Other fairly recent, high-quality, professionally-produced, original fantasy RPGs?

[Derren]

I just saw that DSA (The Dark Eye) is availiable in english. So get that.

 

[Psion]

If you can speak german try DSA.

There was an English translation, the Dark Eye.

 

[Khairn]

Given your criteria, I highly recommend Artesia Adventures in the Known World. You can learn about the game here.

-Origins Award Winning RPG from Archaia Studio Press

-It uses a variation of the Fuzion engine , but has been tweaked to fit beautifully with the setting. Character creation is both detailed and fun.

-The game and setting were written by Mark Smylie who also wrote / drew the graphic novels about the setting.

-The book itself is beautiful with a gorgeous illustrations, maps and a solid binding. The actual index is available as a download which is a minor annoyance.

-The history and flavor of the setting is both familiar and different at the same time. That's not something that many games can pull off, but Artesia does a wonderful job of it.

Given what you are looking for, Artesia might be a good choice.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I completely agree on the idea that a game should only need one book to do whatever you want, and then all the other books should use those same rules to build something and not introduce maybe more then a few small new things. That's why I like Mutants&Masterminds: you can survive completely on the core book alone, everything else is merely examples of what to do with it.

 

[RichGreen]

Given your criteria, I highly recommend Artesia Adventures in the Known World. You can learn about the game here.

Given what you are looking for, Artesia might be a good choice.

I would also suggest Artesia. One of those games I've read but never played but it does look good and the setting is really interesting.

Cheers


Richard

 

[RFisher]

True "fantasy heartbreakers" get their name from the fact that they are, generally, their creator's passionate ideal version of a classic, D&D-style fantasy game, doomed (hence the heartbreak) to failure because the market is flooded with dozens of games which are likewise their creator's "D&D done right".

Ah, so it’s the creator’s heartbreak due to a silly definition of success, not my heartbreak. Got it. (^_^)

Because it's sad to see someone put so much time and effort (and probably expose themselves to considerable financial risk) into something that inevitably tries to challenge D&D on it's home ground with the same weapons, and so turns into an also-ran.

There are classes and spells that are very like the D&D ones, there's usually an arcane/divine divide, and replications of many of the D&D features and limitations. You'll get a few differences; it's really unusual for a modern game to have armor that makes your harder to hit instead of allowing you to shrug off more damage, for example.

See, I call it cleverly not re-inventing the wheel and staying focused on the area where you do have an idea to explore.

I also think that, in many ways, D&D's position as the market's behemoth makes it easier for gamers to accept changes to it.

Instead of “easier to accept” I’d say “harder to resist”. (^_^)

As was mentioned in the the OP, Rolemaster is generally given as the example of a game that has too much crunch. Each weapon had it's own damage/crit chart which took up an entire page, as did each crit chart, as well as the several critical fumble charts. I can't remember how spells worked, but I'm sure they also involved large charts. This is before you get to charts about "how likely is inn food to poison you", and other such details. It also had lots of situational modifiers.

I played plenty of Rolemaster. There’s too big problems with treating it as the complexity punching bag. (1) Those charts might look complex, but they aren’t really so complex in use. If you look at it from a richness-added:complexity-to-use standpoint, tables can really be a big win. (2) ICE published every idea anyone ever had. Nobody was expected to use them all. That was clear even to my group that used a very large amount of it. And that’s not just the Companions. Much of the “core” books (at the time I played) were optional rules.

GURPS certainly has the capacity to be crunchier, even if most people seem to only use the simple version(s) of the rules. HERO is crunchier.

I vacillate on whether I consider GURPS as crunchy as 3e. It probably does have the ability to be even crunchier. (I never actually read Vehicles.)

The thing about Rolemaster and GURPS is that I find it much easier to scale back the crunch quite a bit. The “minimum crunch” that I can manage with 3e is higher than both.

It’s been a long time since I really looked at HERO, so it’s harder for me to comment on.

 

[pawsplay]

For smaller games, only the people who like it are really engaged by it. You don't see consistent criticisms. I think that's actually a significant drawback for them. It's nice to have fans who love your game, but the people who seethe and rant can be pretty useful when it comes time to figure out what you need to fix. If all you hear is praise, you're stuck with guessing.

If there is a dedicated group of people who like and are engaged in a game, why would you need to change it very much? I tend to believe that people who seethe and rant would be happier doing something else. And what useful things do you learn when a large number of people seethe and rant, "We don't like these changes?" Most of what you would be getting is a reactionary sentiment.

I think it's much more worthwhile to discover you have created a great game, then spend your energies on simply refining and expanding it. Continual innovation, with little refinement, is the mark of dilletantism. By leaving a game mostly intact, you allow people to become experts in it, then you enlist those experts to fix what actually does need to be fixed.

Creating very different new editions might be endlessly horizontal, but after a while, who is going to care about about yet another D&D? It is impossible to invest emotionally in something intended for obsolescence, or aesthetics that are tossed aside as simply "nostalgic."

