Branching Out from Fantasy

[Kinneus]

I'm tired of fantasy, and by extension, Dungeons and Dragons. Well, "tired" is probably too harsh a word... I still love D&D, and I'm excited every chance I get to play it. But I'm finally reaching that point where I realize, hey, other games are out there. They might be cool too.

Whenever I have dipped my toe into another game, however, I've always been disappointed. I flipped through the Paranoia XP book, for instance. I love the concept, a humorous sci-fi dystopia where players are actually encouraged to sabotage on another. But the rules, especially for character creation, were too clunky for my taste. Why should I spend an hour creating a character if he is in all likelihood just going to get vaporized ten minutes in for not smiling enough?

More recently I joined an All Flesh Must Be Eaten game that was played through Maptools. All the players seemed really enthusiastic, but the DM kept grumbling about not liking the online format, and it ended after just a couple of sessions. Once again, I love the concept. Who doesn't love a good zombie movie? But I found the game's mechanical approach to "horror" came out feeling more like "frustration." Here's an example. I made a character with 5 ranks in Assault Rifle. This basically made him the equivalent of a very competent soldier. I was standing over a prone zombie that was very slowly crawling toward me. All I wanted to do was shoot him in the head so I grab a keyring off the corpse. Surely my highly competent character could handle that? At point-blank range? Taking controlled, single shots instead of bursts? Well, no, he couldn't. He missed six freaking times in a row (which amounted to four or five rounds of combat, almost the entire session) because the mechanics stacked on penalties for darkness, for aiming for the head, and for a billion other things that weren't at all mitigated by the +1 I got for close range. It was rather silly, being unable to coup de grace a helpless zombie.

So I guess what I'm saying is I'm looking for something that is A) not fantasy, or is at least fantasy in another setting and B) is easy to play and mechanically sound. I found D&D unapproachably complex until 4e... has 4e spoiled me? Or are there other games out there, in other genres, that share its ease of use?

I've thumbed through Call of Cthulu, and I've always been distantly intrigued by Deadlands, but nothing in particular jumps out at me. I once played a game of Vampire that was a lot of fun, but that's because we basically treated it as D&D, and had a lot of guns blazing combat.

In conclusion, I don't know what I want. So... suggestions?

 

[Rechan]

I can think of several games where it was "Love the Setting, Hate the System".

It sounds (to me) like you might be interested in more Rules Light systems. Either very narrativist driven, or very "fast and loose", like Savage Worlds.

Some thoughts that do spring to mind (but I've never played them). Good luck finding a game of them):
Feng Shui
Mouseguard

My personal favorites:
Spirit of the Century
Dresden Files RPG

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I understand your mistrust of Paranoia given your history in D&D, but trust me, that game is a blast to play. The first thing to realize is that, unlike other games, one thing you DON'T do is spend an hour creating the guy. The second thing is that you have to remember that your PC is part of a clone "family"- you essentially have 6 "lives."

The ultimate in "love the setting, hate the system" games has got to be RIFTS. Its incredibly creative, but the mechanics are awful.

Another one sometimes found in that class is Space: 1889, the classic Wellsian/Vernian space RPG. I've used it as is, but also used it as a backdrop for 2 different supers campaigns.

Godlike, a supers RPG set in WW2 also has a system that you'll either love or hate, but with a setting that is extremely well written.

The supers/cyberpunk hybrid Underground is yet another game with a system of questionable quality, but a setting that is quite creative.

If you're interested in supers, probably the 2 most powerful systems out there are HERO (my personal favorite) and Mutants & Masterminds. Both are über flexible. HERO demands a chunk of time in PC design, but once that's done, the game runs quickly. You may not have to reference the book again until you spend some of your XP. M&M is almost as powerful, and is a lot easier to grasp for people who are big fans of D20 based games.

Shadowrun is a unique mix of fantasy and cyberpunk.

Deadlands is a classic mixture of fantasy & western.

Sidewinder and Aces & Eights are two of the best pure western RPGs out there.

