Games that survived first contact...

There's a thread called "Games that didn't survive first contact...". There are, of course, a number of games mentioned that sound horrible in the context of the thread.
I thought that I would start this as a way to "defend" some of these games, or just generally recommend a system that people might not be familiar with.

For me:
4e- My group has fallen in love with this system. It's rather surprising. I have been a fanboy since the beginning, and I even found myself defending the game on the groups boards. Now, it's the main thing that they play. There's plenty floating around about this one, so I won't continue.

Exalted 2e- This is the game that first caused me to roleplay. Well, first edition Exalted was, but you get the point. The rules for stunting are phenomenal and have created within me an urge to stunt in every game that I play.

Dogs in the Vineyard- I was shocked. Honestly. It took a few games before guns came out, and that was mostly due to some misunderstandings with the rules. This is a game where the mechanics are purely roleplaying. You create a character who is one of "God's Watchdogs". You go around solving problems and preaching from the "Book of Life". The best part, though, is that there is nothing written down about the Book. It's entirely player-created. The system is also surprisingly easy to learn and master. The DM definitely needs to know the rules and explain the key points to the players, though. Other than that, there's no need for a player to even hold the book to make a character and play the game.

Besides my love of D&D (4Ed excepted), the other love of my RPG collection is Champions/HERO.

I started with the very first edition, and have loved every edition since then, with the exception of the Fuzion ruleset. Quite simply, its my favorite game.

Mutants & Masterminds, the love-child of HERO and 3.X is second on my list of systems I love.

(3.X comes in at 3rd, all time.)

Beyond that, there are games I love because of or despite their flaws: Traveller, Paranoia, Deadlands, Space:1889.

RIFTS (setting only, not mechanics).

D&D 3.X and 4e: still both great games I've awalys enjoyed.

Mutants & Masterminds: After struggling through character creation once or twice, this game became my new favorite, enough so that I derived an entirely new game from its OGC mechanics (see my sig).

True20: Loved it, though M&M still edges it out. This is what really got me thinking in terms of generic, toolbox systems, and convinced me that d20 Modern was worth another look (which paid off too!).

Shadowrun 4e: I never ran it and only played in it off and on, but darnit, I had a good time (though Wired Reflexes are busted to heck and back... my Troll killed anything he got in melee with three times before they hit the ground instead of just one).

Dawn of Worlds: We're playing this now in a PBP format... it's just too much fun for something so simple.

I already semi-defended FATE/SotC, though that really wasn't my intent so much as feedback. I remember when I was first getting into Spirit of the Century, Obryn commenting that it didn't play well; it turned out his warnings didn't pan out for me. And now, we see, he seems to have based it on a different version of FATE, one that has some fairly significant changes.

To date, it's been a hit both with my local group (it's helping to lure them away from the EVIL Savage Worlds...) and at Cons/Gamedays.

Another game that didn't get slammed on jdrakeh's thread here, but on its crosspost on RPGnet is Spycraft 2.0. It's proven a very robust game that does oh so many things just the way I like it, and has been well received both in my home group and at gamedays.

The obvious one for me is 3.5D&D. Star Wars D20 and Star Wars SAGA worked pretty well (still use SAGA and even ganked parts of it for 3.5 house rules). In opposition to the other thread, RIFTS actually worked pretty well for a group I was in. However, it may just have been because of the GM. He really knew the system, which means also knowing it's shortcomings, and was able to run a really good game with it. RIFTS definately has it's problems but I don't think it's as bad as some others out there. I also feel that the Palladium setting rules (pretty much RIFTS without MDC) has a good D&D or LOTR feel to it and worked pretty well (I still have my Palladium Ranger character from that game).

Mutants and Mastertminds: I knew it was a good game from all the praise but it was different enough for my D&D players that I wasn't sure how they would react to it. The game really won them over.

