You might know the Year Zero Engine from Free League's games. Each game seems to have a slightly different version often with some mechanical changes tailored to the specific setting. They have an open license and it's pretty chill.

I quite like the system. One of the things I like is that the result of a rolled action is more or less immediately known after casting the dice. There's little to no post-roll arithmetic. I'm not afraid of math, but post-roll arithmetic takes away from the drama of the roll, IMO.

Another thing I like is how advancement is handled. You get XP for specific actions. For example, in TW2000, you get 1 XP for taking an action that moves you closer to your "big dream." You get 1 XP for an action that helped your "buddy." The system dangles carrots that promote thematic role play. In theory this seems like it would cause players to play marginal or contrived actions to check off all the boxes to earn their share of carrots, but in my experience it does not. Players do what they want and only occasionally take an action with the goal of getting a carrot.

Also, the system is definitely not OSR yet they adopt some OSR credo like roll only when it matters, rulings over rules, etc.

I've heard (in another thread here and elsewhere) that some people don't like this system and I would like to know why. Not because I want to argue or convert you, haha. I'm making a home game using the system, and I want to know its weak points that I might be blind to.

My only experience is with Forbidden Lands and I love the setting. I just don't like zone based maps and movement. I'm a terrain and minis guy and prefer a more discrete, tactical system for range and movement.

Quote from: Festus on April 05, 2023, 01:27:50 PM
My only experience is with Forbidden Lands and I love the setting. I just don't like zone based maps and movement. I'm a terrain and minis guy and prefer a more discrete, tactical system for range and movement.

I've run Forbidden Lands a half dozen times.  We liked our tactical minis and disliked zone-based movement.
My players also disliked how torches, arrows, food  and water are handled.  I liked it though. *shrug*

Quote from: DocJones on April 05, 2023, 02:13:53 PM

Quote from: Festus on April 05, 2023, 01:27:50 PM
My only experience is with Forbidden Lands and I love the setting. I just don't like zone based maps and movement. I'm a terrain and minis guy and prefer a more discrete, tactical system for range and movement.

I've run Forbidden Lands a half dozen times.  We liked our tactical minis and disliked zone-based movement.
My players also disliked how torches, arrows, food  and water are handled.  I liked it though. *shrug*

How are torches, arrows, food and water handled?

Quote from: migo on April 05, 2023, 02:29:12 PM

Quote from: DocJones on April 05, 2023, 02:13:53 PM

Quote from: Festus on April 05, 2023, 01:27:50 PM
My only experience is with Forbidden Lands and I love the setting. I just don't like zone based maps and movement. I'm a terrain and minis guy and prefer a more discrete, tactical system for range and movement.

I've run Forbidden Lands a half dozen times.  We liked our tactical minis and disliked zone-based movement.
My players also disliked how torches, arrows, food  and water are handled.  I liked it though. *shrug*

How are torches, arrows, food and water handled?

Usage dice. That's one of the things that gets tweaked among the different games. In TW2000 you count every bullet and track food and water normally because you're scavenging.

We played a Mutant/Genlab Alpha combo campaign and overall my group liked the system well enough.  Their two biggest complaints were:

• You have to push a roll and take damage to get the points you need to use your special abilities.
  
  
• The power misfires had too high a chance of occurring. The GenLab players especially disliked it due to the bad result on their table (a 1-in-6 chance of happening) had them losing control of their character for hours of in-game time.

Quote from: migo on April 05, 2023, 02:29:12 PM
How are torches, arrows, food and water handled?

You have a resource die associated with each.  A d6, d8, d10 or d12. 
A d12 is the most you can carry.
When you use or consume an item, you roll the resource die.
On a roll of 1 it is depleted and goes down a die type.   
When your resource die is a d6 on a roll of 1 you are out of the item.

I briefly ran Coriolis (campaign ended because I just didn't have the time to devote to prep for it) and while everybody in my group loved it, at least one player wasn't a huge fan of the dice pool system just because of how often it seemed like you were rolling a ton of dice and still managing to fail a roll.

I've also heard some people say it's too simplistic. *shrug*

I love the system because it is so tweakable, but also because it definitely pushes roleplay more, which I actually enjoy despite being pretty terrible at improv. Characters are pretty easy to put together, especially if you've played any other YZE system before, and the games are relatively easy to run as a GM since it does tend to lean pretty rules-light. I do also like crunchy stuff (I *really* want to play Trudvang Chronicles at some point - talk about crunchy!), but the YZE stuff is just so much easier to put together and explain on the fly.