I've had online discussions with the designer of X-Crawl, which is about LARPing as a competitive sport. While he didn't actually use them as inspiration, his game shares many things in common with Larry Niven's & Steven Barnes' Dream Park novels and the Westworld movies.

SpyCraft is another RPG based on the D20 system, and does spy/modern better than most.

The Scion games seem to be pretty cool for a modern take on demigods wandering the Earth.

 

[Rechan]

Shadowrun is a unique mix of fantasy and cyberpunk.

This for me is another one of those "Hate the system, love the setting" games. The system is clunky.

Same with Exalted. Oh god how I love Exalted's setting.

HERO is hellishly challenging to make characters, but yes, likely you won't need to reference it again if you understand how your abilities work.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, one man's "hellish" is another man's "obvious"- I know people who have tried and tried but ultimately failed to grasp HERO. For me, one read-through hooked me with its clarity.

 

[SiderisAnon]

The Scion games seem to be pretty cool for a modern take on demigods wandering the Earth.

Another one for "Love the setting, despise the system." So very broken.


The OP's original problem about not being able to finish off that zombie sounds more like bad DMing than bad rules. Every game has to include the idea that the rules don't cover everything and sometimes you have to wing it.

I do find that people are more willing to be flexible about the rules when it's a rules light system. A game like D&D 3.5 has a rule for everything, with paragraphs of detail, so no one ones to be flexible. A game like FUDGE has almost no rules, so flexibility is easy.


I personally have found Savage Worlds to be a decent rules light system. There are a number of worlds for the individualized system if you want the full details, or you can just buy the $10 main book and use whatever setting you want. You don't really need all that many special rules to recycle many game settings, unless it's a power heavy sort of setting.

The whole FATE/FUDGE system is great for rules light, and the rules are either cheap or free as I remember. You can do anything with it, though players used to rules heavy games might get the bends when coming up to such a light system.

If you're going to try a variety of games to see what you like, rules light is nice because there's less to learn. (And less to buy.)

If you really are burned out on fantasy, pick something completely different. Something like Feng Shui can be run with a single book and the Hong Kong action movie motif is something that is very different from fantasy. They don't even have elves!

 

[Snoweel]

Same with Exalted. Oh god how I love Exalted's setting.

Me too.

One of the things I love about 4e's revised cosmology is its similarity to Exalted's.

 

[Shades of Green]

I'd suggest Mongoose Traveller. This is a simple, straightforward yet extremely versatile sci-fi ruleset, which you can use with your own setting (the rules assist you in creating a setting) or with the official setting. Additional settings will probably be published soon by Mongoose as well as by 3PPs. For an overview of Traveller you can take a look at this thread where I discussed Traveller in great detail.

 

[Crothian]

There are many good games out there. But there are no perfect games. You get people who will tell you Scion is so very broken, but we played a good campaign that was a lot of fun and never had any issues. Systems that read bad or good (or that you are told are bad or good by others) can play differently depending on the group. Find a genre you like and you can find a game you can make work.

 

[jdrakeh]

You might want to look at Call of Cthulhu a little closer. It was the first pure genre horror RPG ever published and remains virtually unchanged even after 30 years (it has many editions but, with the exception of the licensed d20 variant, none are all that different from the original). Where is really shines, however, is in ease of use and breadth of alternate genre material available for it (qualities often not apparent when only thumbing through it).

As a game, CoC is ostensibly about Lovecraftian horror (i.e., horror based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and other Cthulhu Mythos authors), but it also includes options for more traditional movie monster-esque horror and surreal fantasy (via The Dreamlands). There are also several supplements for alternate history weirdness and even far flung future exploration.

The system, as the many different genre supplements attest to, is quite versatile. It's also quite simple, being based on a strait roll under % system (i.e., skills are ranked by % chance of success; you must roll that number or less to succeed). For these reasons, I think that it might be a good game for you to look into. Just grab the core book, one or two genre supplements that suite your tastes, and you should be set for a few months worth of gaming at the very least.