My Life as a Gamer: John Carter is a 9th Level Fighting-Man

The aging Original Gamers will not find the following at all controversial that a given D&D game can go from Tolkien's Middle-Earth to Conan's Hyboria to Burrough's Barsoom without skipping a beat, or without changing so much as how you roll the dice. Today that assertion routinely leads people who really ought to know better that you can't do that because you need to change the rules with every shift.

Horseshit.

That's artifact of Mech Piloting, because it betrays the belief that you can't get shit done without moving some mechanical lever or another. All that is actually required is that the Game Master have sufficient familiarity with the source material to present the environment appropriately and make rulings consistent with the spirit therein. You don't need a rule to handle it; you need a dude to say "No, that's not how it's done here, get over it."

That world-hopping thing I mention above? What I say applies no matter how you take that. It's valid as literal world-hopping during a game, or as metaphorical world-hopping where the same group plays games in each world using the exact same ruleset. While I can do this with D&D's earlier editions, other publishers built business models around this concept (Palladium, HERO).) and all that a Game Master has to do is decide what content is allowed for players use. (A D&D game in Barsoom has no Dwarves, Elves, or Halflings.)

How you roll your man, how your man operates in the environment, combat and recovery, etc.- all the same from game to game and setting to setting. One game can satisfy your gaming needs and wants for the rest of your days if you just let go of the Mech Piloting bullshit- which is why that gets pushed so hard by publishers seeking to exploit that psychology for their commercial benefit. That Game Master is the strength of the tabletop RPG medium; embrace that shit, and the hobby- and let the industry collapse into a pile of ashes and dust.