Stormonu
NeoGrognard
A bit of wracking my brain to remember what systems I've played beyond making a character and doing maybe a single encounter...
Gamma World (2E?): Played a short campaign (about 3 months) back in the early 80's. It was truly a gonzo experience - I remember my hoop-like character riding on the back of the group's speeder hucking radiation grenades at enemies in-between sniping others with a laser rifle as we explored all sorts of abandoned ruins. Great fun, though the DM handled all the mechanics behind the scenes. I collected all the other versions, but the one campaign was the only one I played extensively.
Vampire (OWoD & NWoD): Both played and GMed this game extensively since the 90's when it came out, moreso the OWoD. Mechanics were surprisingly light for the day and with the group I played with regularly, we rarely needed to touch the dice for OWoD games. Enjoyed NWoD, but the rules were much more in the foreground for those games. I've also touched WW's other products - Werewolf, Wraith and Hunter, but not to the level I've been involved with Vampire.
SAVAGE WORLDS: I've both run and played in multiple different SW games - a fair bit of Deadlands, Flash Gordon, Walking Dead and D&D adjacent games. I really, really like the system and if I had to drop D&D, this is the system I would use. To me, converting content from other games and genres seems dirt-simple and easy to me, I simply love it.
TOON: I can't GM this game, my mind just can't wrap around it, but I can participate as a player, though the game is too wild and chaotic, so I have to sometimes slip into the background and wait for the hijinks to calm down before I can meaningfully re-engage. Rules are dead-simple and all you need is a scene to get going - plot won't matter after the first few minutes, the players will make their own story.
MARVEL SUPER HEROES: I've GMed this over several years back in the '80s, with a lot of homebrew villians. The FASERIP system is super-easy to learn and use. However, its very easy for characters to get outclassed by opponents who have a couple grades higher stats or powers. Got to be very careful in tuning the power curve.
VILLIANS & VIGILANTES: Actually the first super-hero RPG I played. It uses a system tweaked from D&D to cover to cover the heroes and villians, allowing you to have range of characters from ordinary people to Supermen and beyond. I never DMed this game as there is a lot of mathematics to keep track of during play, and like the Marvel game you have to tailor content to the player's abilities. Most of the modules for the game were really fun, and there's still several bad guys I remember to this day (Phantasm gets the prize for returning-villian-we-love-to-thwart).
STAR WARS (WEG, 2E Revised & Expanded): Probably my favorite non-D&D RPG. I've played and run it for years and it just feels so good in getting Star Wars "right", without making Jedi overshadow everyone else. Probably the most complex aspect to the game is actually making characters without using a template - especially a Jedi. Rules are dirt simple, easy to run.
LEGEND OF THE FIVE RINGS (1E, 3E/4E): I've been a fan of Japanese culture since the days of the TV movie Shogun and when this came out I dived right into it. The five attributes being related to the four elements is a neat idea, and the roll and keep system takes a little bit of head space to wrap around initially, but makes for a really simple system. Lots of great lore for the game, but it takes a lot for player buy in because the culture is just so different. This is probably my second most favorite game universe.
7TH SEA (1E): This is another game where the lore is extremely rich and is far more important than the simple roll-and-keep mechanics. Game is set in 16th/17th century pseudoEurope, with splashes of magic thrown in. It's a high adventure game that would fit The Three Musketeers, Pirates of the Caribbean and Zorro. Folks that are accustomed to the magic of D&D will probably be flustered by 7th Sea's magic system as it is much more subdued and fairly low-powered.
SERENITY/FIREFLY: I've only run this a handful of times, but it's a good system that really plays to the storytelling element. The rulebook, unfortunately is scattershot - it's the only RPG rulebook I own that has a dozen bookmark tabs in so I can quickly find rules. Character generation is a bit in-depth as its expected you'll be having them around for a while, but the mechanics work very well for a Big Damn Hero in a common everyman shell sort of game.
