Best Generic Gaming System?
The Generic Universal RolePlaying System (GURPS, natch) is still my go-to system for fantasy, sci-fi, modern, horror, mystery, and superheroes. You can easily run a game featuring a French musketeer, a Viking from 500 AD, a Vulcan science officer, and a Transformer. It's as crunchy as you like. I've played in some GURPS games that were in incredibly deadly with lots of dicerolling and others that were almost freeform with only the occasional dice roll.
In creating characters, you'll pick advantages, disadvantages, quirks, and perks that create nice roleplaying hooks (Duties, Phobias, Codes of Honor, Allies and Enemies, etc.)
One of the biggest challenges to the system are the sheer amount of options available, both when generating characters and in optional rules. It's good for potential GMs to be pretty strict with what they allow and what rules they use. Character creation can take some time, although there are character generation tools available (some free, but the best one is $20).
There also aren't a ton of published adventures for GURPS, since the system is used for all kinds of game genres. Most GURPS GMs prefer to use their own adventures, but if you like to use published modules, they can be converted easily enough.
Another drawback is the number of books available. For a GURPS 4E game, you need GURPS Characters and GURPS Campaigns, but if it's a fantasy campaign, you might want GURPS Fantasy. Magic has its own book. Powers, too. However, there are a ton of useful sourcebooks for different historical periods and campaign worlds. Since new editions of GURPS act more as consolidations of rules, older materials can easily be used. Also, GURPS Lite (and Ultralite) are good introductions, and they're free.
I love that one system can be used for so many different types of games, and I really love how much the system encourages roleplaying.
This message was last edited by the user at 07:13, Fri 18 Aug 2017.