Other Systems

[Avenger337]

Hey, all

So, I just finished a campaign using DnD, which went moderately well. I think all the players had fun, and I had fun as well. However, after it was over, I realized that DnD really isn't the system for me. When I DM, I want to tell a story, I want the players to be able to help me tell a story, and I want a system that's going to encourage me to tell a story (or at the very least, not get in my way). Now, I know DnD can do all of this -- I've done it, and I have a good group of players. So I don't really want a flood of responses saying "DnD can do it!" I already know it can. Neither should you construe this as a bash against DnD -- DnD's a great game, but a lot of times, the mechanics get in the way of my storytelling.

So, I've been browsing around other systems trying to find ones that seem to support storytelling more from the ground up. I've been looking at GURPS, which seems to be a step in the right direction, at least. I'm also very interested in the WoD games, which seem to be very story-focused.

I'm mainly just curious, though, if there are any other systems that you guys like that a) aren't *exceedingly* rules-intensive, and b) encourage storytelling.

[Innis Cabal]

WoD games USED to be good, if you can get your hands on old material go for it, or old exalted is good. BESM Tri-Stat is pretty good as well

[Ravyn]

Old Exalted, definitely. The rules are pretty malleable, basic numerical stats are easy to improvise, and while the Charms do take some memorization, with most types you can just make some up if you need to. Just don't start high-powered until you've got a campaign under your belt--I learned that the hard way. The one catch, if you can call it that, is the whole pre-existing world thing, but even that's not too hard to work around.

Similarly, Aberrant if you're into the whole superhero thing--and you can find it. Finding it's the trick, though.

[Avenger337]

Cool, I'll see what I can find about those. I'm also potentially looking at sci-fi rather than fantasy; anyone have suggestions there?

[Kyrsis]

Yeah old WoD is good, new is so-so.
Coming up with a freeform system might work for you too. That's been my favorite for a while.

[Bears With Lasers]

Spirit of the Century is a very, very, very good game. Character creation is brilliant fun, it emulates its genre very well, the skill pyramid is awesome... it's a rules light system; the default setting is a pulp-adventure story of the 1920s, but it's easy to adapt. And there is an SRD (http://zork.net/%7Enick/loyhargil/fate3/fate3.html) that's more complete than the d20 SRD.

Try it out. You won't be sorry.

[Poison_Fish]

There is the old Alternity system out there if you can find it. But that got shot down pretty quickly as soon as WoTC started up D20 (And destroyed the beautiful star drive campaign setting).

I'd echo Exalted and other white wolf games, but they do have a lot of reliance upon a preexisting world. Not that that always gets in the way.

I happen to also enjoy some of the older cyberpunk books.

[Rasumichin]

I'd recommend the Unisystem by Eden Studios. They've got tons of great games with quick, simple mechanics and a lot of mood and wonderful ideas for developing interesting characters that get easily involved in the narrative.

For a first look, check out WitchCraft, a game about the occult in a contemporary setting, the core rules are for free on Eden's homepage : http://www.edenstudios.net/witchcraft/index.html

I like the "cinematic" version of the system, found in games like the (now sadly out of print) Buffy-RPG, even better.
You'll barely notice the rules are even there, plus, the game has got a highly usefull mechanism of so-called drama points that enable players (and NPCs, as well) to pull of cool stunts or bend the course of the story in their favor.
Or reward them if something bad happens for the sake of storytelling.

[Zincorium]

There is the old Alternity system out there if you can find it. But that got shot down pretty quickly as soon as WoTC started up D20 (And destroyed the beautiful star drive campaign setting).

The one plus side is that the books are generally fairly cheap to buy online. I got into Alternity back when they were still giving it article space in Dragon and Dungeon, and liked both Star*Drive and Dark Matter. The rules were kind of a 180 from what D&D was at the time, but they're a lot more flexible.


