What Does Your Favorite RPG Do Best?

[SLOTHmaster]

I've been wanting to try out a new RPG. I already have Basic D&D, AD&D, AD&D 2e, 3.x (including Pathfinder), 4e, various classic World of Darkness books, Fantasy Heroes, several games using the Amazing Engine system, Sadowrun 2e, Lord of the Rings, Roma Imperious, and DC Heroes. I was considering GURPS, Dresden Files, Doctor Who, Serenity, Ars Magica, or Savage Worlds, but wanted to ask around a little about different games first. So what's your favorite RPG and why do you like it?

 

[bethroth00]

Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok

Well my favorite is Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok (FOTN:R for short), and I love it for a few reasons. One of the things it really gets right is a combat that plays out like a movie... Each player gets to do a lot per round, so when its your turn you can vault over a table, drop and roll between two enemies and reach out your arms and stab them each with a weapon! And even if I don't kill them, if I damaged them, they will lose some abilities from the damage they take. They will lose some runes from the runes they use from turn to turn (oh I forgot to mention, this game uses nordic runes, not dice) and so I will feel like a heroine! The combat really is cinematic and doesn't feel like a hamster wheel where everyone is just trying to reduce everyone to zero!

Another thing I love about the game is that it doesn't feel like generic fantasy at all. There are NO fantasy standard memes and tropes, no paladins or fireball casting mages... the world feels unique and real. I can compare it to the witcher computer game that really felt different than what we are programmed with. In fact a glorious death is celebrated, and players have a chance to roll more options (not more powerful) with new characters which captures the Viking spirit!

I dunno *shrugs* I can go on, but that's what really grabbed me and shook me... and I'm an ex-WoW & Skyrim player. I also love Pathfinder, but FOTN:R has really taken over our gaming table in style!

 

[Celebrim]

So what's your favorite RPG and why do you like it?

Of the ones you haven't tried, my favorite is Chill, 2nd edition.

There are several things I like about the game. First, it does small scale intimate horror better than any other game I've tried. When you get killed in Call of Cthulhu, it's often as not highly impersonal. That's of course part of the horror of the setting, but in Chill evil is intimate, personal, and deeply is invested in your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual destruction. This is the stuff of childhood nightmares. The other thing I like about the game is that it does a very good job of showing and telling you how the prepare the game and run it. This isn't merely a high concept game you read for the rules. This is a game that relies on a backbone of well written intricate modules to get you playing the game for real. Character creation is also a blast, since its a pretty elegant mix of a class based and point buy system, it helps you find a concept while giving you the tools to flesh out the character you want to play.

Another game that you should try is Star Wars 1e, in the D6 system. This is the system that best captures the feel of the movies, so that during the actions sequences you will be hearing the music in your head. While it's a completely different system than chill, the same basic praise can be heaped on it. The game does a wonderful job showing and telling you how to run the game. It has an a number of excellent scenarios. Character creation is elegant, helping to you to find the concept, while being flexible enough to encompass just about anything. The system isn't perfect, but it gets the job done.

Personally, I'm also fond of the classic Chaoism Call of Cthullu - 5th edition is what I have on my shelf, but there isn't a lot of difference between it and 3rd or 4th. The game is sufficiently lethal that it puts a high value on good roleplay and emersion, because really, you don't expect to survive combat. There are some odd quirks in the rules, but the system is very solid, character creation is fun, and the experience system that rewards you for what you do is as elegant as any ever produced.

 

[Evenglare]

Ive gotta push 13th age. You can preorder and get their ... for lack of a better word... beta edition , that gets updated every month or so (next one is due out this week that's supposed to be near final version). It's a d20 system, so it's probably familiar but it focuses on story and fast combat. It's so good, there's a couple of reviews here on the front page about it. I'll list some highlights I enjoy

-10 levels, 3 tiers (1-4 adventurer, 5-7 champion, 8-10 epic)
-escalation die ( every round you increase a d6 , the players get that bonus to their attacks)
-less magic spells , but they scale with level . ( There are still quite a few, but nothing like 3.x/pathfinder bloat)
-Your character gets one unique thing that you decide with the GM.
-Skills are put into backgrounds. ( For ex. In my dragonlance campaign I have white/red/black robe wizard skills, so when something magical applies in the story they add their relevant background skill)
- There is an icon system that adds another dimension of interaction with the big movers and shakers of the world.
- Damage and attacks scale with level (add your level to attacks, and weapon die goes up with level, for example a 3rd level fighter hitting with a longsword does 3d8 damage, they do suggest an average roll when it gets to be a lot of dice)

There's a lot more,but it's by far the best d20 system I have ever seen. I love it.

