PDA

View Full Version : What are you other favorite tabletop RPGs?



bendking
2020-03-06, 09:46 AM
I hope this is in the right forum. I'm interested in what other games this community is interested :)
I personally have only played D&D so far.

stoutstien
2020-03-06, 09:53 AM
Star trek adventures has some very interesting concepts like living campaigns and the ability for players to trade boosts to dive rolls now and risk penalties later on. The momentum idea has a good feel and prompts teamwork.

It's a tad clunky overall but it does have a lot of fresh ideas and is a blast to play even if you aren't a fan of the franchise.

Waterdeep Merch
2020-03-06, 10:49 AM
Pathfinder's my usual number 2. But I also really like (in no particular order):

Mekton Z
Giant Guardian Generation
Shadow of the Demon Lord (newcomer for me!)
Shadows of Esteren
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Numenara

I've recently been learning Savage Worlds and GURPS. I like learning new systems.

Misterwhisper
2020-03-06, 11:22 AM
World of Darkness and almost all their associated books.
- Changeling is great fun
- Werewolf is good but not as good as OWOD
- Vampire is the same as werewolf
- Promethean is absolutely amazing if you have a great GM
- Normal human is probably my favorite TTRPG
- Don't care for Geist

Shadowrun is great to run and have a blast with but loot is unbalanced.
Decades of evolving mythos, and can get really creative.

OWOD Vampire and Werewolf were what I originally started with, still amazing after over 20 years

Did not like: Fate, Numinera, or W40k

L5R was ok 1st edition but we had a crap GM

Mutants and Masterminds was just plain dull, everyone had the same bonuses to everything.

I have played dozens more but the rest were pretty meh or just not good.

Magic Myrmidon
2020-03-06, 11:52 AM
My go-to for everything non-fantasy is Savage Worlds. Very versatile, and more simple than GURPS. Only problem is it's bland on its own. If you add a setting book, though, it usually becomes pretty fun. The setting Interface Zero is the best Cyberpunk RPG I've found for my purposes.

I used to love Legend from Rule of Cool. Ran a long campaign of it up to level 12 or so. Problems: It's kind of a nightmare on the DMs side. I LOVE the ethos behind its design, and being a player is freaking awesome. For for GMs, it's a TON of work, both prep and during the game. Lack of a Monster Manual really hurts it. Also, it's a dead game now, so I feel kinda bad trying to get people into it.

L5R is waaaaay outside of my wheelhouse, as far as themes and setting go, but I've always been impressed by the way it ensures your character has some cool plot hooks that tie you into the setting.

huttj509
2020-03-06, 11:59 AM
Aesthetically: Shadowrun
Mechanically: OMG not shadowrun!

Friends are starting up a SR 5e game (played 3e in the past), and, like, the system is really granular. REALLY granular. Intimidatingly granular.

For example, 1 ranged attack: roll dice equal to your Agi + Weapon skill, with a dice bonus from a smartlink or laser sight, and a dice penalty from wound modifiers, and the recoil if you've fired more rounds than your weapon's recoil compensation + Str/3 +1 since you last did an action other than shooting. Note your hits (5/6 on a d6), with a cap of the weapon's accuracy.

Now the defender rolls their defense pool (reaction + intuition - wounds and situational modifiers - penalty if attacker used burst fire, full auto, or a complex action full auto). Subtract this from the attacker's hits.

If the net hits is >0, add this to the damage value of the weapon. if this is greater than the modified armor value (armor - armor pen of weapon/ammo), it will be physical, else stun damage. Defender now rolls body + mod armor and reduces the damage value by the successes.

Oh, and if the damage taken at one time is greater than the character's physical limit they're knocked down.

you have 6 different types of light pistols, 7 heavy pistols, etc.

Everything in Shadowrun seems to be coming at the angle of "hey, this makes a difference in real life, we should model it." Which sounds great in theory, but bloats really quickly.

Tawmis
2020-03-06, 12:05 PM
D&D is my main jam (because there's variations of it - Forgotten Realms, Homebrew, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, etc).

But I was also a big fan of STAR FRONTIERS (and wish this could get a new treatment), the old school Star Wars RPG (just began playing the newer one from Fantasy Flight), and I even enjoyed the (not so well known) ElfQuest RPG, though it was very, very, very limited (which I think was its downfall and cause for it not being known and so short lived, even among ElfQuest readers).

And I've not played this one in EONS - but I did love the Marvel RPG (FASERIP).

Dienekes
2020-03-06, 12:14 PM
Riddle of Steel remains the best melee combat rpg I’ve ever played in. Sadly, it does just about everything else mediocre to poorly.

Star Wars Saga Edition is probably my favorite variant of the d20 system on a mechanical level. Only, I prefer straight fantasy to Star Wars.

D6 Star Wars got me into ttrpgs and will always have a place in my heart. But it’s pretty wonky if you know how to stretch the system, and I enjoy character building more than the system really allows.

Mutants and Masterminds is fun to just create weird things. Playing as a large sized multi headed snake armed monstrosity is somewhat difficult to make work in most systems. But Typhon was a really fun character for me. That said the sense of progression is somewhat limited. And you’ll always get that guy who abuses the power array rules to do basically anything.

Man_Over_Game
2020-03-06, 12:50 PM
Aesthetically: Shadowrun
Mechanically: OMG not shadowrun!

Friends are starting up a SR 5e game (played 3e in the past), and, like, the system is really granular. REALLY granular. Intimidatingly granular.

For example, 1 ranged attack: roll dice equal to your Agi + Weapon skill, with a dice bonus from a smartlink or laser sight, and a dice penalty from wound modifiers, and the recoil if you've fired more rounds than your weapon's recoil compensation + Str/3 +1 since you last did an action other than shooting. Note your hits (5/6 on a d6), with a cap of the weapon's accuracy.

Now the defender rolls their defense pool (reaction + intuition - wounds and situational modifiers - penalty if attacker used burst fire, full auto, or a complex action full auto). Subtract this from the attacker's hits.

If the net hits is >0, add this to the damage value of the weapon. if this is greater than the modified armor value (armor - armor pen of weapon/ammo), it will be physical, else stun damage. Defender now rolls body + mod armor and reduces the damage value by the successes.

Oh, and if the damage taken at one time is greater than the character's physical limit they're knocked down.

you have 6 different types of light pistols, 7 heavy pistols, etc.

Everything in Shadowrun seems to be coming at the angle of "hey, this makes a difference in real life, we should model it." Which sounds great in theory, but bloats really quickly.

Ugh, yeah.

That's also not including the whole Astral Projection/Hacking minigames your other allies are doing while you're shooting your gun in slo-mo time.

Those rules were just as convoluted, if not more. Nothing like waiting for your hacker and your GM to be whispering for 20 minutes, talking about his 10 rounds to your 1, as the GM comes back to "Well, your hacker failed...and he raised the alarms".

Cool in concept, but I'd just use something like 5e's Modern UA for a similar world.

Pex
2020-03-06, 06:28 PM
I'm fond of Ars Magica. It is my favorite magic system. There's a logic to it.

Xaotiq1
2020-03-06, 06:54 PM
Classic Deadlands. Clunky rules at times, but fun.

micahaphone
2020-03-06, 07:32 PM
I love Stars Without Number - it's a sci fi game with real good GM tools for generating entire solar systems of content, it feels fairly rules light for something based on an old school game (Traveller, the OG sci fi rpg), and there's still enough flexibility to create most any character concept.


Edit: A cool mechanic to SWN is that most skill checks are done with 2d6, so having a small bonus from your class is hugely beneficial, and you'll trend towards an average, but combat is still D20 based - quick, swingy, highly lethal!

I agree that Shadowrun is aesthetically amazing but mechanically rough, I've seen some fan projects to make shadowrun but with mechanics from other systems, like Savage Worlds, Fate, or Cortex. I'm sure there's gotta be a guide to running shadowrun in dnd5e out there somewhere.

Waterdeep Merch
2020-03-06, 08:00 PM
I'm fond of Ars Magica. It is my favorite magic system. There's a logic to it.
I've always liked the 5×5 magic system. Esteren has something similar, but it's not up to what I've seen of Ars Magica.

How are the base mechanics at the table? Reasonable to understand?

Yakmala
2020-03-06, 08:01 PM
Besides D&D, which I've been playing off and on since I bought my original white box set in the late 70's, I've always been a big fan of the Hero system, including Champions, Fantasy Hero and Justice Incorporated. I also played quite a bit of Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020.

ZorroGames
2020-03-06, 08:18 PM
Last time I played a non-D&D TTRPG was when there was only one version of Traveller.

If I had time to dedicate to a SFRPG I might consider Starfinder or Star Wars.

But I choose not to...

So 5e and 5e alone for me I guess.

DeathbyDoughnut
2020-03-06, 08:34 PM
That's an easy question for me to answer:

Paranoia XP/20th Anniversary edition.

FFG's Star Wars.

Mutants and Masterminds 3e.

Fate Core/Accelerated.

