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asaadrehman
2022-03-26, 05:59 AM
Let's create a thread where we describe our favourite game along with the cool think you like the most:smallsmile::smallsmile:

elros
2022-03-26, 08:05 AM
I have to say it is D&D, which I first played in the 80s. It is the best supported game, and the character classes and gameplay are iconic.
That said, my favorite mechanical system is Basic Roleplaying System, which is in Call of Cthulhu. I love the percentile and advantage-disadvantage system to the rolls. Easy to understand and implement.

Anonymouswizard
2022-03-26, 08:41 AM
In concept it's Nobilis/Glitch, due to the amazing setting and the fact that PCs are operating on a level where they can do pretty much anything but probably shouldn't. However I can't really comment on them mechanically, as they're diceless and I've never played a diceless system. So yeah, in theory my favourite but in practice maybe not

Second place goes to Fudge and it's descendant Fate, due to being a really stripped back generic ruleset that plays in the pulpy region I tend to default to. Plus Fate has a large number of free 50 page settings plus a larger tendency to mix genres (with officially released settings including 'Alien Invasion but Standard Medieval Setting' and 'what if Terminator was Cthulhu'). You're not going to be delving into dungeons, but you might be fencing on top of the Statue of Liberty.

SimonMoon6
2022-03-26, 09:35 AM
My favorite game is Mayfair's DC Heroes Role-Playing Game (2nd/3rd edition).

Here are some reasons why:

(1) It can represent everything. Characters of any power level. Characters with any bizarre powers. It can handle all of that. Pre-Crisis Superman? No problem. Rogue/Amazo/Super-Adaptoid? No problem? Metal Men/Metamorpho? No problem. Beast Boy/Jayna? No problem.

And when I say "no problem", I don't mean, "Well, you could *technically* represent the characters in the game system, but they wouldn't be quite right and you'd be straining the game system to actually represent them in a way that either doesn't make much sense or requires way more work (and dice-rolling) than you should ever have to do."

No. Every character can be represented correctly, accurately, and EASILY.

This is because the game was designed to simulate DC's most popular heroes at the time the game was created, so characters with weird powers (like Jericho of the Teen Titans) are super-easy to represent in the game system because the game system was designed to represent such characters.

There aren't many other game system (possibly there aren't *any* other game systems) that can do this. Not GURPS. Not Champions. Not M&M. Not nobody, not nohow. (Maybe, TSR's Marvel Superheroes RPG with FASERIP, but it has its own issues.) Most of these other game systems weren't created to simulate comic book superheroes and so they really can't do it well.

And it's not just character creation either. It's the entire game system, designed to make combat and skill use just as simple and easy as it can be.

(2) Since any character can be represented easily, as a GM, this makes it so incredibly convenient to have sandbox style games.

Can you imagine an adventure where the PCs go off into unexpected territory and the PCs encounter enemies that the GM hasn't already made character sheets for? In a lot of games, it's now time to say, "Okay, let's stop and pick this up next week after I've made some character sheets." But in DCHRPG, you can just spontaneously make character sheets for anyone you want in about 5 seconds, as long as you know what the enemies should roughly be capable of doing. This could NEVER happen in, for example, D&D 3.5. Not in a million years could you make a well-crafted D&D character sheet in 5 seconds.

(3) And again, since the game can handle anything, it can be used for any genre which makes it ideal for the multi-genre games that I enjoy running. Anything a GM wants to do with a game can be done with DCHRPG. This makes it (in my mind at least) the perfect game for a GM. I haven't actually played in the system as a player very much but from a GM's perspective it's the ideal game.

Anonymouswizard
2022-03-26, 09:50 AM
My favorite game is Mayfair's DC Heroes Role-Playing Game (2nd/3rd edition).

Here are some reasons why:

(1) It can represent everything.

Okay, throwing out some wide ranging ideas here, can it represent:

An intelligent blueberry muffin? Not a psionic or magical one, just an intelligent one.

Sir Hopsalot, the Relativistic Rabbit? (In other words a rabbit with enough super speed to reach at least a significant fraction of c.)

An Excrusian Strategist? (Nice grab bag of things here, you need the ability to self-ressurect, the ability to be really good within your rough role, a personalised ability to destroy stuff, your own personal Not-home formed out of the void that existed before Creation, the ability to travel to said void, power over a specific category of the nonexistent, and the ability to sense, travel to, and enhance the bits of Creation you personally Treasure.)

I've honestly found every system except Fudge to have an issue with some kind of character concept, so I'm very skeptical. Although that doesn't make it bad, focus can really help a game run better.

Lord Raziere
2022-03-26, 10:53 AM
I think my current favorite is Mutants and Masterminds QDe.

takes MnM3e, and improves it so that versatility and power are two separate things and explain how attacks work in a way that I use to represent anything using it.

like I don't need to worry about balancing my points between this and that as much, I don't have to sacrifice a section of the character sheet for points, you just get your power level, and your major combat stats are equal to that, so you can focus on the customization part that you really need the points for.


Sir Hopsalot, the Relativistic Rabbit

okay lets see for QDe....

that would be Speed. a Measure in QDe that costs 1pp to rank up. as its modified MnM, and Mnm3e says the speed of light is Speed 28, then Sir Hopsalot would only need 28 points to be that fast, with 72 power points and 100 versatility points remaining in default character creation.


An intelligent blueberry muffin?

QDe assumes all character are intelligent by default. the inability to move because its a muffin means that it probably has a minus to Speed and more points to spend than Sir Hopsalot, on whatever skills you think an intelligent muffin has.


An Excrusian Strategist? (Nice grab bag of things here, you need the ability to self-ressurect, the ability to be really good within your rough role, a personalised ability to destroy stuff, your own personal Not-home formed out of the void that existed before Creation, the ability to travel to said void, power over a specific category of the nonexistent, and the ability to sense, travel to, and enhance the bits of Creation you personally Treasure.)

Lethal Immunity (20vp) (closest thing to immortality/self resurrection QDe has, you still need to define a weakness that makes sure they can't self-resurrect if its used though.)
Bestow (varies, pp, for the rough role thing)
Attack (anything destructive falls into attack, unless its a disintegration in which case it might be transformation, maybe)
Installation features and teleport (for both void and bit of Creation stuff, teleport is 15vp)
Transform/Create/Exert/Perceive (for power for a specific category of nonexistent, that could be an entire array of things honestly)

for this one, pp honestly varies and you'd have to go into more specifics, but I'm pretty sure you'd have.....65vp left over at least? but installation stuff requires vp being turned into feature points or FP, which would eat up a couple of them but not much since its a 1vp-to-10fp conversion rate, as features are pretty minor.

Anonymouswizard
2022-03-26, 11:45 AM
And I realise that I forgot to put the Strategist limitations in, which is more what this is about. These characters all have limited ability to interact with the world.

A Strategist can, but if it's outside their role they're bad at it. At the worst it gets to 'severe dyspraxia combined with chronic fatigue' levels. Some can manage showering or putting on pants in a day, but not both (fine for those who are mongeese or bakeries, a bit of an issue for the human ones).

Sir Hopsalot has limited intelligence, a small size, and no hands. Your average game assumes you can open doors without resorting to superpowers.

The intelligent blueberry muffin can't do anything except exist and think. Even games that don't assume you can open doors assume you can interact in some way (plus it's the classic example of how flexible GURPS is).

Jay R
2022-03-26, 01:24 PM
If you like swashbuckling adventures and musketeer movies, then Flashing Blades, by FGU.

Note: it is simulating the novels and movies, not historical 17th-century Paris.

It has classes that are based on actual classes. Where you were born and who raised you. You are a Noble, Gentleman, Soldier, or Rogue. In the Caribbean supplement High Seas, this is expanded to include Sailor, Marine, or Pirate.

There are five dueling styles. If you learned Italian style, your thrusts and lunges are better. Spanish style has improved slashes, etc. [The game was written in the 1980s, and there is no authenticity to the style descriptions.]

Each character has an Advantage (title, wealth, lackey, favor, contact, etc.) and a Secret (secret loyalty, sworn vengeance, secret identity, duelist, inveterate gambler, etc.). These make the characters unique, and are the key to fitting a swashbuckling persona.

The main characteristics are Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Wit, Charm, and Luck.

The skills are a big part of the game. Each class has three skills that cost 1 point each, a set of what you might call "class skills" which cost 2 points each, and the rest are 3 points. Once you buy a skill, your ability is based on the associated characteristic, plus experience. Acrobatics is based on Dexterity; Carousing on Endurance, Seduction on Charm, etc. Each skill or fighting weapon goes up individually, based on how much you use it. So if you want to improve your cutpurse skill, you have to actually cut purses. Improvements with your rapier won't make you better with a pistol.

Social status is real, crucial, and part of what you're striving to earn.

The game's biggest weakness is, being made in the early 1980s, the assumption was that all players would be guys, and there are no female character types. I invented Actress for a player in my game, and it would be easy to play Noble or Rogue as a woman.

It plays quickly, feels right, and lets players act like a dueling hero.

[Honorable mentions to Pendragon, original D&D, AD&D, D&D 3.5e, TOON, Champions (the entire Hero System, actually), and GURPS. Yes, these are mostly old games. I started playing rpgs in 1975, with the original three-pamphlet white-box edition of D&D.]

Mastikator
2022-03-26, 02:10 PM
My favorite is a system and campaign setting I made called Infinite Darkness. It's a scifi horror game, I try to take a little bit from firefly and a little bit from alien and a little bit from babylon 5.

Mechanically it's a skill based RPG with a hierarchy of abilities -> skills -> perks. Abilities are the basic 6, strength, endurance, agility, perception, intelligence, willpower. Then you have skills which is many, then each skill has a set of perks that either grant new options or enhance niche uses of skills (like being really good at blades). The way you advance is very simple, leveling up a skill costs as much as you're leveling up to per step (so 0 to 5 is 15 for example), perks cost 10,20,30,40 depending on their level.
Conflicts are resolved via opposed checks, roll 2d10 + ability + skill + perk bonus (if any) + modifier from context (if any). Vs environment has static DCs with modifiers for circumstances that makes things easier or harder.

There is an optional magic system that is themed around horror, so far it's a single skill called "spells" and has 36 spells and mutations. Spells can only be gained at random (you roll d100 three times and get to choose between 3). The spells tend to require creativity to be useful, some are directly useful but only in narrow ways, some com.

The aliens are truly alien, they have enough in common with humanity to work together, but different enough that a society can't accommodate all, it's a little bit uncomfortable, but it offers (enforces?) actual different perspectives. Being a human in a Shambra society will make you feel like you don't belong because you need to wear a gas mask at all times so the toxic chlorine gas doesn't slowly kill you. The Nekovian society is all underwater and are basically stone age. The Merlions are so much more advanced than anyone else that it's basically magic, and they don't share.

The combat system is something I've spent a lot of time on, guns should feel dangerous and deadly, but combat shouldn't be too one-sided.
There are many weapons to choose from, guns, lasers, plasma casters, missile launchers, railguns. Each come with modifications and different options for ammunition. Each have drawbacks and strengths. Melee combat has a place too but bringing a knife to a gunfight is often not a smart choice. Armors are highly modifiable, they come in 3 layers and have additional optional integrated systems.
You can make yourself extremely deadly, hard to kill, but it just skews the odds, a noob with a gun can still kill you under the right circumstances. This is also true for NPCs. If the players are clever they can defeat any opponent.


The reason I made it is because I couldn't find anything that checked all the boxes

Mordar
2022-03-26, 02:40 PM
For me, it is a narrow margin. Barely edging out Call of C'thulhu...is RoleMaster.

RM gets a bad rap for barriers to entry and charts, but those issues are easily overcome within 30 minutes of learn-to-play with an experienced teacher. It does have some assumptions, like participants willing and able to perform basic arithmetic, but the flexibility of the system is wonderful. A few of my favorite things:


Skill system
Character differentiation
Weapon/armor interaction
Magic and Spell system


The skill system is very broad and inclusive. All character types have access to a wide array of skills, and there is significant differentiation available. You can really make your character shine in the ways you envision, not just in some narrative fashion or where your dedicated specialist is regularly eclipsed by someone min/maxer defaulting to a stat and using edges/advantages to explain away why his street rat who lived by the University is better able to find and identify the curative properties of plants than your hill-village herbalist who grew up apprenticing to the local wiseman.

Combat skills are skills just like everything else, so your charismatic troubador duelist can be better at swordplay than my hulking barbarian warrior...but put battleaxes in our hands and watch out! (Note: skills are categorical, not weapon specific...this is an example of 1H edged vs 2H skill).

