Games That Really "Wowed" You?
delericho
Legend
It has been a long time since a game wowed me. There are, I think, four: Star Wars d6, Shadowrun 1st Ed, Vampire: the Masquerade, and D&D 3e. I don't play any of them any more, and suspect SW is the only one I'd consider revisiting.
These days I'm looking for consistent fun more than I am being wowed.
These days I'm looking for consistent fun more than I am being wowed.
schneeland
Hero
I haven't been to conventions lately (not even online conventions), so no brand new discoveries, but there's a few games that still very much click with me:
- Broken Compass for light-weight, fast-paced pulp action (sadly in limbo since CMON bought 2LM).
- Forbidden Lands - as others have already mentioned, it feels like OSR with a modern game engine, and I really enjoy the focus on exploration
- Dungeon Crawl Classics - definitely not a new game, but every time I play, I'm reminded how great it is when everybody is itching to go into the dungeon, figure out weird puzzles and try to figure out weird ways to beat their opponent's.
Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
It's been a long time since a game actually "wowed" me.
Three that come to mind-
1. Ghostbusters RPG (1986, maybe?). I'd played a lot of different RPGs before this, but this was the first one to actually start me thinking about the way the game was designed. Between the dice pool, the meta currency (brownie points) and the great and minimal ruleset, it had a lasting impact on the way I thought about games.
2. Amber Diceless. I loved everything Zelazny, so I was so excited to see the Amber RPG. I bought it immediately. And I read through it. And ... I didn't get it. How do you play a TTRPG ...without dice? Eventually, I just had to ... well, do. Running and playing Amber in the '90s made me a better GM and player.
Three that come to mind-
1. Ghostbusters RPG (1986, maybe?). I'd played a lot of different RPGs before this, but this was the first one to actually start me thinking about the way the game was designed. Between the dice pool, the meta currency (brownie points) and the great and minimal ruleset, it had a lasting impact on the way I thought about games.
2. Amber Diceless. I loved everything Zelazny, so I was so excited to see the Amber RPG. I bought it immediately. And I read through it. And ... I didn't get it. How do you play a TTRPG ...without dice? Eventually, I just had to ... well, do. Running and playing Amber in the '90s made me a better GM and player.
The first game that really wowed me outside of my first encounter with D&D was Mayfair's DC Heroes 2E. I had played Heroes Unlimited, and it was cool, but DC was the first time I encountered super hero point buy and oh man was I hooked. When I finally discovered Hero later, it was even bigger of a mind blowing experience.
payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
Thats just two!
Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
NO ONE TOLD ME THAT THERE WOULD BE MATH!
Teo Twawki
Coffee ruminator
Only three or four games have wowed me--especially after playing them. Shadowrun first edition was wow-inspiring to look at, but groan- & cringe-inducing to play. Noumenon is a really, really WoW! game idea. But it requires complete buy-in by everyone, or it doesn't work; I've wanted to use the game as an ontological experiment in a philosophy class, but ... Alas! Never got tenured while teaching, so I never had the chance. 
Delta Green's ingenuity of making a band of investigators in Call of Cthulhu work. Chaosium could have done this years before Delta Green with their Theron Marks Society insert booklet, but they never did anything more with the idea than than one-off-and-forget-about-it booklet. Delta Green grew into a great investigative game that compels the characters to make pragmatic decisions amidst the Weird and Unnatural circumstances. Not many rpgs force the consideration of what to do with the body of who or what the characters have just killed. Or, afterwards, to confront their mundane life of family, friends, and day job.
I haven't verifiably encountered Cthulvian beasties, but I'd guess doing so, especially more than once, would change how I dealt with the husband and the job and the folks stocking shelves at the grocery store.
Nephilim really, really wowed me. Both the original French game and the English translation. Still ranks with me as perhaps the most impressive rpg character building I've ever encountered. The breadth of scope this game has is breathtaking. And the game has some of the most grounded perspective of real-world occultism any rpg has offered.
I certainly cannot definitively state I have lived a dozen lives as the same preternatural sapient being, but I imagine I would remember lucid snippets and retain elements of them while inhabiting this proverbial meat covered skeleton composed of stardust as it rides on a rock hurtling through space.
But of all wow-inducing games, first edition Twilight: 2000 is, by far, the most impressive rpg I've heard of, read, or played. Sure, the military orders of battle details are astounding, but more impressive is to have been able to capture the authenticity of human survival of an almost-resourceless setting in dice mechanics; it is a staggering accomplishment. Granted, implementing such is up to the gm and players involved (I've seen more handwavium fantasy in post-apocalyptic games than probably any other genre--thanks, Hollywood), but the mechanics of the reality is written into the game. Equally as impressive is the tapestry of moral crossroads provided to allow (like human freewill itself) for characters to behave indecently, if that's the vile road they wish to take. Both surviving and having to make a conscious choice to behave either deplorably or with ethical morality are the dilemmas humans face in such a situation as the world around you is fuct, so what do you do now?
Unlike the previous two examples, I have survived a post-apocalyptic military siege for four years with almost no resources and being forced to make decisions that should only ever have to be made in a fictional or philosophic setting. Perhaps if I hadn't survived, I wouldn't care for a game that mimicked such a situation. But I did, so I very much do. 
Delta Green's ingenuity of making a band of investigators in Call of Cthulhu work. Chaosium could have done this years before Delta Green with their Theron Marks Society insert booklet, but they never did anything more with the idea than than one-off-and-forget-about-it booklet. Delta Green grew into a great investigative game that compels the characters to make pragmatic decisions amidst the Weird and Unnatural circumstances. Not many rpgs force the consideration of what to do with the body of who or what the characters have just killed. Or, afterwards, to confront their mundane life of family, friends, and day job.
I haven't verifiably encountered Cthulvian beasties, but I'd guess doing so, especially more than once, would change how I dealt with the husband and the job and the folks stocking shelves at the grocery store.
Nephilim really, really wowed me. Both the original French game and the English translation. Still ranks with me as perhaps the most impressive rpg character building I've ever encountered. The breadth of scope this game has is breathtaking. And the game has some of the most grounded perspective of real-world occultism any rpg has offered.
I certainly cannot definitively state I have lived a dozen lives as the same preternatural sapient being, but I imagine I would remember lucid snippets and retain elements of them while inhabiting this proverbial meat covered skeleton composed of stardust as it rides on a rock hurtling through space.
But of all wow-inducing games, first edition Twilight: 2000 is, by far, the most impressive rpg I've heard of, read, or played. Sure, the military orders of battle details are astounding, but more impressive is to have been able to capture the authenticity of human survival of an almost-resourceless setting in dice mechanics; it is a staggering accomplishment. Granted, implementing such is up to the gm and players involved (I've seen more handwavium fantasy in post-apocalyptic games than probably any other genre--thanks, Hollywood), but the mechanics of the reality is written into the game. Equally as impressive is the tapestry of moral crossroads provided to allow (like human freewill itself) for characters to behave indecently, if that's the vile road they wish to take. Both surviving and having to make a conscious choice to behave either deplorably or with ethical morality are the dilemmas humans face in such a situation as the world around you is fuct, so what do you do now?
Unlike the previous two examples, I have survived a post-apocalyptic military siege for four years with almost no resources and being forced to make decisions that should only ever have to be made in a fictional or philosophic setting.
Perhaps if I hadn't survived, I wouldn't care for a game that mimicked such a situation. But I did, so I very much do. 
MGibster
Legend
Okay, boomer! I played Ghostbusters, and I liked it, but I didn't really appreciate the mechanics until many, many years later.
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