SunderedWorldDM
2020-03-06, 08:55 PM
I like ICRPG, and I port a lot of it into my 5e games (which I think was a big goal of the design, taking mechanical and flavorful tidbits and being able to insert them into any d20-ish game). I really recommend it to anyone who wants their d20 games to get faster, simpler, more intense and more narrative-based. It has some crazy cool stuff in there!

I'm also a big fan of PbtA games for a similar reason, whenever I want to play a pickup game with buddies around I use some variation of 2d6, 10+ success, 7-9 success at a cost, 6- fail. It really makes for an easy to run and really to-the-point sort of game, which really works for some game concepts and not so much others.

I have a soft spot for Cubicle 7's Doctor Who RPG, because I'm a big Whovian, but I have to say, when I get around to running a campaign of it, I'm going to have to cut up the combat and chase rules. Outside of those instances, the game design is really great, and Story Points are a really fabulous mechanic that 'sells' the DW universe, the rules for conflict get really shoddy the closer you look at them. If you want to run this, I recommend using this resource for some great rule patches: http://storygame.free.fr/TOYBOX.pdf

I have Savage Worlds, but I've never liked it. It feels incohesive, like a bunch of subsystems that work really well stapled together. I mean, why do you need a deck of cards for initiative and nothing else?! How the heck are you supposed to figure out how to hit something, what with the three rolls you have to make against three different numbers and a contested check or whatever goes down?! It makes little sense to me.

Other than that, I really don't run too many games that I've said "wow, this is a neat system." Though I might want to check out some of the reoccurring titles on these lists!

JakOfAllTirades
2020-03-06, 09:43 PM
Ars Magica is my favorite fantasy RPG, not just for its excellent magic system but also for its immersive pseudo-historical setting.

I couldn't find a modern hard SF/space opera noir RPG setting I liked, so I created my own.

My favorite published SF RPG's are Transhuman Space (love the setting, but not the ruleset) and Blue Planet. (FFG edition)

My favorite general-purpose rules set is Savage Worlds. It works for pretty much any genre, and I used for my homebrew SF setting.

The gaming group I'm currently in only wants to play D&D, so none of the above are on the menu right now.

EggKookoo
2020-03-06, 10:48 PM
I miss DC Heroes.

Son of A Lich!
2020-03-07, 01:29 AM
Mutants and Masterminds is my favorite system period. It's so fast and it has an initial curve to learning how to DM, but when you get it down, the crunch is just so Goood for being behind the screen. I think this system really taught me the ins and outs of DMing far better then a decade of D&D did.

Dread is really good for everything that M&M isn't. If you want a low magic thriller, where the players are trying to solve a murder mystery or any situation where the teams are clearly and openly lopsided in power, Dread is a great system to keep everyone engaged and moving toward a goal. It's surprisingly good for a beer and pretzels goofy game too; I've always wanted to have a game where players play as Goblins trying to pull off some impressive heist in a fantasy city, and when the players inevitably die, a new goblin takes over to keep the player in the game. I've done similar goofster games before where TPKs were expected (Like a Corporation owned star ship similar to Paranoia in tone), and it's always good for a laugh.

I'm always a DM, so I haven't played White Wolf Games. Its kinda like spicy food; people who like it, love it to no end. For everyone else, it's just a pain. I prefer a more Cartoony tone to my sessions and the White Wolf series just doesn't gel for me.

opaopajr
2020-03-07, 05:03 AM
Call of Cthulhu.
In Nomine by Steve Jackson Games.
oWoD: Changeling, Vampire, Kindred of the East, Dark Ages.
L5R 1e. Legend of the Burning Sands.
Cyberpunk 2020.
Kult.
Astonishing Sorcerors & Swordsman of Hyberborea.
Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Advanced Fighting Fantasy.
GURPS Lite.
CJ Carella Witchcraft.
West End Games Star Wars.

y'know, mostly the 80s and 90s stuff that stands the test of time. :smalltongue:

Zetakya
2020-03-07, 05:10 AM
OWoD Vampire Revised, but with the metaplot completely ignored, none of the bloat from the other gamelines included, and a whole lot more mystery.

Lucas Yew
2020-03-07, 05:55 AM
In order of preferrence from top to bottom, then everything else is currently wavering in my mind;

- Pathfinder 1E (especially with Akashic/PoW/Psionics/Spheres 3PP replacing Core stuff)
- WOIN
- Mutants & Masterminds
- Pathfinder 2E

(D&D 5E fits here)

- Forthright
- Fate Core

- GURPS (might have been an absolute #1 if it was legally free like OGL/CC-BY-SA)
- HERO System (ditto #4 ditto)
- OVA (ditto #6 ditto)
- Savage Worlds (ditto #8 ditto)
- Ars Magica (the most recent edition)
- Cypher System

Note that I actually bought and own all of these either as physical books or PDFs.

LordNibbler
2020-03-07, 07:54 AM
I have really enjoyed:

Call of Cthulhu
Solomon Kane (Savage Worlds Ruleset)
Warhammer Fantasy
Rogue Trader

All of these settings were great. Like 5e though, they get really bogged down at high levels when the characters have so many abilities and options. Then again, with Call of Cthulhu most of my characters went insane early enough this wasn’t a problem.

Denosol
2020-03-07, 10:53 AM
SLA industries

Very cool setting, terrible mechanics. I also started a Fading Suns game recently. So far so good.

ImproperJustice
2020-03-07, 11:24 PM
Savage Worlds has been a great and easy system to run and use for a variety of games. Especially for main stream folks new to RPGs.

I love doing pulp adventures, sci-fi, and it works pretty good for Rifts.


But Stars Without Number is the game I love. So much you can do, and the tools are so vast and easy to use. It’s fun and I love how easy it is to encourage your imagination to develop some fantastic worlds and adventures.

I love letting PCs take the worlds it builds and watching them make it their own.
Had one group play as Star Spanning Mercenaries, another that were Xeno Archeologists, and my favorite being a group of Farmers, who grew a planet wide agricultural empire and then acted as smugglers of relief services in a war torn part of the galaxy.

Sigreid
2020-03-07, 11:25 PM
It's old, and out of print but the West End Games Star Wars game is my favorite.

SpawnOfMorbo
2020-03-08, 02:50 AM
I hope this is in the right forum. I'm interested in what other games this community is interested :)
I personally have only played D&D so far.

Corporation (Cyber Punk but you don't play the punk... You play the Corporate lap dog and it's amazing), Heroes Against Darkness (somewhat of a 3e + 4e), and 13th Age (another 3e+4e but 3e and 4e peeps made this one) are ones I recommend.

Samayu
2020-03-08, 10:59 PM
Used to play Shadowrun. We played since the beginning, so learning the complicated rules wasn't a problem. But now I'm out of it, so I can't go back. I loved it. It had the richest game world of any system. But we played it for 20 years, and it kinda ran its course. Now we just do D&D. I never liked the D20 systems, but its easy to learn, and the generic fantasy world is also easy to learn.

My other favorite game is Paranoia.

Jaryn
2020-03-09, 04:59 AM
OWOD Vampire
7th Sea
Rogue Trader
WFRP
Call of Cthulhu

That would probably be my top five. An honorable mention to Fireborn, which I didn't get to play enough of, but which I found really intriguing and enjoyable when I did.

caden_varn
2020-03-09, 05:38 AM
Fluff-wise, I really like Torg. I haven't played enough of the new edition to have a strong feeling for the mechanics - they have evened out some of the screwiness of the old rules, but I think they have lost a little of the soul of the game bu homogenising some stuff. But you cannot beat playing a cybernetically enhanced priest adventuring with a D&D type mediaeval sorceror, a silver age superhero and an ex-NY beat cop, fighting dinosaurs in the land that time forgot (that used to be New York city).
Then you disconnect, and you gpo blind as all your cyberware stops working, and you have cybereyes.

FFG star wars is also a fun system, if a bit more complex. Helps to have players who are on the ball with the rules & their actions, and a smaller group - I like to have max 4 players. The extra complexity is worthwhile complexity though.

Shadowrun, as others have said, is a wonderful setting, but far too complex rules-wise for me. If I want to play it, I'll try using savage worlds or GURPS as the system & port the setting across.

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-09, 07:19 AM
Savage Worlds has been a great and easy system to run and use for a variety of games. Especially for main stream folks new to RPGs.

I love doing pulp adventures, sci-fi, and it works pretty good for Rifts.

On the other end of the generics there's HERO, now available in a easier to understand one book form in multiple genres. If you ewant to be able to build any character you want the corebook then it'll serve, but the downside is that charater creation is slightly more maths heavy than GURPS.

Savage Worlds is great, but it does somewhat suffer from 'buy book X to play character concept Y', but it's getting better about it (remember when Mind Reading wasn't in the core Power list? I do). Oh, and the 'science fiction' supplement is basically focused on one style of space opera, but it's good besides that.


Unknown Armies possibly has the best setting and magic system of any RPG. When your love of cinema allows you to make goons miss you know there's something crazy and weird right around the corner. Probably a gun mage who can't shoot anybody.