Classes play a role in what skills you can develop more rapidly than others...but your Berserker can learn courtly etiquette if that's what you want.

Finally, you get a significant amount of skill points at the creation and each level...so you can dabble in many things and still excel in your core, or you can grow in ways you didn't anticipate wanting to when you made that character 6 months ago. All of this leads to...

Character Differentiation is a byproduct of the skill system (and magic system) and a big part of what really helped me fall in love with the game. I grew up reading about Aragorn, Fafhrd and the Mouser, Conan, Achilles, Paris, Lancelot and all the others. The idea that each of these were effectively modeled by the "Fighter" class was understandable, but disappointing. The differentiation in AD&D was mostly fluff. In RM, though, these characters can be narratively and systemically modeled and play very differently even at the same levels. Same thing applies to the magic using characters - wizards, sorcerers, necromancers, summoners, psionicists, divine clerics, the whole shebang - and most every other category we could come up with. Thieves, rogues, spies, conmen, troubadors, bards (that aren't reduced to the juvenile like some currently popular views), ninja, and a thousand other options.

Best of all, you don't need gigantic system mastery to achieve this end...you just need the ideas of what you feel makes the character feel like the character. Then you get to see it represented narratively and mechanically at the table, not just in a hand-wavy fashion but in a manner that speaks to your agency and your decisions.

The Weapon/Armor interaction is what scares some people away, and what gives rise to "ChartMaster" primarily from those that don't know any better. Without spending too long in the weeds, combat is handled thusly:

Attack roll (d100, plus attacking modifiers);
Defense modifications (based on target skill/actions/situational modifiers);
Basic math;
Look up result on table that considers your weapon and target armor type;
Apply reult. If you did really well, you may inflict a critical injury - roll and check the chart (no math) for often fun effect.


One roll. Basic math. Check the result - it tells you the damage done. If you did well, one more roll for bonus damage and potential effects. Note this is *at most* the same number of rolls required by (A)D&D. What makes it special?

It considers some degree of reality. Foil against plate armor? Generally not super effective...unless you get right in the cracks. Against chain mail? Better the fine bladed thrusting weapon than the broadsword. Both are fine...but the pointy one is better. The criticals even consider the combinations. That pointy weapon is going to cause more bleeding damage, while the mace is going to do more knock-downs or stuns.

And no, it isn't hard or complicated. Unless you're playing Garret Jax, you only need a couple - maybe three - reference pages. I needed more than that for my Paladin in the "modern" 4E game I last played.

Lest you think RM is short on the magic side, the Magic and Spell system provides the same flexibility for the arcane (or divine...or mentalism) inclined. Thousans of spells available (maybe hundreds when you discount variants). How can anyone manage that many options? They are parceled into spell lists. Magic characters learn spell lists that are thematically linked, and you learn a batch of spells across several spell levels all at once. Playing an "elemental" wizard? You decide that Fire Law and Water Law are good places to start. You also decide you want to defend yourself against your colleagues, so Elemental Shields is a good add. Finally you determine your character is a tinker, always trying to make her magic better...you you add in Spell Enhancement as a list. You've got four lists going, giving you access to at least the first 10 levels of spells from each list.

But you can only cast level one spells, right? Nope. You can try to cast any spell you know. But you can only cast what you prepare? Nope, spell points system. Flexibility but not so good you outshine every other character at the table. There is skill required to cast, and trying to cast spells above your character level is proportionally harder than those "right sized" for you.

The number of spells can really seem daunting, but it is put into more manageable chunks. Spells are grouped into three "types" of magic - Essence, Channeling and Mentalism...basically wizard, cleric, psionicist. Then there is the parceling into spell lists - general lists for each type, limited lists for each type, and then specialized lists for each type. Then, on top of that, many of the spells are greater versions of a base spell (think Cure Light, Cure Moderate, Cure Serious, Cure Critical) that increase the effect or efficacy.

Summation
I love(d) RoleMaster because it gave our group the flexibility to really play the characters we wanted, inspired by whatever array of sources and our creativity, and actually see them take form and matter in both narrative and system. I came of gaming age in a time when you learned a lot of systems because every game had its own, and there were limited worries about modest complexity, engagement in the system or "efficient objective game design" according to whatever internet crackpot happens to be in at the moment, so we didn't know we were supposed to be scared of this system. And so we weren't, and nearly all of my fondest RPG memories are linked to this game and this group.

This is the game I would play if I had time and opportunity at the expense of all other games.

- M

Grod_The_Giant
2022-03-26, 04:09 PM
It varies a lot. Right now I'd probably say my number one pick is my d20 Exalted hack, but M&M 3e is pretty much always in the top three.


I think my current favorite is Mutants and Masterminds QDe.

takes MnM3e, and improves it so that versatility and power are two separate things and explain how attacks work in a way that I use to represent anything using it.
I am... Intrigued. Is that a fan rewrite, or...?

Lord Raziere
2022-03-26, 06:58 PM
It varies a lot. Right now I'd probably say my number one pick is my d20 Exalted hack, but M&M 3e is pretty much always in the top three.


I am... Intrigued. Is that a fan rewrite, or...?

Yeah fan rewrite:
check it out (https://www.trulyuniqueweb.com/unrealquests/mm/#ch-character-creation)

its a little weird if your used to MnM3e at first but once you understand it, it works.


And I realise that I forgot to put the Strategist limitations in, which is more what this is about. These characters all have limited ability to interact with the world.

A Strategist can, but if it's outside their role they're bad at it. At the worst it gets to 'severe dyspraxia combined with chronic fatigue' levels. Some can manage showering or putting on pants in a day, but not both (fine for those who are mongeese or bakeries, a bit of an issue for the human ones).

Sir Hopsalot has limited intelligence, a small size, and no hands. Your average game assumes you can open doors without resorting to superpowers.

The intelligent blueberry muffin can't do anything except exist and think. Even games that don't assume you can open doors assume you can interact in some way (plus it's the classic example of how flexible GURPS is).

oh well.

in that case, MnM QDe handles it by......kind of not handling it I guess? there is nothing saying a blueberry muffin can't exist and think, but if they're not a superhero level then they're probably kind of a background thing. no need to mechanically represent what it isn't, so its probably just an NPC. but what do you use the smart muffin for? if it can't interact with any thing, its just a thinking object and doesn't really need mechanical representation.

Sir Hopsalot is probably also an NPC then, but it still can represent the speed. the question is what do you use sir Hopsalot for? do the PC's need to catch Sir Hopsalot for some reason? is he the pet of a scientist who using sir Hopsalot for an completely ethical experiment and he just escaped one day so he needs to be found and returned to his owner? now I'm imagining Sir Hopsalot is the pet of a scientist trying to make mass-produced FTL for humanity is a superhero setting and Sir Hopsalot was the result of one his experiments going wrong.

I think for the Excrucian thats just a complication of "Highly Limited to their Role". so whenever it appropriate for that to come up, it comes up in exchange for a hero point, much like a fate's aspect but only for negative things.

Telok
2022-03-26, 08:31 PM
Favorite? Right game for the right thing.

Paranoia for comedy. Traveller for SF. Champions for supers. Pendragon for knights in shining armor. DtD40k7e for gonzo mashup action hero junk. Risus for rules light. AD&D for nostalgia. The current flavor of D&D if I don't want to be the GM again.

Scots Dragon
2022-03-26, 09:07 PM
Probably Mutants & Masterminds, with 2nd Edition slightly edging out 3rd Edition. I like both, but I feel the former handles street-level stuff a little better, given the sneak attack feat and a few other similar features.

A few others have mentioned its benefits, and the benefits of the pretty similar DC Heroes RPG.

I don't use it for everything, and will use other games where they might be more appropriate, but if I have an default go-to it's Mutants & Masterminds.

olskool
2022-03-26, 09:22 PM
I have two I play a lot.

The Design Mechanism's MYTHRAS:

A BRP-based fantasy system that is a Skill-based percentile game with 6 different magic types including a well-thought-out DIVINE MAGIC system (Theism) where ANYONE (yes even fighter types) can join a Cult and receive magic. A very good Shamanic/Animism magic for summoning spirits and entities to do your bidding. Folk Magic for minor spells, Sorcery for more powerful magic that can be scaled by the caster, and magic of Mysticism (the monk-like ability to alter your body, climb, jump, and even walk on water). Finally, we add back the older editions of Runequest's Rune Magic as well (special powers from artifacts and attuning Runes- magical symbols that even the gods draw power from).
The system is Skill-based with two Characteristics combined making your base chance for skills. Character generation is lifepath-based. Armor absorbs damage and CON provides your Hit Points. The system uses Special Maneuvers to make combat exciting and every monster has character stats, motivations, and the ability to improve its skills and characteristics. The system gives you a lot of choices and doesn't limit you to a single class. You CAN have a spell-slinging, sword-swinging, Divinely inspired Priest without any issues in the system.



Game Designer's Workshop's Twilight2000/Dark Conspiracy (with V2.2 rules system):

The games I run the most are either Merc style games or X Files meets Constantine meets the Last Witch Hunter type horror-action games. The system is GDW's older (now available from Far Future Enterprises) D20 ROLL UNDER system where you combine one or more Characteristic scores (STR, INT, CHA, etc...) ranging from 1 to 10 [and averaged together] with a Skill (also rated from 1 to 10). The two stats form a Target Number for an AVERAGE Task. We incorporate TRAVELLER'S Task Difficulty Levels into our V2.2 hybrid rules. We use 5e's ADVANTAGE & DISADVANTAGE system (called Boons & Banes after Mongoose Traveller's same system) but because you roll UNDER (like a percentile system) the versions are REVERSED (ADVANTAGE takes the LOWER die rolled while DISADVANTAGE takes the higher). We add special maneuvers for combat when you score an Outstanding Success roll. The system is also life path based (straight from TRAVELLER) and classless. You can build basically any type of character you want to play. Combat is fast and brutal and we adopted the later TW2K13's Coolness Under Fire as a fear mechanic to evoke the more horror-oriented aspects of the game.

Both games are medium crunch but very intuitive since they use a universal mechanic for resolution. There are no dump stats because Characteristic scores DIRECTLY influence skills in BOTH systems. Both systems also control both "power creep" and "lethality" very well.

RedMage125
2022-03-26, 10:39 PM
Most of my gaming experience comes in the form of various editions of D&D. That's what I started on, that's what's been the easiest to find groups for over the years. Of the other systems that I have an interest in, like L5R, Werewolf: The Apocalypse (playing with dice, not LARPing), and Song of Ice & Fire RPG, I've had trouble finding enough like-interested people to make a group. Shadowrun I tried playing once, spent 5 hours making a character, and then the GM, of all people, bailed on the rest of us and the game never got started.

So, my "whys":

As a Player: D&D 5e. It's a close win over 3.5e, because I enjoy 3.5e, but for me, the simple elegance of it wins me over. The fact that I don't have to wait until 6th or 7th level to have my character be the cool thing I imagined. It's fun, and less irritating to explain to new players, which there are a lot of. The ease of finding a group also factors in to this edging out over 3.5e on my list.

As a Game Master: D&D 4e, hands-down. The system was so easy to run. I never had any trouble making the game "feel like D&D" to my players, I even changed the minds of a few "h4ters" who I got to agree to give it a shot. Running this game feels drastically different than running any other edition I have run, I will say that. I really feel like I'm operating with the "lines of code" of a system, but encounter building, the flexibility of the system, how easy it is to just work on the fly with less preparation...everything about this edition makes it a DM's dream come true. Except maybe how long combat takes. But I used to play in 6-7 hour blocks.

Favorite non-D&D system: I've kind of got no choice but to say Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Just because most of the other games I played (like Star Wars d20 and Saga Edition) were basically D&D, and I did get to play this one for several weeks back in the early 2000s. I've never even gotten one session of Shadowrun, L5R. I like the idea that attributes and skills are not inherently tied together, and have co-opted that idea for D&D. So using Intimidate to imply a threat uses Manipulation, but bodily lifting someone to Intimidate them uses Strength, but both use the intimidation skill. I found it very flexible.

Dimers
2022-03-27, 07:58 AM
I like the idea that attributes and skills are not inherently tied together, and have co-opted that idea for D&D. So using Intimidate to imply a threat uses Manipulation, but bodily lifting someone to Intimidate them uses Strength, but both use the intimidation skill.

