What are you other favorite tabletop RPGs?

[EggKookoo]

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

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

[CarpeGuitarrem]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[LordCdrMilitant]

I hope this is in the right forum. I'm interested in what other games this community is interested :)
I personally have only played D&D so far.

Traveller
Dark Heresy/Black Crusade/Deathwatch
Wrath and Glory

[Anonymouswizard]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Toxic Shaman]

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

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

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

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

[SimonMoon6]

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

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

[Belac93]

Monsterhearts, Masks, Spire, Unknown Armies, Under Hollow Hills, Dream Askew, and the King is Dead are all some that I love. I really like PbtA.

[Jinxed_K]

Usually a D&D player, but I’ve played and liked these others

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

[Babaji]

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

[farothel]

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

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

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

[werehounding]

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

[Lord Raziere]

well bearing in mind I barely play any of these since I seem to have bad luck in finding groups for them...

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

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

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

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

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

[Jaryn]

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

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

[Spriteless]

I've recently started reading up on FATE, specifically Mindjammer. Seems really neat, for the wacky sort of SF. And I loved reading the Ryutama sourcebook.

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

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

I might actually use FATE to run Shadowrun.

[kyoryu]

I've recently started reading up on FATE, specifically Mindjammer. Seems really neat, for the wacky sort of SF. And I loved reading the Ryutama sourcebook.

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

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

I might actually use FATE to run Shadowrun.

Mmmmmmm... always happy to talk Fate.

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

[Cygnia]

7th Sea 1st edition
Classic Deadlands
Champions

[Archpaladin Zousha]

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

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

[KineticDiplomat]

Given I really dislike D&D as a system, not sure how helpful this will be to most:

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

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

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

Dark Heresy: Think people know this one.

[Spriteless]

Mmmmmmm... always happy to talk Fate.

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

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

[kyoryu]

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

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

[Telok]

Paranoia, the game thats been running on a single joke for 20 years and is still funny.

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

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

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

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

[Pauly]

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

[Mr.Sandman]

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

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

[Morgaln]

Werewolf: the Apocalypse is my go-to system and the only one I am actively playing currently.

Other than that, I like

Savage Worlds
The Dark Eye
Call of Cthulhu
Shadowrun

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

[Anonymouswizard]

The Dark Eye

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

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

[Spriteless]

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

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

[Tetsubo 57]

Pathfinder (1st edition)
Gamma World (1992 edition)
The Mutant Epoch
Everstone
Stars Without Number
Starfinder
Harp
Mutants & Masterminds

[kyoryu]

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

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

[Knaight]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[PintoTown]

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