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Yora
2011-01-07, 01:03 PM
I want to make this thread because I'm interest in learning about other systems, but quite often it's hard to find any info online and if you do it's often nothing that helps me getting an idea what I can expect from it and what people consider the pros and cons. (Because if it's by the publisher, it's always the best system ever made and close to perfect.)

This is a topic that is very subjective and purely about personal oppinions and experiences. So arguing about what some people think about a system wouldn't get us anywhere, and not be any helpful. So if you have a different oppinion about an RPG that someone else has already describe, just make your own review of it so people can get a set of different oppinions and get a better idea of what they can expect.

Dungeons & Dragons (3rd Edition)
Risus (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10114154&postcount=2)
Shadowrun (4th Edition) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10114179&postcount=3)
Faery's Tale Deluxe (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10114337&postcount=5)
GURPS (4th Edition) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10118530&postcount=6) (2) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10120312&postcount=12)
The Fantasy Trip (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10119526&postcount=8)

So, I should probably start this, and given this forum, the choice for the first RPG is rather obvious. :smallbiggrin:

Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd Edition (3.5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Release: 2000 (3rd Ed.), 2003 (3.5e)
Status: Discontinued since 2008. Core Rules available for free in the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/).

The 3rd Edition was released almost exactly the same time I started to get interested in PnP games, so it was the very first system I really learned to play and stuck with it for about 10 years. (Only got a glimps of the earlier edition through Baldur's Gate, but never really figured out how that system works.)
The 3rd Edition was the first game using the new d20 system, which compared to the older editions of D&D had a huge advantage. Almost every action is made by rolling a d20 and adding situational modifiers and you try to reach a target number or beat your opponents d20 roll. Making Attacks, resisting spells, using a skill, making ability checks: Always the same kind of roll only with different situational modifiers. And any modifier with a + is good and every modifier with a - is bad. I could never figure out in AD&D if a minus to saves is good or bad.
What also really sold the 3rd Edition to me is the ability to freely multiclass and advance in as many classes in any way you like. If you want to, the Player's Handbook (and now the SRD) has everything you need to make every character concept you can think off. It's not neccessarily completely accurate, but you can patch together something with the right basis and fluff the rest as you need it. And not only are all classes completely compatible with each other and all skills and feats, this also goes for monsters. If you know the basic character rules, you can make custom monsters any way you like it.
One thing that I dislike about D&D 3rd Edition, and all other d20 games in general, is it's strong reliance on character levels. As low-level characters you can only fight rats, kobolds, goblins, and an occasional wolf. At higher levels, you can march through a sea of goblins without the slightest chance that any of the characters might get injured in a meningful way. And to add any new abilities to your character, you always also gain more hit points, better saves, and better equipment. For some abilities you simply have to wait quite some time, before they become available. In some cases that means that your characters fighting style simply doesn't work until 6th or 8th level, you just have to wait until you have all the feats and spells. Feats don't let you become better at things, they enable you to do things in the first place. So if your concept uses a lot of feats, you spend quite some time using other tactics than you rally want to.
The E6 variant (which someone else could also make a review of) reduces the power creep considerably and is a very interesting choice for lower-powered games, but still sticks to the core concept of improving your character by gaining feats and spells.

Now that I have learned more about other games, I also have to say that the 3rd (and from what I've heard 4th) Edition is very much about complex tactical combat and rolling dice. If you want to, you can roll dice for about every meningful action in the game, and the rules assume that you do. This includes making rolls to see if you succesfully lied to a guard, convinced the king you're not a spy, and so on. If you want to play the game tactical with a great reliance of building your characters abilities and using the resources you're character has, I think it's certainly a great game. But only when looking more at other games, I realized that you can also have a game in which the GM simply decides if your arguments convince an NPC or you get across a narrow chasm without making a roll to check for a critical failure. But D&D has rules for such things and when there are rules for something, people generally use them.

So, if you want to play a tactical game that includes a great deal of planning and building your characters abilities, I highly recommend D&D 3.5e. If you want a game that does not put much emphasis on rolling dice and carefully monitoring every step of combat or other conflicts, and just following the story and the interactions between people, I think there are lots of systems that will serve you much better.

