if they'd even looked at the thread - which they didn't, because they never heard of it.

There might be something else going on here. I had heard of some of the games, but I hadn't heard of the generalized system name and it doesn't seem to be something that the publisher really promoted much even though it looks like they put out a core book at some point. In fact this very thread is one of the top results if you google "Silhouette System rpg."

I really probably should have voted "I've Never Played It" since I had at least heard of some of the games using it, but opted to go with the "Never Heard" since I wasn't familiar with the system designation.

 

[doghead]

A long time ago, I played a couple of sessions of Heavy Gear, and one or two sessions of Jovian Chronicles. I can only really recall fragments.

The HG game involved an assault on a bunker of sorts. Recollection: for stopping power, a 13mm pistol beats an SMG.

The JC game involved space combat. Recollection: the way the system handled 3d space combat was very tactical. Success was not so much about blasting away with weapons, but manoeuvring for position.

Conceptually, I really liked the resolution system. Skills gave you dice. Attributes gave you bonuses. So the skilled veteran could reliably achieve success, the talented rookie could fluke results beyond the capability of the veteran.

I was not so much a fan of the number of attributes, secondary attributes etc.

thotd

 

[timbannock]

I played a bit of HG 1e and 2e, and a bunch of Tribe 8, both 1e and the 2e/SilCore version.

The systems in both were a bloated mess. They read fine, but once we dove in there was just too many attributes, too many skills, and too much modifier fiddly-ness going on for a system that's meant to be a (seemingly) small pool of d6s. Damage multipliers is also an immediate "un-sold" for me, and this system was how I figured that out. You want me to do multiplication? Then make it a video game; I can't be bothered with that. (In fact, I still vastly prefer and often do pre-session conversions of ranges into squares instead feet for various D&D and similar games.)

It wasn't atrocious, and I don't hate it, but I'd only play it if the I knew the GM would make the game really fun. It's too much of a slog otherwise.

 

[Thomas Shey]

(In fact, I still vastly prefer and often do pre-session conversions of ranges into squares instead feet for various D&D and similar games.)

Well, with games that are going to use grids anyway, that's kind of low-hanging fruit; while you might want to know what the grid spaces are for conceptual reasons, there's no reason to constantly refer to them by the actual measure.