Chronic
2020-03-09, 08:28 AM
I play pathfinder a lot, I like it for the diversity of classes and options, It still lack the smooth running of 5e (can blame him tho, way older).

I've played dozens of rpg but recently outside d&d and PF I've pretty much settled on 3 other rpg.

Exalted 3rd edition is crunchy, but both the setting and the combat system are really cool, and it's not a broken game like the previous edition.

Blades in the dark is quite unique, playing a gang of criminal in a noir Victorian setting where night is endless is really cool. The rules are simple and it plays very differently from other rpg because it's somewhat of a collaborative story, allowing you flashbacks to explain how you prepared an heist on the go. For example you have a meeting with another gang, you don't plan anything as players, you just indicate to the gm the style of approach the group will use (stealthy etc. ) and when the gm confront you to situation you can play either in the present or in the past. Very simple, very elegant.

And last is one of the best scy fi noir setting you can find: Infinity RPG. People may know infinity as a tabletop game, and it was released as an rpg using 2d20 modiphius system (star trek adventure, John Carter of mars, mutant chronicles, Conan) and it is to me the best setting and the best variant of all 2d20 games. The realistic scy fi setting is incredible, with diverse superpowers using small teams and covert actions because war in space is so god damn expensive. While the equivalent of the Un (but actually working) is trying to keep thing in check with is own special service, bureau noir.
it use pretty much the same mechanics for combat, social and hacking
Which are the 3 pillars of the game , but they still feel different, but also interchangeable. You can use social or hacking action in combat, or hacking in social situation etc. It also provide you with what I would call low and high intensity system. For example hacking have extensive rules, but it doesn't mean you will use them if you want to hack a soda machine for a free drink. Simple situations use simple rules, complex ones use the full rules. On top of that as a 2d20 system you have the dual ressources system, with heat for the gm to generate hazards or special actions for the baddies, and momentum for the players allowing them to build further upon their successes. If players have no momentum they can give heat to the gm to buy additional dice for their test, allowing them to overcome most opposition at the risk of the situation becoming more and more volatile.
Last small concept that I like, the game assume that the players are bureau noir agents (although this is no obligation), but you have secret loyalties to a faction, and usually have secret objectives that can conflit with other players secret objectives. They are low intensity enough not to screw the mission objectives, but introduce a small amount of paranoya and foul play between players. It's very fun to watch as a Gm and according to my players it's a blast.

Wraith
2020-03-09, 08:32 AM
I am a big fan of Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, but given the choice I'd rather play Dark Heresy. Same system, same developer, just the sci-fi setting which has more scope and variety than the fantasy version.

I've recently been playing quite a lot of Star Wars, too - though I enjoyed the FFG system, I think at heart I'll always prefer Saga Edition simply because it's "D&D 3.5 In Space" and I happen to know it more fluidly. Probably doesn't help that I'm a bit of a min-maxer which I freely admit is not in the spirit of Star Wars, but I do it anyway. :smalltongue:


SLA Industries

Very cool setting, terrible mechanics..

Same here! Second Edition is due out later this year, and from what I've seen it's a big improvement so hopefully we can cross that out very soon. :smallsmile:

Jaryn
2020-03-09, 10:09 AM
And last is one of the best scy fi noir setting you can find: Infinity RPG. People may know infinity as a tabletop game, and it was released as an rpg using 2d20 modiphius system (star trek adventure, John Carter of mars, mutant chronicles, Conan) and it is to me the best setting and the best variant of all 2d20 games.

OMG you've reminded me about Mutant Chronicles. How could I forget? I loved that game!

PracticalM
2020-03-09, 11:22 AM
I enjoy in no particular order
GURPS
HERO system
Paranoia
Call of Cthulhu
James Bond 007
Toon

I like trying out different systems and I need to find out the name of the system I played at a convention that was a lot of fun, but it might have been some kind of home-brew.

Edit. I really want to like RuneQuest but I don't think I've found the right group for it.

MilkmanDanimal
2020-03-09, 11:23 AM
On the other end of the generics there's HERO, now available in a easier to understand one book form in multiple genres. If you ewant to be able to build any character you want the corebook then it'll serve, but the downside is that charater creation is slightly more maths heavy than GURPS.

Savage Worlds is great, but it does somewhat suffer from 'buy book X to play character concept Y', but it's getting better about it (remember when Mind Reading wasn't in the core Power list? I do). Oh, and the 'science fiction' supplement is basically focused on one style of space opera, but it's good besides that.


Unknown Armies possibly has the best setting and magic system of any RPG. When your love of cinema allows you to make goons miss you know there's something crazy and weird right around the corner. Probably a gun mage who can't shoot anybody.

I adored HERO and Champions for years, and 4th and 5th edition HERO are easily my most-played systems after the various versions of D&D, but, man, 6th edition took a complex system that had some holes in the rules and logic and plugged all of those holes, making a system that was internally consistent and everything fit together in a logical way. It was also so damn complex it killed the system dead, and Volume 1 of the rules (because it needed two damn books to describe the rules) was about character creation alone, and was IIRC ~400 pages. Insanely, insanely difficult to learn. I could still build any character in HERO 5th off the top of my head, but the game designers put flexibility and rules consistency above everything else, and killed the system utterly dead in the process.

Demonslayer666
2020-03-09, 11:56 AM
My favorite system is currently Wrath and Glory.
Star Wars (West End Games) has to be the most fun we have ever had.
Shadowrun will always be my favorite setting, followed closely by Cthulhu.
Warhammer Fantasy - everything but the character progression is great.
Vampire, The Masquerade (Werewolf, Mage)
Champions - I loved making characters for this.
Rolemaster - best critical hits.

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-09, 01:53 PM
I adored HERO and Champions for years, and 4th and 5th edition HERO are easily my most-played systems after the various versions of D&D, but, man, 6th edition took a complex system that had some holes in the rules and logic and plugged all of those holes, making a system that was internally consistent and everything fit together in a logical way. It was also so damn complex it killed the system dead, and Volume 1 of the rules (because it needed two damn books to describe the rules) was about character creation alone, and was IIRC ~400 pages. Insanely, insanely difficult to learn. I could still build any character in HERO 5th off the top of my head, but the game designers put flexibility and rules consistency above everything else, and killed the system utterly dead in the process.

Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete both shrink 6e down to <300 pages with much better presentation, although I'm not sure if you lose options I don't think you do. The main thing I had trouble grokking was Multipowers and Variable Power Pools, with much more trouble with the former.My main issues with it are 1) some characters just don't need some of these dtats (I'm looking at you Offensive Mental Combat Value), and 2) most people I know seem to have an aversion to basic maths in character creation.

Like, the problem with the system is seeing how all the parts work, and most of it is pretty basic stuff. The main nice thing about HERO 6e for me, weirdly, is the removal of derived statistics and making you buy them directly, giving all that control over the minor details of your character in exchange for not too much more work. Because it just makes it clear that your acrobat doesn't need to have high OCV just because they have a good Dexterity, and that it can be saved for characters who regularly get into combat.

But I do understand the arguments over it being more complicated than most systems, it is. But that complexity does have it's upsides, and I'd rather play it than most other generics or superhero games, and significantly more than D&D (although I'll take any point buy system over D&D).

Jay R
2020-03-09, 02:15 PM
These are the games that have made my role-playing experience wonderful, from 1975 to the present. If you don't like these games, fine, and I hope you have games you love as much as I love these.

Dungeons and Dragons. The original three-pamphlet set with the Greyhawk supplement that made it playable. The one that started it all. When I started playing, you could read the entire ruleset in less than an hour, and create a character in less than five minutes.

Chivalry and Sorcery. The first attempt at realism. It showed us all the best, and all the worst, that realism could bring. It is the most lush, vivid, glorious, realistic, carefully detailed, immersive, unplayable mess ever designed.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. The first attempt to cover everything in the rules.

Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. A complete change to the approach to designing D&D characters.

GURPS. The most extended universal system, with an incredible desire to be accurate. When the designers started a table of weights for various weapons, they didn't think about balance or play value, they brought in a bunch of weapons and weighed them.

Hero System. The way to design exactly the character I want, for any value of character. [If arithmetic gets in your way, you won’t enjoy character creation, but that’s not a problem for me.]

Flashing Blades. The system fits the setting perfectly - rules-light, fast-paced, and you can focus on the situation, not the minutia. Five dueling styles. Each character has a unique Advantage and Secret. I would never play a musketeers-era game with anything else.

TOON. It works. Everybody can stay in character, and everybody understands the underlying philosophy. [What would it be worth to you to play a game in which everybody can stay in character?]

Pendragon. This game is a well-researched, loving tribute to the King Arthur mythos that is the foundation of all role-playing, and of virtually all fantasy written in English.

Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. A very elegant system, in which (for example) you simulated looking through the newspapers for a clue by ... looking through the newspapers for a clue.

Again, these are the games that have made my role-playing experience wonderful, from 1975 to the present. If you don't like these games, fine, and I hope you have games you love as much as I love these.