I backport that into D&D when I (rarely) run games. Trying to impress someone using obscure knowledge? Gimme a Charisma/Arcana check. Need to stay still a long time to stay unnoticed? Constitution/Stealth. And so on. It's easy to do.

My favorite game is D&D 4e. I love high-fantasy high-cooperation tactical combat. That's all.

asaadrehman
2022-03-27, 07:59 AM
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is one of my favorite roleplaying games. I start the thread with a reason to get to know the list of people's favorite games and I can also try those ones. Role-playing games are one of my favorites and the reason is that here we can explore a whole new world. Meet with new people through invite options and do many other things that would kill our boredom in no time. If a person hasn't played any role-playing game yet, I suggest you try it once. It would make a fan. :smallsmile:

LecternOfJasper
2022-03-27, 09:44 AM
Hmmmm, my favorite to play would probably be 5e, because it is somewhat simple, people I play with tend to understand what the game is about and lean into it, and there's a lot of good content being made for it.

My favorite to look at and read about is definitely 3.5e, as there's a lot of good content in those books, and a lot of interesting things you can do with it.

My favorite to draw inspiration from is Godbound, the Demigod game, as the ideas and abilities in it are really quite good, and it is fun to build characters for, but the core system is really odd, critical information is often buried, and the combat isn't terribly enjoyable rom either side of the screen.

Numenera was in the same niche as Godbound, where it has a lot of cool ideas that I want to explore, but with a different baseline for achieving results. I've read through a lot of d6 and dice pool games as well, and those always seemed to be horribly convoluted to the point where I can't convince anyone to play them (except Mouseguard, that was fun).

So, naturally, I'm making my own lighter generic system incorporating the pieces from Shadowrun and Numenera that I like so I don't have to deal with the nightmarish amount of stuff in Shadowrun.

Eldan
2022-03-27, 11:24 AM
'what if Terminator was Cthulhu').

I don't know that one I think and I'm intrigued. Which one is that?

Eldan
2022-03-27, 11:25 AM
Okay, throwing out some wide ranging ideas here, can it represent:

An intelligent blueberry muffin? Not a psionic or magical one, just an intelligent one.

Sir Hopsalot, the Relativistic Rabbit? (In other words a rabbit with enough super speed to reach at least a significant fraction of c.)

An Excrusian Strategist? (Nice grab bag of things here, you need the ability to self-ressurect, the ability to be really good within your rough role, a personalised ability to destroy stuff, your own personal Not-home formed out of the void that existed before Creation, the ability to travel to said void, power over a specific category of the nonexistent, and the ability to sense, travel to, and enhance the bits of Creation you personally Treasure.)

I've honestly found every system except Fudge to have an issue with some kind of character concept, so I'm very skeptical. Although that doesn't make it bad, focus can really help a game run better.

Don't forget "an entirely normal guy with no powers or many special skills" and then still have them able to contribute to a party of superpowered beings.


Edit: I guess I should also answer. So, as I've played more games, I've increasingly come to the conclusion that I like settings, and I like systems, but for very few games, I like both. Eberron and Planescape are fine worlds, if you like that kind of thing, and D&D 3.5 is okay and I know it well enough to mostly run it with minimal preparation, but it's not really my kind of thing anymore. FATE is a great system, probably my favorite, but I don't know a setting specifically written for it that I really like, so I mostly homebrew for it. Degenesis may be my favorite world, but it comes with a dice pool system that isn't horrible, but occasionally quite clunky.

The one exception I can think of is Unknown Armies. Which is a game where everything is astoundingly well integrated. Character creation and stats are amazingly laid out and perfectly based on the setting. In a setting about extremely traumatized people slowly losing their connection to reality and learning magic in the process, every single roll you do is based on that idea. Your basic stats are different kinds of traumas that make you better and worse at some things, your magic is restored most easily by being really obsessive and ritualistic about things that don't make sense to anyone else and every story arc is very likely to change deep things about your character and add new traumas and neuroses on them in exchange form magical power. And it has great writing and worldbuilding on top of that.

Anonymouswizard
2022-03-27, 02:29 PM
I don't know that one I think and I'm intrigued. Which one is that?

Fate of Cthulhu. Bare in mind that it has some issues.

SimonMoon6
2022-03-27, 03:13 PM
Okay, throwing out some wide ranging ideas here, can it [DCHRPG] represent:

An intelligent blueberry muffin? Not a psionic or magical one, just an intelligent one.

Yeah, easy.

DEX: 0, STR: 0, BODY: 1
INT: 2, WILL: 2, MIND: 2
and (assuming it has free will as opposed to being a programmed robot):
INFL: 1 AURA: 1 SPIRIT: 1

And then throw in some disadvantages (no limbs, no mouth, no sensory apparatus, tasty, etc).




Sir Hopsalot, the Relativistic Rabbit? (In other words a rabbit with enough super speed to reach at least a significant fraction of c.)



No problem. A speed of c is about 29 in DC Heroes if I recall correctly, so you just need Superspeed: 29 to get to c and slightly less if you only want to be close to the speed of light.


An Excrusian Strategist? (Nice grab bag of things here, you need the ability to self-ressurect,

That's the (badly misnamed) power Invulnerability in DC Heroes. (It should've been called Immortality, but oh well...)



the ability to be really good within your rough role,

Not sure what that encompasses, but if it's just being better than normal at something you're normally only okay at, then the power "Power Reserve" can boost up any minor ability to any ridiculous level.



a personalised ability to destroy stuff,

I'm not sure what you mean by "personalized" but destroying stuff is easy.



your own personal Not-home formed out of the void that existed before Creation,


The Headquarters advantage.



the ability to travel to said void,


Dimension Travel (limited to just that one dimension and limited to just travel and not summoning).



power over a specific category of the nonexistent,


So... a power that doesn't do anything?



and the ability to sense, travel to, and enhance the bits of Creation you personally Treasure.)


There are lots of sense powers. "Remote Sensing" limited to only those areas is possible. Travel is always easy (Teleport or Dimension Travel). And enhancing other things? Enhancement is a power that does exactly that (though the default version is supposed to be used on other characters, it would be easy to add a Bonus that it works on things as well as characters).


Don't forget "an entirely normal guy with no powers or many special skills" and then still have them able to contribute to a party of superpowered beings.

A badly made character will be a badly made character in any setting or system. But if you want to create a character that has nothing but, say, Wealth (which seems to fit your criteria), that could be a useful character, just not in combat. Or someone who's really good at Charisma checks... yeah, they could really be useful in a DCHRPG game. I mean, the system is made so that Batman... weak, pathetic, useless Batman... is able to contribute alongside the Justice League, even though he's outclassed by even Aquaman, much less Superman. So, yeah, useless ordinary humans can contribute well in a DCHRPG game. Even Black Canary without her sonic scream can do okay, as long as she's not sitting next to the best of the Justice League.

elros
2022-03-27, 04:44 PM
I have heard of Mutants and Masterminds but never read or played it. I played a fair amount of Champions in the 80s (as both a player and a GM), and loved character creations but found combat lasted way too long. I also thought that the game mechanics lent itself to abuse, and that some character types were did not fit well into the system.

How did M&M play? What are the advantages to their system, especially if people are not familiar with the d20 system to begin with?

Pauly
2022-03-27, 08:43 PM
For setting Space 1889. The original edition was very clunky mechanically and the new version is much better. I never had a campaign using the setting where people failed to have a lot of fun.

For mesh of setting and rules, Flashing Blades. Once you get that it’s the game of the movie of the book that’s sort of kind of based on history it runs very smoothly and intuitively.

For versatility GURPS. GURPS falls apart the further you get from real world physics, but any genre that is based on having real world physics it gets the job done. The best system I’ve used for shifting genres mid campaign.

The game I’ve read the rules for but haven’t played that seems most interesting - Rolemaster.

Lord Raziere
2022-03-27, 09:21 PM
I have heard of Mutants and Masterminds but never read or played it. I played a fair amount of Champions in the 80s (as both a player and a GM), and loved character creations but found combat lasted way too long. I also thought that the game mechanics lent itself to abuse, and that some character types were did not fit well into the system.

How did M&M play? What are the advantages to their system, especially if people are not familiar with the d20 system to begin with?

Never played Champions so I can't really compare.

MnM's advantages are mainly that its very good for superheroics and covers a lot of ground in the Marvel/DC/Anime kinds of action-style. like it has a default PL of 10 which is world-saving heroes, you can go down for PL8 to be street heroes or up to PL 12 or higher to be like, galaxy saviors. for certain powers that require flexibility have arrays and variable powers for them but its recommended up front in the book that you be careful with variable in particular.

the 3e version mostly had problems in that you have to budget your points between deciding whether to have good defenses and stats and whether to have the powers you want for your concept, which isn't fun. QDe's improvement is that I just focus on making the character, not worrying whether its optimally effective by doing some things to make sure I don't need to split the points up because there are separate pools for separate things and some default stats that scale with PL without any points involved, because if your playing 3e, you scaled your stats with PL anyways to make they remained effective so it was basically a tax.

Pex
2022-03-28, 12:53 AM
It used to be Pathfinder 1E, but from repeated use and a chance of comparison 5E has won me over. This is due to:

1) Being less complex in creating a character.
2) Being less complex in creating humanoid NPCs with levels in something when I DM.
3) Fewer fiddly bits to keep track. Plus numbers do exist in 5E but less frequent. Advantage/Disadvantage plays easier than hunting for every plus or minus 1. Even 5E adding a die is easier than hunting for plus numbers.
4) Complete freedom of PCs to move however far they can and do any action they want to do, including interrupting movement.
5) Class conveniences such as cantrips for spellcasters and warriors have no penalty to combat for having more than one attack or even moving.
6) Improved Vancian spellcasting such that you only need to prepare a spell once but can cast it as many times as you want and can instead of needing to prepare a spell more than once to cast it more than once.

Pathfinder 1E does have things I like better than 5E. The major things being the skill system and point buy ability score generation. A minor thing is feats being separate from ability score increase. I can still enjoy a Pathfinder game.

Telwar
2022-03-28, 12:52 PM
Mechanically, it's a three way split between 4e, PF2, and the FFG/Edge Star Wars rpg.

4e took the mess of 3.5 and made a very balanced and logical game for dungeon crawling. Having the actor make the roll feels elegant compared to random saves or attacks. It also decisively resolved the martial/caster problem that was satisfying for mostly martial players and not really satisfying for mostly caster players. Math issues (ironically, on an edition that claimed to get the math right!) and the requirement for a character builder legitimately hurt it. But I would happily play again.

PF2 takes a lot of the lessons from 4e and uses them in a manner that alleviates the "zomg I don't have spell slots (crying)" complaints. Words mean things, like in 4e, and the developers respect the players and GM's time by actually writing rules. I would love to play this.

The FFG/Edge Star Wars game was a hell of a lot of fun. It has a lot of character customization potential, and is generally well written. I also got to build very customizable guns and other weapons, which filled a nice itch. The weird dice are a bit of a turnoff, but do make it easier to do the "fail with benefits" and "success with consequences" that is really hard to do with plain number systems.


Now, for setting? Shadowrun. It's not just because I'm in the setting as a (dead) NPC, but it's a living breathing setting that's been going for thirty years at this point, which is hard to beat. And who doesn't love to have an elf shooting at a drone with an AK-47?

Grod_The_Giant
2022-03-28, 01:50 PM
if your playing 3e, you scaled your stats with PL anyways to make they remained effective so it was basically a tax.
After seeing how nicely the auto-scaling stuff has worked in Ex20, the next time I run M&M I'm thinking of giving out defences and attack bonuses for frees and just cutting the starting points back a bit. Having 100pp to spend feels less like a tax than having 150pp but knowing that 50pp are required to go to defenses in one way or another.

Easy e
2022-03-28, 01:53 PM
This is a hard question. I prefer more "free-form" style of games so my mind goes more towards things like 2d20, Powered by the Apocalypse, and Fudge/Fate style games. Things that are more narrative driven than rules driven. I would play Lasers and Feelings over GURPS any day of the week.

However, no matter the mechanics I have had great and less great games with them all. Mechanics do not make the game great, your fellow players and GM do. If the others are not into it..... the game sucks. This is especially true for the GM, but applies to all players.

LecternOfJasper
2022-03-28, 05:56 PM
PF2 takes a lot of the lessons from 4e and uses them in a manner that alleviates the "zomg I don't have spell slots (crying)" complaints. Words mean things, like in 4e, and the developers respect the players and GM's time by actually writing rules. I would love to play this.


PF2 is a very solid system. Most everything they did makes some amount of sense, and the math for the most part works out.