Star Wars d6: Twelve or so years ago I didn't know much about the system but the game worked realyl well for us. And now looking back on how easy it is to break the game especially for the Jedi I'm happy it worked so well for us for years.

Star Wars Saga: After the disappointing d20 version of the game I found this worked very well even though we only played a few months.

Rifts: I had a single campaign that lasted almost ten years in this game. We grew with the game as it came out I think when I was in middle school. For all the problems the game has I leanred more GMing this game then anything else.

Psion said:

I already semi-defended FATE/SotC, though that really wasn't my intent so much as feedback. I remember when I was first getting into Spirit of the Century, Obryn commenting that it didn't play well; it turned out his warnings didn't pan out for me. And now, we see, he seems to have based it on a different version of FATE, one that has some fairly significant changes.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I think that was just an edition thing... I can believe 100% that 3e plays a ton better than 2e. It had a lot more development time, and probably learned from its errors.

When I speak of FATE, I'm only talking about the bare-bones FATE 2.0 Fudge Edition.

From what I've read of SotC, I think I'd love it. I almost picked it up, but I think I'm the only one of my players who thinks 20's pulp is pretty sweet.

-O

Basic Red Box D&D - recieved it for my 10th birthday and ran my first adventure (the solo introductory adventure in the book) that afternoon, my first adventure with friends the following day. The blue Expert box also gets honourable mention here - You can play outside the dungeon? Cool!!!! Followed by Masters, AD&D @nd Ed, D&D 3rd Ed and 4th Ed

Arcana Unearthed/Evolved and Iron Heroes for expanding the boundries of what D&D is.

Shadowrun 3rd ed - the setting blew my friends and I away and more than covered up for unbalanced rules

Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies, All Flesh Must Be Eaten have provided many awesome 1 shot horror evenings and all remain on standby.

Phaezen

The games we loved after the first session:

Deadlands classic or the Savage Worlds version- this is probably my all-time favorite game to run or play. It has everything I want in a game, and walks a fine line between campy humor and downright disturbing horror. I've run Deadlands games where the players had to take 30 minute breaks from being weirded out so badly. Conversely, I've had Deadlands games that are so goofy and surreal that they seem almost Paranoia-like in comparison. My players love the system and setting because of its originality.

Savage Worlds- probably the best generic system out there that allows for tons of customization while also remaining simple in play. Its our go-to system for any genre of game we want to try now. I've run Victorian horror, Star Wars, Fading Suns, post-apocalyptic, Deadlands, gritty sci-fi, Soloman Kane, Pirates of the Spanish Main, and Midnight with it.

Call of Cthulhu BRP- 'nuff said.

Kult- this one gets a lot of flack, but with the right group and GM, this game can really shine and be something incredible.

nWoD Mortals- a great system for any generic modern day game, and very smooth to play. nWoD Hunter and Changeling look awesome too, but haven't played either yet.

WHFRP2 and Dark Heresy- I have a rather twisted group of players, so the subtle/dark humor in the Warhammer games really appeals to us. We also love grim/gritty games, which WHFRP and Dark Heresy do VERY well.

And of course D&D 4e. My group had tired of 3e and its klunkiness, rules-heavy nature, and general tone of the rules. We were skeptical of 4e at first, but after our first playtest session of KotS, we were in love and embraced our new 4e masters. For us, we're playing the same style and tone of games we did under 1e/2e again, but with a more robust and customizable system. Last week one player joked that he might want to switch back to 3.5, which was met immediately with cries from around the table of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" God, I love my group.

Engilbrand said:

There's a thread called "Games that didn't survive first contact...". There are, of course, a number of games mentioned that sound horrible in the context of the thread.
I thought that I would start this as a way to "defend" some of these games, or just generally recommend a system that people might not be familiar with.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if games in the other thread need "defending" as said other thread is about recounting stories of games that didn't pique the interests of certain players or groups for whatever reason. I mean, in the context of the other thread, the only real defense is "You're a liar!" But I digress. . .

