Pathfinder 1E Non-D&D /Pathfinder RPGs

[3catcircus]

Where do I begin...

For a quick and easy game, I like d6 (and it is free!) rules - fantasy, sci-fi, all there. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of work to build your own system using the d6 rules.

For super-heroic (but not supers) gaming, my preferred system is TORG. I managed to purchase a copy of every single supplement about 10 years ago during a fire sale and have yet to find anyone willing to play. Great system (it scales well) and the drama deck is still the best implementation I've seen of using cards in an rpg. The magic system is one of the best I've seen, using a pseudo-para-scientific approach to defining how magic works (and how spells can be built). The best part is the GM can mold his campaign by deciding which supplements he'll allow.

My all-time favorite, though, is Twilight:2000 (I can take or leave the V1 rules, like the V2.2 rules, and prefer the V3 Reflex System rules).

Using the V3 rules, I think it is a well-done life-path system (no making a PC whose last selections result in death, like in Traveller), fairly-well implemented team integration rules (sorta-like-but-better-than the Team Feats in D&D 3.x), and the combat system is detailed enough (likely too detailed for some people) to allow you to "feel" like getting shot at is dangerous, like it is supposed to be. It models both the sense of being scared shitless via a "Coolness Under Fire" attribute as well as the fact that better-trained troops and those who've seen more combat are able to react more quickly than civilians or new guys.

I like the initiative system, which is encumbrance-based (carrying more stuff? You can't do as many things as quickly as someone who isn't) so it encourages people to do like they do in real-life and dump their pack at the first sign of combat.

The "hit point thresholds/wounds" system works really well - each hit does a certain amount of "damage" which, when compared to various hit point thresholds, causes different levels of wounding - from a scratch all the way up to instant death. It is like a condition track, but makes more sense.

Some things that could be improved: the "Tick System" is similar to the Fallout 1/2 system where each action costs a certain amount of time and once you use up all your actions in the round, it is someone else's turn, but it is a bit unwieldy unless you've got a cheat sheet with all the actions and their costs. Combat can get a bit fiddly because of all the variables, but I've found that "weapon cards" that contain all the relevant information works well at a glance.

Additionally, the campaign can get really tedious for players who don't like resource management as part of their gameplay - foraging, wear/maintenance, and keeping track of your bullets is important in this game, but some players don't like the idea of "gotta keep the jeep running, so I have to barter some farmer for a starter motor, which means I've gotta bring him some alcohol in trade; but I need the alcohol to run the jeep - how much can I give him and still get the part? If I gotta give him all my hooch, I've gotta go and distill more, which means I've gotta go find more potatoes/corn/whatever can be turned into alcohol. Which means I'm stuck here for another growing season. F*&K!!!!" being used as the premise of a campaign arc.

Basically - Twilight:2000/2013 requires lots of loving attention from both the GM and the players, whereas some other more accessible games require minimal effort on the part of the players to still make for a fun game.

 

[scourger]

...d20 Judge Dredd is quite fun...

I didn't mention the good Judge Dredd d20 or the brilliant Omega World d20 because they are D&D (d20) derivatives, but they are quite fun. Same with Star Wars d20 and the new Gamma World.

 

[Obryn]

I have to hop in and mention FATE Core. The kickstarter is destroying stretch goal after stretch goal, and the stuff you already get for $30 is mind-boggling, including a downloadable PDF right away. This is the FATE version of the Reaper kickstarter, is what I'm saying. It's also a damn fine non-D&D rpg.

-O

 

[Shades of Green]

For sci-fi in general and space opera in particular, I strongly recommend Stars Without Number. This is basically a hybrid of Traveller with old-school D&D with many modern design elements and very robust sandbox support. The core-book (all 210 pages of it) is FREE in PDF format. Its main weakness is the use of (highly simplified) descending AC, which could annoy new-school D&D players, but once you get through thsi minor inconvinience the game is glorious.