The only problems I've encountered with it are that the additional +1's that quite a few of the feats are start to feel meaningless when you add your level to everything, people have a pretty low chance of hitting or successfully doing anything compared to other games, which feels bad, and a few of the classes don't feel like they get anything good.

Despite all that, out of the fantasy, D&Desque systems that I've played, it's definitely in the top two.

Tanarii
2022-03-28, 06:46 PM
Dungeons and Dragons.
Because I can always find players, and can usually find a DM.

Leon
2022-03-30, 03:14 AM
Powered by the Apocalypses games, specifically Dungeon World.
Simple, adaptable, advancement through failure.

Satinavian
2022-03-30, 06:16 AM
Splittermond

- traditional crunchy fantasy game
- classless, huge variety of character concepts in without using rule bloat
- can do other things than combat quite well.
- Nice magic system that encourages sticking to themes without being overall too restrictive
- enough combat options to ensure variety here

Overall the system has little that is really new and inventive. But it combined a lot of established ideas and concepts in an elegant way.

Anonymouswizard
2022-03-30, 07:16 AM
PF2 is a very solid system. Most everything they did makes some amount of sense, and the math for the most part works out.

The only problems I've encountered with it are that the additional +1's that quite a few of the feats are start to feel meaningless when you add your level to everything, people have a pretty low chance of hitting or successfully doing anything compared to other games, which feels bad, and a few of the classes don't feel like they get anything good.

Despite all that, out of the fantasy, D&Desque systems that I've played, it's definitely in the top two.

P2 is great, but it's just too complex for me to run. Despite the rules being free I know I'd be the only one to read them, and then I'll have to help build 3-6 PCs and create an adventure.

The only D&Dlike I'm really interested in running these days is AGE, and only after removing the horrific scaling (for the first nine levels hp increases by an average of 4.5, damage is unlikely to increase by more than a few points until you hit the late teens). The Blue Rose/Modern AGE fatigue casting is a lot closer to fantasy book magic, and the corebooks for Fantasy AGE and Modern AGE are small enough that I can expect players to read enough to create their characters. Plus d6 only is becoming a big plus for me, and the Stunt mechanic is nice.

LecternOfJasper
2022-03-30, 08:22 AM
P2 is great, but it's just too complex for me to run. Despite the rules being free I know I'd be the only one to read them, and then I'll have to help build 3-6 PCs and create an adventure.

Oh that's for sure. I'm not going to run it without a group that knows the rules better than I do, but my friends can if they like :smallbiggrin:


The only D&Dlike I'm really interested in running these days is AGE, and only after removing the horrific scaling (for the first nine levels hp increases by an average of 4.5, damage is unlikely to increase by more than a few points until you hit the late teens). The Blue Rose/Modern AGE fatigue casting is a lot closer to fantasy book magic, and the corebooks for Fantasy AGE and Modern AGE are small enough that I can expect players to read enough to create their characters. Plus d6 only is becoming a big plus for me, and the Stunt mechanic is nice.

That seems interesting, I'm on a d6 kick too. I'll have to grab that at some point.

JellyPooga
2022-03-30, 09:26 AM
The One Ring has to top my list as far as games go. I'm only familiar with 1e, but as I understand, the 2e was a bit of a tweak rather than a significant re-write.

Pros
- Dice Pool mechanic to determine both success and quality of success with an independent Critical success/failure System/Die. Rolling Dice in TOR isn't a linear swing, making improvement actually feel significant without hedging out the upper and lower bounds of the system.

- Huge narrative focus featuring your characters non-numeric traits heavily influencing experience gain and in-game success/failure. The same system trades these two concepts (XP and success/failure) off against one another; take a risk and learn something new, or declare success by resting on your laurels and gaining no new learning? Your choice.

- Abstract combat that models distance, fatigue, encumbrance and detailed combat manoeuvres in an elegant and concise manner. Combat is also not the primary focus of the game.

- Travel rules that for the cartographically inclined make a whole sub-game out of planning your route and calculating the impact of the journey without relying on either ignoring the whole affair as a waste of time or random encounter tables.

- Special gear that is tailored and feels special to your character, personally.

- Legacy rules that means retiring a character isn't the end of the game and is actively encouraged.

- Insanity rules. You will go mad. It might take a good long while or it might happen quickly, but largely speaking that will depend on you and how you act. Want to go be a murderhobo? Sure. Say hello to my friends paranoia and bloodlust, I'm sure you'll all get along just fine. Don't expect any favours from the good guys while you're at it though.

Cons

- Er...it's Lord of the Rings only? Then again, it's pretty easy to port it to other settings so long as they fit the genre. I've done a 40k port of the TOR rules, but I imagine it'd work for things like Cthulhu, Earthdawn, perhaps even Traveller (I'd be interested to see the TOR travel rules adapted for a mercantile Traveller game actually...).

- No battlemaps, if that's your thing I guess. If all you want is a combat simulator, TOR might not be nuanced enough in that respect. That said, if combat is your bag, you still might want to look at TOR and how it handles things; there's a great deal of elegance in how things interact in TOR.

Anonymouswizard
2022-03-30, 01:24 PM
Oh that's for sure. I'm not going to run it without a group that knows the rules better than I do, but my friends can if they like :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, I'll happily play it. Probably as a Witch, so my fellow PCs can get annoyed at me talking to my cat (which I have already named Setanta) as much as any of them. Plus there's some things there I'm definitely stealing if I ever try writing a fantasy heartbreaker again.


That seems interesting, I'm on a d6 kick too. I'll have to grab that at some point.

Whether or not it's worth checking out basically depends on what you think of the Stunts mechanic. Essentially there are no critical hits, instead all rolls are 3d6, one of a different colour, and if you succeed when rolling doubles you get to perform Stunts. You take a number of points equal to the off-colour die and spend them on effects, with combat examples ranging from moving yourself or your enemies, dealing extra damage, partially ignoring armour, or grappling. A big part of Talents is making certain Stunts cheaper so you can do them more often.

Yes, Combat Stunts are the best defined, but Modern AGE manages to have a good variety of social and exploration Stunts.

Also note that it assumes you want to used randomisation in character creation, and not every corebook have the optional rules for just picking.

asaadrehman
2022-03-31, 02:36 PM
I can't believe I could get such an impressive response at my first thread. Love you guyz.

Easy e
2022-04-01, 10:26 AM
F.A.T.A.L. is my favorite RPG system!*





* = This is not a true statement. I have never even read or played it, but just know it by reputation.

InvisibleBison
2022-04-01, 11:07 AM
advancement through failure.

What is the appeal of advancement through failure? I've seen people cite it as a virtue of PbtA systems, but I don't quite understand why. Advancement systems serve to incentive desired gameplay, but I can't imagine that the game intends people to do things that they're bad at instead of things that they're good at.

JNAProductions
2022-04-01, 11:15 AM
What is the appeal of advancement through failure? I've seen people cite it as a virtue of PbtA systems, but I don't quite understand why. Advancement systems serve to incentive desired gameplay, but I can't imagine that the game intends people to do things that they're bad at instead of things that they're good at.

It encourages you to try riskier things-not stick to safe and boring options.

It also doesn’t call for rolls for everything-you’re expected to be competent and not roll for anything ordinary, in my experience.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-01, 11:37 AM
F.A.T.A.L. is my favorite RPG system!*





* = This is not a true statement. I have never even read or played it, but just know it by reputation.

I've read (significant bits of) FATAL, and the review rebuttal, and the WIP supplements that somehow found their way onto archive.org. Honestly it's reputation is overblown.

Oh it's bad, both mechanically and thematically, but people treat it as if the infamous review isn't being intentionally hyperbolic. FATAL had, as I understand it, one of the most hostile 'promotion' campaigns an RPG has had and the review is also reacting to that.


Really there are three core parts to the game:

The AD&D knock-off mechanical system. Yes it's Senzar levels of bad, but I suspect that it really boils down to '10+ years of continuous AD&D houserules'. Note the randomisation fetish, I'm fairly certain there's an example of the legendary d% percent chance' somewhere in there. Apart from a certain category of rules there's really nothing here you haven't seen a hundred times.
The views of the authors as expressed via the text and their posts, which are as legendarily horrific as they say. This is what leads to those 'wonderful' additional rules FATAL is famous for, and thus the optimal combat strategy.
The actually kind of neat idea of playing a randomly generated average person. It's entirely out of place in the system, and has resulted in the system being so heavily weighted towards the average that you'll (for example) likely never see the extremes of Ability Scores provided by the rules. You could legitimately write a good RPG about playing ordinary people doing ordinary things.

The author(s) also seem to have stopped paying attention to the industry in the late 80s? Like they clearly have no idea as to how Vampire works. FATAL is basically a perfect storm of bad RPG


Pulled out my copy of All For One: Regime Diabolique earlier. Ubiquity is fine, but I should probably find a better swashbuckling system.

Mordar
2022-04-01, 12:26 PM
What is the appeal of advancement through failure? I've seen people cite it as a virtue of PbtA systems, but I don't quite understand why. Advancement systems serve to incentive desired gameplay, but I can't imagine that the game intends people to do things that they're bad at instead of things that they're good at.

There's some truth to the idea that you learn more from mistakes than you do from successes. I don't know PbtA ruleset(s) at all...but I read this more as being a learning-based issue rather than a "level advancement" idea. Am I off base? Is failing at things the only way you can improve your character? Or is that just a side-light?


It encourages you to try riskier things-not stick to safe and boring options.

It also doesn’t call for rolls for everything-you’re expected to be competent and not roll for anything ordinary, in my experience.

I can certainly see it as encouraging stretching limits, going cinematic, etc...but sadly also encouraging "everybody wants to try to do every thing" and stepping all over niches and spotlights.

Aside: I have always loved Call of C'thulhu (and the similarly cored Chaosium games) because they kind of embrace a good middle ground in this conversation. You need to succeed in a skill to try to improve the skill, but the worse you are at the skill the more likely it is to improve...without any strange skill cost formulae or penalties.

- M

LecternOfJasper
2022-04-01, 01:54 PM
There's some truth to the idea that you learn more from mistakes than you do from successes. I don't know PbtA ruleset(s) at all...but I read this more as being a learning-based issue rather than a "level advancement" idea. Am I off base? Is failing at things the only way you can improve your character? Or is that just a side-light?


In the original Apocalypse World and in Monster of the Week, at least, I believe it was the main way to advance. The only other way that was available to everyone in apocalypse world iirc was maxing out your history bar with another character, which you could only do every few sessions or so, and only gave you one point... So essentially the only way for them was through failure (and maybe some end of session questions? It's been a while).

Other PbtA games I know of had the GM and other players pick 2 of the 4 (or 5) stats that you had that would net you experience for that session, which encouraged people to play into different stats. While a bit arbitrary from the simulationist side of things, it was a good way to spread out what people did. And you could only gain this experience once per scene, so there wasn't much of a rush for everyone to spam their chosen stats.

As it is, most PbtA games don't give you much increasing power for leveling. Sure, you gain more moves, and your stats go up a bit, but the power curve is pretty flat, so "advancement" isn't really a great term for it. So while you may only gain experience from failure, the things you get in exchange for that experience generally make sense for a character that had a few harrowing experiences and has gained a new idea/perspective on overcoming obstacles down the line.



Aside: I have always loved Call of C'thulhu (and the similarly cored Chaosium games) because they kind of embrace a good middle ground in this conversation. You need to succeed in a skill to try to improve the skill, but the worse you are at the skill the more likely it is to improve...without any strange skill cost formulae or penalties.


I believe Pendragon did something similar. That was an interesting game.

Mordar
2022-04-01, 05:56 PM
I believe Pendragon did something similar. That was an interesting game.

Yup - CoC, Stormbringer/Elric, Pendragon...all used the same core as far as I know.

- M

Drascin
2022-04-01, 06:25 PM
Honestly I couldn't choose. Too many good games.

I will say that I was extremely pleasantly surprised by both FFG's Legend of the 5 Rings edition, and The One Ring.

That last one is honestly kind of surprising, I'm a heck of a Tolkien buff, so I was expecting to have a lot of niggling feelings, but no, turns out, they nailed like 90% of it, and most of my complaints are quite minor.

Leon
2022-04-02, 03:32 AM
What is the appeal of advancement through failure? I've seen people cite it as a virtue of PbtA systems, but I don't quite understand why. Advancement systems serve to incentive desired gameplay, but I can't imagine that the game intends people to do things that they're bad at instead of things that they're good at.

