Silhouette core system?

[pming]

Hiya.

Just wondering what others thoughts are on this system. I first encountered it with Jovian Chronicles (a "hard" sci-fi game with a distinctly anime feel). At that time I thought it was an 'ok' system, but I admittedly didn't *really* try and absorb the rules...heck, I didn't even play the game.

I recently (two'ish weeks ago) bought the Silhouette CORE rules (PDF). Upon a more in-depth read I found myself rather impressed with how it works. It *looks* like it can cover a huge range of capabilities...from low-powered stuff up to starships/gods. The seems elegant and straight-forward, and I'm really keen on how they do skills.

Anyway...has anyone had any experience with this system? Anyone use it for their own setting (fantasy, post-apocalyptic, horror, etc.)?

[Evil Lincoln]

Yeah, I know Silhouette.

I never got into the "SilCORE" version of the rules, because I feel they didn't do due-diligence in the testing. I used Silhouette mainly in Heavy Gear 1st and 2nd editions, and Tribe 8.

The system works pretty well until up around Skill Rating five, and then things are a lot less stable. They created the "complexity" rule in SilCORE for little other reason than to address this problem, but I never could quite understand what they were trying to describe there.

There's a lot of potential in the system, and I've played some really great games with it.

[Whited Sepulcher]

Ah Jovian Chronicles, I love that setting, own all the books and almost all of the early Heavy Gear books. The system is okay for low to mid level settings. The game we played was a cloak and dagger operations set in the Jovian Chronicles world, none of us used mechs and went undercover to other stations. It was a fun setting. Go Venusians! ;-)

[Chris Mortika]

I'll add in my two cents. I'm a fan of the game system, as well as the settings. Tribe 8 contains a good model of a "low fantasy" clerical magic system.

I wouldn't want to try running an anything-goes supers campaign through it, but it handles human-scale interactions very elegantly.

[Jeremy Epp]

I used it as my goto system for a while, it does a good job in a number of settings but is especially good at dealing with vehicles. As mentioned Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, Tribe 8 and Gearkrieg are all available. The system scales very cleanly and intuitively between character scale and vehicle scale which makes it great for hardware heavy settings that have tanks, helicopters, mechs and the like.

It has a very different die rolling method that constrains things to a pretty narrow range but works well within the range. As mentioned above skills above 5 don't really work in the game and target values higher than 8 get pretty impossible to beat no matter how good you get. Given that a skill or two at lvl 3 is fairly reasonable for a starting character and with a system that breaks down at lvl 5 you begin to be a little thankful that advancement is pretty slow.

All in all though I recommend giving it a shot. To see it work where it really works go with Heavy Gear, Gearkrieg or Jovian. Heavy Gear has the most support by far. Tribe 8 is a very interesting setting with really cool rules but can be hard to fit to a group, when it does fit I see a ton of potential there.

[pming]

Hiya.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

I do have a trio of JC books (core rules, a mech/ship book and a sort of 'extra character stuff' book).

Anyway, I was thinking about using the SilCORE rules with the Iron Kingdoms (fantasy) setting...it has mech's and 'vehicles'. ;) I am also seriously considering using one of the optional "dice sides" rules; specifically, upping to d8's in place of d6's. This, so it seems, would 'tone down' the importance of skill ranks and at the same time allow for more 'heroic' level successes.

Then again, the other two systems I'm toying with for an Iron Kingdoms campaign is the d6 System (by WEG), and the CORTEX system (by, iirc, Margaret Weis's company).

Any thoughts about those last two systems?

^_^

Paul L. Ming

[Chris Mortika]

I love the d6 system a whole lot. It takes people about five seconds to learn. The only reason I don't use it for everything is the lack of good combat modification systems.

I don't think I'm familiar with CORTEX. Is that the system in Serenity RPG? (I own the book, but it's gorram unreadable. Dohn ma?)

[ChrisRevocateur]

D6 is awesome. That is all.

[Chris Mortika]

Well, to be honest, the d6 system, as it stands now, has one tremendously-developed setting, the Star Wars game, and three settings that are still too generic and sketchy to set people's imaginations on fire: d6 Fantasy, Modern, and Space. I've heard of one person who's used d6 Fantasy, and he said he has a blast, but he had to write his own magic systems from the ground up.

I'd like to see:

• the stats for Freeport in the d6 system, with enough rules support for swashbuckling combat.
  
• a native d6 Fantasy setting fleshed out. West End Games got the tabletop rights to the "Avlis" computer game, and gave us a pretty good translation into the MasterBook system. But MasterBook already had several settings. I'd like to see something like that for d6.
  
• Likewise, a space setting that's not Star Wars. I wonder if the tabletop rights to HALO or EVE are available.

You see, in this particular, the Game Pod 9 people did it exactly right. They gave us a quality, versatile system, and they also gave us three or four terrific settings, packed with flavor and details, each different and each engaging on its own.

[Freehold DM]

WOOOOOOOOT! DP9! I LOVE Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles!!!

One of the more muddled systems I've kinda played though. We only played one game of each. I love what has happened in the Jovian Chronicles universe since its inception though. Maybe I should take a look at the new rules.