Ye Olde Character Sheet #4: System Panic

Somewhere in the late eighties - or was it in the early nineties? - we couldn't decide on which system to play. Yes, we tried D&D. We loved and hated AD&D. We did many homebrews. I think my own systems were in their seventh incarnation. We loved to game, but we just couldn't agree on the rules.

It's much like today's high finance. But that's for another blog, I guess.

So, if fantasy gaming was an issue, Sci Fi adventuring was even worse. We tried and forgot about Traveller, mostly because of MegaTraveller. RoleMaster was hard to get, and no one would have gotten through it anyway. TSR's attempt at SF was a laugh - or at least that's what we thought then. So where to go?

One of my fellow players (you know who you are, JLC) was so desperate to play, he wrote up his favorite addicted female rogue in all systems he could think of. As this sheet testifies.

What I find intriguing is how much the stats differ. You might not guess it's all the same character we're talking about, even if you can decipher all of them. See how short the Traveller code is? Or how seemingly low the strength in Judge Dredd? Probably, the gaming experience would also be different for each rule set.

But then again, the crazy computer in Paranoia is also a very different adversary (euhr, "Friend") than is Darth Vader in Star Wars. And any game surely differs more with the Game Master than with its system.

Sylvia eventually was played in a version of Dark Dungeon adjusted for Space Travel and Sci Fi. I'm not sure if any of the above stats were ever tried.