ALIENS: I've only had experience with an extended one-shot for this, but it is a fantastic game and the existing adventures really fit the world. Mechanics are simple, but the game is freakin' brutal, just like you would expect it to be. I think it'd be really hard to do a regular campaign, but running an ongoing story of linked one-shots is what I'm planning - which is very much in line with the actual movies.
MY LITTLE PONY (River Horse edition): Sure, it's a niche game, but the rules system for this game is very SW, so I found it very easy to run and use. While I can't quite handle the mayhem of Toon, I was able to GM this quite easily and my players had a blast, and its one of the more memorable games I run. While its certainly geared more towards a kids game, there is enough of a chassis here that it handles adults playing as well.
ROBOTECH (Palladium): Of the several variations of the Palladium game system, this is the one I had the most experience with. It wasn't pleasant. I hate the Palladium system - it's cumbersome, slow and unintuitive. It handled the source material very poorly, mechanically and thematically. I keep the old books around for reference, but I'd never run the system again.
FIASCO: Ever since I watched the Will Wheaton show about this game, I wanted to play it. I wasn't disappointed when I got the chance, and I've played it several more times since then. Its free-form nature takes a fair bit of creativity and buy-in so you really need to have a good group to pull it off. The collaborative story-telling nature takes some of the pressure off the need to BS your way through a scene as usually someone at the table has an idea to get things rolling. Moreso, having a willingness to "go with the flow" is far more important as a lot of people who come into Fiasco the first time want to try and "win" it - and that is just the wrong way to go with the game. Just let things happen - I've had a case twice where my character "died" half-way into the story, but still got to use flashbacks and the like to be involved andscrew contribute to the other characters stories and antics for the rest of the game.
As I mentioned above, there's a lot of other systems I've tried out - either just making characters or having a session or two, but for whatever reason they just didn't survive long enough to say like I know them well. Including Shadowrun, Mechwarrior, TMNT, Star Frontiers, Alternity, BESM, DC Super Heroes, Dune, Fading Suns, Forbidden Lands, Pendragon, Rolemaster (MERP), James Bond 007, Spycraft, Paranoia, Space 1889, Star Trek (FASA, Last Unicorn), Tales from the Loop, Three-Sixteen, and Twilight 2000.
Gamma World (2E?): Played a short campaign (about 3 months) back in the early 80's. It was truly a gonzo experience - I remember my hoop-like character riding on the back of the group's speeder hucking radiation grenades at enemies in-between sniping others with a laser rifle as we explored all sorts of abandoned ruins. Great fun, though the DM handled all the mechanics behind the scenes. I collected all the other versions, but the one campaign was the only one I played extensively.
Vampire (OWoD & NWoD): Both played and GMed this game extensively since the 90's when it came out, moreso the OWoD. Mechanics were surprisingly light for the day and with the group I played with regularly, we rarely needed to touch the dice for OWoD games. Enjoyed NWoD, but the rules were much more in the foreground for those games. I've also touched WW's other products - Werewolf, Wraith and Hunter, but not to the level I've been involved with Vampire.
SAVAGE WORLDS: I've both run and played in multiple different SW games - a fair bit of Deadlands, Flash Gordon, Walking Dead and D&D adjacent games. I really, really like the system and if I had to drop D&D, this is the system I would use. To me, converting content from other games and genres seems dirt-simple and easy to me, I simply love it.
TOON: I can't GM this game, my mind just can't wrap around it, but I can participate as a player, though the game is too wild and chaotic, so I have to sometimes slip into the background and wait for the hijinks to calm down before I can meaningfully re-engage. Rules are dead-simple and all you need is a scene to get going - plot won't matter after the first few minutes, the players will make their own story.
MARVEL SUPER HEROES: I've GMed this over several years back in the '80s, with a lot of homebrew villians. The FASERIP system is super-easy to learn and use. However, its very easy for characters to get outclassed by opponents who have a couple grades higher stats or powers. Got to be very careful in tuning the power curve.