FaerieGodfather
2020-03-09, 07:03 PM
Street Fighter: the Storytelling Game. Just got done describing this on the RPG Pub as one of my "irrational loves" in gaming: a system I dislike from a company I hate, a mostly unfaithful adaptation of what was at the time a very sparse canon of lore. But I love it so much.

Barbarians of Lemuria. The perfect lightweight system for sword & sorcery or any other sort of heroic genre. Only problem is your characters start off "fourth level" in D&D terms and only really advance to "ninth".

Dresden Files Roleplaying Game. Not a fan of the Gothic Horror elements that are so pervasive in Urban Fantasy, but they're mostly handled well without the warped moralizing of the World of Darkness. The Fate system is a perennial favorite.

Flying Swordsman is the only clone of the D&D that D&D always should have been.

Veldrenor
2020-03-09, 07:29 PM
Monster of the Week. Character building has a History section where you determine how you know and are connected to each of the other characters, so you've got ideas for a group dynamic before the game itself really starts. The playbooks are a lot of fun and allow for a surprising amount of customization despite relatively small ability lists, and I quite enjoy how the Apocalypse World system is designed so that actions aren't solely pass/fail.

I'm also enjoying Pathfinder, although that might be more because of the group and the characters than the game itself. I like the character-building metagame, combining this feat with that class feature and this magic item can be a bit like assembling a clock and then watching it start ticking, but the gameplay becomes a little dull in mid-to-high levels due to the sheer power of spells turning combat into Rocket Tag.

Chronic
2020-03-09, 09:19 PM
OMG you've reminded me about Mutant Chronicles. How could I forget? I loved that game!

I must admit I haven't played this one, is it good?
(So in retrospective I should have said that infinity is the best 2d20 setting outside of mutant chronicle I haven't played).

Leon
2020-03-09, 09:29 PM
Dungeon World

Jorren
2020-03-09, 09:35 PM
In no particular order:

Call of Cthulhu (particularly the Delta Green material)
Tribe 8
Apocalypse World
Traveller
Mage The Awakening

Haven't played D&D in years and don't really miss it anymore.

2D8HP
2020-03-09, 11:54 PM
1) King Arthur Pendragon is my favorite game, whether the 1985 rules, the 2016 version, or any version in between

2) Dungeons & Dragons , oD&D + supplements + AD&D Monster Manual + All the World's Monsters + Arduin Grimoires (basically everything available in 1977)

3) 1978 rules RuneQuest

4) 1977 rules Traveller

5) 1981 rules Call of Cthulu

6) Stormbringer whether 1981 rules, '97, or in-between.

7) Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which came out in 2010 and is largely, but not completely, based on 1981 rules "B/X" D&D.

I'm also very found of the Castle Frankenstein, and 7th Sea settings.

Pleh
2020-03-10, 05:05 AM
Star Wars Saga was a bit mpre than 3.5 in space. It was also a prototype for a few 4e concepts they were working on that feels to me like it helped streamline 3.5's clunkiness a bit.

I've had a copy of the Serenity RPG book by MWP for years. The d12 system never caught on with my group, but I always loved the character creation setup.

One year I ran a PBP ATLA game using a few core Saga edition mechanics and the Serenity RPG traits and flaws. As with most PBP games, it didn't get too far, but it was fun while it lasted.

Mordante
2020-03-10, 05:58 AM
D&D 3.5 Like it because of the vast recourse materials. Lots of fluff, lots of freedom

Talislanta I think the combat system is better then that of D&D. weapon skill vs weapon skill and armor work like damage reduction. Also no character levels en no HP increase


vampire the Masquerade. (Owod) I would love to run a game. But I really don't have the time to do so.

Democratus
2020-03-11, 08:17 AM
Traveller

There has never been a better time to get into this classic SciFi RPG. Mongoose has been furiously publishing over the last few years and has created several boxed campaign sets:


Pirates of Drinax: Players are given a Letter of Marque and a ship to ply the Sindallian Main. Avast!
The Rift: Explore the empty reaches of the Great Rift and find adventure in the isolated islands of civilization
Element Class Cruiser: Join the Imperial Navy! Meet strange and interesting creatures. And kill them!
Deepnight Revelation (coming soon): Crew a deep-space exploration vessel and embark on a multi-year mission to discover strange, new worlds!

Dimers
2020-03-11, 02:45 PM
Particularly good stuff that I've tried:
Shadowrun, for setting and for incidentally learning about some cutting-edge IRL technology
13th Age, for doing the best job at having mechanics without letting them get in the way
Deadlands, for setting and for a couple thematic and innovative mechanics -- best initiative system I've seen
Mage the Ascension, for paradigm

I'd like to play Human-Occupied Landfill at some point. Wish me luck.

SimonMoon6
2020-03-11, 05:18 PM
I miss DC Heroes.

Yeah, Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG is pretty much the gold standard of superhero game systems designed to simulate comic book superheroes. (Most superhero game systems forget about the whole "simulating comic book superheroes" idea.) It has none of the crunch of the tedious games (like Champions) but all of the style and flavor of actual comic book superhero combat. Running fights is easy. From a GM's perspective, it's just about the perfect game. Coming up with stats for an enemy on the spot is super easy, for example. No flipping through books or doing lots of arithmetic or anything like that. (What can the bad guy do? Write it down, assign numbers, you're done.)

There is no other game that actually simulates comic book style superheroes while also being both super flexible and super easy to use. If a character can be described as they would be in a comic book, you have exactly enough information to write down their stats. (Well, TSR's Marvel Super Heroes RPG (with FASERIP) does have some of these advantages, but it's a game where a high Agility does not make you harder to hit, it only gives you more hit points, so that's not a very "simulationist" game to me.)

And the best thing about having a versatile, easy, and flexible superhero game system is that, since superhero comic books really cover EVERY genre (superheroes, science fiction, swords and sorcery, etc), then you also have a game system that can handle every genre of game, making it a perfect game system to run a multi-genre game in. (Yeah, don't even think about GURPS or Rifts or any of that junk. Although, to be fair, GURPS works fairly well for very very low powered characters and worlds.)


Fluff-wise, I really like Torg. I haven't played enough of the new edition to have a strong feeling for the mechanics - they have evened out some of the screwiness of the old rules, but I think they have lost a little of the soul of the game bu homogenising some stuff.

I agree with all of that. (I'm also a little bummed that the 1st edition's final adventure where the heroes win didn't pay off the whole "Mara-1 turned the super religious world into a cyber punk world, giving them all sorts of extra awesome technology... but that's supposed to hurt them somehow?" from the very beginning of the TORG story.)

Two of the things I loved about TORG, 1st edition that are absent in the 2nd edition:

(1) Atheism was a valid character choice that was just as important and useful as any other religious belief system. This is something that I haven't seen in any other game system. The devs for the new version have decided that atheism will never play such a role ever again, stating something like they didn't want atheism to be seen as anti-religion, because that would be negative somehow.

(2) The open-endedness of rolls would cause it to be possible for ridiculous results to happen. Now... not so much. You can only do so much, no matter how lucky you are in the new edition. Like, in the 1st edition, if the die roll for casting a spell would add the results to the spell's duration, a ridiculous die roll could cause a ridiculously long duration. In the new edition, that can't happen. You can only get a "good" result or an "excellent" result, not a +35 to duration (on a logarithmic scale) result.




Talislanta I think the combat system is better then that of D&D. weapon skill vs weapon skill and armor work like damage reduction. Also no character levels en no HP increase



I remember being fascinated with Talislanta at one point. The sheer number of character races to choose from was staggering. My friends and I at the time made characters... but never got around to playing it. Looking back, I think other parts of the game might not be that exciting (monsters all seem pretty bland piles of statistics, for example), but I recall little gems almost everywhere else in the game, like the treasure system. I remember (when making a character) trying to spend gold to get interesting jewelry, rather than the D&D standard of trying to sell jewelry to get gold. But maybe I was just obsessing over the wrong parts of the game...

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-11, 06:08 PM
Eh, simulating comic book heroes isn't the be all and end all of superhero systems, if you want weird powers handled smoothly you want Wild Talents.

Sure, in DC Heroes you can have heat vision, but in Wild Talents I can turn organic matter into Sodium with an AU power with Mass as the quantity of both the Attack and Useful quantities for four points per die. For eight points I can get two hard dice (always roll a ten) for it and automatically succeed on all rolls, although I should probably get six hard dice to make it very damaging and fast, that's forty eight points. Maybe increase the duration of the Utility effect for +1 per normal die, and increase the range so I don't have to touch what I'm turning into Sodium for +2 per die. So that's seven points per standard die, so if I still want to be really fast and damaging in my sodium creation I need to spend seventy seven points, fine for a major power in a superhero campaign where you get 250 points.

Or let's say I want the power to move at exactly 0.78c. That sounds like an ADU or possibly AADU power (I can attack people by moving really fast near them or running into them, dodge attacks by moving out of the way really fast, or just move to places at 0.78c). Probably a couple of drawbacks there, because you're going to be doing a lot of damage to your surroundings. The power to have any solid object moving directly towards me instead hit a random object within a meter of me is just a D power, while being able to teleport by entering and exiting vehicles is a U power.