Yora
2011-01-07, 01:20 PM
Risus
Creator: John Ross
Release: 1993
Availability: Free (http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm)

Risus is probably the most simple RPG with the shortest rules ever! The basic rules are 4 pages, with additional 2 pages of optional rules. And that's all.
Risus is easiest to understand when you know about it's source as a comedy game. Instead of classes, skills, spells, and equipment, you simply have cliches: A typical character has 10 cliche points which he can put in three or four cliches. For example Ninja 4, Sorcerer 3, Alchemist 2, and Farmer 1. That's the entire character creation process. If your character performs an action that is part of the things Ninjas do (jumping to another roof), you roll 4d6 to determine success. If it's something that a Ninja usually has nothing to do with, but an Alchemist does (mixing explosives), you roll 2d6 to determine sucees.
And that's about all there is to the system. The rules have some more words on combat and explain things a bit more detailed, but that's really about it.

Risus is the perfect game when you have some spare time at hands an all you have is some paper, pens and a couple of dice. A class is canceled and you have two hours with nothing to do? Play Risus. You just have to have some dice at hand.
We once played it for one session with our D&D group and it worked really well for a gritty campaign with well developed characters either. It certainly isn't the game for every situation. Sometimes you want the rules to be a bit more complex, especially when you plan on longer campaigns. But Risus is so rediculously easy, that I advice everyone to learn it and try it out once or twice. You never know when you want to play a one-shot adventure or mini campaign and nobody has his books with him or you don't want to bother with character creation or teaching a new game to some of the players.

TheCountAlucard
2011-01-07, 01:23 PM
Shadowrun (Fourth Edition)
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
Release: 2005 (4th Ed.), 2009 (20th anniversary book)

Shadowrun was the first game I got to actually play in. I may have read other game books before that, I may have been reading comics and the like with RPG humor in them years beforehand, but my first game was Shadowrun. People tell me that 4e apparently lobotomized the fluff of previous editions, but I enjoy the world of 2070 enough. Magic, technology, and heists - what more can a guy ask for? :smallsmile:

Okay, so the rules have their moments of complexity, and the first version of the 4e rulebook was so complex that finding any one particular rule was a Herculean effort, but thankfully now we have the much-better-organized 20th anniversary book. One other flaw is just how long the character creation process takes, especially considering the lethality of the system.

Now, one advantage you have with this game (as you do most classless systems) is that you build what you want from the start. A starting mage could also be a hacker, or a social engineer, et cetera. You'll still want to keep in mind the roles you may want to cover, but those are more guidelines and are in no way set in stone.

Yora
2011-01-07, 01:32 PM
Okay, so the rules have their moments of complexity, and the first version of the 4e rulebook was so complex that finding any one particular rule was a Herculean effort, but thankfully now we have the much-better-organized 20th anniversary book.
Last week we started a campaign with lots of RPG veterans, but only two who played SR before. We had one hardcoppy and one players pdf-version on three notebooks, and we still had all them being occupied all the time by people trying to find the stats for elves or the weapon list.
I'm glad it was the Anniversary edition. :smalleek:

The Rose Dragon
2011-01-07, 01:47 PM
Faery's Tale Deluxe

Publisher: Green Ronin Publishing / Firefly Games
Release: 2007

Faery's Tale Deluxe is a wonderful little game that is one of the few RPGs aimed at children and their parents in a market oversaturated by mature content. It uses d6s as its dice and a dice pool mechanic where even dice are counted as successes (odd dice for dark faeries, but we'll get to that in a minute), but the mechanics are not really why you should get the game (even though I think they are good enough - not brilliant, but nothing immediately leaps out as out of place). You should get the game because it's an amazing read, because your inner child did not die yet and because one day you want to be a parent and you want a good RPG to get them started.

The default setting takes place in Brightwood, a magical land where faeries as tall as an apple exist and are ruled by Queen Leana, are surrounded by humans, animal friends, and other supernatural creatures both dark and light. While most faeries are good beings, there are some dark faeries who are more malevolent than mischievous, and dark witches and dragons and giants and other kinds of beings who you can adventure against. Through these adventures, the faeries (who are immortal and never really age) learn the value of friendship, cooperation, honesty and whatever else you want to teach your kids. If you are not sure how to do so, there are sidebars on how kids mature as they age, what concepts they can understand at what ages and how to play games with the little brats.

Kaldrin
2011-01-08, 12:47 AM
GURPS (Generic Universal Role-Playing System) 4e
Publisher: Steve Jackson Games
Release date: 2004

Our societies have a dark connotation when we hear the word 'generic', but don't let that connotation fool you. This game system can do pretty much anything you want it to. It's based on simulation of realistic physics and responses, so it tends to be very deadly to characters as is.

