GURPS is probably my favorite adaptable system; given a casual idea for an iron age planet-hopping setting with earth-shaking magic that's exclusively item-based, GURPS would be my system of choice. It's easy to take stuff apart and put it back together. (Though I hate the "default" GURPS magic system, there are enough others that I can always find a replacement for the task at hand; heck, I'd probably use GURPS: Vehicles for that example, assigning a high tech level to magic items.) Shadowrun 2ed(w/ SR Companion) is close to being my favorite "tall" system, i.e. stretching from gritty to fairly epic. There are a few problems, like the "double jeopardy" flavor of opposed tests, and the granularity of damage(10 HP plus 10 subdual HP for everybody, and an attack can only do 1, 3, 6, or 10 damage), but if I was doing Highlander or another very tall setting, I'd start with Shadowrun. Shadowrun 2ed is also my favorite system for flavor. I tend to prefer "high-performance" systems, so "favorite" is usually based on "best", but there's something ineffably cool about how Shadowrun goes together. Even the magic system is cyberpunky. And nothing says "you've made it" like the words "Luxury Lifestyle" on your character sheet. d20 is my second favorite "tall" system, as it doesn't do gritty very well, but has a good range from somewhat: epic to really-epic. Again there are problems, like classes, HD for all classes, multiclassing math, and the base mechanic being additive (with a +1000 base attack, a mob with a +1024 AC is all but untouchable), but with a sufficiently dramatist (has that changed to "narrativist" now?) or gamist perspective, you can look away from all the handwaving. Overall, I'd have to go with GURPS, but that's probably because I burned out on sword & sorcery years ago, and started running unusual campaigns... Like the simply-titled Fairies!(office politics in a Ferngully-inspired fairy glade), or Here There Be Dragons (kinda Ars Magica meets Cliffhangers with dragons, the PCs are elemental dragons awakened from centuries of slumber, and set about claiming and organizing their realms), or Stellar Navy working on it now, the PCs and many NPCs are planet-sized computer intelligences, who travel about the universe using stars as warp vessels). Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 9 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com