Its more interesting. As other have said you can do the safe thing and progress but it rarely leads to the interesting. Failure to do something often (for when i played at least) rarely stopped us from proceeding it just made it more interesting or more of a challenge. We had a few occasions where instead of merely opting to fail people would go for the really fouling it up for more experience and wilder story consequences ~ magical miscasts were popular with that. I had an occasion where in combat with a goblin i failed, it still died but in doing so it curse my spear to let any other goblin who saw it to know not to trust the bearer.

Eldan
2022-04-02, 07:38 AM
Splittermond

- traditional crunchy fantasy game
- classless, huge variety of character concepts in without using rule bloat
- can do other things than combat quite well.
- Nice magic system that encourages sticking to themes without being overall too restrictive
- enough combat options to ensure variety here

Overall the system has little that is really new and inventive. But it combined a lot of established ideas and concepts in an elegant way.

We found it kind of tedious, to be honest, and we stuck with it for quite a while. The world had a few interesting bits and character creation wasn't bad, but combat, especially, was incredibly long-winded and took forever.

Quertus
2022-04-02, 07:10 PM
2e D&D

It's the most fun per unit time I've had in an RPG. :smallbiggrin: Most of my best characters hail from there. :smallamused:

WoD Mage

I like the concept, of actually manipulating and fighting over the nature of reality. :smallcool: The system, and the games I've actually played, were not as awesome as the concept. :smallfrown:

Paradox

A homebrew perhaps best described as Rifts, but good. :smallsmile: Played everything from (functionally) an Illiithid Savant a decade before such existed (a "telepathic vampire") to a sentient potted plant. :smallbiggrin: Also played myself (I hid :smalleek: and prayed :smallwink: and surrendered :smallconfused: and totally gamed the system :smallcool:). Set to the backdrop of reality hopping. Good times. :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: Honorable mention to DtD40k7e. I'm in love with the system setting spoofy concept and flavorful, wonderful implementation, but I've never gotten to be a player in it, so it's a different kind of love than my instinctual "favorite" list.

elros
2022-04-03, 08:54 AM
WoD Mage

I like the concept, of actually manipulating and fighting over the nature of reality. :smallcool: The system, and the games I've actually played, were not as awesome as the concept. :smallfrown:
That is how I felt about a lot of the WoD games. Great concepts (esp Promethian) but no idea how I would create an ongoing campaign.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-03, 09:37 AM
Mage feels like a game designed to be played as one campaign for ten years and then end with either the Traditions or the Technocracy triumphant. An ever more brutal war for reality which ends with the world irrevocably changed

Honestly my issue with Mage is that I read it and just see a weaker Unknown Armies. A small number of vast Traditions instead of UA's many smaller and often local occult groups, making a war with two sides instead of two hundred. The magic is just less cool, and it's world heading towards stagnation and a mutual loss in the Ascension War just doesn't grab me as compelling.

Vampire, Werewolf, and Changeling I can more get behind. Although I do wonder what kind of game to use Lost for, probably a mixture of Court Politics and struggle to cope with what's happened to you as somebody launches a plan to take over the freehold permanently.

Promethean at least does have a built in main quest, but I don't see it as a game I'd play twice.

Eldan
2022-04-03, 11:01 AM
I generally don't really like games with few worldspanning organisations making up their conspiracies. First thing I did when I got the Dresden Files RPG was rewrite the entire world, removing the Fey Courts, the Vampire Courts, the White Council and a few others. It's just more interesting if you have city-scale vampire cabals and wizard circles who are mostly busy dividing up the territory and bribing local politicians.

So yeah. UA over Mage any day.

tenshiakodo
2022-04-03, 11:57 AM
D&D is my first love. I did have a love/hate relationship with V:tM for many years. But personally, a game I have a huge soft spot for is Earthdawn.

I often say it's ahead of it's time, and it was! A mechanic that let you heal throughout the day without using spells? Check.

A mechanic that let you increase your odds of success in critical situations? Check.

A fully fleshed out fantasy world that isn't 'ye olde Ren faire?" Check.

Lots of history, lore, and mysteries? Check.

Non-caster classes that used magic to allow them to perform superhuman feats? Check!

A selection of races both familiar and new, all of which have a place in the world and their own cultures? Check!

A system that supports magic items fully, and has it's own version of attunement to prevent "magical Christmas tree"? AND has a system for items becoming stronger over time in a cool, story-driven way?

CHECK PLEASE!

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-03, 07:55 PM
I generally don't really like games with few worldspanning organisations making up their conspiracies. First thing I did when I got the Dresden Files RPG was rewrite the entire world, removing the Fey Courts, the Vampire Courts, the White Council and a few others. It's just more interesting if you have city-scale vampire cabals and wizard circles who are mostly busy dividing up the territory and bribing local politicians.

So yeah. UA over Mage any day.

I kind of get it in Vampire, because the Camarilla (or Invictus) was set up by people who regularly live for hundreds of years and most of it's top ranks are now over a millennia old. Add to that the facts that domains that don't mess up are relatively autonomous, the fact that the focused on sects are mostly a European/American deal, Africa and Asia are established to be mostly doing their own thing in Masquerade and Requiem 2e shows the Covenants aren't even universal in Europe and America, and if you go by official numbers it does kind of work out. The Camarilla vampires concerned with anything more than their city are maybe a couple of dozen until the Archon comes knocking, even in relatively densely populated Europe.

Werewolf and Mage kind of mess this up. Mage presents fourteen significantly more structured global groups with a near-monopoly on magic, Werewolf implies that the vast majority of werewolves come from thirteen Tribes. They put more focus on the global conflict and make it a lot easier for characters to travel about. I think Forsaken changed it so that Tribes are now broad philosophies werewolves choose to join, but I still haven't got round to buying it and I don't care about nMage.

But if there's a rule for WoD it's 'Changeling: the Lost does it better'. The Courts aren't global, it's just that when Changelings get together they create social structures and four seasonal Courts is an easy one to come up with. Yes there's a bargain way back in history that grants magical powers, but the city where that happened probably no longer exists. Yes it's entirely possible for a freehold using Seasonal Courts to just not have a Summer Court and for neighbouring freeholds not to care. Yes there are almost certainly freeholds who never have a reason to establish Courts, and weird highly specific Courts that only appear in one place are totally a thing. Yes there are many other standard systems, and yes some freeholds use multiple systems at once.

I remember being disappointed when I read Requiem for the first time and realised that the Covenants were still above city scale, I'm much happier with 2e presenting them as a default. Changeling is even better in my mind, it's actually even more focused on local scale groups than UA is.

What I'm saying is the Changeling: the Lost is a cool game where 'personal tailor to the Winter Queen' makes sense as a starting character.

JellyPooga
2022-04-03, 07:59 PM
D&D is my first love. I did have a love/hate relationship with V:tM for many years. But personally, a game I have a huge soft spot for is Earthdawn.

I often say it's ahead of it's time, and it was! A mechanic that let you heal throughout the day without using spells? Check.

A mechanic that let you increase your odds of success in critical situations? Check.

A fully fleshed out fantasy world that isn't 'ye olde Ren faire?" Check.

Lots of history, lore, and mysteries? Check.

Non-caster classes that used magic to allow them to perform superhuman feats? Check!

A selection of races both familiar and new, all of which have a place in the world and their own cultures? Check!

A system that supports magic items fully, and has it's own version of attunement to prevent "magical Christmas tree"? AND has a system for items becoming stronger over time in a cool, story-driven way?

CHECK PLEASE!

I love Earthdawn for all of the above, but where the system really falls down hard is in the execution of its truly arcane rules and books. Just to cast a spell you need to look up rules from about three different sections of the books (yes, plural)...just to prepare it, let alone actually cast it with all the rules for that and on top of that the actual effect of the spell itself.

Don't get me wrong, once you've managed to wrap your head around the worst of it, it plays easily enough, but the entry level required reading is prohibitive for most. It fails really hard at actually getting players to engage with the system because it's all over the place. Some hard revision of the layout and presentation of the core books would go a long way toward lessening that entry-level barricade to play.

lightningcat
2022-04-04, 01:38 AM
My current favorite is Starfinder, it just has that right blend of scifi and fantasy to make me happy. Plus it can be used for a large number of subgenres, even if it does have the usual d20 issues. And the starship combat is the best I have used. Although I have a feeling it might not work as well in capital ships, but not gotten to that yet.

Of course I will always have a soft spot for Mage: the Ascension, although it never lived up to its promise.
And there is my Transformers RPG, which is the first game design project I really did. And I think it turned out well, even if it isn't really finished. I still played several very fun campaigns in it.

Eldan
2022-04-04, 03:33 AM
I kind of get it in Vampire, because the Camarilla (or Invictus) was set up by people who regularly live for hundreds of years and most of it's top ranks are now over a millennia old. Add to that the facts that domains that don't mess up are relatively autonomous, the fact that the focused on sects are mostly a European/American deal, Africa and Asia are established to be mostly doing their own thing in Masquerade and Requiem 2e shows the Covenants aren't even universal in Europe and America, and if you go by official numbers it does kind of work out. The Camarilla vampires concerned with anything more than their city are maybe a couple of dozen until the Archon comes knocking, even in relatively densely populated Europe.

Werewolf and Mage kind of mess this up. Mage presents fourteen significantly more structured global groups with a near-monopoly on magic, Werewolf implies that the vast majority of werewolves come from thirteen Tribes. They put more focus on the global conflict and make it a lot easier for characters to travel about. I think Forsaken changed it so that Tribes are now broad philosophies werewolves choose to join, but I still haven't got round to buying it and I don't care about nMage.

But if there's a rule for WoD it's 'Changeling: the Lost does it better'. The Courts aren't global, it's just that when Changelings get together they create social structures and four seasonal Courts is an easy one to come up with. Yes there's a bargain way back in history that grants magical powers, but the city where that happened probably no longer exists. Yes it's entirely possible for a freehold using Seasonal Courts to just not have a Summer Court and for neighbouring freeholds not to care. Yes there are almost certainly freeholds who never have a reason to establish Courts, and weird highly specific Courts that only appear in one place are totally a thing. Yes there are many other standard systems, and yes some freeholds use multiple systems at once.

I remember being disappointed when I read Requiem for the first time and realised that the Covenants were still above city scale, I'm much happier with 2e presenting them as a default. Changeling is even better in my mind, it's actually even more focused on local scale groups than UA is.

What I'm saying is the Changeling: the Lost is a cool game where 'personal tailor to the Winter Queen' makes sense as a starting character.

Yeah, I can deal with it in Vampire. As you say, you can still have your local city prince, who isn't just going to call in half the world's worth of vampires if he's threatened. Like the White Council in Dresden Files might. Werewolf I can't comment on, never got into that.

Batcathat
2022-04-04, 08:15 AM
Yeah, I can deal with it in Vampire. As you say, you can still have your local city prince, who isn't just going to call in half the world's worth of vampires if he's threatened. Like the White Council in Dresden Files might. Werewolf I can't comment on, never got into that.

The way the White Council is depicted in the books, it would probably be pretty easy to justify them not interfering (at least not quickly) in anything short of a very major and very obvious threat. The same is probably true of the vampire courts to a lesser degree.

I mostly agree with the general issue though. It's a little similar to the "Hey, why doesn't the Avengers react to this massive threat happening in their backyard?" problem that plague shared universes.

Eldan
2022-04-04, 09:00 AM
It's that, but it's also that it's a bit boring if all the wizards are in the same organisation. I mean, they still have different specializations and talents and so on, but if I have a wizard circle per city, I can make them different everywhere and can have far more politicking. And when travelling, the dynamic changes from "I'm going to call Ramirez before visiting the west coast, we're both wardens after all" to "Better send an envoy to the Council of San Francisco to ask permission to enter their territory, this is going to cost us a lot of favors."

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-04, 02:18 PM
To be fair the White Council consists of only 300 or so wizards. I'm sure there's many spellcasters of the same power who aren't members of the WC.

I think it works much better in alternate presents where these groups are only semi-secret, or science fiction where they're allowed to be actively changing the world. But it still better if you can focus on the local, I'm very tempted to run an Aeon campaign where the PCs are freelance psions mainly interacting with other freelancers away from the big Psi Orders (so in like France or one of the colonies).

Lord Raziere
2022-04-04, 02:26 PM
that reminds me, I had this idea of a Dresdenpunk setting set after whatever apocalypse thing Harry will foil, so you get this kind cyberpunk world with dresdenverse magic where the supernatural is known but now is just apart of life and making things worse because of it. like there'd be a Steel Court of Vampires who are these cyber-vampires draining electricity from people to replace Red Court, White Court and the Fae would have corporations, things like that, which of course is a perfect setting to make more wizard detective noir in. something like that

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-04, 02:40 PM
And everybody hates wizards because they're still walking EMP generators.

