What fantasy system and setting should I try?

[Bill Zebub]

(cue Huey Lewis...)

What I'm looking for, in rules & setting & campaign:

1. Low magic, in the sense that by design casters are either rare as PCs, or even exclusive to NPCs, and magic items are special/rare.
2. Low-to-medium crunch. I lean toward fewer rules but with complex implications/interactions.
3. Flat-ish progression. Low level characters can adventure with high level characters. What's the opposite of "zero to hero"? Whatever it is, that.
4. Un-exotic: no flying ships, planar travel, floating cities, or tons of exotic races to choose from ("humans only" would be fine). And absolutely none of that steampunk crap that seems to be infesting the whole genre.
5. Save the Village, not the World: I'm also pretty tired of every adventure path being a race to save the world from destruction. It's fine if there's a Sauron out there, but the players shouldn't be setting out at 1st level to defeat him.
6. Suspense and fear.

Things I do like:

• Trudvang, thematically. (I'm just not familiar with the rule system). Viking-inspired games in general I'm finding appealing.
• The dice mechanic in The One Ring (one roll, but with various grades of outcome)
• Dungeon World mechanics/classes. (I just struggle with the overall Dungeon World playstyle, which requires a lot of improvisation.)
• Straightforward dungeon crawls

But other than that, whatever. I'm not picky.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

I would suggest two games: Forbidden Lands and Symbaroum. Both are by Free League Publishing.

Forbidden Lands
This is Free League's response to the OSR movement.

1. It's lowish magic. There's casters classes, but you don't cast a ton of spells and their pretty impactful. There's few magic items, but they're quite potent (artifacts).
2. The game is low crunch. But there's a big side-management side to the game. Tracking ressources, tracking raw materials, tracking some conditions. You can have a mount and a stronghold, you have to track your hirelings salary, etc. If you decide not to play with Strongholds and just do the adventurers running around, it seriously reduces the amount of work.
3. There's three elements tied to your character: his attributes (strength, agility, etc), his skills (melee, move, craft, etc) and your talents (something resembling feats). Your attributes will never increase. Your skills increase and you can get new talents as you spend experience you accumulate. But you do not become excessively powerful. There's no challenge rating system because lower-end monsters will end up being easier to manage but will always be a threat and higher-end monster will become more manageable but will always be a serious threat.
4. The elevator pitch is that the region known as the Ravenlands was covered by something known as the bloodmist for 300 years. People couldn't get really far from their villages as the bloodmist would reappear every night and kill anyone in it. Unexplicably, five years ago, the mist lifted. The whole ravenlands are ripe for exploring. There's ruins, hidden treasures. But there's no big cities, very little trade. There's only specks of villages around the map. The game is very clear about the players not being heroes but adventurers.
   Unfortunately there's exotic races but the setting is slightly human-centric.
5. The game is slightly brutal. It gets easier as your player progresses, but there's a lot of random tables and hunger, thirst, cold and dangerous enemies. Things can quickly spiral out of control.

Symbaroum
This is an actual dark fantasy product that joined the Free League family a few years ago.

1. Similar to Forbidden Lands. There's magic, but it's very mysterious. There's caster classes but they don't throw spells every round. And casting has a cost. There's something called corruption.
2. The game is pretty low crunch. It has a very simple roll-under your attribute system. I was impressed by how lean the rules were (maybe even a little too lean to my taste).
3. Similar to Forbidden Lands. There's no level, you accumulate experience and buy talents and boons. They give you abilities but you don't really progress all that much numerically. What was deadly will still be as deadly, you just have a better toolkit to manage it.
4. The setting is locked on a limited region of the world. There's an area of plains known as the Kingdom of Ambria that's stuck between a mountain chain and a humongous dark forest known as Davokar. An old civilization known as Symbaroum used to be here and thus there's old ruins, castles and treasures to be found in the deepest parts of the forest. But there's dangerous monstrosities coming from the corruption, there's the elderfolks (elves, goblins, etc) that are really protective of their territory. Once again, you play adventurers and explorers but not heroes.
   There's exotic races, but they're pretty based and not as high-fantasy as others. The setting is also very human-centric.
5. The game can be pretty brutal. It's marketed as a gritty dark fantasy game.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I'd suggest Beyond the Wall and Other Adventure.

It uses playbook like Dungeon World, uses OSR-lite rules.
Casters do not have endless cantrips, they can cast 1 spell per level per day. There's only the Mage class; no difference between divine or arcane magic. Spells do not have level, they just level with the mage himself. Then there's ritual, who are pretty long to cast, but are more. powerful (i.e Fireball is a ritual that takes 4 hours to cast, wall of stone takes 8 hours). Rituals require costly reagents that are consumed upon casting.

Its really made to play young-ish villager having sandboxy adventures around their village.

 

[TwoSix]

Forbidden Lands, Symbaroum, and Beyond the Wall (or it's S&S sequel, Through Sunken Lands) are all good fits for the requirements.

A lot of OSR games would fit a good amount of the requirements except for "zero-to-hero", which is pretty endemic to anything D&D derived.

For the grimmer Viking aesthetic, maybe Ironsworn?

 

[MattW]

1. Pendragon.
2. Bushido (It's probably best if you can find a secondhand physical copy. But there is a scan of the game for $10 at Drivethrurpg)
3. Warhammer Fantasy
4. Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of (I haven't played this one, but it has good reviews)

Of course, there are several systems that have supplements for Medieval/Renaissance settings. GURPS, or World/Chronicles of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu might all be possible solutions to your problem.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Warhammer Fantasy (1st Edition is best, imnsho, but the latest 5th (?) has some interesting bits n' bobs). This checks all your boxes.

Pendragon (as mentioned above). But its definitely got it's own "vibe" of Arthurian Classic Fantasy...which doesn't mesh well with the idea of "dungeon crawling".

Just about any Point-Buy-System (GURPS, HERO System, Masterbook, etc). These can be, obviously, used in almost any way. But it will take a lot more work to infuse your own particular "vibe" into it... generic point buy systems, without significant preliminary work on the part of the GM, feel just like their name; generic (flat, boring, grey, etc).

Oh, one more, maybe look at an old classic: Powers & Perils (early 80's fantasy RPG by Avalon Hill; you can get the full rules free, legally, here: www.powersandperils.org ). The only warning I give is this: It falls into what I termed back in the mid 80's as a "Lightbulb Moment" game. You'll start reading it, and be thoroughly confused. Parts will make sense, and others will make none. But, at some point, a lightbulb will go off over your head and all the pieces fall into place and it all makes sense. So if you persevere, keep going, it changes from a "highly complex and confusing system" into a "pretty simple system with a lot of stuff you can use or not use as-is". It's a "Low Roll is Better" system, using d100.

The P&P community are generally old farts like me, and we're mostly harmless (lack of teeth and poor eyesight and all that... ), but we are friendly. Join the mailing list and ask whatever you want. Someone will typically reply more or less immediately.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Bill Zebub]

Great answers, thanks. I have some research to do!

 

[Campbell]

I would take a serious look at Worlds Without Number. It works well with no magic users, has a pretty flat power curve, and is more swords and sorcery leaning than default D&D.

 

[Retreater]

I'm really enjoying Warhammer Fantasy at the moment and it seems to line up well with what you're describing. The Starter Set is a pretty great intro to the system if you'd like to give it a test drive.

 

[Bill Zebub]

That makes a bunch of recommendations for Warhammer. I will definitely check it out.