However, there are a lot of options that make genre specific needs doable. For instance, there's a way of just doing 'stun' damage instead of bodily injury if you want to have a good fisticuffs game where few people die. You can have a very fun Delta Green campaign (think Old Ones meets MIB) with bullets flying. The GM can tailor powers, talents and just about anything else, including templates (as close to classes as you'll get in the system).

We've played quite a few different types of games in it. A bog standard fantasy where the knight in training got his arm severed early in the series, recovered, and became known as "The One-armed Knight" in the kingdom. A space marine epic in which a small squad re-takes a mining colony on the edge of space. A master spy and a gunslinger (who talks to his guns) take out a cabal of psi-ops who want to create a dimensional rift and bring forth whatever nasty and smelly bits that reside there. An epic fantasy where a group of established heroes take on the avatar of a rebellious god trying to destroy all life in the universe. A post apoc zombie game in which a group of rural folks save their small town and fortify it against the legions of undead.

That's the sort of thing we do with it, but there are an unlimited number of ways to use the system. My favourite by far.

Yora
2011-01-08, 06:57 AM
Can you say something about how character creation and combat works? Things like that are what interests me most.
(Not to be snarky, but all you said is that gurps can cover many settings.)

Grendus
2011-01-08, 09:13 AM
The Fantasy Trip
Publisher: Metagaming Concepts
Release Date: 1980

The Fantasy Trip (TFT) is a very old PnP game, which is really two parts. The first parts were simply called Melee and Wizard, which covered (as you might guess) melee and magical combat for a very simple tactical war-game. RPG elements were completely absent from the rules, and any role playing was really handled by DM and player interaction. In the Labyrinth was later published, which compiled the rules from Melee and Wizard as well as adding some back rules for running a game, some setting information, as well as expanding certain things from both pamphlet sized PnP handbooks (seriously, my dad still has them, they're tiny).

Unfortunately, Metagaming Concepts died out and one of the main founders disappeared leaving the actual game's intellectual property rights in question, though most PnP gamers will recognize the other founder: Steve Jackson. Consequently, many TFT elements are found in GURPS and other Steve Jackson Games products. There's also a small community publishing modules.

The system had it's advantages, especially back in the day. Stats were purchased in a crude point buy system, where each race started with various stats pre-set and then you were given a small pool of bonus points to distribute as you saw fit. Creatures with stats that started too far ahead took longer to level, ending up far weaker in the end. Instead of leveling up, each time you reached the experience point cap (which started at 125 and doubled at various point amounts) you gained an attribute point which could be added to either your strength, dexterity, or intellect.

Each stat had a direct effect on the game. Strength governed your hit points (literally, your strength was your hit point total) and allowed you to wield weapons that did more damage. Dexterity governed your chance to hit, you had to roll less than your dexterity on 3d6 to hit a target. Intelligence allowed you to learn more and better abilities.

One of the main advantages it had was that there were really only two classes - fighter and wizard. Beyond that, everything was tied to your stat allocation and abilities taken. Made character creation a breeze. Combat was fairly fluid, with initiative being determined by the relative dexterity scores (which made dexterity based builds very powerful) and turns being very quick due to very limited iterative attacks (you could dual wield, and characters with ridiculous dexterities could rapid fire bows, but that was mostly it unless you used shakeen, which usually warranted a ITL to the face). Hex based combat made navigation a little tricky, but being able to organize by megahex and mega-megahex made dungeon design fairly easy. The downside was mostly due to lack of material. Metagaming Concepts went under relatively quickly, and while Steve Jackson tried to purchase the license to TFT they asked for $250,000, which was out of his price range at the time, and the current owner of the intellectual property has since vanished, so regardless of whether Steve Jackson is still interested in the game there's no real way for him to legally extend the system.

true_shinken
2011-01-08, 09:22 AM
Can you say something about how character creation and combat works? Things like that are what interests me most.
(Not to be snarky, but all you said is that gurps can cover many settings.)
It's point based. I dunno about most recent editions, but GURPS always seemed slow to a crawl to me, for everything. It's very, very rules heavy.

The Rose Dragon
2011-01-08, 11:16 AM
It would be a good idea to have a list of what we expect from reviews. Not every system will be able to answer every question, of course, but everyone has different expectations from games and thus the reviews should cover a number of essentials at the very least.

Gnaeus
2011-01-08, 11:33 AM
Faery's Tale Deluxe

Publisher: Green Ronin Publishing / Firefly Games
Release: 2007

Thanks Rose! I'll be getting a copy this weekend. My girls have been watching Fantasia and love fairies.

