System
The game rules for Underground is an adaptation of the Mayfair Exponential Game System, originally developed at Mayfair Games for the earlier DC Heroes roleplaying game depicting the DC Universe. However the rules were modified to depict lower-powered characters and a more deadly setting.
The Underground game books had color-coded text. Each line of text in the books was colored differently if it was part of the rules, an example of game play, optional rules, or fiction and exposition for the setting.
As part of the political and social nature of the game, and to encourage games to be about righting the many wrongs in the setting, the designer included Parameter Rules, a mechanism wherein the players could change the entire setting. The rules allowed the players to change the parameters of an area, or even the country or the whole world. The drawback is that affecting one parameter (like Quality of Life or Education), would adjust another (like Take-Home Pay or Wealth). The players, because they are heroes, can change parameters without penalties if they perform actions that lead to change, with enough time and effort.
Read more about this topic: Underground (role-playing Game)
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Whoever places his trust into a system will soon be without a home. While you are building your third story, the two lower ones have already been dismantled.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)