Which gaming system has the best mechanics and why?

[Henry]

I think other parts were flawed (wounds and stuns) but the core mechanic was cool

Actually, the stun/wound/mortal part of the system was my favorite part - unlike D&D, you could take a wound that was going to kill you in five minutes, but still had you able to fight for a few precious seconds to either make a last stand or get to safety. Pathfinder's bleed damage does something similar, but it's too easy to stop or avoid, but with mortal damage you didn't have blow through someone's "normal" damage track to get to the mortal damage, nor did a mortal wound give you penalties so severe you were useless. In my opinion they solved Ryan Dancey's "hit points suck" argument without doing away with hit points.

For me, i did go back to Alternity a short while after 3e, but the hardest thing was the init system -trying to go back to a "roll every round" system was sheer torture after 3e. For the life of me the whole table kept forgetting to reroll init!

 

[dracomilan]

For me, i did go back to Alternity a short while after 3e, but the hardest thing was the init system -trying to go back to a "roll every round" system was sheer torture after 3e. For the life of me the whole table kept forgetting to reroll init!

Also true. They desperately tried to use the same mechanic all over the place, but it clearly did not make sense. I house ruled that (also for my AD&D game) as soon as they published the article on Dragon on "how you can play 3rd edition now"

 

[sheadunne]

Right now, my game of choice is my own fantasy hack of Danger Patrol. It does what I want it to do (for the most part, still tweaking), provides little work on the DM side (other than being creative) and after some major tweaking, provides the character choices I enjoy on the player side. Still trying to get it all functioning how I want it, but for now it's a blast.

 

[Geeknamese]

I won't say which system is the best but I will say that out of all the games I've played and ran, I've had the most fun (my players feel the same way) with Star Wars by Fantasy Flight Games.

 

[GMMichael]

Ah, dissent. Saelorn, this is why you're a valued member of the Modos RPG community.

That seems really vague, though. For most tasks, success and failure are clearly defined. With a system like "favorable" or "unfavorable", it seems like a lot is left up to GM interpretation, which can create an issue where the player thinks a particular goal has been achieved and the GM ends up narrating it in a completely unexpected manner.

I have to disagree with this first premise, and suggest that only tasks found on tables and meta-rules have clear lines of success and failure. If a table lays out your outcomes:
[TABLE="width: 500"] [TR] [TD]Roll[/TD] [TD]Outcome[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]1-5[/TD] [TD]Spell fizzles[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]6-10[/TD] [TD]Spell hits caster[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]11-15[/TD] [TD]Spell hits target[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]16-20[/TD] [TD]Spell doubles damage[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] well, each outcome is subject to interpretation, but yes, there's a clear definition that you will have one of four outcomes. Or if your rule is based on rules (a meta-rule), then that could also have a clear definition. For example, when a player's attack roll exceeds his opponent's - sorry - equals or exceeds his opponent's armor class, then the player is allowed to roll damage and apply that damage to his opponent's hit point total. That's pretty clear. What, exactly, that represents in-game is not always clearly defined.

So what are the other clearly defined tasks? A survival check to see if you salvage enough food for the day? What if you collect more than enough food, but half of it goes rotten? Is that a success or failure? A perception test with four stunt-points to read a photo's inscription? Success could be simply noticing a marking, understanding half of the words, or being able to read the secret code written in fine characters between the words.

That's a problem with any game where "complications" are part of the success table. Note that with D&D, in my above example, the specific checks would involve riding and pushing an animal for an extended period of time, and the PCs can be reasonably assured of the likely results before any check is made - if it took you six hours to deliver a message, but the opponent got there in four hours, then it's because you didn't push the mount hard enough (or pushed too hard and exhausted it). One of the major benefits of a system like D&D is that results are usually clear, and the DM is rarely left uncertain about how to narrate them.

D&D accomplishes this with a lot of tables, and math (see the jump skill). Nothing wrong with that - some people like books and calculators with their RPGs. I think it's possible to achieve more immersion and faster gameplay with a more vague system like I've suggested. Complications are one way to do that. One of my motivations, though, is to take out critical fail and critical success from the ends of the outcome line, because these make degrees of success implicit. And... (now for a little math)

...if a PC has a 40% chance to accomplish a certain task, each "success" die roll should result in the exact same outcome, since (on a d20, anyway) each die roll has the exact same chance of occurring. The same goes for the "failure" rolls. A 1 is a 3 is an 11. Now, this still presents a glaring problem: there are two types of outcomes on the d20, and they are essentially -complete opposites- (succeed or fail). If you change those outcomes to favorable or unfavorable, they're still opposites, but I think the difference is softened a bit. If you roll an 11 or a 13, a 1 or a 20, your outcomes could be very similar but with the key difference: one is favorable, the other is unfavorable.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I have to disagree with this first premise, and suggest that only tasks found on tables and meta-rules have clear lines of success and failure.

Sure, but that includes most rules in most editions of D&D, and most games that are based on D&D. I can't speak for anything earlier than 2E, but even that version suggested using a binary-outcome ability check for resolving actions not otherwise covered in the rules. The only games which don't really offer such clear results tend to be the ones which describe themselves as "rules-lite" or "story-telling" games, and the lack of such clarity is considered to be a major criticism against them.

One of my motivations, though, is to take out critical fail and critical success from the ends of the outcome line, because these make degrees of success implicit.

There's no problem, then - no edition of D&D includes critical success or critical failure for anything other than attack rolls, and it's not too terribly difficult for those to be removed. Complications only make things more complicated.

As with anything else in game design, it essentially comes down to a trade-off in priorities. Since a game is defined as a series of meaningful decisions, one of the priorities must be the clarity of the rules - without which, no decision can be meaningful. But if you want to tell a good story, then it really helps for you to have more freedom in interpreting results. These priorities should be weighed carefully.

 

[Hyper-Man]

I am confused.

If this is a thread about ALL systems why is it listed under General D&D Topics* and have a D&D graphic next to it in the forum listing?

 

[GMMichael]

Because OP wants you to say that a D&D system is the best one? More likely, user error.

If there IS a best system, then it probably has the ability to make the greatest number of gamers happy. This could point to an OGL, like d20, WOIN, or Savage Worlds, or a modular system (like GURPS?): a game that can transform to become what its players want...

 

[Ravendesk Games]

Firefly!!

LOL! So easy, see???