What game system have you tried that made you go WOW!

[Phaezen]

Shadowrun is my first choice here without a doubt, nothing has blown me away like it the first time I picked up the rulebook.

Call of Cthulhu, Dread and Unknown Armies are a close second

 

[Asmor]

Scion. Still not a fan of White Wolf's system in general, but I'm madly in love with the initiative system used by Scion (from what I understand, it's originally from Exalted, and it's also pretty much identical to the system used by the World of Warcraft minis game).

Basically, the Scion initiative system is an 8-sectioned wheel. People are placed in the slices in the wheel, and every action takes a certain amount of time. One weapon might take two or three slices, a slower weapon might take four or five, movement might take a couple, etc. Whenever you do something, you move your marker that many sections forward in the wheel.

Then you just keep going around the wheel. Whoever's lowest on the wheel always goes first.

 

[Umbran]

No game has ever made me go "Wow!" just on the reading. It's all in the playing.

My tops were:

Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP version)
Godlike
Deadlands (the original, not the d20 nonsense)
Mage: the Ascension (not the nWoD nonsense)

Shadowrun falls in not too far behind these.

It is my contention that Mage is both the best and the worst RPG ever created.

 

[GlassJaw]

Back in the day? Shadowrun, 1st edition. It was a mess of a ruleset, and we didn't understand half it, but damn was I blown away by the setting and the promise of what the rules could do.

Recently? Savage Worlds. Easy to learn but still robust and has infinite campaign possibilities. Not good for anyone with campaign ADD, however (like myself).

 

[drothgery]

Game that I thought would wow me but didn't - True 20

Game that actually did - Star Wars Saga, which is just about perfect

 

[jdrakeh]

The Window and Fudge, respectively.

 

[Greg K]

In order that I encountered them:

1. Champions: The first point buy system I encountered and I felt that it could do a better job representing comic book heroes and fights better than TSR's Marvel (which I did like for the invention rules and karma).
2. Rolemaster
3. DC Heroes 2e: So much goodness in the box, better (imo) universal resolution and creation rules than TSR's Marvel game, and the magic rules.
4. Shadowrun for the setting and Magic in the Shadows Supplement
5. Ars Magica for the setting and magic system
6. Warhammer Fantasy Rpg for the setting, art and career system
7. L5R for the setting and Clan books
8. 7th Sea for the setting and Nation books
9. Mutants and Masterminds 1e and 2e. It is as if Steve Kenson reads my mind. It did almost everything that I had written on Monte's board about what I felt was necessary for a good d20 based supers game.

Edit: Two that I left off:
10. Mage: the Ascension for the the magic system
11. Earthdawn for the setting

 

[karlindel]

I'll join the bandwagon and go with the original Deadlands. It's a great example of game mechanics that build a sense of the setting. The use of poker chips and cards had a lot of flavor. The western tone of the books also made them a fun read. I also liked that you can vary the gameplay significantly by changing the levels of western, steampunk, and horror that you use in a given adventure. The Savage Worlds version is also excellent, the D20 version is evil beyond words, and not in a good way.

Fading Suns and 7th Sea are two other games that I enjoyed a lot, although both of them for the settings and flavor rather than the systems.

I recently picked up Dread, and I'm hoping to run a game of it soon. The game mechanic is very interesting, and it's definitely unique to use a Jenga tower instead of dice or cards as a resolution mechanic.

 

[kitsune9]

The Window and Fudge, respectively.

The Window? I've never heard of this game. What's it about?

 

[jdrakeh]

The Window? I've never heard of this game. What's it about?

It's a generic game system, but at the time (1997 or so) it was the only game system I had seen with character creation governed only by the cooperation of the Storyteller (GM) and the other players.

Players were actively encouraged to define their character using only words, then work with the Storyteller to assign traits to those words. This meant I didn't have to level up several times to play a seasoned veteran of war or a world renown professor of archaeology. And I didn't have to worry about bookkeeping like I did in point-buy games.

The Window was also my first brush with a "step-die" system of any kind. System-wise it has a lot in common with Tales From the Floating Vagabond (it even uses a d30). It plays very fast and loose, much moreso than other step-die systems that I've had experience with (including Savage Worlds).

Back in the late 1990s, this (fast play) was a huge thing for me as I was drowning in AD&D, Shadowrun, and Rifts, respectively (all of which were chock full of rules, rules, and more rules). I guess, The Window was the first truly complete "rules light" game system I stumbled across.

Attached is a copy of the most recent revision. Just ignore the godawful intro. I pushed really hard to have that removed this time around (and the original author has since said that he dislikes it nearly as much as I do), but fandom won out. Damn fandom.

There are some interesting (albeit poorly translated) notes on Shadowrun conversion here, which is what initially piqued my interest in the system.