Like, Wild Talents as written kind of sucks at emulating four colour superhero comics, but it's not supposed to and outright admits that. One of the things it is intended to do is handle out there superpowers very well, which it does elegantly through the A(ttack) D(efence) U(tility) system. Because occasionally you want to play a superhero who can make farmyard animals stampede in the direction of your choice.

kyoryu
2020-03-11, 07:33 PM
Fate

Various PbtA games

GURPS

You could talk me into Savage Worlds or BRP games

Old school D&D, run as a megadungeon

Powerdork
2020-03-12, 05:06 AM
Lately I've been really into Ironsworn (https://ironswornrpg.com/). It's free!

In terms of other games: MASKS: A New Generation has been a blast, and I'm really excited to play Armour Astir once it leaves the playtest! Songs for the Dusk holds promise.

Legend is near and dear to my heart.

EggKookoo
2020-03-12, 05:24 AM
Sure, in DC Heroes you can have heat vision, but in Wild Talents I can turn organic matter into Sodium with an AU power with Mass as the quantity of both the Attack and Useful quantities for four points per die. For eight points I can get two hard dice (always roll a ten) for it and automatically succeed on all rolls, although I should probably get six hard dice to make it very damaging and fast, that's forty eight points. Maybe increase the duration of the Utility effect for +1 per normal die, and increase the range so I don't have to touch what I'm turning into Sodium for +2 per die. So that's seven points per standard die, so if I still want to be really fast and damaging in my sodium creation I need to spend seventy seven points, fine for a major power in a superhero campaign where you get 250 points.

https://media.tenor.com/images/72cd8e758e7518d83eefdddb217743fb/tenor.gif

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-12, 08:13 AM
https://media.tenor.com/images/72cd8e758e7518d83eefdddb217743fb/tenor.gif

Yeah, it looks kind of complex, but it's actually really simple. Although they was late at night and I think I got my maths wrong twice, it should be nine points per die, for eighteen points per hard die, so one hundred and eight points for six hard dice. On the other hand you can pick up five wiggle dice in charm for 100 points and be as charming as humanly possible.

It basically boils down to:
-Define power
-Does it let you attack? Does it let you defend? How many useful things does it let you do? +2 points per die each
-For each quality defined above does it affect a mass, work at a distance, or have a measurable duration?
-Apply extras you want, and flaws you want, altering cost per die.
-buy dice, hard dice, and wiggle dice.

Like, if you don't want to go through the first four steps you can just pick from the list of prebuilt powers, but they're mostly boring useful standard stuff. No stitching together explosive kittens from fur and meat, no causing anything lime green to undergo spontaneous rapid nuclear fission, no causing mental health problems via acupuncture...

This is a game where the designers worked out how to build 'turn off the sun' as a power and put it in the first edition rulebook. The somewhat complex power creation is intentional because it's not supposed to make you feel like you're playing four colour superheroes, but it is the most intuitive power creation system I've come across in a game, even if it can cause balance issues if everybody isn't on the same page (although honestly not more than something like Mutants & Masterminds or HERO). When you can have Captain Cheesecake, The Recurringly Exploding Boy, Bananaman, and Major Damage in the same group a power creation system is doing what's intended (for reference those characters respectively summon cheesecake out of thin air, violently convert their mass to energy before coming back to life, turn into a flying brick after eating a banana, and cause collateral damage).

Telwar
2020-03-12, 09:44 AM
In no particular order:

Shadowrun: This has basically been my favorite game since high school. I personally like 4e, 5e seemed like a poor set of changes and 6e seems like a dumpster fire. We're going to do a one-shots with the quick-start box soon.

FFG Star Wars: Sure, you need weird dice, but it works really well and has a lot of crunchy bits. Our current game is running down, but I hope we do another campaign.

13th Age: I just love this so much more than 5e it's not funny. It makes logical sense and the mechanics work really well. I'd like more options, though.

caden_varn
2020-03-12, 10:45 AM
I agree with all of that. (I'm also a little bummed that the 1st edition's final adventure where the heroes win didn't pay off the whole "Mara-1 turned the super religious world into a cyber punk world, giving them all sorts of extra awesome technology... but that's supposed to hurt them somehow?" from the very beginning of the TORG story.)

Two of the things I loved about TORG, 1st edition that are absent in the 2nd edition:

(1) Atheism was a valid character choice that was just as important and useful as any other religious belief system. This is something that I haven't seen in any other game system. The devs for the new version have decided that atheism will never play such a role ever again, stating something like they didn't want atheism to be seen as anti-religion, because that would be negative somehow.

(2) The open-endedness of rolls would cause it to be possible for ridiculous results to happen. Now... not so much. You can only do so much, no matter how lucky you are in the new edition. Like, in the 1st edition, if the die roll for casting a spell would add the results to the spell's duration, a ridiculous die roll could cause a ridiculously long duration. In the new edition, that can't happen. You can only get a "good" result or an "excellent" result, not a +35 to duration (on a logarithmic scale) result.



We never got as far as the final adventure (we graduated, basically, and that stopped RPGing for a decade or so).
I definitely agree on the open-ended rolls - part of the fun of the system was adding your attack bonus to your damage - so the better you hit, the more damage you do. The extra dice for good/outstanding is weak in comparison, and most ot the time you just end up doing base damage, making combat a nickel & dime shock damage affair.

I really hate that they have made magic, psionics & miracles use exactly the same system. OK, the old system for miracles was a better in theory than in practise (expecting multiple characters to have the same faith to power miracles), but they could have made it a bit different - I don't think there should be backlash on miracles, for example.

I also dislike that fact that around half the spells I currently have access to are Alteration, with the other 3 magic skills fighting it out for the rest. Apportation is particularly poorly served.

Friv
2020-03-12, 11:20 AM
My current top three:

Blades in the Dark is an absolutely beautiful heist-running game for desperate criminals in a grim magical city (a little bit Dishonoured, a little bit Fallen London) who are slowly building their gang and territory. It runs like a dream, and I love the flashback and engagement mechanics for creating a smooth balance between "we want a plan going in" and "we don't want to spend the next hour putting that plan together IRL."

Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine is a super-crunchy narrative game in which players advance by finding quiet moments and triggering interesting story beats, with mechanical and narrative advancement intricately tied together.

Monster of the Week is a monster-hunting Powered by the Apocalypse game, in the style of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "Supernatural." It's a particularly streamlined and fast-paced version of PbtA, with a decent investigation mechanic to keep things interesting.

Honorable Mention: Rhapsody of Blood - A PbtA dungeon crawler in which successive generations of heroes attack an ancient, evil Castle. The editing is a bit rough, and while it's a decent game for players new to PbtA but familiar with D&D, the GM should really be familiar with a couple of other PbtA games first, but we're playing it right now and having a phenomenal time.


Aesthetically: Shadowrun
Mechanically: OMG not shadowrun!
Related - Shadowrun would be very easy to skin in Blades in the Dark...

SimonMoon6
2020-03-12, 11:35 AM
Eh, simulating comic book heroes isn't the be all and end all of superhero systems,

I can understand that point of view, even if I don't actually agree with it.




Sure, in DC Heroes you can have heat vision, but in Wild Talents I can turn organic matter into Sodium with an AU power with Mass as the quantity of both the Attack and Useful quantities for four points per die. For eight points I can get two hard dice (always roll a ten) for it and automatically succeed on all rolls, although I should probably get six hard dice to make it very damaging and fast, that's forty eight points. Maybe increase the duration of the Utility effect for +1 per normal die, and increase the range so I don't have to touch what I'm turning into Sodium for +2 per die. So that's seven points per standard die, so if I still want to be really fast and damaging in my sodium creation I need to spend seventy seven points, fine for a major power in a superhero campaign where you get 250 points.

See, that's the problem with almost every other superhero game system. Too much attention is paid to excruciating details.

In DCH, you can turn one substance into another substance, no problem. Maybe you use the Transmutation power or if you are fancy, you use Matter Manipulation. If you want to deal with the volume, no problem, the amount of volume could be the result of your die roll. Powers don't need to be faster than they are because every power requiring dice just uses a "dice action". Range is built in to the Transmutation power (and the range is usually big enough that nobody needs to have more, though there are ways...), so you don't have to add stuff to the power to do that, but you could take the range away if you wanted. Etc. It's all already there and you don't need to focus on the nitpicky details. Why would that be fun?



Or let's say I want the power to move at exactly 0.78c.

I think any superhero game system should be able to do that quickly and easily. In DCH, that's a speed of about 29 APs (I think... I'm away from books right now), so you just need flight of 29 APs or Running of 29 APs (or Swimming of 29 APs if you're aquatic) or... if you want to do more than just move with that, if you want to attack and dodge and so forth at that speed, then you need Superspeed of 29 APs. And that's it. You don't have to build any normal standard powers like this. They're already in the game system.


