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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Kagus]

That's always been how I've done it, too. Character first, build backstory off that.

[Cruxador]

I do it kind of piecemeal. Gross choices first from mechanics, especially class, and then I look for a few key themes (in the narrative sense) to build the character around and I pick details of the mechanics and of the background based in part on how they interact.

Like, in my current character, I looked at Magus and thought it was cool, especially for a gish class, and then I thought well this is a lot like a xianxia character. So maybe my character is from the setting's China analogue. And if it's xianxia, that's basically human with ancient bloodlines, so half elf, and my elf half is the Chinese one with the ancient legacy and the other half can be some local noble or something. Then I looked at details, I saw that a half elf can have an alternate elf-raised version where you are better at magic and get an exotic weapon proficiency, so I figured I was trained in the ancient methods of my mother's line and got her ancient jian (counts-as estoc) and I found that the fiend-blooded trait could make my father a more interesting character and play into my character's mixed bloodline themes, and then that supported taking a Hexcrafter archetype to represent my father's magical heritage (and hexes are cool anyway). And in there, I noticed that the flight hex fits the xianxia theme really well. And then as I was looking at the archetypes, I found that Bladebound would reinforce the legacy of my mother's sword, so I went with that.

In this case, some choices were purely mechanical (feats, spells, two of my three traits) but it's almost all oriented towards a story that I built while picking the options.

[Mephisto]

I recently came to be aware of Universal Horizons.

Fun rule of the day: When entering combat, one of the steps both sides do before actually entering combat is rolling perception to see if they notice the other side.

I can imagine a situation where the Guide breaks out the minis and... whatever they call the play area which has a kitschy name in this system, sets it all up, and everyone rolls. Players fail. Cool, maybe it's a sneak attack. Nope, enemies failed to notice the PCs as well. What do we do now? ‾\_(ツ)_/‾

Then again, this is the system that has "Banking" under the list of magic skills. Not even magical banking like Harry Potter's goblins, but standard banking stuff. Make of that what you will.

[Persus13]

Is entering combat called an Event Horizon in that system?

[Mephisto]

If that is a reference to physics or pop culture, I didn't get the connection. So, answering at face value.

The writing of this book isn't even vanilla. It's more like plain oatmeal. Entering combat consists of three phases - "rally phase", "perception phase", and "battle phase".

[scourge728]

I believe the joke is related to the part of a black hole called the event horizon and the name of the game

[scriver]

Said part of the black hole being the point of no return.

[Persus13]

Yeah, thanks for explaining the joke. Does the Universal Horizons title have some sort of meaning in the system, or is it just something to sound cool?

What goes into naming RPGs is something I find interesting, because its pretty obvious why GURPS and Call of Cthulhu are called that, and then you have a bunch of RPGs with names like Pathfinder, which you have no idea behind the thought process other then that the name sounds cool.

[Mephisto]

Does the Universal Horizons title have some sort of meaning in the system, or is it just something to sound cool?

Yes. "How can we denote that this is a generic system in the most bland and generic way we can think of?"

Seriously. The whole premise is taking your one character that was created in one genre and converting it (through their patent-pending method, though their patent was denied like five years ago) to other genres.

That method? "Get rid of racial features when going to a genre that doesn't have them. Magic skills don't exist in modern or future genres, unless they do. Shooting works equally well for guns or bows. Going through Genre Portals magically fucks up your brain so a high level of Sciencey Build Shit skill either results in fancy architecture or literal rocket ships depending on what's genre-appropriate." It's very "just write shit down; we're for damn sure not going to actually make a real conversion system because that's hard."

And this isn't me misusing genre. This is how they use the word. I don't even want to ask what genre something like Shadowrun would be.

[Kagus]

I don't even want to ask what genre something like Shadowrun would be.

Soykaf.

[scriver]

I think Universal Horizons is a pretty cool name too.

My favourite names for game systems are probably Stars Without Number or Riddle of Steel, though. I find them both to be just immediately adventure-inspiring to say.

[Kagus]

Is it wrong to want to run a campaign where the antagonists are two necromancer brothers from Kara-Tur, just so you can prove that two Wongs can make a wight?

[Egan_BW]

Follow your dreams, Kag.

[Superdorf]

Is it wrong to want to run a campaign where the antagonists are two necromancer brothers from Kara-Tur, just so you can prove that two Wongs can make a wight?

That is very, very wrong. In the best way.
I say do it. 

[pikachu17]

Does Kara-Tur have family name-personal name?
If so, their names are Wong Way and Wong Idea. Way really doesn't want you to get his brother.