 

[Dykstrav]

Vampire: the Masquerade

Published by White Wolf, currently supported under the Onyx Path imprint. It's a great game, and one of the very few games that I've never gotten tired of at one point or another.

Strengths: The game's setting is essentially the "real" world with a few occult wrinkles, not the least of which is the existence of vampires and other supernatural monsters. It's very easy to get people into the context of the game because you can set a chronicle in your own home town or a real-world city that everyone has some passing familiarity with (say, London or Los Angeles). You don't have to explain the level of technology, the economy, the politics, the arts--the players already know it. Furthermore, the inherent familiarity of the setting actually helps with building a horror environment.

The character generation system is a point buy that allows you to create virtually any sort of character that you can envision. Attributes and Abilities are rated on a scale of one dot (abysmal) to five dots (superb, literally one of the best people on the planet). You can easily make a world-famous neurosurgeon by selecting, say, four dots of Medicine and four dots of Fame. This is sufficient to make your character one of the best surgeons in the world that's also a household name, but it's also not a crippling min-maxing investment. You'll still have plenty of dots to make your character a well-rounded individual that can accomplish many tasks at least passably, and probably better than the average human.

The mechanics are simple, easily learned, yet remarkably comprehensive. You can learn the entire system in under ten minutes, and resolving even a big combat scene rarely takes more than five or ten minutes. A great deal of power exists in the hands of the storyteller, they are mostly free to do as they please. As long as the players are enjoying the game, there's no real discussions about "balance" or following the letter or intent of the rules.

Vampires deal with a trait called Humanity, which basically measures how much of a psychotic bastard they are as they become more and more comfortable with the fact that they need to hurt and kill to survive. Losing Humanity is a great deal more terrifying to a Vampire player than losing hit points or shifting alignment in D&D, it represents your character's transformation into a callous monster. The fundamental struggle that a vampire undergoes to retain some vestige of decency is considerably poignant, and in the hands of a competent storyteller, can be profound and engaging on a level that's difficult to match in other games. Unlife as a vampire has consequences. Every feeding, every killing weighs heavily on the mind and spirit of the vampire. You can use violence to deal with a situation, but it's rarely the best option and it always carries consequences.

If you have a good storyteller, the mood and flavor of the game can't be beat. You absolutely have to get the right people for the group, but when you do, the game seamlessly accommodates creepy occult mysteries, high society intrigues, personal tragedy, high-octane action... Just about any mood or theme you can imagine for a horror setting.

Weaknesses: First off, it's a Horror game with a capital "H." If your players don't dig horror, they aren't going to dig Vampire. The setting and events of a chronicle can be bleak and depressing if the player and/or storyteller let it. It's a game that explores the lowest, darkest corners of the psyche at times. It should be creepy and tense, but it can also be profoundly disturbing (ask Vampire players about their first encounters with the Tzimisce, for instance). Not everyone enjoys that sort of game, and there's no real way to tone it down.

The game is also pretty narrowly focused. It does what it does very well, but you can't really adapt it to do things beyond vampire fiction. Depending on your tone and mood, your chronicle could be the Lost Boys, Interview with the Vampire, Blade, or Underworld. But it's never going to move beyond vampire fiction, or at best, various strains of horror. Other World of Darkness games do other things very well, but Vampire is pretty narrowly focused on what it does.

Players can get bogged down in how much of the "real" world exists in the World of Darkness. Some players want to deal with topical issues in the news, especially those with a strong social conscience. You can certainly use current events to inspire stories, but I ultimately want to watch the news, not play an RPG set in it. It's very important to establish expectations about tone, mood, and good taste up front when you play Vampire.

Players can lose their sense of perspective when playing a vampire character. Because it's possible to begin play as a relatively powerful character (even the weakest vampires outclass the majority of humans), they don't always remember that a five-dot rating in a particular trait makes them literally one of the best people in the world at that particular Ability. It's easy to become blase about someone with four dots of Firearms and explain their expertise as, "my character hangs out at the gun store a lot."

