Other tabletop formats

[Laki]

Hello! I've been reading OOTs for quite awhile, but have never really had the opportunity to actually play tabletop D&D until pretty recently (lots of cRPG experience though). Our DM is incredible and utilizes his own system (and universe) which is loosely based around 3.5 with a totally different magic system and fewer hard set restrictions. Anyhow, his departure from canon got me thinking about the type of system I would run if given full rein. I was hoping some of you with more experience than me might be able to point me towards a tabletop system that meshes with what I have in mind. I don't want to reinvent the wheel, after all, if someone else has already put in the work to flesh something similar out.

How I'd envision my perfect gaming environment:

(Mostly) hard set HP. I really dislike the die roll upon level up system. In fact, I dislike the whole leveling system to be honest. It's so inorganic. Rather, I'd prefer you gain RP points at the DM's discretion that can be used towards purchasing up your various attributes, skills, abilities etc. (as long as it can be justified in-game: you probably won't gain much foraging knowledge if all you did in a campaign was hack through a haunted castle and murder a lich). For this to work, I imagine attributes and skills ought to be out of a hundred, with a complimentary hundred die rolling system (we have several of those handy, so that's no barrier).

I could probably piece together something on my own, but if anyone knows of anything similar in scope and vision to this it would be super useful, as balancing out the point costs for various skills and attributes as well as hammering out game mechanics would be extremely beneficial.

Thanks!

[Grinner]

How I'd envision my perfect gaming environment:

(Mostly) hard set HP. I really dislike the die roll upon level up system. In fact, I dislike the whole leveling system to be honest. It's so inorganic. Rather, I'd prefer you gain RP points at the DM's discretion that can be used towards purchasing up your various attributes, skills, abilities etc. (as long as it can be justified in-game: you probably won't gain much foraging knowledge if all you did in a campaign was hack through a haunted castle and murder a lich). For this to work, I imagine attributes and skills ought to be out of a hundred, with a complimentary hundred die rolling system (we have several of those handy, so that's no barrier).

You've just described GURPS.

Edit: World of Darkness might also work for you.

[dsmiles]

You've just described GURPS.

Edit: World of Darkness might also work for you.
I think Dungeon World may work for you as well.

[TheOOB]

Well, the class and level system, as well as the hp system, are fairly unique to D&D. Only a fairly small percentage of PnP game systems work that way, as most systems intentionally try to be different from D&D rather than directly compete with it.

Most game systems I've played with has characters gain experiance points(which may be called something else), that the player can use to increase whichever attribute/skills/abilities they choose, and most systems have a fairly narrow range of possible wound levels from character to character, and they usually only go up if you make your character tougher with xp.

You may want to think of what kind of game you're looking for. Shadowrun does great fantasty Cyberpunk, Legend of the Five Rings does samurai stories, (New)World of Darkness does modern Gothic horror. Whatever you're looking for, there is a system for it. Hell I'm working on two PnP systems of my own.