The Best Game of All Time...

[Brother MacLaren]

B/X stat generation, power levels, rules-liteness, resource management considerations, magic item availability, hard limits (18 ability score, 9 HD, -10 AC, etc.) Change 3.5's DC formula to make saves more like B/X, where your odds of making it go up as you level.

Ability scores improved by choosing 1 stat at each level and rolling 3d6 against it; if beat the old score, stat goes up by 1, if fail, get to roll 4d6-drop-lowest next level (if fail again, then 5d6-drop-2-lowest next time, etc.).

Limited spell list from 3.5, using the things that fit the B/X model (very few damaging or offensive buffing spells for cleric, wizard summoning spells rare and dangerous, save allowed for basically everything)

Removal of certain perpetual offenders on the spell list, or addition of a serious drawback (e.g. system shock checks, teleport death)

3.5 d20/DC task resolution mechanic, some races, some classes, multiclassing, and certain PrCs (the interesting ones that involve an actually meaningful tradeoff compared to the base class).

EK, MT, and AT are taken to be the necessary patch for multiclassing casters (with one free Practiced Spellcaster feat). About as good as a multiclassed caster in 1E or 2E. Any other gish-type PrCs should not exceed this power level.

3.5/4E hybrid skill system

Some of 4E flavor ("Points of Light," Feywild, Shadowfell, Far Realm), some of 3.5 flavor (Lords of Madness, Fiendish Codex, Great Wheel, Greyhawk gods)

Greatly limiting buffing by limiting sources, bonus types, and maximum bonuses; absolutely no stat-boosting effects at all except for Gauntlets of Ogre Power (18 Str)

Power Attack like Pathfinder's version

Weapon skills similar to BECMI Weapon Mastery or to Might & Magic VII

Wildshaper, beastmaster, and summoner are druid PrCs with non-casting 1st levels; base druid has no wildshape, animal companion, or spontaneous SNA.

Give the d12 more love

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Street Fighter: the Storytelling Game Second Edition

True to form, it came out after ten years of "revisions" and "nostalgia editions", and after all but the most diehard fans had given up the series for dead.

• Hardcover, full color, all illustrations by UDON Studios. They've done spectacular work for White Wolf games and they've done spectacular work for Street Fighter... they're naturals.
• Updated and upgraded to include the entire Street Fighter canon, from Street Fighter and Final Fight all the way through Street Fighter III.
• Use the WoD 2.0 Attribute system and make Social and Mental attributes more relevant to combat.
• All of the main characters' fighting styles and the most common real world styles in the core rulebook, along with all of the "standard" exotic backgrounds. Separate Karate from the "Shotokan" practiced by Ryu and Ken.
• Full splat coverage. Style books (for multiple related styles), Region books, a Cybernetics and Mutations expansion, a Magic and Psionics (Psycho Power!) expansion, an armed combat expansion... alternate campaign settings...

Only real rules differences from the game as it stands now? Using the improved WoD 2.0 attribute and background systems, a more consistent and balanced system for handling exotic backgrounds, and integrating the four or five sourcebooks that saw print into the core. Everything else is just wishing for the kind of support the game deserved the first time around...

Otherwise, my favorite games are already pretty close to perfect:

• I'd like to see a cross between "expanded core" D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder that's designed specifically for Gestalt play. I'm getting close to this by importing many Pathfinder rules into my 3.5 House Rules, but it still feels like I am trying to force the system into something it was not designed for.
• HARP is absolutely, outstandingly gorgeous and it scales beautifully from brutal, gritty realism to high action pulp fantasy-- which is just short of the kind of power level I like in my games. (As you might guess from my previous two suggestions.) It's about one solid "epic-level" sourcebook away from being perfect. Fantastic martial arts, persistent magical powers, assorted superheroics...

 

[maddman75]

Truthfully, none because I don't like generic system. I much prefer a game to be made for its setting and genre, not the other way around. I wouldn't want just one game, though there are games I really, really like.

 

[PoeticJustice]

Dread.

Dread's mechanic is a Jenga Tower. That's an awesome hook that can convince people who'd otherwise never play an RPG to play.

It's also an awesome mechanic that does most of the heavy lifting for the Host. Once you're in hour 3 of a game and 30 pulls have sucked out of the now-rickety tower, and everyone is sitting 5 feet off the table for fear that an errant breath might topple the thing, and every pull causes even the people watching to hold their breath in anticipation, you'll understand. All the host has to do is put some scary paint on that tension, and you've got the best horror RPG ever made.

Dread adventures can be prepared in 10 minutes.