BESM (big eyes small mouth) is one of the only systems that does anime inspired games well, Exalted being another, and both scale well into high powered games. Very simple stat system (I don't suggest getting the d20 version) and as long as you keep a tight rein on what the players can select, you can do pretty much any style.

[Lord Tataraus]

Personally, I like the Cyberpunk 2020 (2nd edition cyberpunk). It's really cool with the cyber mechanics, just need to updata some of the stuff a little. Once and awhile my DnD group plays it and always has fun.

[Kiero]

Hey, all

So, I just finished a campaign using DnD, which went moderately well. I think all the players had fun, and I had fun as well. However, after it was over, I realized that DnD really isn't the system for me. When I DM, I want to tell a story, I want the players to be able to help me tell a story, and I want a system that's going to encourage me to tell a story (or at the very least, not get in my way). Now, I know DnD can do all of this -- I've done it, and I have a good group of players. So I don't really want a flood of responses saying "DnD can do it!" I already know it can. Neither should you construe this as a bash against DnD -- DnD's a great game, but a lot of times, the mechanics get in the way of my storytelling.

Problem is this is very much a "how long is a piece of string" type request with only these criteria. There are screeds of games different to (and lighter than) D&D.

What specifically don't you like about D&D, where don't you feel supported? And equally importantly, what aspects of D&D do you like, and would prefer in another system?


So, I've been browsing around other systems trying to find ones that seem to support storytelling more from the ground up. I've been looking at GURPS, which seems to be a step in the right direction, at least. I'm also very interested in the WoD games, which seem to be very story-focused.

Have you seen anything of either system? GURPS Lite is freely available, but GURPS seems to be designed for the mindset of simulation, not storytelling.


I'm mainly just curious, though, if there are any other systems that you guys like that a) aren't *exceedingly* rules-intensive, and b) encourage storytelling.

What do you mean by aren't exceedingly rules-intensive? How light are you willing to go, how much structure do you want out of the system, what areas do you want it to focus on? Are you happy with having a single method of resolution for all types of conflict, or are you attached to having a specialised combat subsystem?

What do you mean by encourage storytelling? Do you want mechanics that specifically model/reward certain kinds of behaviour? Meta mechanics/resources that aid players getting involved? What?

[Fhaolan]

If you want to go the 'really incredibly rules-light' direction, there's 'Primetime Adventures' http://www.dog-eared-designs.com/games.html

I'm about to start up a Sci-Fi game using this ruleset. I'm not entirely sure if it will work, because we've never used Primetime before. It's going to be a bit of a shock for the players, because they've not gone *this* rules-light before either.

GURPS is a nice system, but hardly rules-light. Char-gen is *very* long.

Cyberpunk 2020 is a personal favourite of mine, but you might have difficulty finding it anymore, as they've released a new edition which I'm not that happy with.

I saw on the shelf at a game store something new, but I didn't want to drop another $60 on a new game that I hadn't heard of before. It was called 'Battlestations' (http://www.battlestations.info/), and apparantly it's a combination starship wargame and RPG. Again, not used it myself, but the reviews I've read sound interesting.

[Annarrkkii]

If you wait about a month the revised Star Wars saga RPG will be out, and that looks absolutely spifftacular.

Wheel of Time is broken beyond hope, but if you play a no-channeler variant it can be a lot of fun for Jordan fans. IF you're willing to do a good bit of adjucating.

Straight up d20 Modern is actually a blast, and can easily be modified to be a bit more D+D-like by use of Urban Arcana. There's a hefty SRD for it (plain text download, blehkr) on the WotC site.

[Corolinth]

I'm to understand 7th Sea is good for your storytelling needs. Supposedly the Gamemaster's Guide says something to the effect of, "If one of your players wants to swing on a chandelier, now might be a good time to put a chandelier in the room."

[Bears With Lasers]

7th Sea is pretty cool, yeah. It's got some problems with the metaplot (you got your Cthonic horror in my swashbuckling adventure!) and the Important NPC design (this NPC has no stats and auto-wins... so does this one... this one has stats, but their stats are I Win... and so on), but it is swashbuckly.

