Best single volume RPG?

[demiurge1138]

Call of Cthulhu, either d20 or BRP. And this thread's been very encouraging to me picking up Spycraft 2.0...

Demiurge out.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Palladium 1st Ed. Everything you need for a cool vanilla fantasy, including spells, monsters and a world setting.
3rd Ed CoC. Again everything you needed plus loads of fantastic stuff about life in the 20's and 30's.
Heros SYstem: my fave for any supers games. Haven't tried 5th ed yet but looking forward to it.
and if one box counts then the old Marvel game. Fast, furious fun. PLus all my fave hereos were there.

 

[Twowolves]

Two Questions:

1. Why do folks like CoC 5th > 6th Ed? Just curious.

2. What's the difference between Savage Worlds big book and the Explorer's Edition?

I can't help you with 1. but I'll try with 2.

The Explorer's Edition is digest sized, first of all, with less wasted space and a smaller font, so they really cram in a LOT of the original text. Other than that, they dropped all of the example races (humans only in the core book), they dropped the chase rules, they use the "Way of the Brave" melee damage rules from Deadlands:Reloaded (instead of weapons doing Strength die + a set number, it's a Strength die + a weapon damage die, both of which can ace, and they toss in some additional rules to handle low strength characters using high damage weapons to balance it out), and lastly healing checks are now unlimited, so long as they occur in the "golden hour" (before you got one and only one healing check, now you can try multiple times).

Oh, and the blast templates are not in there (the cone wouldn't fit anyway), so they are free downloads on their website, and have been for years. There are probably some other bits, but I am unaware of them.

 

[Silver Moon]

I vote for Sidewinder Recoiled - The single-volume rules not only give you all of the game mechanics needed for a great D20 Western but also include quotes and stories of real life 19th century people and places to help the GM to set the stage for the players.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Interesting, since we used to use the magic system in other games where we disliked the magic system.

Mechanically, it was ok. We just found that the benefit vs. the XP costs weren't worth it. Also, the combination of low chances of success for the good spells, plus the decent resists, made for unhappy and ineffective mages. And no armor plus deadly combat made for ex-mages

 

[HelloChristian]

Car Wars Compendium

We got a ton of use out of this book. Between the autoduels and out-of-car action, we played some great campaigns.

Middle Earth Role-Playing was also pretty great.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

A little-known title called Noir, which is exactly what it sounds like: roleplaying in the shades-of-grey world of thugs, gunsels, femmes fatales, and tough-guy talk. I've only been able to play it a couple of times, because you needs a table full of people with the appropriate film education and mindset, but it was awesome when I played.

I also enjoy Buffy. Shadowrun 4 looks pretty good, but previous versions had balance problems between character types. I own the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, but I was just never able to go back to Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings as character classes.

 

[Glyfair]

The Explorer's Edition is digest sized, first of all, with less wasted space and a smaller font, so they really cram in a LOT of the original text

Plus, it's $9.95 vs. $29.95. A major selling point (I wouldn't have bothered picking it up at $30).

 

[Korgoth]

Anybody tried "Rolemaster Express"?

It's supposed to be a non-Tolkien version of MERP, essentially. Designed to be compatible with "Rolemaster Classic" (i.e. revamped 2e).

 

[Cam Banks]

King Arthur Pendragon. 4th edition is my preference, although I'm perfectly happy with 5th edition if for no other reason than it starts things off in Uther's time and not Arthur's. The Great Pendragon Campaign is not essential but given that it's the only adventure book you'll ever need for the game, I think it holds up well as a supplement.

KAP is hands down my favorite game of all time. It beats out all of the others by a significant margin. Now if only I could ever get a serious game of it going for longer than a few months!

Cheers,
Cam