Coming from a computer background, I have a deep skepticism of any OS less than a decade old. New technology usually means less reliable technology. New art disciplines mean less refined artistic disciplines. New game designs mean less playtested designs.

 

[JackSmithIV]

This thread has so many concepts flying around, you can make 10 or so forked threads which could separately tackle pieces of the issues. I, however, will adjust the original post, and a few things said.

There are games for you. There are games shining through constantly, from all sorts of unexpected sources. For a while, I had a kind of nihilistic view of the RPG world myself. Mostly because I didn't explore communities other than Enworld and the D&D core forums. All I saw were d20 games, D&D, the occasion similar game, Cthulhu, Shadowrun, etc...

But once I branched out, and opened up, there were plenty of things to take a look at. World of Darkness is a magnificently expansive world, with an easy system, a huge lean toward roleplaying, and excellent inspiration for my games. They are absolutely the best publisher (in my eyes) for books that are entirely usable for my game in every paragraph but can never be described as "crunchy". You can write them off as "emo-goth", but frankly, I don't know what the **** that even means. Even the best target for this kind of criticism (V:tR) is a full-fleshed out, interesting, intruiging game that continues to be a pioneer in it's small subgenre. I find that this criticism is usually targeted at the people who play the games themselves, and is mostly about belittlement than contructive criticism of the game.

Then there's the Fantasy Flight family of games. They're well-funded, well designed, and very sexy. I havn't picked up Anima or Grimm, but I'm giving you another WFRP vote for the game you should play. Fits your descriptors, and it's going to offer you an experience unlike anything you're used to. Dark Heresy might be another target for the "emo-goth" lable if you're a crackhead, but I'd say it's an incredibly solid game that comes from a fantastic Sci-Fi setting. Might not be at all what you're looking for, but it's a perfect example of a new game that's blazing it's own path, even though it mechanically resembles the rest of the Fantasy Flight game systems.

RPGs are going through a funny time. PnP games are going to see a big shift. All along the forums, people are starting to look for something new. On Gnome Stew, I participated in a huge thread talking about how the example of the Nintendo Wii can be applied to the idea of an RPG that would help evangelize the hobby. WFRP and Dark Heresy are getting more attention, and as 4th Edition gets more popular, more people will slowly trickle into the hobby, and others will search for new systems to explore.

This wasn't a very well thought-out post. I just wrote stream-of-consious, so it may not be fool-proof, but I suppose what I set out to say (whether or not I suceeded) is this... for those who would say that PnP RPGs are stuck in the rut of uniformity that we can't escape from:

Give it some time. You speak too soon.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

To the OP, if you can wait until next August, check out Spellbound Kingdoms. Yeah, this is a shameless self-plug. There are some technological elements in SK (zeppelins, submersibles, cannon), but otherwise it fits your bill. There are new mechanics that encourage fantasy roleplay and traditional gaming action (combat, competitive social encounters, war, chase scenes, etc.) without kowtowing to the conventions of the past. In particular, social encounters are impromptu and scored, almost like playing "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" There is also a specific fantasy setting: a paranoid magical Renaissance where the aristocrats hoard spells and employ secret police to prevent magic from being sullied and abused by common hands.

On another note...

Two words: grognard capture.

Something here isn't computing.

Firesnakearies said other RPGs change very little. Mike says that grognard capture explains this.

But grognard capture causes RPGs to change a lot. That's the whole point of grognard capture. The grognards take over and move the game beyond its core, doubling the size of the rulebook, making it increasingly complex, and likely (but not always) making the game less accessible to newbies.

I think I can tell that what was actually meant was: a) other RPGs have grognard capture, which causes the RPG to preserve vestiges of their earlier editions, and b) D&D has been brave enough to discard un-fun vestiges and "refine" itself.

Anyway, it's interesting to compare games (across all genres) that do change a lot from edition to edition to those games that do not; nice point by the OP.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Something here isn't computing.

Firesnakearies said other RPGs change very little. Mike says that grognard capture explains this.

But grognard capture causes RPGs to change a lot. That's the whole point of grognard capture. The grognards take over and move the game beyond its core, doubling the size of the rulebook, making it increasingly complex, and likely (but not always) making the game less accessible to newbies.

I think I can tell that what was actually meant was: a) other RPGs have grognard capture, which causes the RPG to preserve vestiges of their earlier editions, and b) D&D has been brave enough to discard un-fun vestiges and "refine" itself.

Not all change is the same. Grognard capture causes RPGs to grow and expand, but it also causes to core gameplay to remain unchanged. So the "core" rulebook might have very different contents with each iteration, but most of the change is the incorporation of earlier expansions into the core. The "nucleus" of the core remains unchanged.

Clearly all RPGs supported by active companies are changing. The question is whether the change only includes minor patches and expansions or whether it also includes periodic rereleases.

That said, I more or less agree with your interpretation of Mike's post, although I would call 4E more of a reinvention than a refinement. Pathfinder is the refinement, aimed more squarely at the grognards who were quite happy with 3E.