[Raum]

True 20 is a fairly rules-light system that has the advantage of being easy to learn for any experienced d20 players. Someone mentioned Unisystem above, it's worth a look. I like Shadowrun for SciFi RGPs, but it may have a beefier ruleset than you're looking for.

[Ashes]

I'll go against the grain here, and recommend the new World of Darkness games. A lot more free than the old, and completely devoid of the horrid metaplot that plagued the OWoD. I can't see why people would recommend that novel-series for a request like this.

Also, the rules are simpler, more intuitive and streamlined than the OWoD. I liek it, and I think you should look into it.

[Vyker]

Shadowrun is an amazing world, but steer away from vehicle combat (unless you like math. Like, a lot.). It's got a rough learning curve, but once you're over that, it flows really well and it's a lot of fun. No classes per se, so you can really spin archetypes and come up with some fun characters.

Exalted has been tossed in a couple times and I can't stress enough how awesome it is. If you want story and badassery, look no further than the original Exalted.

[Counterspin]

Unknown Armies is my favorite system. There's a lot of effort to make characterization part of the character creation process. You name each of your four stats, and you create most of your skills together with the DM. Between those two things you get a feel for your character's traits, and to a certain extent his style.

The skills are all percentile based, with very little actual rolling required. Characters with appropriate skills are generally presumed to successful if the check is out of combat.

Combat is very dangerous, especially guns. You have a one percent chance of killing anyone you strike in combat, so there's always the risk of death, even against significantly lesser foes, discouraging combat and encouraging weird off the cuff combat resolution.

The one problem would be if you require magic. Uknown Armies has two parallel magic systems, but they're heavily imbedded in the metaplot. Everything else is applicable to pretty any kind of game you might want to run.

[Ranis]

OP-I'm confused. Why exactly isn't D&D for you? You said it wasn't for you, but I'm missing the reasoning behind your claim.

[Avenger337]

Thanks for all the replies; I'll definitely check some of these out.

There are several reasons that I've been intrigued by GURPS; one of the primary ones is the heavy focus on character creation and development that seems evident in the sourcebooks. Every other sentence is "But your character must have some in-game reason for this advantage/skill/etc," which appeals to me, since it means that they were thinking about role-playing as the game was designed. Another reason it appeals to me is the fact that it's classless, so you can play *anything* you want, and not be restricted by "Well, this class doesn't have that ability, so I have to multi-class over here, and blah blah blah." It feels very modular to me. A third reason that I'm intrigued by the system is that it at least claims to be flexible in terms of which rules you actually use. I.e., you can decide you don't want combat to be so complicated, so you just ignore the whole section on tactical combat, and it still works out ok.

Now, granted, I've never actually played, so how well all this works out in practice, I don't know. That's part of why I posted this thread.

As for the questions about my problems with DnD, I guess I don't really have a particularly good answer. I guess I just feel that the mechanics of the game get in the way of my description. When you're in the middle of a heavy combat, I want it to feel like you're in the middle of a heavy combat with bullets flying past your head or whatever. And DnD reduces it to "Ok, make an attack roll. Add five million modifiers to it. Subtract another five million modifiers. His AC is 32, so you hit. Now roll for damage, and add a bunch more modifiers. Wait a minute, why was I attacking him in the first place?" Which really isn't much of a better answer than before; I guess I want a system that isn't completely rules-free (because if everything's left up to me, I'm going to feel like I'm railroading), but has some fairly simple mechanics that don't get in the way of the mood I'm trying to set.

And again, it's not that I can't do this with DnD. It's just a lot harder than I think it ought to be.

[Jannex]

I'm going to echo the recommendations of Original World of Darkness, 1st Edition Exalted, Cyberpunk 2020, and BESM. The latter two work especially well for sci-fi, though I've played in a successful game that used the basic WoD mechanics for a completely different, sci-fi setting. Removing the setting-specific magic powers, WoD mechanics are simple, intuitive, and flexible. I've had a lot of fun with Cyberpunk, in terms of both systems and setting. And BESM, despite my irrational hatred for d6s, and my somewhat more rational hatred for rolling low, is a fun and flexible system that's great for anime-style games.

