Nostalgia: The Fuzion Years

There was a time that I was a Fuzion fanatic. Did I have issues with the system? Like many people, yes. But I liked it because: (a) it was the child of two favorite systems -- HERO and Interlock; (b) it had some okay settings for it like Champions: The New Millenium and great anime properties like Armored Trooper: Votoms, Bubblegum Crisis, and Dragon Ball Z; (c) it taught me a bit about how the systems I was into at the time (HERO, Interlock, D20) were actually very closely related, resolution mechanic-wise.

I snapped up almost every Fuzion book I could get my hands on in Asia.

Also, there was the online community that came up with their own Fuzion powered material, like the Atomik Fuzion series of PDFs, and the fan-made Record of Lodoss Wars RPG, and of course the Lightspeed RPG that I've posted about as a kitchen sink setting in prior posts.

I'd hoped that Fuzion would catch on, and that the bits that annoyed me about the system (like the weird costing problems when dealing with Mekton-style gear creation vs. Hero-style suit creation) would be overshadowed by other strengths (collapsible stats and skills, a smaller statblock foot print for NPCs, an open-ended power scale, etc.) but it was not to be.