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Xyphan
2014-01-20, 08:35 PM
I want to give mutants and masterminds a shot, but I don't know what books to start with. I would also like to look at other RPGs and would like this thread to help with both. I play D&D 3.5 with some stuff from Pathfinder thrown in based on rules me and my gaming group have agreed on, only one of us doesn't dm. I have also played and enjoyed Vampire the Masquerade, and Heroes Unlimited.

Grinner
2014-01-20, 08:40 PM
It's traditional to start with the core book.

Beyond that, you may want to look into the Power Profile PDFs.

Knaight
2014-01-20, 08:45 PM
Get the one core book, and you're pretty much golden. As far as other RPGs go, there's quite a few worth looking at. Personal favorites include Fudge, Microscope, Chronica Feudalis, Nemesis, and REIGN. Of those Fudge and Nemesis are free - they are also quite different, short, and worth looking into.

Rhynn
2014-01-20, 08:52 PM
All the retroclones in my sig, starting with the free ones.

Aces & Eights - alt-history Wild West.

Artesia: Adventures in the Known World - awesome fantasy balancing realism and mythic feel.

Burning Wheel - it's good, I hear.

Call of Cthulhu - Lovecraftian horror.

Conan d20 - because Conan, duh.

RuneQuest - RQ6 is the latest edition. Classic.

GURPS - generic perfection.

HârnMaster - splendid setting, simple and excellent rules. Mostly realistic 11th-century medieval European fantasy.

Legend of the Five Rings - fantasy feudal Japan.

Little Fears - horror RPG where the PCs are children. Get the original edition with the hardcore horror material.

Lord of the Rings - Decipher's LotR RPG is pretty dang good, actually.

The One Ring - also a good LotR (well The Hobbit) RPG!

Rolemaster - Rolemaster Express if you like a little complexity and few tables and all your rules in one book, Rolemaster Classic if you want to buy multiple books to have even the core rules and love hundreds of tables.

Shadowrun - cyberpunk with elves and mages.

The Riddle of Steel - good luck finding this, the RPG with the hands-down best medieval hand-to-hand combat rules ever.

Traveller - classic hard-SF fantasy with operatic elements (of course space navies train you to use cutlasses!).

Twilight 2013 - post-nuclear war survival. Has the hands-down best rules for modern small arms combat on a squad level. Fiddly.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying - gritty, dirty fantasy. 1st or 2nd edition only. Hisssss.

Airk
2014-01-21, 10:52 AM
We could recommend RPGs for pages and pages and pages.

The fact is that unless you have an extremely narrow definition of what makes a 'good' RPG, there are far more 'good' RPGs out there than not. The really crappy ones tend to sink to the bottom of the heap.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure Black Jester is now going to swoop in and tell me that I'm wrong and most RPGs suck and we should all be playing GURPS, but I'm sticking to this. Yes. There are bad RPGs. But the odds of you bumbling into one are not nearly as high as you might think.

Blah blah games:

Fate Accelerated (http://www.evilhat.com/home/fae/) (I don't really recommend Fate Core unless you already know you like Fate)
Mouse Guard (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/60496/Mouse-Guard-Roleplaying-Game)
Tenra Bansho Zero (http://www.tenra-rpg.com/)
Houses of the Blooded (http://housesoftheblooded.net/)
Zounds (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/102723/Zounds)

I also hear very good things about Dungeon World (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/108028/Dungeon-World), Numenera (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/114133/Numenera) and Monsterhearts. (http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/monsterhearts/)

Or, for something completely different, Golden Sky Stories (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118784/Golden-Sky-Stories).

Note. Those products are all over the place in terms of setting, goals, and style. This is by design. All of them are good games.

tensai_oni
2014-01-21, 11:07 AM
Mutants and Masterminds - which edition?

2nd ed, other than the core book I also suggest looking at Ultimate Power, as it provides some slight balancing and expands on powers. Mecha and Manga is a very good book if you want to run anime-like games, especially with martial arts or giant robots - its feats are also really broken if used irresponsibly.

But these are just extras. Even without them, the core rulebook is perfectly playable.

For 3rd ed, just grab the core rules.

Tengu_temp
2014-01-21, 11:57 AM
Warlocks & Warriors is also a good M&M 2e splat - its main purpose is to run fantasy-style games, but it has good feats and powers that can be used for every game.