Whatever you decide to run with, have a fun game! :smallsmile:

[The Gilded Duke]

Going to have to second Unknown Armies. Wonderful game, and mostly a wonderful system, the interaction between magic and social skills works a bit oddly, but nothing that cant be fixed with houserules.

There are however three (and a little bit more) magic systems in the system that you can use.

Avatars try and fit closley with an archtype, and then get powers of that archtype. Get fools luck by acting foolish, become able to lie really well by being a trickster, become able to trade anything by becoming a merchant.

Adepts exploit a contradiction in reality through some form of sacrifice. One of the best example Adepts is the Pornomancer. It unfortunatly usually isn't that good for pcs to play. Pornomancers exploit the contradiction of pornography. Pornography gives you power over the desires of others through rote unemotional unfulfilling sex. Through completing preprogrammed sex acts without feeling you can warp and change the desires of others.

The last magical system are rituals. Rituals can be used by either Avatars or Adepts, or even normal people. There is also a special type of magic user that only uses rituals but is very good at it. The rituals tend to have very bizare requirements, requiring set materials and set words and actions at set times. They tend to produce powerful but difficult to set up effects. The most famous in the setting is probably the proxy ritual. Through using it you can make other people your shields against magic. Whenever someone casts magic on you, it effects the shield instead, no matter where they are.

The ritual becomes more powerful if the shield is a blood relation and somehow shares your same name.

From Old World of Darkness Changeling and Mage really stand out. Two of the games that you can be the most creative in. I have friends who hate the tone of both Old World of Darkness and New World of Darkness but love those games.

My favorite game right now though... has to be Cell Gamma.

You start out in a cell. You dont remember anything. The symbol Gamma appears on the wall. You don't have a character sheet. The Dm makes all the rolls. You get to find out why you are here, and how you can survive.

[Bears With Lasers]

You start out in a cell. You dont remember anything. The symbol Gamma appears on the wall. You don't have a character sheet. The Dm makes all the rolls. You get to find out why you are here, and how you can survive.

God, I'd hate that game.

[Kiero]

Just some caveats to toss into this suggest-fest.

Unknown Armies isn't a game that likes combat-heavy sessions. Not only do PCs tend not to be very good in a scrap, they'll go bat**** crazy if they're fighting all the time. UA has one of the most realistic combat systems to my mind, but I wouldn't use it for anything remotely heroic.

Shadowrun has possibly the worst GM advice I've ever seen in any game. It basically advises the GM to screw over the players at every opportunity and play with the adversariality tuned up to 11.

7th Sea is alright, provided you don't expect the setting to make any kind of sense. Because piracy without a Caribbean-equivalent or any reason for it to actually exist defies logic. I hear later supplements tried to address that, but if that kind of thing bothers you, avoid.

True 20 ain't rules-light, it's just lighter than D&D. It still follows a largely similar structure, though it has just three classes (Warrior, Expert, Adept; fighting type, skills type, magic-using type) and a simpler Feat and Skills list. It's a cut-down D20, but still similar enough to be familiar. I doubt combat is going to be markedly different from your experience with D&D.

Exalted is often touted as the anti-D&D, but as far as complexity goes, it's right up there with it. Combat does not run fast, or smoothly in Exalted, and you're chucking around big buckets of dice all the time. You don't have classes really, but there's just as much optimising going on, and the GM has to stuff their head with how everything works just the same as in D&D.

nWoD is a possibility, long as you don't mind a multiple book buy-in. The corebook only gives you rules for mortals and ghosts, you need to buy a second one for any of the splats (mages, vamps, werewolves, etc). It's lighter than D&D, but still not light.

Again I ask, if you're interested in GURPS, have you at least read GURPS Lite, which is free?