What system would you use for gritty fantasy?

[Argyle King]

I'll echo what some others have said and say GURPS.

If you don't want to do the work of building templates, plenty of people on the SJ Games forum have resources. It's also worth mentioning that many of the books (such as Banestorm) have templates in them.

For whatever it's worth, I've also found that many of the old D&D adventures from 1e and 2e seem to work fairly well in GURPS. Though, undead tend to be a lot rougher to deal with in GURPS.

 

[GMMichael]

Morrus, have you checked out ZWEIHANDER Grim & Perilous RPG yet? It ticks off all of the major themes of a grim, gritty game. It even has a 35 page morally grey adventure in the core book, if you want something that can be ran quickly without a lot of preparation required.

Dang. He beat me to it.

I'd recommend Modos 2, which I'm trying to get into the ENWorld downloads section this month. Because:
- Characters are quick to make - about as long as this post. So creation-to-play time is minimized.
- Character durability runs in the teens to twenties, while the average two-handed weapon does d10 damage.
- PCs have options when they run out of health. Wounds, scars, and disease are among them. So is death.
- Light rules and short character sheets mean that the GM doesn't spend a lot of time turning pages, so there's less prep investment in a short campaign.
- Each PC has a free-form "flaw," which can make things gritty right off the bat.

Notes to [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]: I'm assuming "gritty" means "full of wounds and/or disease and/or dark themes." I could be wrong, but it makes me worry that newer users have less of a guess than I do. Also, I just noticed that XP can be undone. XP blasphemy!