Because occasionally you want to play a superhero who can make farmyard animals stampede in the direction of your choice.

That's just the Animal Control power. That's not fancy or intricate... or at least it shouldn't be.


https://media.tenor.com/images/72cd8e758e7518d83eefdddb217743fb/tenor.gif

By the way, can I just say how much I hate that meme? It's like, "Look at all this hard math"... and it's like junior high geometry... with maybe a dash of trigonometry at the end that goes by so fast you can't see it. I mean, where's the hard math? That's not even college level math (well, for anyone who was prepared for college anyway... I know some people have to take remedial classes like algebra at the college level, but it's just sad).

EggKookoo
2020-03-12, 12:39 PM
By the way, can I just say how much I hate that meme? It's like, "Look at all this hard math"... and it's like junior high geometry... with maybe a dash of trigonometry at the end that goes by so fast you can't see it. I mean, where's the hard math? That's not even college level math (well, for anyone who was prepared for college anyway... I know some people have to take remedial classes like algebra at the college level, but it's just sad).

Yeah, but it conveys the idea and is easily recognizable.

CarpeGuitarrem
2020-03-12, 03:08 PM
So, so many! The only reason I even play D&D these days is to hang out with friends who only play D&D. Here's some games I've been playing lately.

Masks: a really cool game about teen superheroes with emotional problems and villains to punch. Introduced it to a group and they love their characters and the gameplay so much.

Star-Crossed: a brilliantly designed game about two people falling in love. You make pulls from a Jenga tower as they get closer emotionally, and when it falls, they get together! But if it's too early, the relationship won't last... Great blend of sweetness, cuteness, tension, and melancholy longing. Everything about this game is perfectly calibrated.

Kingdom: everyone plays characters who shape the fate of a community. It can be any setting, and it's all laser focused on how the community solves problems and handles conflict, and whether it lasts.

The Final Girl: fast, bloody slasher horror where players trade ownership of characters. You start with a huge pool of 10+ characters and then slowly winnow them down in schlocky 80s horror fashion.

Burning Wheel: janky but oddly compelling character-driven fantasy. It's about dramatic situations that lead to intense moments and long-term character change.

Demihumans: a game about an enclave of fantasy peoples surviving under the thumb of a human empire. Really unique stakes because of the setting, and play that drives towards an ominous, grinding doom.

Swords Without Master: a fascinating game that cares more about pushing tone and atmosphere than about success or failure. It creates a very cool pulp fantasy feeling and has never failed to produce creativity with any groups I've played it with.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-03-12, 04:22 PM
I hope this is in the right forum. I'm interested in what other games this community is interested :)
I personally have only played D&D so far.

Traveller
Dark Heresy/Black Crusade/Deathwatch
Wrath and Glory

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-12, 04:56 PM
I can understand that point of view, even if I don't actually agree with it.

Well congratulations you've reduced the ability to explore the idea of superheroes by limiting it to what appears in one medium (which admittedly is a lot of stuff, but still not everything superhero way).


See, that's the problem with almost every other superhero game system. Too much attention is paid to excruciating details.

In DCH, you can turn one substance into another substance, no problem. Maybe you use the Transmutation power or if you are fancy, you use Matter Manipulation. If you want to deal with the volume, no problem, the amount of volume could be the result of your die roll. Powers don't need to be faster than they are because every power requiring dice just uses a "dice action". Range is built in to the Transmutation power (and the range is usually big enough that nobody needs to have more, though there are ways...), so you don't have to add stuff to the power to do that, but you could take the range away if you wanted. Etc. It's all already there and you don't need to focus on the nitpicky details. Why would that be fun?

Details? The most detailing going into that is 'oh it can affect a mass of stuff at a distance and isn't instantaneous'. Yes Wild Talents can do power creation at the nitty gritty level (and in fact I do find messing around with specifics to build the exact power I want fun, even if half the time it costs me a bunch of extra points).

Honestly the speed thing is just an inherent part of the system, an action's speed is determined by it's die roll. So you gather your d10s, and see what sets your roll makes, high numbers (height) increase the quality of your action while more numbers (width) increase the speed and power of your action. So a six hard die attack is very accurate, very fast, and very damaging, but as a downside is pretty much always hitting at 6x10 (compared to wiggile dice which allow you to just create whatever sets you want). When you use your power if it affects mass or volume or distance or whatever then your roll determines how much of that quantity it affects (either the height or the width depending on the roll).

But here's the thing, you're picking from a set list of powers, here I get to have fun with building the exact power I want. Maybe I don't want to turn organic matter into sodium by snapping my fingers, maybe I want to do it by touch. And if the power can theoretically cause damage I don't have to go and find a separate power or include rules in the specific power about how turning an enemy's hair into razor wire works in combat, I just buy an Attack quality and it works like any attack, if I want it to be ranged I just buy a ranged extra for the attack quality (or take it for free over mass. But if I want something standard, like a power that just harms somebody, allows me to fly, or read minds, there is also a bunch of prebuilt powers.

But that's no fun, so I'm going to get back to working out how to make a character have the ability to build any device they know of with a box of scraps (actually that's pretty much just a Useful power with two hard dice and nothing else, it's probably just a background power you throw on a gadgeteer).

A problem is you're assuming everybody finds the same things fun and unfun as you, and having spent over three hours building a 100 point GURPS character because I was trying to fit in all my skills and spells some of us do find the fiddly bits enjoyable and want to spend ten minutes making our own buffalo igniting power.


I think any superhero game system should be able to do that quickly and easily. In DCH, that's a speed of about 29 APs (I think... I'm away from books right now), so you just need flight of 29 APs or Running of 29 APs (or Swimming of 29 APs if you're aquatic) or... if you want to do more than just move with that, if you want to attack and dodge and so forth at that speed, then you need Superspeed of 29 APs. And that's it. You don't have to build any normal standard powers like this. They're already in the game system.

And every superhero system I've built that power in has a problem, in that it's darned hard to tweak the rules to represent the negative consequences of moving at that speed, and never actually lets me plonk the limitation of 'can only move at human or ludicrous speeds, nothing in between'. I can actually make the power much better in Wild Talents by splicing on a handful of additional extras and flaws to a simple Useful power, but I don't need to buy two separate powers to move at 0.78 speed. I just buy one power that represents all of that.


That's just the Animal Control power. That's not fancy or intricate... or at least it shouldn't be.

I mean, powers get more intricate once you start limiting them, it's annoying. Unless you're playing something that's Effect-based, where by definition just doing one thing means you have to have fewer effects than if you can do many things.


By the way, can I just say how much I hate that meme? It's like, "Look at all this hard math"... and it's like junior high geometry... with maybe a dash of trigonometry at the end that goes by so fast you can't see it. I mean, where's the hard math? That's not even college level math (well, for anyone who was prepared for college anyway... I know some people have to take remedial classes like algebra at the college level, but it's just sad).

And like I'd not used anything you wouldn't have encountered by the end of year 3, do people not have the maths skills of eight year olds these days?

Toxic Shaman
2020-03-13, 03:08 PM
I don't game as much as I used to, so I'm not that familiar with more recent releases. With the exception of Pathfinder, most of what my gaming group plays utilize game systems written well over 20 years ago.

Anyone who has played a lot of older edition Shadowrun probably would not be surprised that someone with the handle Toxic Shaman would be a fan of that game. 3rd edition Shadowrun is still by far my favorite game.

Earthdawn is another game I love. The designers made a game that managed to take a lot of the D&D tropes and make it possible to talk in character about mechanics like character level. Both Shadowrun (pre-fourth edition) and Earthdawn have some of the best setting info of any game I've ever played.

I also like Ars Magica for a game where everyone is a spellcaster. It has a totally different vibe than most fantasy games.

SimonMoon6
2020-03-13, 04:19 PM
And every superhero system I've built that power in has a problem, in that it's darned hard to tweak the rules to represent the negative consequences of moving at that speed, and never actually lets me plonk the limitation of 'can only move at human or ludicrous speeds, nothing in between'.

That's weird because in DC Heroes, they literally have a Miscellaneous Limitation option, where you just say, okay, my power sucks in the following ways and you get free points for doing that. The GM may have to adjudicate the exact value of the limitation, but ANY thing you want as a bonus or limitation is allowed by RAW in DC Heroes. So, if you really want powers that work in stupid ways, you can have them. But you don't have to do anything other than say "Oh, another limitation..., that's -1 to the Factor Cost, so I get points back".

Belac93
2020-03-13, 07:32 PM
Monsterhearts, Masks, Spire, Unknown Armies, Under Hollow Hills, Dream Askew, and the King is Dead are all some that I love. I really like PbtA.