Batcathat
2022-04-04, 02:54 PM
They probably wouldn't be. It's mentioned that the same disturbance that messes with machines used to have different effects earlier in history (I believe making milk go sour was one of them, as was giving the user a stereotypical "witch" appearance), so presumably it will eventually change into something different.

It sounds like it could be a pretty interesting setting (also, at least the White and Red Courts already have a ton of corporations).

Lord Raziere
2022-04-04, 03:09 PM
it also provides another justification for human character being able to take supernatural powers in DFrpg like enhanced strength because they'd be cyborgs. the cybernetics would probably be a little supernatural and replace too much of your body with them and you'd become one of the monsters. also a good setting for frankensteins/promethean like beings.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-05, 04:24 AM
it also provides another justification for human character being able to take supernatural powers in DFrpg like enhanced strength because they'd be cyborgs. the cybernetics would probably be a little supernatural and replace too much of your body with them and you'd become one of the monsters. also a good setting for frankensteins/promethean like beings.

Eh, I kind of don't think humans need supernatural powers in Fate, and I'm not overly happy with the way the Dresden Files game does them. I'd rather just make them all run off stunts and just let powers stack.

Also blargh, Weapon and Armour ratings should go away, or be replaced by Fate System Toolkit's Red and Blue Dice.

LibraryOgre
2022-04-05, 01:12 PM
I don't play favorites; I love all my RPGs equally. (https://youtu.be/UqDuUCRrles)

Seriously, though, it somewhat depends on the day and what I'm feeling.

For D&D-likes, I like Hackmaster, 5th edition (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/109620/HackMaster-Players-Handbook?affiliate_id=315505) (free basic game! (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/104757/HackMaster-Basic-free?affiliate_id=315505)). It's got some things I do not like (the Dev Team is still "humanoids are just evil", though I'm trying to change that with stuff I'm writing for them), but the game has a fair amount in common with Palladium (on which I grew up), but much more tightly written. Your race determines the cost of getting your class... mage is cheap for elves, expensive for dwarves, but both can be mages. There's a good skill system that, though it has a different system than combat, is still well-integrated. Combat is great and fluid, with a second-by-second count up.

And there's still serendipity in character creation... you roll your stats, and either keep them in order for a bonus, or rearrange them for a lesser (or no) bonus. It can lead to interesting, unplanned characters. My favorite examples are a cleric who knew another religion better than his own, who I decided was from a family heavily involved in that church, but had a call to another god. There was also the pair I made for a con that were a needy (rolled quirk) gnome rogue and a very dumb (Int 4) halfling thief, with the flaw of Pocking and an unnaturally high Fire Starting skill (random rolls for kill %, with penetrating rolls)... so it became a needy gnome who travelled with a dim halfling who liked to set fires, because the halfling thought he was smart and funny. Some MIGHT make those characters on their own, but the random roll can lead to some really fun concepts, without the need to optimize.

I like Savage Worlds for its flexibility. I find it easy to make new things in it, allowing it to be an "everysystem", especially for when you want to adapt things to it. D&D really only does D&D; Savage Worlds can handle a lot of different kinds of games.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-05, 01:50 PM
Randomness in character creation is great, if the only way to bypass it is group consensus, and nobody's going to get a shiny ability when some other guy gets nothing. Sure it can create really bad characters, but I don't think I've seen a group that won't let you drop a character with honesty bad stats. I'm very skeptical of anything that says 'roll or pay X to choose'.

Because yes, it can lead to more interesting characters.

It's like how balancing a character by social disadvantages totally works if enforced, as my character with the Disliked By Our Employer flaw can attest (look, it got me 15 shiny skill points, I thought it was a worthwhile trade). Bring on more characters with disads in their area of expertise!

Might write up a Big Table of Disadvantages for my next game. Players can roll on it for more XP, but there's no telling if they'll roll 'destitite' or 'bad leg'.

LibraryOgre
2022-04-05, 02:55 PM
Randomness in character creation is great, if the only way to bypass it is group consensus, and nobody's going to get a shiny ability when some other guy gets nothing. Sure it can create really bad characters, but I don't think I've seen a group that won't let you drop a character with honesty bad stats. I'm very skeptical of anything that says 'roll or pay X to choose'.


One of my friends really disliked that aspect, because you couldn't make what you wanted... it was hard to decide "I'm going to be a sil-karg fighter", because you might not get the stats you want.

And Hackmaster has standard rules for "bad stats"... if you have no 13+, or two of <5, you just toss the character and roll again.

Mordar
2022-04-05, 04:31 PM
D&D is my first love. I did have a love/hate relationship with V:tM for many years. But personally, a game I have a huge soft spot for is Earthdawn.

[SNIP nice list of qualities]

CHECK PLEASE!

Yes, another wonderful game!


I love Earthdawn for all of the above, but where the system really falls down hard is in the execution of its truly arcane rules and books. Just to cast a spell you need to look up rules from about three different sections of the books (yes, plural)...just to prepare it, let alone actually cast it with all the rules for that and on top of that the actual effect of the spell itself.

Don't get me wrong, once you've managed to wrap your head around the worst of it, it plays easily enough, but the entry level required reading is prohibitive for most. It fails really hard at actually getting players to engage with the system because it's all over the place. Some hard revision of the layout and presentation of the core books would go a long way toward lessening that entry-level barricade to play.

I respectfully disagree, but with the caveat that I started with Earthdawn when it was just the first core book. We seemed to "get it" fairly quickly...thread weaving and then spell casting was a new wrinkle in the process, but by the end of the first 4ish hour session our feet were well-wet.

My local experience was never one of a great barrier to entry...but that may be because the core group quickly embraced any new players and was able to fast-track them through any rough patches.

- M

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-05, 05:27 PM
One of my friends really disliked that aspect, because you couldn't make what you wanted... it was hard to decide "I'm going to be a sil-karg fighter", because you might not get the stats you want.

And Hackmaster has standard rules for "bad stats"... if you have no 13+, or two of <5, you just toss the character and roll again.

Eh, as I understand it that's kind of the point of including random stat generation in modern games. It's supposed to have you generate your concept after you know what you're good at.

It's why pretty much every modern game that uses it has some alternative system for less random generation, it's a fairly nice compromise.

As to rules for bad stats, honestly it's still a group decision. I've met some players who won't have read far enough into the rulebook to know that, and other's who'd argue for throwing away characters who passed the test. At least once I've told a player to throw away a D&D character that passed the bar but was still significantly below where I'd expect (we're talking like 'five 8-10s, one 13 level').


Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is one of my favorite roleplaying games. I start the thread with a reason to get to know the list of people's favorite games and I can also try those ones. Role-playing games are one of my favorites and the reason is that here we can explore a whole new world. Meet with new people through invite options and do many other things that would kill our boredom in no time. If a person hasn't played any role-playing game yet, I suggest you try it once. It would make a fan. :smallsmile:

I think we should probably address this post, OP was apparently talking about CRPGs.

OP, you've got the wrong forum. All computer games are under Gaming (Other), this forum is specifically for tabletop roleplaying games.

elros
2022-04-05, 08:03 PM
Although I enjoy rolling characters when I am making a PC, when I am the GM I like to avoid it. I want the players to have the character that they want, and it prevents someone from being under or over powered.
That said, I go back and forth about point buy versus standard array. I dislike min-maxing, but the “cloning vat” approach doesn’t sit right, either.

Telok
2022-04-05, 08:54 PM
At least once I've told a player to throw away a D&D character that passed the bar but was still significantly below where I'd expect (we're talking like 'five 8-10s, one 13 level').

I played that character. Did it in both ad&d & d&d 3.5, went fine. But d&d has increased the relevance of stats each edition, making them more the pc core capabilities and thus pcs incapable with low stats. Average chump pulled into an adventure isn't a thing any more.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-06, 04:44 AM
I played that character. Did it in both ad&d & d&d 3.5, went fine. But d&d has increased the relevance of stats each edition, making them more the pc core capabilities and thus pcs incapable with low stats. Average chump pulled into an adventure isn't a thing any more.

Yeah this was 5e using 4d6 in order, I can't remember where the 13 was placed but it was something like STR or CON. Now I'm AFB, but I remember 5e not having a 'scrap bad rolls' rule, which is an issue when it presents it as the default (neither did Dark Heresy IIRC, but that was more thematically appropriate).

But yeah, the issue with point buy is that characters end up very similar. Characters in point buy systems tend to either get their key stats and skills near the cap or spread their points around, depending on what the system encourages. It all gets very boring, but when you want to be a Guardsman and somebody else decided to be a Space Marine...

Eldan
2022-04-06, 04:57 AM
Huh.

YOu know, this is giving me ideas, and I'm not sure if that already exists anywhere, but could you not make balanced (-ish) random character generation?

Where instead of just, say, rolling 4d6 for stats, you'd instead roll between, let's call them "packages" of roughly equal value? Would probably work better in a point buy system.

Or where you roll a stat distribution, instead of rolling each stat by itself.

That would, I think, have most of the advantages of rolling randomly (i.e. unusual character concepts, you don't know what you get), without the disadvantages (wildly unbalanced powerlevels, nonviable characters).

I suppose Lifepath systems are an attempt at that, thinking about it some more.

Telok
2022-04-06, 10:33 AM
Huh.

YOu know, this is giving me ideas, and I'm not sure if that already exists anywhere, but could you not make balanced (-ish) random character generation?

Where instead of just, say, rolling 4d6 for stats, you'd instead...

Been around for years, just not in the books. For d&d, any edition, roll 3d6 three times. Subtract each number from one of 27, 25, 23 (adjust these numbers to taste per the target power level. Assign & mod by race/species. Nothing goes over 18 or under 3 (or 5 or 7 or whatever lower bound you want), drop/raise anything beyond those bounds.

You usually end up with 3 even numbers, 3 odd numbers, and each high stat offset by a low stat. Rolling 5-6-7 gives the other three 18s. Rolling 16-17-18 gives the other three 9-8-7. Most of the time it's much more midline, those are extremes.

The only time it might be a problem is 5e saves and ability checks where the average 13-15 DC and very limited proficiency numbers are kinda harsh. But thats because 5e predicated most of a pc non-combat stuff & saves on having high stats instead of anything from class or in game actions/options.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-06, 11:29 AM
Huh.

YOu know, this is giving me ideas, and I'm not sure if that already exists anywhere, but could you not make balanced (-ish) random character generation?

Where instead of just, say, rolling 4d6 for stats, you'd instead roll between, let's call them "packages" of roughly equal value? Would probably work better in a point buy system.

There are systems like this. Paleomythic springs to mind, where you can randomly generate everything, including Traits (roughly stats, but each only has 'good/normal/bad) and Talents. The issue is that one player could get very synergistic rolls and another is distributed all over the place. It can be vary hard to make both jacks and specialists competitive.

(Paleomythic has an additional issue, in that it's just best to go 5 Traits/1Talent, then take two flaws and use them to buy more Traits. Even if generating Traits randomly you're going to be better at everything except your Flaw, and it's cheaper to buy the Flaws off or get new Talents than buying more Traits.)

RedMage125
2022-04-06, 01:29 PM
Huh.

YOu know, this is giving me ideas, and I'm not sure if that already exists anywhere, but could you not make balanced (-ish) random character generation?

Where instead of just, say, rolling 4d6 for stats, you'd instead roll between, let's call them "packages" of roughly equal value? Would probably work better in a point buy system.

Or where you roll a stat distribution, instead of rolling each stat by itself.

That would, I think, have most of the advantages of rolling randomly (i.e. unusual character concepts, you don't know what you get), without the disadvantages (wildly unbalanced powerlevels, nonviable characters).

I suppose Lifepath systems are an attempt at that, thinking about it some more.

There was something in a Dragon Magazine in the 3e era, just after they made the 3 Dragon Ante game.

It involved using the 3DA game as a sort of "tarot reading", which determined how many chips went in each of the 6 stats. And starting everybody with the same number of chips means you have the balance advantage of point buy, with the slightly more randomized spread of rolling.

I've done it before, it's fun.

I wish I could give you an issue number, but I'm AFB right now.

kyoryu
2022-04-06, 01:49 PM
Depends.

Generally, GURPS, Fate, old-school D&D, depending on what I'm doing.

SimonMoon6
2022-04-06, 05:00 PM
Huh.