VILLIANS & VIGILANTES: Actually the first super-hero RPG I played. It uses a system tweaked from D&D to cover to cover the heroes and villians, allowing you to have range of characters from ordinary people to Supermen and beyond. I never DMed this game as there is a lot of mathematics to keep track of during play, and like the Marvel game you have to tailor content to the player's abilities. Most of the modules for the game were really fun, and there's still several bad guys I remember to this day (Phantasm gets the prize for returning-villian-we-love-to-thwart).
STAR WARS (WEG, 2E Revised & Expanded): Probably my favorite non-D&D RPG. I've played and run it for years and it just feels so good in getting Star Wars "right", without making Jedi overshadow everyone else. Probably the most complex aspect to the game is actually making characters without using a template - especially a Jedi. Rules are dirt simple, easy to run.
LEGEND OF THE FIVE RINGS (1E, 3E/4E): I've been a fan of Japanese culture since the days of the TV movie Shogun and when this came out I dived right into it. The five attributes being related to the four elements is a neat idea, and the roll and keep system takes a little bit of head space to wrap around initially, but makes for a really simple system. Lots of great lore for the game, but it takes a lot for player buy in because the culture is just so different. This is probably my second most favorite game universe.
7TH SEA (1E): This is another game where the lore is extremely rich and is far more important than the simple roll-and-keep mechanics. Game is set in 16th/17th century pseudoEurope, with splashes of magic thrown in. It's a high adventure game that would fit The Three Musketeers, Pirates of the Caribbean and Zorro. Folks that are accustomed to the magic of D&D will probably be flustered by 7th Sea's magic system as it is much more subdued and fairly low-powered.
SERENITY/FIREFLY: I've only run this a handful of times, but it's a good system that really plays to the storytelling element. The rulebook, unfortunately is scattershot - it's the only RPG rulebook I own that has a dozen bookmark tabs in so I can quickly find rules. Character generation is a bit in-depth as its expected you'll be having them around for a while, but the mechanics work very well for a Big Damn Hero in a common everyman shell sort of game.
ALIENS: I've only had experience with an extended one-shot for this, but it is a fantastic game and the existing adventures really fit the world. Mechanics are simple, but the game is freakin' brutal, just like you would expect it to be. I think it'd be really hard to do a regular campaign, but running an ongoing story of linked one-shots is what I'm planning - which is very much in line with the actual movies.
MY LITTLE PONY (River Horse edition): Sure, it's a niche game, but the rules system for this game is very SW, so I found it very easy to run and use. While I can't quite handle the mayhem of Toon, I was able to GM this quite easily and my players had a blast, and its one of the more memorable games I run. While its certainly geared more towards a kids game, there is enough of a chassis here that it handles adults playing as well.
ROBOTECH (Palladium): Of the several variations of the Palladium game system, this is the one I had the most experience with. It wasn't pleasant. I hate the Palladium system - it's cumbersome, slow and unintuitive. It handled the source material very poorly, mechanically and thematically. I keep the old books around for reference, but I'd never run the system again.
FIASCO: Ever since I watched the Will Wheaton show about this game, I wanted to play it. I wasn't disappointed when I got the chance, and I've played it several more times since then. Its free-form nature takes a fair bit of creativity and buy-in so you really need to have a good group to pull it off. The collaborative story-telling nature takes some of the pressure off the need to BS your way through a scene as usually someone at the table has an idea to get things rolling. Moreso, having a willingness to "go with the flow" is far more important as a lot of people who come into Fiasco the first time want to try and "win" it - and that is just the wrong way to go with the game. Just let things happen - I've had a case twice where my character "died" half-way into the story, but still got to use flashbacks and the like to be involved and
As I mentioned above, there's a lot of other systems I've tried out - either just making characters or having a session or two, but for whatever reason they just didn't survive long enough to say like I know them well. Including Shadowrun, Mechwarrior, TMNT, Star Frontiers, Alternity, BESM, DC Super Heroes, Dune, Fading Suns, Forbidden Lands, Pendragon, Rolemaster (MERP), James Bond 007, Spycraft, Paranoia, Space 1889, Star Trek (FASA, Last Unicorn), Tales from the Loop, Three-Sixteen, and Twilight 2000.