Dread adventures only need to track one mechanic--how many pulls does it take to succeed here?--and that's usually something even a new GM can do.

Dread is cheap, cheap, cheap! 20 bucks for a pretty little softcover and off you go!

Dread's flaws are as follows: One can't really run a long-term campaign with it, because the fatality rate is just to high. It's great for people who want to run a twilight zone type of game, where every week someone runs a weird, scary adventure. Dread has no advancement system, and thus can't rely on that most easiest of motivations: reward. Dread is just weird enough to alienate some close-minded RPG'ers. Dread relies on a dexterity-based system to resolve challenges. Dread's PvP is enormously destructive.

Despite all that, I still think it's the best RPG ever.

 

[SolitonMan]

As long as we limit RPGs to PnP there will always be tradeoffs between easy rules and realism. So I vote for a holodeck - a completely virtual environment in which you actually interact with your surroundings, and which can create any sort of desired adventure on the fly.

It may seem far from realistic at the moment, but the OP did ask for the best game of all time, and the future is part of time. As well, if anyone hasn't already seen previews, Microsoft's work on Project Natal is a step in the right direction - a controllerless interface that captures live body movements and translates them into game actions. We're really not too far off from tech that, while not actually identical to a holodeck, would effectively perform similarly.

The advantage to such a system would be that all the details of the rules would be abstracted into the environment, and so there'd be no hardship from rules bloat or data tracking. All of the game would be about the action. If it was developed correctly, there'd be no need for a DM. That would be my best game of all time.

 

[maddman75]

Dread's PvP is enormously destructive.

I pretty much agree with everything you said about Dread. Especially that last bit.

I ran a game recently that I dubbed 'Dread at a Funeral'. Got the idea from a friend. The story involves a small-time crook that had found a magic amulet that gave him incredibly good luck but drove him insane. He had a string of successful robberies, but at the last one essentially committed suicide by cop. He wasn't really a well-loved guy, but several people showed up at his funeral.

- His wife wanted the amulet as she was convinced it was worth a fortune.
- His mistress wanted it because he promised it to her.
- His shyster lawyer wants it because he thinks it would help him win impossible cases.
- The pawn shop owner that sold it to him wants it back.
- His partner in crime wants it to continue the crime spree.
- An old professor from Miskatonic U wants the amulet to keep it safe.
- A rebellious mystic wants the power of the amulet.
- The cop who was at the scene of his death is convinced it gave him mystic powers.
- The funeral director is there, but doesn't have a clue as to what is going on.

The amulet has been hidden from everyone, and most believe that it is among his personal effects at the funeral home, or at least there will be clues to its location or someone there will have it. The funeral home is a cheap place in the basement of a city block, and halfway through the service an earthquake collapses the stairs, sealing everyone inside. The whole thing is set up to provoke PVP action. And boy did it work!

As soon as it started, several players wanted to sneak off to look around with no one watching, which required a pull. Of course someone else wanted to keep an eye on them, so they pulled. Before long two of them concluded that the girlfriend must have it so they tried to knock her out, other characters got involved - by the time it was over, there were half a dozen dead bodies surrounding the coffin. It was glorious

 

[kitsune9]

Edition Wars suck. This thread isn't an edition war. It's about games that will never exist.

Simply describe your idea of the best RPG of all time, probably by mixing and matching good qualities of other games. You don't have to know how these qualities would mix in real life - that's the work for some imaginary game designer!

The Rules:

1) You can't just say one game is the best game of all time. You could say (for example) "4e, but I don't like minions, so it would have better minion rules"). You should be listing multiple games/house rules/whatever.

2) Keep it short. No super-huge lists. Or, if you do, don't expect me to read 'em.

3) The most important Rule: No disagreeing with other posters. You can add/suggest to other posts, and ask questions... but no downright "you're wrong". This is, after all, everyone's unique opinion on the best game of all time!

Have fun!

My game would rules light but have the modularity to go to an "advanced" version. For example, the player's rulebook would be 64 pages, the GM's book another 64 pages, and adventures/critters book 64 pages. Complete game. Why just 64 pages? You can sit down and read it about an afternoon and get going the next day.

Then there could be an add-on or advance version where the books are larger. More rules, classes, complexity, etc.

My rules would be rules light in that there aren't too many rules, but what mechanics I do have will convey a lot of information. For example, in Top Secret/S.I. when a player rolled to hit with an unarmed attack, you could tell if you hit, where you hit, and how much damage you did with a single roll. I would make my mechanics convey a lot of information with a single roll.