Jinxed_K
2020-03-14, 11:17 AM
Usually a D&D player, but I’ve played and liked these others

Champions: Overly detailed superhero game
Melton Z: same as above, but mecha
GURPS Ring Dream: The only pro wrestling rpg I’ve seen
Role master: The system isn’t anything special, but the charts gave the table a nice thing to laugh over

Babaji
2020-03-14, 01:28 PM
LOL, Rolemaster was insane. I played it back in college. Extremely complicated look up tables to figure out damage, and really amusing ways to die. The only thing it really did well was to model armor. Wearing armor made you easier to get hit, but much less likely to get seriously hurt. Going unarmored was risky. You dodged a lot of attacks, but if you did get hit you were in deep trouble.

farothel
2020-03-15, 06:29 AM
I like a lot the more 'political' systems, where politics is just as important (if not more) than combat. Things like:
-L5R
-Vampire (Dark Ages)

but also others like:
-Alternity
-Star Trek
-Scion
-Warhammer Fantasy RPG
-Shadowrun
-D&D/Pathfinder

For me the system is less an issue but the story is important. The system is there to support the story and while some systems appeal to me more than others, if the story is good, the system is just a set of rules to make it work.

werehounding
2020-03-15, 09:17 PM
D&D was my first TTRPG, so I'll have a soft spot for it for time immemorial. However, I also really enjoy Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and The Sprawl; particularly The Sprawl's Shadowrun hack/mod I found. I use it for the Shadowrun campaign I run because I have fairly severe dyscalculia, and Shadowrun - for whatever reason - is hard for me to wrap my head around stats-wise, likely because I'm so new to it. I also love VTM V20 (I'm looking to try V5 soon).

Lord Raziere
2020-03-15, 09:53 PM
well bearing in mind I barely play any of these since I seem to have bad luck in finding groups for them...

Mutants and Masterminds 3e, it just allows me to play so much

Godbound, it outdoes Exalted at its own demigod game with less rules.

Fate and Strands of Fate are also good each in their own ways.

Anima beyond Fantasy is awesome, really like the Nephilim and the high power ceiling.

anything I just kind have because lots of other people have them and I might be able to play a character concept I want to in some manner.

Jaryn
2020-03-20, 05:57 PM
I must admit I haven't played this one, is it good?
(So in retrospective I should have said that infinity is the best 2d20 setting outside of mutant chronicle I haven't played).

It's a huge heap of fun! Diesel punk turned up to eleven - you can run it a whole heap of ways; investigation, war, horror, etc

Spriteless
2020-03-23, 12:04 AM
I've recently started reading up on FATE, specifically Mindjammer. Seems really neat, for the wacky sort of SF. And I loved reading the Ryutama sourcebook.

But to play, I like Werewolf for being a hack and slash with fully integrated spirit world, Mage for being a contradictory hot mess, Active Exploits for being a balanced, flexible game with character sheets that fit on a flashcard (and free-ish), and In Nomine for being gloriously unbalanced if you don't enforce the role-playing of one's angelic or demonic caste. If you do enforce it, the most powerful characters are nigh impossible to play.

The Star Wars d20 game was pretty good too. Got to play some wonderful fan-fiction that fixed everything wrong with the prequels, crossed over with KOTOR, and got a glimpse of Palpatine with an alchemy clone of little Anni before they escaped.

I might actually use FATE to run Shadowrun.

kyoryu
2020-03-23, 09:12 AM
I've recently started reading up on FATE, specifically Mindjammer. Seems really neat, for the wacky sort of SF. And I loved reading the Ryutama sourcebook.

But to play, I like Werewolf for being a hack and slash with fully integrated spirit world, Mage for being a contradictory hot mess, Active Exploits for being a balanced, flexible game with character sheets that fit on a flashcard (and free-ish), and In Nomine for being gloriously unbalanced if you don't enforce the role-playing of one's angelic or demonic caste. If you do enforce it, the most powerful characters are nigh impossible to play.

The Star Wars d20 game was pretty good too. Got to play some wonderful fan-fiction that fixed everything wrong with the prequels, crossed over with KOTOR, and got a glimpse of Palpatine with an alchemy clone of little Anni before they escaped.

I might actually use FATE to run Shadowrun.

Mmmmmmm... always happy to talk Fate.

This seems to have helped a lot of people new to the system: https://fate-srd.com/odds-ends/book-hanz

Cygnia
2020-03-23, 09:40 AM
7th Sea 1st edition
Classic Deadlands
Champions

Archpaladin Zousha
2020-03-23, 10:03 AM
Pathfinder and Starfinder are my go-to games after D&D. Other than that I've dabbled in Legend of the Five Rings and Genesys (specifically the Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk setting).

I do have books for a few other games like Pendragon, Fantasy AGE, Dragon Age and Blue Rose, Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Zweihander, Cypher, and some more obscure stuff like Ygdrassil and Keltia, but I've yet to actually PLAY them with anyone...

KineticDiplomat
2020-03-23, 12:27 PM
Given I really dislike D&D as a system, not sure how helpful this will be to most:

Blade of The Iron Throne: An updated Riddle of Steel, really, really good for low fantasy play. Powered at a usual sword and sorcery level - you never fight a giant rat, but a dozen armed men will make anybody pause. Magic is terrifying, but is more ritualistic and less "battle wizard rocks house while retaining infinite utility." And the melee system is extraordinary. The dicing is comparatively easy as well.

Burning Empires: The best space opera scale system I've seen. The rules are meant to wage story arcs across planets, the social system is exceedingly well done, with grand political movements, espionage, and the like having the same ease of play and multitude of options as combat. Weaker on man-to-man fights, but it's not a game about man-to-man fights.

Blades in The Dark: Quick, clean, focused fun. Basically a crime story machine. Some people think it's a little too structured, but generally its meant to flow through a series of heists with tight plotting and without having to sit for seventy hours planning. One of the defining aspects is flashback - if you say, arrive at a locked door, rather than spending ten hours before hand performing recce, buying lockpicks, etc., you just initiate a flashback (it costs stress) where you show how you planned for this and roll away to see if you really did bribe a guard to leave it unlocked tonight.

Dark Heresy: Think people know this one.

Spriteless
2020-03-23, 05:37 PM
Mmmmmmm... always happy to talk Fate.

This seems to have helped a lot of people new to the system: https://fate-srd.com/odds-ends/book-hanz

Ah, nice essay series there. I noticed how the base page of the wiki asks if you came here from the Dresden Files game. Might want to use that as an opening with my online group.

kyoryu
2020-03-24, 11:41 AM
Ah, nice essay series there. I noticed how the base page of the wiki asks if you came here from the Dresden Files game. Might want to use that as an opening with my online group.

Thanks! A lot of people have told me it's helped them. (Yeah, I'm Hanz).

Telok
2020-03-24, 11:56 AM
Paranoia, the game thats been running on a single joke for 20 years and is still funny.

Ad&d 1e / Spelljammer, basic d&d with optional rules / gonzo nuts d&d.

Champions/Hero system, personal preference for 3rd/4th ed and using the modifier lookup table instead of doing the (admittedly quite basic) math.

Traveller, the classic version, as hard SF as you want, or as soft as you want by just ignoring parts of it.

Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7th edition, written as an April Fools joke/bet years ago and actually quite playable. I've been running a (mostly) weekly game for over a year now and its working well. Although it has taken that long for the players to get out of the "ask permission to roll a d20" mindset and into the "we're awesome, lets steal a civilization from a god" type ideas. I ought to do a lets read of it.

Pauly
2020-03-24, 08:40 PM
Space 1889 The system is nothing out of the ordinary but the environment it gives you is the most fun to adventure in that I’ve ever had. You can play straight Victorian era, light steampunk or full Jules Vernian sci-fi.
The Soldier’s Companion and Ironclads and Ether Flyers supplements not only give you TT wargaming but also give you the structure to fit your campaigns seamlessly into military campaigns.

Mr.Sandman
2020-03-25, 12:03 AM
I love Mutants and Masterminds, 2e and 3e. That was really where I got most of my gaming experience that wasn't d&d 3.5 early on, being a part of the Atomic Think Tank forums during and just after college, when I couldn't get a stable real world group going. I haven't played it in a disappointingly long time though.

This will probably sound weird to some people, but I also like making campaigns in Zombies! With the Deadtime Stories expansion. As a board game the games are relatively short, and my players have found cool ways to surprise me, even with the limited rules, like the one time my brother wanted to hold off the hoard at a chockpoint and let the others get to the objective. He was tired of playing the game that night, and just wanted his character to die, but was too stubborn/proud to not go down swinging. He kept rolling high and just wouldn't die, it got so intense he actually regained interest in the game, wanting to give the character a proper heroic sacrifice, and when the rest of the team made it out alive, he expressed interest when I brought up the idea of the character coming back in the final episode to help out as we never saw him actually die.

Morgaln
2020-03-25, 11:01 AM
Werewolf: the Apocalypse is my go-to system and the only one I am actively playing currently.

Other than that, I like

Savage Worlds
The Dark Eye
Call of Cthulhu
Shadowrun

I'm also looking forward to this August when the Sentinels Comic RPG is supposed to be released finally.

