Good Narrativist Game Systems?

[Wik]

Savage Worlds has a good mix of crunch and narration; but the combat pretty much demands a grid.

Shadowrun, to me, is pretty open to character development, though it is definitely crunchy.

The d6 system, such as d6 Space or d6 Adventure, is a very easy system that can be played with very little in the way of rules knowledge.

 

[Woas]

Wushu

...or just read a book.

 

[eyebeams]

See my sig!

 

[Campbell]

Mutants and Masterminds 2e is a somewhat traditional role playing game with narrative leanings (mostly in the way Hero Points and Complications are used). It is a fairly crunchy game though.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Thanks everyone, I will look up the different systems that have been suggested.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

If you can be more specific in terms of what you'e looking for, it'd be easier to suggest stuff.

To be honest, games that focus/rely on miniatures are really the minority, in terms of how many there are. Since this is a board focused on D&D and d20, you're going to see a huge emphasis on it just for that reason; add in the fact that D&D _is_ the #1 rpg out there, and it can sometimes feel like everything requires minis or has a rather tactical focus.

You say you're looking for something that's "lighter" on the crunch, but still has some. That helps narrow things a bit, but it's still pretty open.

Unisystem is a good way to go. Their mainstay is the All Flesh Must be Eaten line, which focuses on zombie stuff. Lots of supplements, and you can use them across a bunch of the other games. They also did the Buffy/Angel games, which are solid in my opinion. The rule system is slightly different for the Buffy/Angel line, using the "Cinematic" version of Unisystem, whereas AFMBE, Witchcraft and others use the "Classic" version.

You can download the Witchcraft book for free from here:
http://enworld.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=692&it=1&filters=0_0_0&free=1

There's a spiffy game out there called Witchhunter: The Invisible World. It's done by Paradigm Concepts, who's responsible for something called Arcanis (d20 thingy) that folks seem to like. Witchhunter uses a d10 system that's similar to the old World of Darkness mechanics apparently. The setting is "action horror", set in the 1620s in a world mostly like ours.
http://www.paradigmconcepts.com/

Let's see...

For science fiction, there's Blue Planet, and Serenity (or the Battlestar Galactica game which uses a tweaked and updated version of the Cortex system). There's others, but tossing out minis eliminates something like Heavy Gear for example.

There's also Fireborn, which is a great ruleset and a great setting, but you shouldn't use the rules with the setting. The setting would work better using something like Unisystem or WoD or something. The rules would work better for a game with lots of combat. Fantasy Flight Games has abandoned this game though, which might be a problem for some folks.

Secret of Zir'An which had some printing problems that people made a much bigger deal of that it really warranted, especially since they put up the entire chapter that had some problems in some books for download on their website (paragon games). It's a "pulp fantasy" like some folks claim Eberron is, but it really delivers; Eberron is an entertaining setting, but it's still D&D. SoZ's world is much more like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, with magic and other fantasy trappings added in. Very slick, and a sadly under appreciated game.
http://www.paragongames.us/

SoZ is unfortunately a "dead" game as well. There's fans out there, but again a "dead" game is a deal breaker for some folks.

Feng Shui is a solid game, all about action. It's apparently based on some CCG, but I don't know jack about the CCG and that lack of knowledge has had zero impact on my enjoyment of the game.

Qin might be a bit on the light side for you, but if you're wanting some ancient chineese wuxia action, it's a good way to go.

Indy stuff? All kinds of options. The Shadows of Yesterday and Spirit of the Century are two solid picks. Depending on what you're after from there, something like Nine Worlds might appeal (kinda sorta like Nobilis but not).

And that's just the highlights from some of my collection.

After that...

Well, there's a number of different flavors of d20, all the old White Wolf games, some of the new White Wolf stuff...

Right now about all you're going to get is, "Pimp your favorite game or flavor of the month". Genre, setting, and what you want the rules to do are all important things.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Right now about all you're going to get is, "Pimp your favorite game or flavor of the month". Genre, setting, and what you want the rules to do are all important things.

I was going to post something like this, but well, you did.

It's true. Even the term 'narrativist' might or might not mean what you think it means in the context. And if it does, there's still a lot of room for disagreement.

If you want a somewhat lighter form of d20, I'll certainly pimp a couple of my faves - True20 and M&M. I have no idea if they'll appeal to you, but I enjoy them. Er. . .

So yeah, you'll get a bit of that, unless you specify some things.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Wow. Almost none of the games that I've seen in this thread strike me as Narrativist! The GSN framework isn't really a great one, anyway, and in part because of the confusion over the categories. Unfortunately, my experience with these games is pretty limited, so I don't feel comfortable recommending one.

 

[apoptosis]

I would second The Shadow of Yesterday.

It is pretty lite but has enough crunch to make things interesting.

The Bringing Down the Pain idea is really awesome as it allows players to determine which conflicts should be granular and which ones should be glossed over. It allows drama without having TPK be an easy thing to happen.

It is very easy to add new parts to the game as a whole.

It is very narrative and is conflict-resolution based which can be granular when the players choose (kind of a repeat of above).

I think it is one of the best fantasy RPGs out there and it is free.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Wow. Almost none of the games that I've seen in this thread strike me as Narrativist! The GSN framework isn't really a great one, anyway, and in part because of the confusion over the categories. Unfortunately, my experience with these games is pretty limited, so I don't feel comfortable recommending one.

Well, you'll notice that I didn't make any claims about "Narrativist". I tried to stay more towards a "rules-medium" area, shading down a bit into the lighter side with something like Qin or The Shadows of Yesterday.

And I woudn't say that there's "confusion" over the categories. It's that the categories/terms mean different things to different folks. And like it or not, the majority defines what something means. While the whole GNS thing has been around for a while, it hasn't been adopted by a majority of anyone. The people most likely to even know what GNS is are those that are online, and an entire chunk of them outright reject/loathe the whole thing. Many of those that don't reject it outright spend all their time not just arguing about how many angels are dancing on the head of pins, but what kind of dances these angels are doing.

I mean, let's be honest here... despite some folks frothing hatred of World of Warcraft, it bills itself as a roleplaying game. It doesn't matter that it doesn't match up to how some (or even many) people run their games. The majority has defined an "rpg" to mean [x], and that's how it's used. Someday, perhaps folks will have an agreement on the whole GNS thing (or whatever other pet rpg theory there is) and what the different terms mean. Until then, people are going to use the terms in the way that makes sense to them, even if others think they're "confused".

Personally, I have a love-hate thing with rpg theory and the terms everyone likes to toss around. I really like the potential help it can offer someone to figure out how to tune a game to match the kind of play that they want to get. There's some pretty sharp thinkers out there that have managed to zero in on some pretty groovy things.

I hate how almost all the theory discussions are more about mental masturbation than actually being useful. Arguements over how to define something, whether you're really playing a game "right", people bashing everyone else's playstyle that isn't their own pet favorite... it's an awful lot of static to sort through, just to get to something that's actually going to be applicable to my games.

That's another reason why I said the OP really needed to give up some additional information. Plenty of people for example could take exception to the idea of there being crunch to play around with, and yet still calling a game "Narrativist". For better or worse there's a pretty strong link with "narrativist" and "rules light" in many places.

The O.P. is going to be served far better by simply describing what they're after in terms of rules doing this or that, and not doing this other thing. In my opinion whether something is "narrativist" is completely beside the point.