Pretty much any game that I didn't personally mention in the other thread did survive first contact for me and my group/s. Of course, this list is several dozen times larger than the three or four games that didn't survive first contact, so I'm going to have to limit myself, here.

Dark Heresy

Though all of the players (including the GM) were initially put off by the inability of PCs to do anything successfully, after we gained a few ranks in our chosen career paths, things evened out and got a lot more fun (in fact, I'd be playing Dark Heresy later tonight if I wasn't having to deal with some real life issues).

I'm personally glad that we rode out the rough patch but we have all decided that if we ever start a new game of DH, we'll be buffing PCs with a few free career ranks. What works fine for generic adventurers in WHFRP (i.e., starting with almost no skill or ability) shatters disbelief for supposedly capable members of an Inquisitor's personal retinue.

Star Wars D6

One of the other two sci-fi RPGs that survived first contact with me and people I play with, Star Wars D6 spawned the second longest RPG campaign that I had the pleasure of playing in (two years long).

That said, I think the reason that it lasted so long had less to do with anything Star Wars than it did with our GM exploiting the biggest strength of the D6 System. . . namely, if we could rationalize a character and provide a fair/unbroken build for it, we could play it.

While our game was set in the Star Wars galaxy, we decided that the Universe was infinitely bigger than that was also inhabited by Immortals (via Highlander), vampires (via V:TM), sentient cyborgs (think Terminator/Manhunter), symbiotes (as seen in Spiderman), and all manner of other weirdness.

I typically hate kitchen sink settings, but even with all of the potential for wonkiness, this Star Wars game was a blast (and said wonkiness rarely reared its head). In fact, the whole 'vampires in space' thing still intrigues me, despite my never having played one in this Star Wars game. In retrospect, this campaign wasn't just a lot of fun to play, it was also a vast idea mine.

Shadowrun 1e - 3e

I almost listed this in the other thread for, while I have played a lot of Shadowrun and love it dearly, the rules for decking and rigging usually killed any attempt at a campaign after one session (and sometimes, before that session had ended). That said, the setting oozed enough Cool that everybody kept trying to make it work with different players and different groups over the years.

In fact, despite all of the system trouble, I've probably logged just as many hours playing Shadowrun as I have D&D since 1994, which is saying something. And, now that I think about it, I've also had some of my best roleplaying fun ever in the Shadowrun world (though, if memory serves, by that time we were using a very, very, house-ruled version of the 3.0 system that was more conflict resolution and less task resolution).

There are a few interesting rules-lite conversions for Shadowrun today that I'm soooooooo tempted to try out, but I traded off all of my Shadowrun books back in 2003 or so and, given that the setting is spread over so many volumes, I doubt that this will ever happen. That having been said, if somebody else is doing the running, I'm always up for a Shadowrun game

AD&D 1e/2e

A hybrid of AD&D 1e/2e was the first game that I ever played as a hobbyist (I had previously played BD&D as part of a school project) and, for several years, the only RPG that I played due to the insular nature of the folks who I played with at the time (only one of them had any willingness to play things other than AD&D). The longest RPG campaign I have ever played in was also played using this system and with this group.

I have many very fond memories of AD&D, though only of this 'first' game specifically -- after that, everything seemed to be a series of false starts or campaigns that didn't survive first contact. I've tried hundreds of times to recapture the two and a half years of adventure had in my first AD&D campaign, though I've since come to believe that most of the fun was had because of the people playing, not because of the system itself.

Even though I've pretty much given up on AD&D as a system, it's the very first place that I go when I want cool ideas for a fantasy game -- be they adventures, locations, settings, or even characters. There is still a lot of Fantastic in AD&D worth owning, despite the fact that I'm no longer playing it (in fact, I regularly purchase several of the old books in PDF format from RPGNow).

When it comes to an abundance of great ideas, I can't think of another product line that has those of AD&D 1e/2e beat for substance (though 3x comes close).