YOu know, this is giving me ideas, and I'm not sure if that already exists anywhere, but could you not make balanced (-ish) random character generation?

Where instead of just, say, rolling 4d6 for stats, you'd instead roll between, let's call them "packages" of roughly equal value? Would probably work better in a point buy system.

Or where you roll a stat distribution, instead of rolling each stat by itself.

The strangest D&D character generation rules that I remember was the 1st edition Unearthed Arcana optional rules (that my group immediately started using) where you would first choose the class you wanted your character to be and *then* you would roll for your stats. Each class had its own way to roll for stats, but it was always "this many dice, take the best 3". So, like a fighter might roll (I've forgotten the actual numbers) 6d6 for STR and 5d6 for CON but only 3d6 for INT, taking the best 3 dice each time. And then, if you still didn't manage to qualify for your class (that was a thing back in 1st edition), your stats got automatically raised to the minimum for that class.

It was all pretty reasonable, and each class had a similar distribution of dice, with one exception. Paladins. Paladins still ended up only rolling like 3d6 for CHA, even though they needed a minimum of 17 CHA, so they'd basically get that 17 CHA for free. Grrr. That bothered me a lot, so I house-ruled a fix for paladins that put them back in line with all the other classes. It probably wouldn't matter so much except that I had a player who would ALWAYS try to play a paladin, no matter what.

Also, I guess, a high CHA in 1st edition didn't really matter much since you couldn't do much with it anyway. Maybe that's why they let paladins get a free 17 CHA? I don't know.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-06, 05:31 PM
Also, I guess, a high CHA in 1st edition didn't really matter much since you couldn't do much with it anyway. Maybe that's why they let paladins get a free 17 CHA? I don't know.

Potential hireling numbers and loyalty ran off Charisma. I only have 2e, but as it's mostly compatible I assume the numbers are roughly the same.

Paladins could have up to ten Henchmen (compared to four for CHA 10) who were six points more loyal than for a CHA 10 character, and got a +6 bonus on reaction rolls. Those are pretty big boosts, Charisma had teeth in AD&D.

In fact by my understanding INT was the weakest stat, and even then it can be incredibly useful (and not only for proficiencies). You were probably fine with an 8 in most stats, but more points is always useful.

elros
2022-04-06, 08:28 PM
The strangest D&D character generation rules that I remember was the 1st edition Unearthed Arcana optional rules (that my group immediately started using) where you would first choose the class you wanted your character to be and *then* you would roll for your stats. Each class had its own way to roll for stats, but it was always "this many dice, take the best 3". So, like a fighter might roll (I've forgotten the actual numbers) 6d6 for STR and 5d6 for CON but only 3d6 for INT, taking the best 3 dice each time. And then, if you still didn't manage to qualify for your class (that was a thing back in 1st edition), your stats got automatically raised to the minimum for that class.
I remember when UA came out I hated those rules for character creation. I wanted 18s to be rare, so the thought of rolling 6d6 for the primary stat didn’t sit right with me. I actually preferred a standard array to that method, because that way players could get the character they wanted, but without overpowered stats.

Tanarii
2022-04-06, 10:17 PM
Also, I guess, a high CHA in 1st edition didn't really matter much since you couldn't do much with it anyway. Maybe that's why they let paladins get a free 17 CHA? I don't know.
Charisma was the most important stat in TSR D&D.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-07, 09:37 AM
Serious question, was there ever a time where the most common answer to this question wasn't 'D&D [X edition]'?

I've heard that WoD (okay, Vampire and possibly Mage) was big in the 90s, but I got into roleplaying post-Time of Judgement, so I have no clue if it was actually more popular than AD&D at the time. In my experience the standard answer has gone from D&D 3.5->D&D 3.5->D&D 5e.

The only other system I've heard of as begin really big is Shadowrun, and never in a context where it was more popular than D&D.

I'm actually disappointed that nWoD never really caught on in the way oWoD did. I understand it basically basically has to do with dropping the old lore and requiring years to build anything comparable, but it feels significantly better as a game (the 2e Scion/Trinity stuff is as good, but designed for different tastes).

elros
2022-04-07, 10:39 AM
I'm actually disappointed that nWoD never really caught on in the way oWoD did. I understand it basically has to do with dropping the old lore and requiring years to build anything comparable, but it feels significantly better as a game (the 2e Scion/Trinity stuff is as good, but designed for different tastes).
I never played oWoD, but I bought several of the nWoD darkness books and really liked the theme and settings. I liked that in VTR we didn’t know the origin of vampires, which added to the mystery and sense of horror. That was why I was surprised that they went in a different direction with Mage by indicating a known history with Atlantis as the origin of magic. I also thought Hunter had a good approach with underpowered heroes battling forces greater than them, and that it had the potential for a long campaign. Other games in the line had great character concepts (Promethean and Changling), but were harder for me to figure out.
The nWoD games were well supported for a while so I don’t know why they faltered.
All I know is that they made major missteps when they released the latest edition of Vampire, and I don’t know if they can come back from that.

Easy e
2022-04-07, 11:37 AM
When I was in college back in the mid-90s, Vampire:TM was HUGE. However, the part that was most interesting to me as an RPGer was a lot of the popularity in the area was focused on LARPing in real time Vampire across the city/campus. It attracted a lot of non-RPGers into the mix. I don't know if it was bigger than D&D but I heard a lot more about it than D&D at the time.

This is just an anecdote so take it for what it is worth.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-07, 11:43 AM
I never played oWoD, but I bought several of the nWoD darkness books and really liked the theme and settings. I liked that in VTR we didn’t know the origin of vampires, which added to the mystery and sense of horror. That was why I was surprised that they went in a different direction with Mage by indicating a known history with Atlantis as the origin of magic. I also thought Hunter had a good approach with underpowered heroes battling forces greater than them, and that it had the potential for a long campaign. Other games in the line had great character concepts (Promethean and Changling), but were harder for me to figure out.
The nWoD games were well supported for a while so I don’t know why they faltered.

Honestly Mage has apparently gotten a lot better now they've made it more 'there was this place with magic that got destroyed when they did a thing that created an Abyss, and we call it Atlantis but don't know what or where it was'. I can't really comment on that much, Changeling kind of killed my interest in Mage.

But I do believe it's because of the abandoning of the old lore people grew attached to. Some of that lore is very good, and I'm very torn on if I prefer Requiem or Masquerade for that reason.


All I know is that they made major missteps when they released the latest edition of Vampire, and I don’t know if they can come back from that.

Masquerade 5e? It had a pretty good launch but seems to have just been one issue after another including two massive reworkings on how they were dealing with books. Plus the fact they expect me to buy a campaign setting I have no interest in if I want to use Lasombra is annoying.

Requiem 2e had a very good launch almost ten years ago and it's only real issue is that Onyx Path has bitten off a lot and don't have time to add more books to settings (although there are still fan supplements).

In fact all of OPP's games seem to be doing better than the relaunched World of Darkness. V5 launched in 2018 but W5 is barely on the horizon, whereas Trinity Continuum launched in 2019 and has shown significant progress towards releasing its third major subline. It's kind of a kick in the face after OPP basically revitalised the cWoD by picking up the 20th Anniversary books.

It's not a good look, as OPP is, last time I checked, known for having so many projects on the go they don't make promised release dates.

(Wait, Deviant's out? Darn, my RPG wishlist already has enough OPP stuff.)



(Wait, C20 released years ago!? I guess that's what I get for drifting away from the OPP forum.)

Tanarii
2022-04-07, 12:05 PM
Serious question, was there ever a time where the most common answer to this question wasn't 'D&D [X edition]'?Technically PF1.

Personally I knew a LOT of people into Palladium's RIFTS, but that's totally anecdotal and in no way indicates actual market share / popularity, :smallamused:

Batcathat
2022-04-07, 12:12 PM
On an international scale, there are also probably quite a few local exceptions. I'm Swedish and while D&D is certainly fairly popular and well known here, it's not really the RPG the way it is in the English speaking world (at least it didn't use to be, I suppose D&Ds increased pop culture exposure in later years might've changed things).

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-07, 12:39 PM
Technically PF1.

Eh, it's nothing more than D&D 3.5 with enough tweaks to claim they did work.

Mordar
2022-04-07, 12:51 PM
Serious question, was there ever a time where the most common answer to this question wasn't 'D&D [X edition]'?

I've heard that WoD (okay, Vampire and possibly Mage) was big in the 90s, but I got into roleplaying post-Time of Judgement, so I have no clue if it was actually more popular than AD&D at the time. In my experience the standard answer has gone from D&D 3.5->D&D 3.5->D&D 5e.

The only other system I've heard of as begin really big is Shadowrun, and never in a context where it was more popular than D&D.

While I don't think "like most" and "sells most" are directly linkable. I bet most adults spend much more money on foods that aren't what they like the most than those that they do.

Using total sales as a metric, probably not...but certainly at my local game store in the early 1990s, other games significantly outsold AD&D 2E. Specifically, VtM and Shadowrun...and then for brief periods of times others as well, like RIFTS and L5R when new books hit. The other WoD lines didn't move nearly as much as VtM, but if you counted them in aggregate, they kind of crushed everything else. For what it is worth, GW probably crushed all of those too...both Fantasy Battles and WH40K were massive at that point and you couldn't get into those games for a single $25 player book.

That store was by far the largest and most successful serving a community of about 850,000-900,000 residents in a college town in an era before Amazon...so it seems their data would be relevant for this region at that timepoint. Waldenbooks/BDalton were in play (as was Borders, and 1 B&N) so it is possible the numbers would be different in those locations but I suspect the FLGS was the bellwether for RPG sales in town.

- M

Telok
2022-04-07, 02:18 PM
Contrast with my position, a town of a bit less than 300k (& the biggest within 1300+ miles/2100 km) and exactly one gaming store thats rather off the main shopping areas.

Since nothing else carries anything but d&d and only d&d has advertising outside the hobby (I've seen d&d ads on the associated press website) the majority of local rpg players are basically d&d-only by access & information. Since wotc only pushes & sells the current version the majority of the local base consider latest = greatest with only other out of print wotc d&ds or wotc's ads to compare it too.

Here d&d is "best" by having basically zero competition.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-07, 02:26 PM
Contrast with my position, a town of a bit less than 300k (& the biggest within 1300+ miles/2100 km) and exactly one gaming store thats rather off the main shopping areas. Since nothing else carrys anything but d&d and only d&d has advertising outside the hobby (I've seen d&d ads on the associated press website) the majority of local rpg players are basically d&d-only by access & information. Since wotc only pushes & sells the current version the majority of the local base consider latest = greatest with only other out of print wotc d&ds or wotc's ads to compare it too.

I'm sorry, 5e isn't really a great game.

Like it's alright, but it feels like it was half a decade behind the industry at release throwing in mechanics without integrating then into the system. Inspiration is a great example, it's so vestigial that most groups forget to use it, but it could have either a much more prominent luck manipulation mechanic (like WFRP's Fate Points) or tied into the power system. Unlike 3e, which as far as I can tell was pretty current for the industry and came out before narrative mechanics beyond 'just wing it' had really been formalised.

It always disheartens me when I see people buying their third PhB, DMG, or MM. They could pick up another system for less and likely play something different!

Satinavian
2022-04-07, 02:41 PM
Serious question, was there ever a time where the most common answer to this question wasn't 'D&D [X edition]'?
If you go out of the English language market, you will find several, where D&D never was the number 1.

It is really hard to fight established games. Because what everyone always needs most is other players and GMs.

Tanarii
2022-04-07, 02:43 PM
Eh, it's nothing more than D&D 3.5 with enough tweaks to claim they did work.
I can understand that point of view. Thus the technically. :smallamused:

kyoryu
2022-04-07, 03:02 PM
I'm sorry, 5e isn't really a great game.

Like it's alright, but it feels like it was half a decade behind the industry at release throwing in mechanics without integrating then into the system. Inspiration is a great example, it's so vestigial that most groups forget to use it, but it could have either a much more prominent luck manipulation mechanic (like WFRP's Fate Points) or tied into the power system. Unlike 3e, which as far as I can tell was pretty current for the industry and came out before narrative mechanics beyond 'just wing it' had really been formalised.

It always disheartens me when I see people buying their third PhB, DMG, or MM. They could pick up another system for less and likely play something different!

While I don't disagree with you, clearly it's doing something right, as a lot of people are playing it and enjoying it. If it was that bad, they would migrate at least partially to other systems (see 4e, and I don't even think 4e was a bad game).