Vampire has a vast metaplot, if you choose to use it. The game works just fine without it, but some players have become very attached to the various facets of the metaplot published throughout the product line. Some players that have read through a dozen sourcebooks get very frustrated when you tell them that you're going to ignore metaplot, or worse, change it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The game is also pretty narrowly focused. It does what it does very well, but you can't really adapt it to do things beyond vampire fiction. Depending on your tone and mood, your chronicle could be the Lost Boys, Interview with the Vampire, Blade, or Underworld. But it's never going to move beyond vampire fiction, or at best, various strains of horror. Other World of Darkness games do other things very well, but Vampire is pretty narrowly focused on what it does.

Partly, that will depend on the players, of course. My comedic-horror Brujah PC- based on NEC's The Tick- was the scratch in the LP for really reaching for truly dark depths of horror...

 

[Bluenose]

Runequest 6
The Design Mechanism
456 pages

Laurence Whitaker and Pete Nash have written other RQ material when they worked on Mongoose Runequest, and Pete has the Ennie award winning Rome supplement for BRP to his credit. Now they’ve teamed up to produce the 6^th edition of Runequest.

The core is the complete rules, with nothing relegated to supplements. There are three chapters on characters, a rather large one on combat, chapters on the five magic systems (Common, Animism, Theist, Sorcery, and Mysticism), and then chapters on creatures, equipment, and one on running the game. They fit a lot into the book, but perhaps could have included a wider variety of creatures. Notably there’s no chapter describing an assumed setting, though throughout the book there are examples which are set in a version of “magic Earth” – also, an ancient world setting rather than medieval, which is in keeping with the art throughout the book where a hoplite would be much more appropriate than a knight.

Mechanically it’s going to be mostly familiar to old Runequest/BRP players. Skill based, location based hit points, armour as DR, opposed checks. If you last played Runequest in the 1970s, much of this will be familiar to you. It worked then and it works now, and remains a very elegant system in play. Though as always, not as quick to resolve as many other games. There are some innovative elements, mysticism is a new system of “magic”, and they’ve also included rules for passions similar to those in Pendragon which don’t really feel as well integrated as the Pendragon ones. Theist magic has seen a rather large change, which I’m still a little doubtful about. Apart from that area, it’s very compatible with everything previously produced for the various versions of Runequest and/or other BRP games.

If I’ve got one major criticism, it’s that they really need a better index. Or perhaps an appendix defining the terms being used. Or better cross-references. There are some things which are described in parts on several different pages, without always indicating where the rest of the description is.

So is this the perfect version of Runequest? No, not yet. Probably the best so far, though, if you’re happy with the amount of crunch involved. It’s a good fit for Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Beowulf, Jason and the Argonauts, fantastic versions of the ancient world, or Glorantha. It’s would be less good for medieval King Arthur, for the more fantastic versions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, for many D&D settings (though I think you could do a very good version of Birthright), and actively bad at something like Exalted’s creation.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Focussed games

Leverage

Do you want to run con/heist games, playing robin hood and tricking the bad guys rather than taking them out through force? Do you want this to come with a system that's rules light, can be taught in 10 minutes flat, assumes competent characters, and allows shared narrative authority and flashback scenes to get out of especially tricky situations? Really, there's only one game on the market that does con/heist/caper games well and that's Leverage. If you don't want to run con/heist games then it's probably not the system for you (although there is an elegant hack of it that does Mage the Ascension better than the official Mage rules). It doesn't hurt that it has some superb advice for running this style of game in the book.

Monsterhearts

Does the idea of making the bloodiest, sexiest, best HBO teen drama ever sound like an absolute blast? Simple rules, and holding strings on half the other PCs while they hold strings on you? Skins where every character is about their fundamental flaw? And it can literally be paid for by Good Deeds.

