Good Narrativist Game Systems?

[Tinker Gnome]

Heh, okay, I will try and define what I am looking for more.

1. Needs to be able to handle a "traditional" fantasy campaign
2. Minis and Grid not a part of the system.
3. A player should be able to say " I am going to try and do X" and the GM should be able to adjudicate it quickly.
4. Quick character creation.
5. A magic system that is easy to learn and easy to adjudicate for the GM.

Basically, I am thinking of a system where the players can sit down and create all their characters in under 15 minutes, then they could jump right into the game and have fun.

There should still be some crunch so a player can have fun equipping their character with cool items, but not have those items be necessary to them being effective in gameplay.

Please no one say 4E.

 

[LostSoul]

I think The Shadow of Yesterday should fit all those needs, though I haven't looked into magic. It is, however, just another way of doing things, so it doesn't use a different sub-system or anything like that.

Here is one flavour of magic in TSoY; you need to buy Secrets (which you can do when you get XP, or when initially creating a PC) in order to use them. Looks like they all use standard skill checks to resolve success, just that you can do a little more with that standard skill. All magic systems are like that in TSoY.

It comes with a complete setting, but if you don't like that, just steal from the basic setting what you like and make up your own. That's what we did in our current game.

 

[apoptosis]

I think The Shadow of Yesterday should fit all those needs, though I haven't looked into magic. It is, however, just another way of doing things, so it doesn't use a different sub-system or anything like that.

Here is one flavour of magic in TSoY; you need to buy Secrets (which you can do when you get XP, or when initially creating a PC) in order to use them. Looks like they all use standard skill checks to resolve success, just that you can do a little more with that standard skill. All magic systems are like that in TSoY.

It comes with a complete setting, but if you don't like that, just steal from the basic setting what you like and make up your own. That's what we did in our current game.

There are several different magic systems based on the cultures:

Maldor uses 3-corner magic (more traditional wizardry)

The Zumani uses Zu which is something like Cabalism

The Qek uses shamanism

Etc.

It is pretty easy to design magic systems in the game and you can find several more fan-developed around

 

[Andor]

Heh, okay, I will try and define what I am looking for more.

1. Needs to be able to handle a "traditional" fantasy campaign
2. Minis and Grid not a part of the system.
3. A player should be able to say " I am going to try and do X" and the GM should be able to adjudicate it quickly.
4. Quick character creation.
5. A magic system that is easy to learn and easy to adjudicate for the GM.

Basically, I am thinking of a system where the players can sit down and create all their characters in under 15 minutes, then they could jump right into the game and have fun.

There should still be some crunch so a player can have fun equipping their character with cool items, but not have those items be necessary to them being effective in gameplay.

Please no one say 4E.

I'd say Earthdawn, but the magic system isn't that quick to learn.

Ars Magica is brilliant but very mage focused.

World Tree is basically a variant of the Ars Magica system but every character can use magic and it's dialed back a bit.

5th Cycle is a nice basic fantasy RPG.

BESM or Tri-System is quick to pick up and usable for fantasy.