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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 6105541" data-attributes="member: 85870">Savage Worlds. Period. End of discussion. Seriously, I've been running various Savage Worlds campaigns for about 2 years now, and hands down, this is the system that meets all of your criteria. Savage Worlds Deluxe is a wholly self-contained, complete rules system that supports all of the genres you described out of the box with minimal "shift" in mindset. You can go for the fantastic hardcover book for $30, or you can spend as little as $10 for the paperback, "explorer" size rules. In either case, you're getting the exact same rules system. The system is classless, meaning each character chooses their own unique sets of skills / edges (feats) and areas of focus. There are no "dump" stats in Savage Worlds, and the dice mechanic keeps average abilities close enough together that it's almost impossible for any one character to completely overshadow another. It's also incredibly easy to learn---one of my current players had never played a table top RPG before; one had played maybe twice EVER as a teenager over a decade ago. We're now 4 sessions in to our campaign, and both of these players have already quickly caught on to the basics, and are already moving into more "advanced" stuff in the rules. Every single player and character has meaningfully contributed in every session and encounter, played to their strengths, and generally had a great time. Once you understand the basics of the resolution system, you can literally come up with entire encounters THE SECOND the players engage them, without having a single enemy pre-generated before hand. Obviously you can create more dynamic terrain and interesting encounter "hooks" if you pre-generate them, but if it's literally just a, "Oh hey, looks like there's 8 orcs here you weren't expecting!" you can do that EASILY without spending a SECOND before hand preparing the encounter. And don't let anyone fool you into thinking that because it's "generic" that it won't run fantasy well. Savage Worlds emulates "classic" fantasy so well I hardly believe it at times, while being more consistent in terms of rules structure, easier to adjudicate, and with more dynamic, interesting combats than the "old school" D&D rules systems. It's very rare for me to universally recommend something, but you couldn't have matched your criteria to Savage World's strong points any better than if you had written the game yourself. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Worlds-Deluxe-S2P10014-Hensley/dp/1937013049/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363902497&sr=8-1&keywords=savage+worlds" target="_blank">Start here</a>, or switch to the paperback version on the same page.</blockquote>

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