Dread

How has no one mentioned Dread and its Jenga Tower of Tension yet? The tensest one shot horror game it's ever been my pleasure/fear to play. I'll let @Piratecat sell this one

Fiasco

It's a fiasco. Two hours of things going catastrophically and entertainingly wrong for all characters involved. Simple to play (but remember the post it notes), fits any setting

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

Best comic book superhero roleplaying game ever. (Note: Comic Book Supers - if you want Superheroes In The Real World look somewhere else). Simple rules, flexible, and both evocative and draws description. @Vyvyan Basterd has made the pitch.

Dogs in the Vineyard

Rising tension on a foundation of "What stakes are you prepared to risk to win this?" @steenan has got here first.

Generic Games

GURPS

Steve Jackson's Generic Universal Roleplaying System - a very simulationist, slightly gritty, and highly detailed system designed to cover anywhere and anywhen and with sourcebooks to back it. In fact the beauty of the game isn't the game itself, but the care and attention in the massive range of sourcebooks. With incredibly rare exceptions (Pendragon springs to mind) if there is a GURPS sourcebook of a setting and a roleplaying game focussed on that setting, the GURPS book will be better written and researched, and presented towards having adventures in that setting. That said GURPS fetish for simulation occasionally gets the better of it. The GURPS vehicles book includes formulae such as the power of the engine in horsepower and the weight of the structure being based on the square of the cube root of the volume in feet.

FATE Core

At the other end from GURPS, high action narrative with aspects and who your character is being more important than a long list of skills. @Obryn has already mentioned this one.

 

[marroon69]

Mouseguard
It was mentioned before but I think it should be mentioned again...it is a story based game very much focusing on role playing aspects as opposed to power gaming. Great world, simple story line and easy to grasp. I play with a group 2 of which are power gamers and it seems to changed there focus since since there is no experiencing point system....it is built on the idea of success and failure at the things you advances your character not just grinding out party kills. Great system, fun to play, good character creation.

Brass and Steel
A little know steam punk alternative history game that has a simplified system that is uses one d20..that is it a single roll for success and degree of success. The best part of this game is the world in my opinion...Victorian times where things are much different. The English empire, to Ottoman empire and of course the Aztec empire all fighting for controlled.

Iron kingdoms
This is an offshoot of the popular Warmachine large scale battle game but it is so much more. Built around the War machine rules and world it is a simple easy to use system with a fully fleshed out history. It also seems to be able to go from role playing right into large scale battles and back pretty seamlessly.

Gamma World (7th ed)
This not your fathers gamma world...lol it much better. Built around the 4e DND base...but not really since it changes just about everything. It is meant to played as sort of a tongue in cheek mutant mash up from all dimensions and histories smashed together. Just thank god you did not live in Pestigo...those damn french.

Lots of good games out there.....personally I just starting my journey into the Marvel Heroric Role playing....looks good but not sure.

 

[marroon69]

Mouseguard
It was mentioned before but I think it should be mentioned again...it is a story based game very much focusing on role playing aspects as opposed to power gaming. Great world, simple story line and easy to grasp. I play with a group 2 of which are power gamers and it seems to changed there focus since since there is no experiencing point system....it is built on the idea of success and failure at the things you advances your character not just grinding out party kills. Great system, fun to play, good character creation.

Brass and Steel
A little know steam punk alternative history game that has a simplified system that is uses one d20..that is it a single roll for success and degree of success. The best part of this game is the world in my opinion...Victorian times where things are much different. The English empire, to Ottoman empire and of course the Aztec empire all fighting for controlled.

Iron kingdoms
This is an offshoot of the popular Warmachine large scale battle game but it is so much more. Built around the War machine rules and world it is a simple easy to use system with a fully fleshed out history. It also seems to be able to go from role playing right into large scale battles and back pretty seamlessly.

Gamma World (7th ed)
This not your fathers gamma world...lol it much better. Built around the 4e DND base...but not really since it changes just about everything. It is meant to played as sort of a tongue in cheek mutant mash up from all dimensions and histories smashed together. Just thank god you did not live in Pestigo...those damn french.

Lots of good games out there.....personally I just starting my journey into the Marvel Heroric Role playing....looks good but not sure.