House System

A set of rules used by a game development company for almost every game they publish. It is much cheaper to create the system once, and then tweak it for a specific game than to develop a unique system for each game. It also helps with sales because players will already know the basics, and won't have to learn a whole new set of rules. However, it can backfire if the system doesn't fit the genre they're trying to apply it to.

Most House Systems end up as Universal Systems, if they didn't start out that way.

Has nothing to do with an antisocial genius's idea of how to perform medical diagnoses.


 * The d20 System by Wizards of the Coast.
 * The Palladium or "Megaversal" system by Palladium Books.
 * The d10 system of Fantasy Flight Games Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay / Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay
 * The Storyteller system by White Wolf.
 * Followed by their new Storytelling system, where each game refers back to the core system in a single book (World of Darkness).
 * The D6 system (later OpenD6) by West End Games.
 * The Unisystem by Eden Games.
 * The Tri-Stat System by Guardians Of Order
 * The Basic Roleplaying system by Chaosium is an interesting case: Chaosium mutated the original RuneQuest into a half-dozen systems with the same core mechanics (percentile skills and the same seven stats, more or less), and recently collected most of the variations into one system with numerous options.
 * Except for Pendragon, which changed too radically.
 * Mongoose's version of RuneQuest is just different enough from Chaosium's system to avoid lawsuits, but thanks to the first edition's Open Game License became the basis for other variations, mostly fan-made.
 * And then there's OGL retroclone OpenQuest from D101 Games.
 * The D10-based system used by AEG for Legend of the Five Rings and 7thSea. Both used the same basic die rolling mechanic, but were otherwise quite different.
 * The Hero System is a textbook example of a single Superhero game (Champions]) evolving into a House System (used in the original editions of Fantasy Hero, Star Hero for Space Opera flavour, Justice, Inc. for Two-Fisted Tales, Danger International for Spy Fiction, and Robot Warriors for Humongous Mecha) - and then back into a single Universal System game. Most of the older side-games were revived during the 5th edition era as genre-advice sourcebooks.
 * GURPS, kinda. Steve Jackson Games does publish other systems, Toon being the best known.