Moving onto different games - looking for advice

[lesser_minion]

I've decided to try out some of the various roleplaying games which I've managed to pick up and then never actually play - in particular, WitchCraft, NEMESIS, OSRIC, Swords and Wizardry and True20.

Does anyone have any thoughts on any of these games, or experiences they'd like to share? Do any of them have any serious flaws?

[Raum]

From your list I've played Witchcraft and True20. I also played the original D&D (which OSRIC tries to recreate) but that was too many years ago to provide a helpful review. So, guessing you're familiar with D&D 3.x, I'll compare Witchcraft and True20 to it...from my point of view.

Witchcraft - Think of a grittier D&D 3.x without levels. Hitpoints are based on attributes and seldom change. A pistol round can kill...it's likelier to kill if the shooter has a higher skill but damage is going to hurt no matter what. Character archetypes (essentially classes) cover a variety of myths and generally have differing subsystems for each type (think D&D psionics vs spells vs ToB subsystems). As with D&D, balance wasn't a consideration when creating the various archetypes...this probably isn't much of an issue unless you start using some of the archetypes from other sources (relentless dead are extremely hard to kill is one example). Conflict resolution is usually 'skill + attribute + d10' and is often directly opposed by your opponent's roll.

True20 - In many ways this is simply D&D 3.x light. You even have many of the same (or very similar) feats available. It's still level based and most rolling will be very familiar. You'll only need the d20 though...other dice aren't used. It limits you to three classes (though other sources add some hybrid classes) and isn't really balanced much differently than D&D. Two major differences are wealth and hit points - instead of spending gold you make a wealth roll to see if you can afford something and instead of hit points you get a damage save.

Hope that helps give some idea of those two games...have fun whichever you choose!