Kaldrin
2011-01-08, 12:59 PM
Can you say something about how character creation and combat works? Things like that are what interests me most.
(Not to be snarky, but all you said is that gurps can cover many settings.)

Character creation is point-based. The starting point values depend on what you want to do with the game. High point levels don't exactly equate to high combat power though. You can have a 250 pt warrior who would kill a 750 pt accountant. A GM has to balance abilities of the PCs with the campaign world.

Standard combat is more involved than other games. You have attack rolls and defense rolls. Attack is to hit. Defense is to avoid the hit. If the attack succeeds, you have a damage roll, then a shock penalty on the target's next turn due to pain and injury. There are also other options, like doing an all-out-attack, which negates your defensive rolls for that turn. All-out-attacks give bonuses depending on what you want to do. Likewise, you can forgo your attacks for an all-out-defense and get bonuses to your defenses.

Additionally, you get health rolls if you go below 0 hp to keep fighting or stay conscious.

However, like I said before, there are many optional rules that you can apply. For instance, I never have my mooks (the incidental enemies, like foot soldiers or other cannon fodder) use defense rolls. They also don't roll health for death. They just die at 0 hp.

I've heard a lot of people complain about GURPS fights being slow and they just don't know the rules well enough to apply things on the fly or don't use the right optional rules to keep the game moving along with the incidental fights.

At least three groups who had tried the system and hated it, loved it after I ran a campaign for them. GURPS is about modification for your needs. It's a Lego system... and most of the know-how is on the GM's shoulders, so your players really don't have to know everything.

true_shinken
2011-01-08, 01:21 PM
I've heard a lot of people complain about GURPS fights being slow and they just don't know the rules well enough to apply things on the fly or don't use the right optional rules to keep the game moving along with the incidental fights.

Well, you yourself need 2 houserules (minions die at 0 Health and they don't get defense rolls) to make it work like you want, so you can't blame them.

Kaldrin
2011-01-08, 01:36 PM
Well, you yourself need 2 houserules (minions die at 0 Health and they don't get defense rolls) to make it work like you want, so you can't blame them.

Like I said, you don't know the rules well enough to comment. Those are optional rules stated in the books, not house rules.

AyeGill
2011-01-08, 01:44 PM
Like I said, you don't know the rules well enough to comment. Those are optional rules stated in the books, not house rules.

The point stands that you actually need to modify the system(which i'd consider an optional rule just another way of doing) to make it as fast as it is in your game. Just because the book includes a way of modding the system to make it faster, doesn't mean you aren't justified in saying it's slow. Optional rules still require you to understand the rules fairly well to apply them, and with a rules-heavy system like GURPS, the people who hate slow and rules-bound combat are often people who don't like spending large amounts of time wrapping their minds around heavy-duty rules.

Now, i don't actually know GURPS, so correct me if what i propose would be impractical or otherwise invalid, but it seems to me as if a system is better built as a simple core system with optional rules for added complexity, rather than the other way around.

true_shinken
2011-01-08, 01:53 PM
Like I said, you don't know the rules well enough to comment. Those are optional rules stated in the books, not house rules.
I played GURPS (2nd edition) for more than 10 years, I know the rules pretty well. Memorizing all optional rules from all suplements is just insane. Core GURPS, at leats in 2nd edition, was very very slow. That's a fact. Optional rules are optional. It's like saying 3.5 is a high lethality system where death is not cheap because the SRD has rules for alternate massive damage thresholds and you can run an outsider-only campaign.

The Rose Dragon
2011-01-08, 01:55 PM
I played GURPS (2nd edition) for more than 10 years

I'm beginning to see the problem here.

Tael
2011-01-08, 06:22 PM
The thing about GURPS is that it's basically a toolset. You cannot just pick up the core books, make characters, and run through a module. The system has to be adapted to the setting and style you want, but once you do that, it can work very well for pretty much anything. This does however mean that the GM has their work cut out for them, and my biggest detractor of GURPS is it's lack of any kind of bestiary or collection of enemies/monsters.

Also note that GURPS generally isn't played like D&D, it's not very combat focused. One should take not of it's huge and awesome skill system, which is the best I've found in an RPG to date. I do find combat to be a bit slow with beginners, but when any fight can mean death or serious lasting injury, they shouldn't always be over lightning fast.

And I just love being able to accurately replicate pretty much anyone any anything in the world. Now my friends and I can kill/maim/burn each other without ever leaving the comfort of our basements! :smalltongue:

EDIT:

I'm beginning to see the problem here.

Yeah, 3rd and 4th are quite similar, but there have been some pretty significant changes since 2nd edition.