Good/New Fantasy RPG's

[Treebore]

The latest revision (Mark III) of the Epic RPG might be what you're looking for. The magic is mechanically consistent and simple to use, but absolutely full of flavour and variety. An important aspect of the game is that where you come from plays a large part in who you become and what options are available to you. So if you like a game where geography, culture, social class, and upbringing are important, Epic might be worth checking out. Mark III fixes a few odd mechanics present in earlier iterations which significantly improve aspects of play.

This is a great suggestion! Reminds me that the 6 week playtest we ran went great and that we still need to give it a long term try out.

 

[Afon y Bydysawd]

Oh, and the character generation process in Epic RPG is a real treat. A few times now we've just sat down with no real idea what we wanted to do. After building the characters, we ended up with enough hooks to start us off on an adventure in a completely different direction than we would have thought up on our own. “Pirates?!? We've never done pirates! But with these characters, it just might work!”

 

[oni no won]

A couple of recommendations:

Savage Worlds + Shaintar. Savage Worlds is a generic rpg and Shaintar is a fantasy setting for it. Shaintar is a plot point book which gives you enough setting info to make the world your own and the plot points are arranged so that you can either concentrate on the main adventure or you can go off tangent and do many side quests. It has a very nice epic feel to it.

Legend of Anglerre. A FATE based fantasy rpg. If you want to try something more novel, I recommend this.

 

[Technomancer]

You know i love DnD but I am looking for something new, specifically:

-not D20
-Detailed but easy to use magic system
- rules that "feel" realistic without being overburdened by detail
- classical fantasy (low or high magic)

I have four suggestions:

1) and 2) "Fabled Lands" and "Advanced Fighting Fantasy". Both are based on choose your own adventure style gamebooks from the 80s and 90s, with their rules expanded and modified for tabletop play. Both use 2D6s, the former is roll over vs a difficulty number, the latter is roll under your skill. Both have extensive spell lists, and interesting (but optional) settings. FL is class-based, while AFF is skill-based

3) "Dragon Warriors" is an old school-ish (meaning no unified mechanic), with good-sized spell lists for each of the magic-using classes and a very evocative setting, a little dark and mysterious, magic is kind of rare and mysterious. Characters have a number of Attributes, and each class has it's own talents/skills

4) "Age of Shadow" is a variant of "OpenQuest" (which is itself a variant of "RuneQuest"), with a very Tolkienesque feel in both rules and setting. There are two different types of magic with their own spell lists (though there is some overlap). Character Creation is a little heavier than I like what with all the percentages you have to figure out for each skill, but once that's done the game itself is pretty smooth. Oh, and this one is free.

Fabled Lands
Advanced Fighting Fantasy
Dragon Warriors
Age of Shadow

 

[NotZenon]

its going to take me months to catch up on all these suggestions! thanks everyone.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

its going to take me months to catch up on all these suggestions! thanks everyone.

I just received the Burning Wheel fantasy roleplaying system (I paid USD22.50 for a 600 page B&W hardcover - 145mm x 225mm in size) and it was as I thought, and thus I believe very close to what you are looking for. Flicking through this book, you just get a really good vibe; I want to run a game using it already (note I have not played or run this before though so this is real initial impressions only).

For more info, you can go to their website here.

To see a 17 minute video promoting it you can go here.

To download for free the first 74 pages of the 600 page book, you can go here.

Altogether though bang for buck, this seems a pretty good deal, and hopefully exactly what you are looking for.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[pemerton]

Another mention for Burning Wheel.

Also, if you were intrigued by Rolemaster but found it too clunky, there is a streamlined version called HARP. You can download the free lite version here.

 

[Agamon]

HackMaster!

HackMaster Basic

Just so you know, this is a new game, not the original 1e/2e AD&D parody game. I'd recommend it along with Arcanis and Savage Worlds.

 

[Kris]

"Age of Shadow" is a variant of "OpenQuest" (which is itself a variant of "RuneQuest"), with a very Tolkienesque feel in both rules and setting. There are two different types of magic with their own spell lists (though there is some overlap). Character Creation is a little heavier than I like what with all the percentages you have to figure out for each skill, but once that's done the game itself is pretty smooth. Oh, and this one is free.

Age of Shadow

I'm thrilled to see my own little game getting a mention

If you decide to check it out (or anyone else does for that matter), let me know before purchasing the Campaign Guide, and I'll set up a discount code for fellow ENWorlders.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

A couple of recommendations:

Savage Worlds + Shaintar. Savage Worlds is a generic rpg and Shaintar is a fantasy setting for it. Shaintar is a plot point book which gives you enough setting info to make the world your own and the plot points are arranged so that you can either concentrate on the main adventure or you can go off tangent and do many side quests. It has a very nice epic feel to it.

Legend of Anglerre. A FATE based fantasy rpg. If you want to try something more novel, I recommend this.

I second both of these suggestions. However, Shaintar will be realeased in a new (improved they say) version in Q1 2012, so wait for that.


You could do worse than checking out Earthdawn. The setting drips with flavor, there's a logical reason for all the D&D tropes, magic items are so special you bond to them and they increase in power along with you (and you have to discover their history to unlock their powers), magic is flavorful, dark and dangerous, and the opposition is just nasty.
I really enjoy the Earthdawn system (increasing steps = higher dice types and dice numbers, all dice explode), but some people dislike it. For those, there's hope, as early 2012 will see a Savage Worlds version.