What are the major RPG systems?

[PJ-Mason]

The major ones would be Palladium, D&D, Gurps, Storyteller, and Hero. They all have huge followings and huge lists of game books for their franchise game system/engine. I don't throw in D20, because its a different kettle of fish than the others, as it has 100 different publishers, not just WOTC.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

actually, I think the "major game systems" should be classified by system type, not brand name.

dice pool systems, skill-based systems, class-based systems, level-based systems, etc.

 

[Samothdm]

Fantasy Games Unlimited

I remember back in the 1980s that FGU advertised several different games every month in Dragon, stuff that's been mentioned, like Bushido, but there were also ones like Aftermath, Space Opera, and a Pulp/Adventure one (I forget the exact name) and it seems like at least 3-4 others. Since they were all RPGs by the same company, I assumed that they were all roughly the same "system". And, since they advertised every single month for at least a couple of years I assumed that they were making money.

I never played any of those games. Were they part of the same system? And, does anyone know if they made any money?

 

[PJ-Mason]

actually, I think the "major game systems" should be classified by system type, not brand name.

dice pool systems, skill-based systems, class-based systems, level-based systems, etc.

I think that might cause more confusion than is needed. There is more than one game system that could qualify as more than one of the above. Plus you didn't add point-based in there, which would send it into an even bigger spin.
If you DID judge by that critieria, then Palladium/D&D (as class based games) combined would crush the rest of them i think.

 

[Ron]

We are creating lists of favourite system here, rather than major.

If you are going for the systems that have sold well, you only end up with a handful:

D&D
GURPS
Storyteller

After that you have

BRP
Palladium
Heroes/Champions

Everything else, whether you love it or hate it, is pretty much filler.

Heck, I love Ars Magica to tears, but I would never consider it a "major" system; D6/WEG had its following, but never the real numbers.

There are the Big Three and The Others. That's called marketing.

You're underestimating by far the volume of sales in the 80s. Usually, companies do not post the number of units sold as it is considered a business secret. However, I suggest you to give a look in Marc Miller's series of reprints of Traveller. He states sales in the order of a few hundreds of thousands, something only a few WotC books can achieve now. Also, d6, or more properly, WEG's Star Wars was a major success in its time, much more than the WotC d20 version. I have no numbers but I would guess it could be easily considered a major system.

 

[buzz]

I remember back in the 1980s that GDW advertised several different games every month in Dragon, stuff that's been mentioned, like Bushido, but there were also ones like Aftermath, Space Opera, and a Pulp/Adventure one (I forget the exact name) and it seems like at least 3-4 others. Since they were all RPGs by the same company, I assumed that they were all roughly the same "system". And, since they advertised every single month for at least a couple of years I assumed that they were making money.

These aren't by GDW. These are FGU (Fantasy Games Unlmited). The pulp game was Daredevils.

Technically, they're still in business, i.e., they have a warehouse in Arizona where they keep stock that you can sort of still buy, thus prepetuating their hold on the various copyrights they own, insuring that you'll never see new editions of classic games like V&V or Space Opera. :\

Anyway...

None of their games shared a common system (though I think Land of the Rising Sun was mostly Chivalry & Sorcery based). FGU wasn't a game design company as much as a publishing imprint, so most of the games were by different designers and had nothing in common with each other, save for stapled bindings and a semi-hard-to-read sans-serif font.

FGU's games were notable for being insanely compicated, for the most part, generally involving as many forumlas as they could cram in the rulebook. Space Opera actually required use of trigonomoetry for space sombat, and Aftermath used some sort of 40-step flowchart to resolve damage, iirc. V&V had a formula for carrying capacity that used cubes and nested expressions; unfortunately it was wrong, adn didn't get errata'd until Jeff Dee posted the correction on his Web site... some 15 years later.

--Buzz, who bought a *lot* of FGU product in the 80s.

 

[akchf]

I don't think I read the Coda system in any of the lists above, that's what Decipher used in the Lord of the Rings and Star Trek.

 

[buzz]

I don't think CODA qualifies as "major," though. Not to mention, Decipher has canned their RPG staff, so the system is not long for this earth.

 

[Samothdm]

These aren't by GDW. These are FGU (Fantasy Games Unlmited). The pulp game was Daredevils.

Technically, they're still in business, i.e., they have a warehouse in Arizona where they keep stock that you can sort of still buy, thus prepetuating their hold on the various copyrights they own, insuring that you'll never see new editions of classic games like V&V or Space Opera. :\

Thanks for the correction - you're totally right, of course. Now I remember that those were FGU, not GDW. I corrected my original post to make the change.

I had forgotten about Villains & Vigilantes, too.

My (f)LGS had a copy of Bushido in their 50% off bin a couple of months ago. The problem was that due to bad printing, the ink on some of the pages had actually come off onto the facing page, so a good 10% of the book was completely illegible.

and Aftermath used some sort of 40-step flowchart to resolve damage, iirc. V&V had a formula for carrying capacity that used cubes and nested expressions; unfortunately it was wrong, adn didn't get errata'd until Jeff Dee posted the correction on his Web site... some 15 years later.

I remember a thread on ENWorld awhile back discussing the insane math required to run an Aftermath game.

 

[JoAT]

Tri-Stat/BESM is the only relatively important system I haven't seen mentioned yet. (edit - Because I overlooked Thanee's post. )

But yeah, really 'major' are only D&D/d20 and Storyteller; everything else is secondary.

I'll second (or perhaps thrid) Tri-stat/BESM as a major system - After all, looking at it's growth over the past 5 or so years since it's come into being, the relatively large array of games produced under the label, and the fact that there's a small, but burgoning (close enough to) third party movement under the Magnum Opus line... Besides, the core books for any of their games seem to outsell the ones for Palladium/Rifts, up here, anyways...