Looking for Game System Recommendations

[Zadmar]

My favorite part of this hobby is crafting interesting combats for my players, however, I find D&D overly complex and slow moving.

I have enjoyed playing D&D 3.5 and 4, but am looking for something simpler. I am looking for a "rules light" game that does tactical combat well.

That was one of the main reasons I moved from D&D 3.5 to Savage Worlds - I liked the tactical combat in D&D, but found it got really slow at the higher levels. However after playing each system for a few years, I actually find Savage Worlds is more tactical, despite being rules-medium.

In D&D 3.5 you can typically take one standard action and one movement action, and you have to finish one before you can start the other. Any special actions you wish to perform are covered by Feats, without those you're limited to some very specific actions in combat - which usually means you move up to an opponent and then attempt to hit them.

I find Savage Worlds far more flexible, as you can perform one or more normal actions, and freely combine them with your movement. So for example you could move 2", perform a melee attack, move another 2", kick a stone at someone (as a narrative-defined "trick"), move another 2", drop behind cover, and taunt a third opponent.

You can take Edges (which are like a combination of Feats and class abilities) to improve your chances of succeeding at certain actions, but you don't need them. It's far more permissive of player creativity, as players can describe any reasonable action and it's usually supported by clearly-defined mechanics. The initiative system also lends itself well to tactical combat.

And of course combat is much faster to resolve, particularly with large numbers of combatants. A big part of this is due the lack of bookkeeping (no need to write down initiative or hit points), but it's also because of the simplified stats (you don't need to balance everything exactly, and many opponents can just be made up on the fly) and the way attacks for groups of NPCs can be resolved like a dice pool system (if five soldiers with Fighting d6 attack a PC, you just roll 5d6 and can see at a glance how many hit).

Some other points which are worth noting. While Savage Worlds is good at handling large numbers of combatants, it doesn't do a good job of solo BBEGs - they tend to get trampled extremely quickly, and typically need minions to make the fight challenging. Combat is also much less predictable, there are no "safe" fights, there is always the risk of death. Player advancement is also much flatter, a starting character is more like a level 5-7 D&D character, and a high rank character is more like a level 12-15 D&D character.

 

[RetroGameView]

For those interested, you can get Savage Worlds Showdown for free, which is basically Savage Worlds combat turned into a miniatures game.

https://www.peginc.com/freebies/Showdown/Showdown.pdf

There are more download links here.

https://www.peginc.com/product-category/savage-worlds/

 

[scourger]

Here's another recommendation for Savage Worlds.

I also enjoy Dungeon Crawl Classics. It is not exactly light, but it plays easily; and I think it gives that old school feeling. http://www.goodman-games.com/5070preview.html

 

[Fractalpony]

Thanks for all the input. I will definitely look into all of these.

 

[sabrinathecat]

d6 system by West End Games.
Most famously their StarWars game.
Most quick, down&dirty game engine I've ever seen. Yes, you can ponder and evolve complex tactical situations, but if you want quick and easy to learn, you need look no further.

 

[Mloren]

My favorite is the roll and keep system currently used by L5R.

 

[Jhaelen]

"Rules light" and "Tactical Combat" tend to not be used in the same game to the best result.

This. You cannot have a rules-light game that offers the same depths of tactical combat that 3e or 4e do.

 

[steenan]

Rules-light games can't offer an interesting play with rules-based tactics, nearly by definition.

But you can also have fiction-based tactics (some people, eg. my wife, prefers it to rules-based tactics). And that's something that many modern games do very well. A few posters already suggested Fate Core and Cortex+ and I second these suggestions. Both are simple and reasonably light and both are designed to support fiction-based tactical play.

People who like battle maps and figures won't be satisfied with this kind of playstyle. But it can be no less tactical, and significantly more fun.

 

[Zadmar]

Tactical combat in game terms is more about available options than the complexity of the rules - take chess for example, the rules are very simple but the game itself is still very tactical. You probably won't want to model a roleplaying game on chess, but the same principle applies.

Rolemaster is one of the most rules-heavy roleplaying games I've ever played, each weapon literally has its own full-page chart, but there were rarely any tactical decisions - I'd just hit the enemy with my weapon, round after round, until one of us exploded in a shower of gore.

D&D 3.5 has a lot of combat rules, but in my experience fights typically consisted of moving up to an enemy and making an attack roll. Players would occasionally perform a maneuver like bull rush or grapple, and would try to take advantage of flanking, but most of the combat consisted of performing the same standard attacks over and over. There are many special abilities, but most of them require Feats or class abilities - and if you've invested in those, you typically want to use them as much as possible, which doesn't really add to the tactical options.

Savage Worlds is generally classified as rules-medium, but the reason I find it more tactical is that there are a wide variety of viable choices available to everyone (things like tricks, push, tests of will, Wild Attack, Rapid Attack, performing multiple actions, and so on), and movement is less restrictive (you can freely mix movement and other actions, and can even move around a bit during melee combat without risking attacks of opportunity). It's more permissive - if a player describes an action they can usually do it, without needing a special Feat. You can do different things each round, you don't have to just keep making a standard attack, and I think that's what makes it feel more tactical to me.

 

[Azgulor]

Another vote for Savage Worlds. While I haven't tried it for fantasy yet, it seems to hit closest to the mark on your requirements.

I have used it for sci-fi, and I found it to provide a great deal of tactical options without slowing game play. Hands-down, it's the best system I've used for firefights that provide satisfying tactical choices for players without slowing things down on the GM-side. Players also stay much more engaged in the combat and what other players are doing vs. going the "waiting for my turn" route, at least with my group.