I am a "maximalist" gamer, and am of the belief a game should be a rule engine that affords logical/internal consistency rather than a tide of bespoke rules. I also prefer a larger list of in-game options, maximal customization, and minimal downtime. Among notable games that I have been influenced by, are:
1. GURPS: Back in college, about 10 years ago, I ran what may be the most insane campaign I've ever run: GURPS: Dwarf Fortress. The players sought to excavate the ruins of an old ruined Fortress, and settle it as new rulers. Aside from the (admittedly hilariously abuseable) flexible "pointbuy" chargen in lieu of bespoke character classes, what drew me to GURPS was the insane internal consistency between different charts. Damage to knockback was a ratio, amount of explosive material to damage was a ratio, collision impact to damage, magic to kinetic energy, etc.
2. Starfleet Battles: Known for its infamous starship sheets, power allocation, and a rulebook that reads like a car manual, SFB is actually pretty neat. It has next to no downtime, since it uses an Impulse-Turn-Base structure (aka "near-simultaneous turns", and there is a frankly hilarious amount of options. Say your ship has several shuttles. You can send them "unmanned" as glorified bombs, load them up with crew to attempt boarding actions, retrofit them with "Wild Weasel" jammers to muck up enemy missiles, or deploy them statically to act as "sentries" over a limited area. Say you have a Plasma Torpedo Launcher. You can lower its power requirement to fire "dummy" rounds, switch it to "plasma shotgun" mode to MIRV it into subtorpedoes, fire it as a "plasma beam", sacrificing raw damage for the reliability of being direct-fire, etc. The game has its own fan-terms for manuevers, from the Sabre Dance to the Kaufman Retrograde, and the game feels surprisingly emergent for such an ancient game.
3. Chess and Variants: I enjoy Chess since the majority of chess literature focuses on openings, plays, doctrine, etc. rather than "pls nerf Queens" or unit composition. Shogi is interesting due to how it intentionally creates an unstable equilibrium by allowing you to place captured pieces under your control. Xiangqi adds the condition of requiring you to defend a fixed point (no castle, and the king is confined to a 3x3 "palace" with 2 guards), and Arimaa is super-tricksy due to its "push-pull" mechanics rather than being direct captures. I
4. X-COM Series: The original X-Com was ahead of its time, and was also incredibly atmospheric as well. Sure, starting off with Rookies hunting Sectoids near a small UFO was a tame start, but then teching up that your Power Armor notSpaceMarines were burning down cities to prevent being overwhelmed by Chryssalids was game-defining in its own right. That being said, the early games got silly fast due to unlimited manufacturing/sales, and the tension of keeping Earth safe on a limited budget faded when XCom became "Crazy Bradford's Used Laser Cannon and Xeno Cadaver Emporium!" That was something I felt the reboot did right (restricting manufacturing based on limited components), but it also eliminated the whole "recon for UFOs" aspect of the original: In the first game, there were multiple alien bases that could be established as the aliens did missions, but in the remake, you had a railroaded story...anyway, XCom showed how it was possible to make a "two-action" system feel both fast-paced and tactical at once.
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