If you go out of the English language market, you will find several, where D&D never was the number 1.

It is really hard to fight established games. Because what everyone always needs most is other players and GMs.

There's another factor, too. Whatever the dominant game is tends to be what people first encounter, and so it tends to be what people think RPGs are. People who like the game end up continuing to play RPGs, and people that don't like the game tend to stop playing RPGs entirely, even if they might love another game.

Telok
2022-04-07, 03:28 PM
While I don't disagree with you, clearly it's doing something right, as a lot of people are playing it and enjoying it. If it was that bad, they would migrate at least partially to other systems (see 4e, and I don't even think 4e was a bad game).

D&d is the McDonqlds of gaming. Everywhere, advertised, not toxic enough to kill too many customers, and most bits taste OK-ish.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-07, 03:41 PM
While I don't disagree with you, clearly it's doing something right, as a lot of people are playing it and enjoying it. If it was that bad, they would migrate at least partially to other systems (see 4e, and I don't even think 4e was a bad game).

It's alright, and it's not as tightly structured as 4e. Combine that with name recognition, having the most visible advertising of any RPG except maybe Vampire, and being the RPG that kicked off the 'actual play' boom, and it kind of doesn't need to be anything more.

Like, it's not actually a bad game, and it's more flexible than 4e was. It's lack of rules also let's it seem broader than it actually is, but I don't want to get into another 'if you're not using 90% of the the rules you're not playing the game' discussion.

It doesn't shine anywhere, but if used as a dungeon crawler or fantasy combat sim it's not going to come up weak in any particular area. It's good enough, it doesn't have to be great to succeed.

Comparatively Vampire kind of just aimed at the right market at the right time. It didn't matter that it billed itself as a narrative system without any story or character arc emulation rules, it just hit a niche that was willing to try a different system to play that.

Honestly, V5 on a system level is a better game than D&D5e, but at least WotC puts books out!

elros
2022-04-07, 04:16 PM
Because WotC has the cash cow from MtG, and D&D has name recognition, it will always have good support and an easier time finding players.
What I didn’t expect was that it would take off on Twitch and other steaming services! I think that ultimately helps the industry.

P. G. Macer
2022-04-07, 09:20 PM
I’m a total RPG neophyte compared to most of the posters in this thread. I’ll confess that D&D 5e was the first RPG I played*, and thus it’ll always hold a special place in my heart, even though I’ve become more and more critical of the system and especially recent design decisions.

But as to my favorite, I’d have to go with 13th Age. It’s very D&D-esque, which is fitting because its creators are Jonathan Tweet (of 3e fame) and Rob Heinsoo (of 4e fame), but action-packed, heroic-to-high fantasy is my favorite genre outside of TTRPGs as well as inside. 13th Age is less nitty-gritty than 5e, borrowing some elements from more narrative-focused games, with its Icon Relationships and One Unique Things, and combat, while still very tactical by non-D&D standards, is more abstract than WotC D&D (I don’t know enough about TSR D&D to comment there, even secondhand).

For Instance, distances in combat are very abstract and Theatre-of-the-Mind in 13th Age, with distance simply being measured as Engaged, Nearby, and Far Away; there’s no counting of feet and squares like in 4e or 5e. When the wizard casts Fireball, they simply target 1d3 nearby enemies in a group.

The rules are also written in a very accessible, one might even say casual manner, and the GM is encouraged to improvise in a way that openly facilitates communication between both the GM and the rules and the GM and the players. It deliberately discourages players from trying to “gotcha” the DM by asking leading questions with its “Telegraph your Intent” reminders, encouraging the players to cooperate in building the world with the GM, being closer to equal partners in the endeavor, though obviously the asymmetry is still there.

*Technically, I joined what should have been a 4e campaign back in middle school, but it fell apart during Session 1. As a majority of us players had AD(H)D, it was kinda fated to happen.

RedMage125
2022-04-08, 01:59 PM
The other WoD lines didn't move nearly as much as VtM, but if you counted them in aggregate, they kind of crushed everything else.

I knew people that played Mage and Werewolf, but I was kind of put off by the fact that most VtM players were LARP. I didn't care for it, personally.

I know Wraith died off early on (although I had friends who were into it in HS), but I was pleased that Time of Judgement brought it back in mention. Basically that the intersection of MtA, VtM and WtA caused "the Oblivion", which forces the wraith back into their rotting bodies, which was also "the Reckoning" for Hunter. The storylines there were very cool.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-08, 02:26 PM
No game has done metaplot like WoD did, but that might be a good thing. Honestly I was most excited for V4 and V5 because of the promises of a continually developing metaplot, and while I disagree with some of the decisions made in V5 only one of those is purely a metaplot thing (hello House Mary Sue, who apparently managed to invent a new way of doing Blood Magic in twenty years as powerful as what the Tremere managed in eight hundred).

Masquerade has a certain amount of coolness that Requiem lacks, Wraith and Changeling were both cool ideas wrapped in the opposite end of the idealism scale, and if it wasn't for UA I'd be a die hard Mage fan. At the same time the cWoD mechanics kinda sucked and V5 basically jumped to altered nWoD mechanics.

I honestly think if the revived WoD had taken off in the way it seemed it was going to in the late 2010s the anglosphere industry would be in a much better place where people didn't assume D&D was the be all and end all of roleplaying. As it is I suspect I'm still going to end up with every last VtM book* as well as the entirety of both Changeling lines eventually.

I actually tried making Changeling: the Dreaming 2e work back in the day. Never got to reworking the Glamour harvesting rules, but I did work out a system to make Banality something you might want a bit of.

* Despite knowing that I should just buy V20.

Tawmis
2022-04-08, 03:04 PM
Let's create a thread where we describe our favourite game along with the cool think you like the most:smallsmile::smallsmile:

I began with basic D&D, but barely remember any of it.
I really got into D&D as a DM and playing with 1st Edition.
Immensely enjoyed D&D 2ndE, despite the horrid math at times to do THAC0.
Enjoyed 3rd and 3.5.
Only played a few sessions of 4thE and strongly disliked it. Felt like an MMO on paper.
Now, 5e - has surpassed my love of 2ndE, which had been my favorite.
The other that I really love, that's outside of D&D's settings - would be Star Frontiers.

Schwann145
2022-04-20, 02:33 AM
I'm so tired of D&D, lol...

My favorites are, in no particular order; Legend of the Five Rings (FFG > AEG 3rd > AEG 4th), basically anything World of Darkness with a preference for Vampire, and Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of (2d20).

Basically, I want two things from a game above anything else:
1) I want narrative to be part of the game from the ground up. D&D, GUPRS, all these game systems that are just the chassis are fine, but they're missing something I value out of a ttrpg.
2) Don't treat me like an idiot. 5e is very guilty of this, unfortunately. "We need to keep the game *simple*" sounds like code to me for "our customers are idiots who need their hands held, so let's keep things kindergarden for them." This is usually more of an issue when a "new edition" of a game comes out and it's very broken down compared to a previous edition. Like I said above, I like L5R 4e, but it's very much the "for idiots" version of 3e. And 5e D&D is very much the "for idiots" version of D&D, and it's hard not to see it once you play the system enough to have a good look under the hood.

Tawmis
2022-04-20, 04:10 AM
For me, without a doubt D&D (5e, specifically these days).
Especially if I get to DM.
I enjoy being a player, but the real thrill - that injection of fantasy morphine comes when I get to DM.
The writer in me thrives off of it - the unpredictability of my players - forcing me to always be ready to improvise.
I've gotten to the point that I just scribble notes and don't plan anything. It's all improvised.
And it challenges that creative need in me and silences the voices in my head.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-20, 05:45 AM
Basically, I want two things from a game above anything else:
1) I want narrative to be part of the game from the ground up. D&D, GUPRS, all these game systems that are just the chassis are fine, but they're missing something I value out of a ttrpg.

That's interesting, because IME neither L5R or WoD have any mechanical incentive for narrative emulation. CofD has a bit, and I've never even tried to read the FFG version of L5R, but I remember them being pretty straight 'here's how to simulate the world' RPGs.

They do have great integrated worlds.


2) Don't treat me like an idiot. 5e is very guilty of this, unfortunately. "We need to keep the game *simple*" sounds like code to me for "our customers are idiots who need their hands held, so let's keep things kindergarden for them." This is usually more of an issue when a "new edition" of a game comes out and it's very broken down compared to a previous edition. Like I said above, I like L5R 4e, but it's very much the "for idiots" version of 3e. And 5e D&D is very much the "for idiots" version of D&D, and it's hard not to see it once you play the system enough to have a good look under the hood.

Eh, the issue with 5e is the heavily imbalanced rules allocation combined with the assertion that no, the bits they're giving rules for aren't the important bits. I own marvelous games which are simple, D&D5e fails more because it tries to incorporate every trend since like 2005 in one game.

Really simple games are very different beasts. They exchange rigid rules and options for intuition, which isn't for everybody's tastes, but they do it everywhere. Less complicated character building, but more need to focus on fictional context. All that stuff.

Schwann145
2022-04-20, 05:54 PM
That's interesting, because IME neither L5R or WoD have any mechanical incentive for narrative emulation. CofD has a bit, and I've never even tried to read the FFG version of L5R, but I remember them being pretty straight 'here's how to simulate the world' RPGs.

They do have great integrated worlds.
I simply mean to say I prefer when a game expects and prepares for the roleplaying to be front-seat, rather than just giving you a set of mechanics and trusting the players to do anything with it.
5e tends to turn into a "combat board game, disguised as an rpg" as an example. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just not my preference.


Eh, the issue with 5e is the heavily imbalanced rules allocation combined with the assertion that no, the bits they're giving rules for aren't the important bits. I own marvelous games which are simple, D&D5e fails more because it tries to incorporate every trend since like 2005 in one game.

Really simple games are very different beasts. They exchange rigid rules and options for intuition, which isn't for everybody's tastes, but they do it everywhere. Less complicated character building, but more need to focus on fictional context. All that stuff.
Don't disagree at all.
I don't mean to suggest that if a game is simple it is therefore an insult to it's players. I like some complex games, and I like some simple games. It all depends on the game. But there are definitely cases where the simplicity is less of a feature, and more of a selling point, and that's what usually ends up being the one to rub me the wrong way.

Mordante
2022-04-21, 06:03 AM
Talislanta,
My first RPG started playing in the late 90s wonderful strange world. Magic system is a bit clunky. I like the melee system. Weapon skill vs weapon skill. Armour is a damage reduction. Also no character levels or hitpoint gains. :)

oWoD,
I would love to play some V:tm or something I do own the 20th anniversary book. But not sure if this is a decent release. Maybe one day I will get around to start a campeign.

DnD 3.5
So many options, so many things to choose from. I don't like the zero hero vibe in the game though.

Anonymouswizard
2022-04-21, 06:56 AM
I simply mean to say I prefer when a game expects and prepares for the roleplaying to be front-seat, rather than just giving you a set of mechanics and trusting the players to do anything with it.
5e tends to turn into a "combat board game, disguised as an rpg" as an example. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just not my preference.

Oh, yes, I totally agree that roleplay focused is more enjoyable than a combat simulator.

Due to owning other fantasy games D&D 5e has become a major disappointment to me. There could be a decent game there, but it's strived so hard for 'generic fantasy' that it's buried the D&D experience in order to be a combat engine.


Don't disagree at all.
I don't mean to suggest that if a game is simple it is therefore an insult to it's players. I like some complex games, and I like some simple games. It all depends on the game. But there are definitely cases where the simplicity is less of a feature, and more of a selling point, and that's what usually ends up being the one to rub me the wrong way.

Okay, that makes more sense, the 'we want to say it's simplified so we just cut out half the systems' situation. Where the complexity works, but simplicity is trending so the chainsaw cones out.


oWoD,
I would love to play some V:tm or something I do own the 20th anniversary book. But not sure if this is a decent release. Maybe one day I will get around to start a campeign.

V20 is interesting.

If you know the setting it's a much better corebook than V5, with all the Clan's and a lot of Bloodlines in one place. Some sad omissions (I would have liked to see the Laibon) but relatively complete.

Rules wise it's mostly Revised with I believe 2e's multiple action rules and sone tweaked Disciplines. So not a great system, but it is what's promised.

On the downside it's just a compilation. There's not really anything updating the setting to the 2010s like all the other 20th Anniversary Editions, but that does mean there's fewer changes to get righteous furious over.

Eldan
2022-04-21, 07:06 AM
I only had a short look at V5, but from what I saw, I really liked some things they fid to the rules, though.