 

[Jhaelen]

I have a fondness for Runequest because
- the rules are a perfect compromise between realism and playability
- Glorantha is such a weird setting
- it's deadly

But my all-time favorite is probably Ars Magica because
- it has the best magic system ever
- it has the best downtime system ever
- it has the most believable setting ever (Mythic Europe)
- I love creating a Covenant and the troupe-style play

Nonetheless, I play D&D (4e) most often because
- I find it easiest to DM
- I'm enjoying the tactical skirmish game within the rpg
- it's just plain fun

Wraith: Oblivion deserves a special mention because
- it presents such a brilliant premise for a game (everyone just died)
- the idea of playing a fellow player's dark side is just evil
- it just oozes with atmosphere
- it's succeeds so well, there's probably no one who'd ever want to play it

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

HERO- I've yet to encounter a gaming idea I can't model in it. That means, among other things, that it is perfect for genre mixing.

Yes, PC-gen can be complex & time consuming. OTOH, once you have everything written up, you almost need never reference the books again.

 

[Cor Azer]

Chronicle System by Green Ronin, as currently implemented by ASoIaF RPG (generic supplements on the horizon)

Big draws:
- an intrigue/social resolution system that offers a back-and-forth as interesting as combat
- a combat system that puts injuries and wounds under a player's control (so players have most of the say as to whether that warhammer broke their rib or not)
- an excellent noble house/organization design/play system
- a "detailed enough" mass combat system
- for those that care, a system that allows character concepts from wet-behind-the-ear kids to stooped elders to be easily mixed in the same game

 

[Celebrim]

Jhaelen and I clearly have very different tastes in games, but we seem to completely agree on Wraith.

IWraith: Oblivion deserves a special mention because
- it presents such a brilliant premise for a game (everyone just died)
- the idea of playing a fellow player's dark side is just evil
- it just oozes with atmosphere
- it's succeeds so well, there's probably no one who'd ever want to play it

In my opinion, Wraith is the first and best example of almost the exact opposite sort of game than the ones I recommended. It probably has the best written rule/setting book of all time, and is just a brilliant evocative read. In terms of tying the mechanics to the game, it's as elegant as White Wolf has ever been with its somewhat awkward Storyteller system. Yet for all that, it is a game that is nearly unplayable as written precisely because it does do such a good job of conveying the alienness of being one of the disembodied dead. As written, the characters seem to rarely interact with anything. They have no collective motivation, no reason to be in a group, no real purpose in doing anything but enduring their own private hells. There are no clear examples of how to prepare or play the game, and in practice those people who actually did play Wraith did not play the game described in the original source book. It's possible that the game could be played one on one with a story teller and a single character, but I'm not sure how often even that happened.

Of course, to a certain extent Wraith was simply a more dramatic example of the problems in WW's most famous game - VtM. I was incredibly impressed and maybe a little bit frightened by the design of VtM when I first encountered and read the book, but so far as I can tell - for a variaty of reasons - no one actually played the game described in the original ground breaking rule book (based on their latter work, this would include the games designers).

 

[kitsune9]

I'm going to skip the Pathfinder, D&D, etc. games because everyone knows or plays those.

I would say Hero System. It's an awesome toolkit in which you can build your campaign from scratch, choose how complex you want the mechanics to be, and then start from there. It's kind of an investment of time for setup, but once you got that part done, then it's a rewarding system to play. All editions of Hero System are fun for me.

For runners up - WHFRP 2nd ed and Runequest II.

 

[Stormonu]

Savage Worlds.

Making characters and foes is dirt simple, but the game feels like it can handle just about anything you throw at it, storywise. Converting other system NPCs and monsters can be done on the fly in the middle of a game.

Despite the outwardly simple rules, characters feel like they have a lot of RP depth and the combat engine is surprisingly tactically rich. What you can do in 3 hours of combat in 3E/4E/Pathfinder you can cover in maybe 20 minutes in SW without rushing. And it handles epicly huge combats (say the size the man vs. man ship battles of Pirates of the Carribean) easily.

And the rule system is only $10, instead of the $50-$100 for other systems.