What do you do to chill out? I have been known to read a rulebook or two, just for fun. I can be really fussy. If a rulebook is over about 300 pages it has to be really great to keep my attention.
Recently, I have been playing Index Card RPG [ICRPG], a 400 page rulebook in case you are interested, and just as a counterpoint I have been reading some Operation Whitebox.
It is interesting how they control the power level within the game. The lever the writers use is simply hit dice. In a more realistic power level game you use d6 for hit points. In a cinematic game it uses d10s, and at the inglorious basterd level characters use d20s.
In a game where a rifle does 1d6, you can imagine what having d20s for hitpoints does to a players perception of danger.
By the time you reach about 3rd level every character is on a par with Captain America.
I do like characters to be successful. I think, to my taste, the mid-point, d10s for hit points is closer to the sweet spot.
I haven’t played this game yet, but I am a big Whitebox fan, Whitestar is a favourite system. Operation Whitebox is now firmly on my play list.
Another system I want to look at is ICONS. This was a pandemic freebie. It seems a bit mean to grab a copy of a free game and then not play it, or worse still not read it. It looks like it has some FUDGE or FATE dna in there from reading the game description. I already have both FUDGE and FATE solo rules on hand. I hope I can play this out of the box without having to tweak too much.
Either of these will give me something a bit different after my murder in Death Valley experience with ICRPG. Somehow, my character has managed to make Mad Max look like officer Dibble by comparison! I hove the ICRPG big guns.