What are your all time favorite rpg games, and why?

[Mortaneus]

Lessee...favorites....well, since I'm more of a GM than a player, I tend to look at things in that light. Here we go, then...

1. GURPS - I can put a setting together containing just about any elements I can imagine, and have it work. I second Synicism regarding IOU. The setting is inspired, and with Phil Foglio artwork too!

2. Planescape - Unbelievably good setting. Everything else ever published for any edition of D&D pales in comparison to this one. Best used by a mature group of players who are closet philosophers.

3. Street Fighter RPG - Yes, the rules are absolutely atrocious...but it's so much fun!

4. Principia Chaotica - Made by a friend of mine, and the single best GM I've ever encounted, Dan 'Doc' Myers, the game is inspired in it's simplicity. Hunt around for Monolithic Games, and you'll find it. Doc's book of tables is another good find, if you can dig it up. Especially the 'Pulling Something Handy' table. Ever find Cthulhu and a battleship in your glovebox? Ever try sneaking 'Throwing Knaves' past your GM on your equipment list? Try it sometime...it's a riot when you pull them out.....

5. Allout Helter - A LARP that runs out of Columbia, SC. Magic, Monsters, Guns, and Ancient Evils. Lots of fun.

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

i was wondering...What is Thieves World? I have never heard of it before this thread but many of you have listed it. Where can I find some information about it?

oh... bump.

Obviously Crothian is enworld's no. 1 guy for what Thieve's World is, but since he hasn't bitten yet -

Thieves' World began as a series of short stories by numerous fantasy authors, published in collections edited by Robert Asprin. The stories were set in and around the city of Sanctuary, a fantasy backwater at the @$$ end of an empire.

In the early eighties Chaosium produced a setting supplement for roleplaying in Sanctuary which contained rules for about a dozen game systems, each written by prominent people in that system. The Thieves' World box set is IMHO the benchmark by which all other setting supplements are judged. It was brilliant.

 

[Mr Fidgit]

i was wondering...What is Thieves World? I have never heard of it before this thread but many of you have listed it. Where can I find some information about it?

Thieves World wasn't actually a RPG, but a setting based on a series of books. the RPG supplement that was released (1981?) made it compatible was just about every fantasy RPG out at the time. here's some more info...
http://www.geocities.com/jillari1/menu.htm

back on topic, D&D (in all its incarnations) is probably my all time favorite (most played, most materials owned and read...)

but i really like Deadlands. great setting (wild west) and great system (lotsa props, you use all of your dice, especially those neglected d12s )


[edit - i stepped out of the room and you beat me to it, NoOneofConsequence! ]

 

[ejja_1]

favorite rpg's

D&D cus it was the first, Palladium for the setting. Twilight 2000 for the group who I played with, TMNT and other strangeness for the bizarre characters we made. Paranoia for the sheer ability to mess with the players.

Ejja_1

 

[Talvisota]

As much as I really like GURPS, I have been unsuccessful at making my GURPS campaigns as entertaining as D&D. Just can't put my finger on it, but D&D has an unbeatable nostalgic and well-fed base that gets you into the game better than other systems can.

So, GURPS for the system, D&D for the gestalt.

 

[Crothian]

i was wondering...What is Thieves World? I have never heard of it before this thread but many of you have listed it. Where can I find some information about it?

Simple anser dark Fantasy Setting. As others have said it is based on 12 collections of short stories written in the 80's. Many of the authoers wrote full novels on their characters and expanded the world as well. Chasium put out a box set in 81 and followed it up with 4 modules. It was none system specific including rules to convert it to all the systems out at the time.

As my friend said, this is a very dark setting. While reading one of the books he encounters most of the things in the BoVD except in the thieves world books, it was actually more vile.

The series has been reborn with a Novel that came out in the Summer called Sanctuary, and the first of the new collections of short stories came out a few weeks ago called Turning Points. They advanced the setting about 50 years and they are excellent. Sanctuary, the city this all takes place in, is alive like no other place I've ever encountered.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

(In no particular order...)

- GURPS: You can do pretty much everything you want with it, as long as it isn't too high-powered and you are willing to put some work into it. And many of the supplements are just plain brilliant (and my name is in Transhuman Space as well! Yay!)

- Shadowrun: We always come back to this. Sometimes, you just want to blow things up, whether with an assault rifle or a few kgs of C-12. This one had trolls with big guns as player characters long before d20 Modern was anyone's wet dreams.

- D&D: Another classic we always return to - when you want to see your PCs grow from helpless weaklings to near-demigods, D&D is the way to go. The 3rd Edition solved almost all the problems we had with the earlier editions as well...

 

[buzz]

1. Runequest: the best game that I never got to play.

While the BRP system has its quirks, I don't think that any RPG I've ever experienced did such an amazing job of conveying the *tone* of the setting as well as Runequest. The 2nd edition managed to provide a farily complete skill-based system that just *oozed* the setting of Glorantha. I don't think I ever read a supplement for it that was anything less than amazing. As far as I'm concerned, the Chaosium of that era was the greatest RPG company EVER.

It's one of the great crimes that that Runequest got sold off to Avalon Hill (for all their talent for wargames, they positively sucked at RPGs), and now is buried in liscensing oblivion in the vaults of Hasbro.

2. D&D3e: IMHO, the deifnitive version of the classic game.

3e/d20 just plain amazes me. A game so good that it brought me back into the hobby after a long hiatus, and brought me back *in force*. I'm probably a bigger gaming geek now than I've ever been.

3. Champions/HERO: hands-down, the best "system" I've ever encountered.

HERO is the main reason that I can't seem to get interested in GURPS. When I read the GURPS Basic Set, I kept thinking of ways that I thoguht the game ought to handle various rule constructs... and they added up to making it exactly like HERO. I have yet to see another point-buy system that, *in a rules-heavy context*, manages to be as flexible, universal, and balanced. If it can be done, it can be done in HERO.

4. Call of Cthulhu: the most fun game ever.

It might be more appropriate to credit the Keeper who was running the CoC games I played in college, but I have never had more fun, nor learned more about *what RPGs are capable of*, than when I played CoC. Of course, being an ENWorlder, I prefer the d20 edition...

5. Dark Matter

It's probably dishonest of me to include this on the list, as it is a setting, and I only got the book a few weeks ago. Nonetheless, this is easily the most entertaining and thought-provoking setting I've ever had the pleasure to read. I don't even particularly like the conspiracy genre, and this book has me hooked.

 

[Orias]

D&D third edition is my favorite. I think the rules are complex, yet flexible enough to provide any sort of story or character, & that if you play the game right, you can use many of the new applications (feats, prcs, etc.) as great role playing tools.

My favorite setting for D&D would be Forgotten Realms, because of how historically indepth it is, & how the different cultures aren't distinguished necessarily by race as a monolithic sense, but by regional culture to culture.