I have yet to run anything with it - but I'm super interested in running Alien.

I'm used to zone-based movement from Marvel Superheroes, so I have no real problem with it. I'll get around to running it someday.

Quote from: Wasteland Sniper on April 05, 2023, 03:01:31 PM
I briefly ran Coriolis (campaign ended because I just didn't have the time to devote to prep for it) and while everybody in my group loved it, at least one player wasn't a huge fan of the dice pool system just because of how often it seemed like you were rolling a ton of dice and still managing to fail a roll.

I've also heard some people say it's too simplistic. *shrug*

I love the system because it is so tweakable, but also because it definitely pushes roleplay more, which I actually enjoy despite being pretty terrible at improv. Characters are pretty easy to put together, especially if you've played any other YZE system before, and the games are relatively easy to run as a GM since it does tend to lean pretty rules-light. I do also like crunchy stuff (I *really* want to play Trudvang Chronicles at some point - talk about crunchy!), but the YZE stuff is just so much easier to put together and explain on the fly.

I would also like play Trudvang Chronicles one day! I've got the gorgeous books on my shelf and have read the main rules. I agree 100% with you - it's got some real crunchy bits. But there are some really neat ideas in there, too!

I've run both Forbidden Lands and Vaesen. My experience was with Forbidden Lands is that one or 2 characters quickly became overpowered, and the way willpower works people always have a ton of that valuable resource - trying to work around both of those made us give up. Vaesen was fun we had the opposite issue - it seemed like player rolled very large pools but failed more than you would expect.

I played a long campaign of Mutant Year Zero, which was what the system was designed for and it was great.

I've never played any games using the YZE and I recently read the YZE SRD, which includes the die step system used in later YZE games like their Blade Runner TTRPG.

For those that have played using both the d6 dice pool and the die steps, which do you prefer and why?

Quote from: Wasteland Sniper on April 05, 2023, 03:01:31 PM
I briefly ran Coriolis (campaign ended because I just didn't have the time to devote to prep for it) and while everybody in my group loved it, at least one player wasn't a huge fan of the dice pool system just because of how often it seemed like you were rolling a ton of dice and still managing to fail a roll.

You nailed it. I so wanted to buy Coriolis-- it checks off all of the right boxes for my sci-fi tastes. But the core mechanic kills it for me. IIRC, you roll a pool of d6s trying to get a 6. The probability looks like this:

1D   0.17
2D   0.31
3D   0.42
4D   0.52
5D   0.60
6D   0.67
7D   0.72
8D   0.77
9D   0.81
10D   0.84

When the most skilled person in the game has only a 84% chance of success, something's wrong.

(Edit: I assume 10d is the max, could be wrong)

Quote from: DocJones on April 05, 2023, 02:54:35 PM

Quote from: migo on April 05, 2023, 02:29:12 PM
How are torches, arrows, food and water handled?

You have a resource die associated with each.  A d6, d8, d10 or d12. 
A d12 is the most you can carry.
When you use or consume an item, you roll the resource die.
On a roll of 1 it is depleted and goes down a die type.   
When your resource die is a d6 on a roll of 1 you are out of the item.

I like that mechanism. We use something similar in our homebrew. Rolls are opposed based on the ability/attribute strengths, which are means in terms of the first five die sizes (4, 6, 8, 10, 12). A bonus lets you go up a size. A penalty makes you go down a size.

No love for the 1d4 in the other system I guess.

Quote from: Aglondir on April 05, 2023, 07:48:00 PM

Quote from: Wasteland Sniper on April 05, 2023, 03:01:31 PM
1D   0.17
2D   0.31
3D   0.42
4D   0.52
5D   0.60
6D   0.67
7D   0.72
8D   0.77
9D   0.81
10D   0.84

When the most skilled person in the game has only a 84% chance of success, something's wrong.

(Edit: I assume 10d is the max, could be wrong)

I completely agree on this point. I find that having a high default target number on a dice pool system to be a poor implementation of dice pools as you end up chucking fistfuls of dice for little payoff.

In instances like these, you can simply replace this kind of dice pool by giving attributes and dice their own die types (d4 to d12) and do attribute + skill vs. a TN, with 7 being the baseline for a task that would challenge an amateur with an average attribute die. Alternatively, you can replace a flat TN with difficulty dice, with 2d6 representing the same level of difficulty previously mentioned.