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-25, 12:12 PM
The Dark Eye

I love DSA, I really think it's what D&D 3.5 should have been. An incredibly crunchy medieval fantasy RPG with a heavily detailed setting and a low power level. Plus it manages to keep mages useful but not overpowered due to a mixture of small AE pools, spells requiring investment, and encouragement of mundane skills as well as spells (wilderness skills for elves, academic skills for mages, anything goes for witches).

It does have problems of course, in 4.1 guild mages were regarded as the best spellcasters by a large margin, while in 5e mages are considered to get fluff advantages and witches some minor mechanical advantages. It's also hard to build a combat mage, 8AE for a Ingifaxius (Fire Lance) spell, while a starting character has a maximum of 35, and can only cast the spell every other round, fireballs are even worse (I believe they're 32AE). But for everything it does wrong I find that it does many things right.

Spriteless
2020-03-26, 07:02 AM
Thanks! A lot of people have told me it's helped them. (Yeah, I'm Hanz).

Neat! It would be easier to read if at the bottom of each chapter, there was a link to the next chapter, or at least to the index of all chapters.

Tetsubo 57
2020-03-26, 08:28 AM
Pathfinder (1st edition)
Gamma World (1992 edition)
The Mutant Epoch
Everstone
Stars Without Number
Starfinder
Harp
Mutants & Masterminds

kyoryu
2020-03-26, 09:45 AM
Neat! It would be easier to read if at the bottom of each chapter, there was a link to the next chapter, or at least to the index of all chapters.

I'll mention that to the maintainer. While I wrote the original posts, I have very little control over the formatting of the SRD. Hell, I didn't even compile the things, as some things are a bit out of order in a way that makes "follow-ups" to various posts not make much sense :/

Knaight
2020-03-27, 05:08 AM
I could easily drop 30 titles in here, but in the interest of not doing that here's five. It's not a top five or anything, just five games I like that are all reasonably easily available and cover a bit of range.

Fudge: You've got to have your generic. Sometimes you just want to run some bizarro setting that doesn't have a clear genre, or some highly specific thing that will bump up against assumptions for your settingless but genred games. Fudge is my favorite for this, an overlooked stepping stone between GURPS and Fate, simulationist but light about it. There's another contender here, but if Cortex wants free advertising Cortex can get something that looks like a functional purchasing method.

Save The Universe: My generic might be sim, but I'm not down on narratavism, and StU is my favorite there. It does broadly capable pulpy space opera heroes well in play, and I adore the dice mechanic (2d6, check each die individually, every number 2-5 succeeds under specific conditions, but it moves really fast instead of getting bogged down), but the real genius is in how it starts the game. The setting generation involves curated list picking of certain elements that hits the genre highlights, which segues seamlessly into fun character ties. It brought me my favorite campaign (The Gulags of Cthulhu), so it gets on the list.

Warbirds: Sometimes you just want to play diselpunk celebrity fighter pilots in a deeply carribean setting that happens to on floating islands that orbit around the eye of a gas giant. I don't run games in published settings, but it was a fun read and I absolutely do run fighter pilot stuff from time to time.

Microscope: Microscope is my really weird favorite, hanging out on the edge of the RPG genre operating on its own unique parameters. It's a collaborative GMless timeline building game, played incredibly nonchronologically. The rules are strictly structural, both in the data structure of the timeline you build (which works beautifully) and in the structures of who gets what influence when.

Reign: The one roll engine holds a special place in my heart, and Reign is my favorite iteration of it. The really key things going for it are rules for modeling large scale organizations and conflicts between them, a magic system involving building to specific heavily themed magical orders that range from solid to really cool (the smoke sculptors are my favorite, involving what is basically magical aerogel manipulation), and of course the ORE itself is neat.

PintoTown
2020-04-04, 09:50 AM
I love the systems behind Blades in the Dark and Shadow of the Demon Lord. The settings are just a little grimdark for my roleplaying tastes though.
No Country for Old Kobolds is a home run in short term pallet cleansers for when you’re tired of the 5e and Pathfinder big guns.

Psyren
2020-04-14, 08:47 AM
Other than D&D/PF/SF, I've had a lot of fun with Green Ronin's Dragon Age (https://greenronin.com/dragonagerpg/), which is a 3d6 system. I've also played some White Wolf stuff (Changeling, Werewolf, Vampire, Mage.)

Anonymouswizard
2020-04-14, 10:34 AM
The Fantasy Trip is basically my argument against 'you need detail for tactical combat'. It's the predecessor to GURPS, but significantly more simple, charcters are made up of three stars (Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence), their Movement Allowance, and their list of skills and spells. Damage and Fatigue both reduce ST, there are a lot of combat options but everything bar spells are open to everybody, and while basic combat has as much complexity as grappling in D&D the important parts (such as distance and facing) are clear on a hex grid. It helps that the game was designed as a board game before becoming an RPG.

It's also one of the few games I've seen to make Intelligence important to warriors. While the basic IQ of 8 allows you to learn how to use any individual weapon type, you require an IQ of 9 to have exceptional skill with a ranged weapon, an IQ of 11 to buy Expertise with their weapon, and an IQ of 13 to buy Weapon Mastery. Not as important as it is for wizards, who unlock the ability to learn new spells all the way to IQ 20, but the same applies to ST for wizards in 2e (it's useful, but they don't need a massive amount).

Another quirk is that it uses the number of dice you roll to determine difficulty, an easy task is 2d6, challenging 3d6, and hard 4d6 or 5d6. Quite interesting, even if it isn't overly elegant).

kyoryu
2020-04-14, 05:37 PM
The Fantasy Trip is basically my argument against 'you need detail for tactical combat'. It's the predecessor to GURPS, but significantly more simple, charcters are made up of three stars (Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence), their Movement Allowance, and their list of skills and spells. Damage and Fatigue both reduce ST, there are a lot of combat options but everything bar spells are open to everybody, and while basic combat has as much complexity as grappling in D&D the important parts (such as distance and facing) are clear on a hex grid. It helps that the game was designed as a board game before becoming an RPG.

Interesting decisions in gameplay are brought about by having options which are not immediately dominant strategies. In some ways, that's easier to achieve with simpler math. With complex math, edge cases tend to occur that become better than other options.

Necroanswer
2020-04-15, 01:58 AM
3rd ed. GURPS for gritty fantasy

thorr-kan
2020-04-15, 11:23 AM
The Fantasy Trip is basically my argument against 'you need detail for tactical combat'. It's the predecessor to GURPS, but significantly more simple, charcters are made up of three stars (Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence), their Movement Allowance, and their list of skills and spells. Damage and Fatigue both reduce ST, there are a lot of combat options but everything bar spells are open to everybody, and while basic combat has as much complexity as grappling in D&D the important parts (such as distance and facing) are clear on a hex grid. It helps that the game was designed as a board game before becoming an RPG.

It's also one of the few games I've seen to make Intelligence important to warriors. While the basic IQ of 8 allows you to learn how to use any individual weapon type, you require an IQ of 9 to have exceptional skill with a ranged weapon, an IQ of 11 to buy Expertise with their weapon, and an IQ of 13 to buy Weapon Mastery. Not as important as it is for wizards, who unlock the ability to learn new spells all the way to IQ 20, but the same applies to ST for wizards in 2e (it's useful, but they don't need a massive amount).

Another quirk is that it uses the number of dice you roll to determine difficulty, an easy task is 2d6, challenging 3d6, and hard 4d6 or 5d6. Quite interesting, even if it isn't overly elegant).
You are aware SJGames go ahold of the rights and has been busily releasing a new version and content?

Anonymouswizard
2020-04-15, 01:39 PM
You are aware SJGames go ahold of the rights and has been busily releasing a new version and content?

Yes, how else do you think a millennial like myself got ahold of it? In my opinion it's just a plain better generic fantasy system than D&D5e, despite the somewhat lethal combat, and I was giddy to discover I could buy it.

thorr-kan
2020-04-15, 03:26 PM
Yes, how else do you think a millennial like myself got ahold of it? In my opinion it's just a plain better generic fantasy system than D&D5e, despite the somewhat lethal combat, and I was giddy to discover I could buy it.
Bits have no age. :smallsmile:

And since I've run into multiple fen from back in the day who never heard there was a revival, Imma not gonna keep the info to myself.

Enjoy the game!

Anonymouswizard
2020-04-16, 09:39 AM
Bits have no age. :smallsmile:

I have no idea what you're talking about, and if I did I wouldn't participate in it :smallwink:


And since I've run into multiple fen from back in the day who never heard there was a revival, Imma not gonna keep the info to myself.

Enjoy the game!

Oh, the second edition certainly needs more publicity, but then again unless your name is Dungeons & Dragons: the Masquerade then your RPG gets literally no spotlight in mainstream media (but I can save that wasn't and the linked 'stop trying to make D&D run everything' rant for later).

But it's a neat little game that I shall have lots of fun with.

thorr-kan
2020-04-16, 10:02 AM
I have no idea what you're talking about, and if I did I wouldn't participate in it :smallwink:
What I meant was, on the internet, nobody can determine somebody else's age.

8 bits = 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
etc

We're all just bits on the net.