My homebrew RPG (which has been going under the term FFRE for a number of years now, but which has very recently been renamed as "Sagatafl - the Free Fudge-light Roleplaying gaming Engine") is largely a hybrid of two published RPG systems, so obviously there is something in each of those two systems that I like a lot:
GURPS is good because of the basic character creation philosophy, which is that you can have any trait which exists in the game world, for your character, for a price. This means that you can dream up a character (any character), and then divide that character into component parts (many of which synergize - I see synergies in a lot of places in the real world, so obviously for a game world to feel real, it must have synergies) and assign a point cost to each part, and then the sum of those costs is the desirability of the character, as seen from the point of view of a "generalized" or "averaged" roleplaying gamer - a broad-thinking one who appreciates all kinds of competence and ability, not just those that are related, directly or indirectly, to combat.
Quest FRP is good for different reasons. First of all, it has many attributes. Not that that's entirely new to me. The system under which I learned to roleplay (a licensed BRP/Runequest clone) has seven attributes, so the four attributes of GURPS, or the three attributes of BESM, is certainly not something I'm inclined to view as a "normal thing". But Quest FRP has more attributes: Nine. And some of the choices are quite good. For instance, I like the distinction between Intelligence and Magic Talent - I think it's boring when every potential Mensan is also eligible to join the Mage's Guild, I'd much rather have a few stupid mages around, plus a few smart people who are inept at learning magic (as in Lord D'arcy). Also the distinction between Agility and Dexterity is very useful, allowing for some character concepts that can't work under one-attribute systems. For instance, some years ago I dreamed up a character concept which was inexpressable, in the literal sense of the word, under any standard version of D&D (except, possibly, Player's Options, a.k.a. AD&D v2.5), because he warranted a high Dexterity (18) but an Agility that was merely average (10 would have been fine).
Then there's the relation between attributes and skills. Pretty much every other system posits an additive effect of innate talent upon skill performance. But Quest FRP instead posits a multiplicative effect, which happens to be both much more realistic, and much harder to abuse (maybe impossible, unless the implementation is incompetent). In fact, the main reason for why I'm not using GURPS is that high-attribute characters don't work in GURPS. They're too good, to the point where even if the GM allows you to actually play one (most GMs would not), the other players will resent you for having optimized your character to an abusive degree. And raising the cost of attributes will not solve the problem. Quest FRP showed an alternative, although unfortunately that implementation failed to let high-attribute characters actually be good. The last really neat bit about Quest FRP is the magic system. The way magic was divided into spell lists (Fire, Water, Illusion, Necromancy...) was cool, but the true neatness was the way it handled religions, giving each faith differently themed magic, utilizing historical religions in an extremely flavourful and atmospheric fashion: Rabbis could create golems, e.g., and study the Kabbalah. Druids could work nature spells. Norse Priests could use rune magic, and appeal to specific Gods. Christian priests could call upon specific Saints, and the most virtuous could even become Saints.
That's saying one good thing about GURPS and four good things about Quest FRP, but this doesn't mean that Quest FRP is four times as good as GURPS. I find it bothersome that Quest FRP lacks social skills, for instance, and, as I said earlier, it fails to let high-attribute characters be good. The learning speed span, for intellectual skills, between a character of average Will (12) and average Intellect (12), and a character of very high Will (18) and very high Intellect (18) is only 1.5:1, and that's unrealistically low, especially since one designer, Todd Richmond, has described attribute values of 18 as being three standard deviations (sigmas) above average (My opinion is that such a character should learn around 4 times faster than a normal person, not 1.5 times faster). Quest FRP is also largely unconcerned with non-combat conflicts. It's not as bad as AD&D, but still much inferior to GURPS in this regard.
Most of you probably already know that Steve Jackson Games has recently published a new version of GURPS, 4th Edition. It tries to address the possibility of abusive degrees of optimization, and in fact it does manage to remove it, but at cost that is far too high - by introducing character traits which the characters are unable to discuss with each other, the same way D&D characters can't discuss with each other what class(es) they are. In other words, the naughty eight-letter word: metagame.
Some might claim that it this problem exists in all systems (in fact some have raised this objection, in another discussion forum), but that's wrong. In a system like Quest FRP or Sagatafl, it is for one character to ask another character why he is so good at sneaking around, and receive the (correct) answer from the other character: it is because he is highly agile. Agility, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma, Strength, and so forth are not metagame traits. They exist within the game world, and the characters are perfectly capable of becoming aware of stark differences in each other's specific potentials (even if egalitarian impulses prevents some from noticing - just as is the case in our world).
But Quest FRP is also about to come out in a new version. The guys in Wisconsin have been working on a new version for the last several years, and from what little they've leaked on the mailing list that I run (QuestRPG, on YahooGroups), it sounds exciting. In fact it also sounds as if they've addressed at least two of the concerns raised by Brian Gleichman in his review of the system, posted on Usenet, in the rec.games.frp.advocacy group, in 2000: The presence of real world religions (a loss, as far as I'm concerned) which offended not only Brian but also others, and the inability of weapons to kill (or at the very least to incapacitate) in a single blow (Now, apparently, weapons will do multiple dice of damage, instead of always 1d6+N). A third change is that the sequential spell lists (10 levels per "theme", and (almost always) only one spell per level) will be replaced with spell trees. I like the idea, but am a bit concerned about how it can be graphically represented (That doesn't mean I don't wish the best of luck to Todd, Gene and the rest of the designers, of course. They're smart, dedicated and hard-working people; it's just that their design goals differ somewhat from mine).
I'm excited about both these new projects (mostly Quest FRP, but that's only because I know so annoyingly little about it - the designers are stingy with info - whereas I have a quite good idea what GURPS 4th Edition will be like, from the "leaks" in Pyramid Magazine). You all know where to find GURPS 4th edition, and as for the new edition of Quest FRP, I'll link to it from my website when I become aware of its release.
The author advises us: Peter Knutsen is a card-carrying Arrogant Elitist Bastard(tm), living in Denmark, one of the most backwards and barbaric provinces of the European Union. He started playing and designing RPGs in 1987, at the age of 10. Since 2001, he has been working on a new freeware roleplaying gaming rules system, called "Sagatafl - the Free Fudge-light Roleplaying gaming Engine". Preview material is being made available at www.sagatafl.org. Besides designing RPGs, he writes historical fantasy fiction, and he hopes, some day, to sell it.
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