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

[avin]

The original Deadlands.

 

[amysrevenge]

I know you said not D&D. But the only game that ever "did it" for me the way you describe is the Dragonstar d20 setting/rules.

 

[kitsune9]

For me it was Sorcerer. Not picking up the book and reading, but actually playing it.

It's obscure and still in print - do I get triple bonus points?

Yes, you do!

 

[Woas]

Barbarians of Lemuria. It does S&S just how I always wanted it.

 

[Squizzle]

Dread, with its Jenga-based resolution system and its "13 questions" character creation. I'm not sure you could convince me there's a better, more atmospheric horror mechanic than the Jenga tower Dread uses.

It's not the fresh new darling anymore, but Dogs in the Vineyard continues to impress me. I realised recently that it's probably the best system available for running a thematically-accurate game set in Star Trek or Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I have yet to be anything but stunned with any system based on FATE3.

Wild Talents impressed me, but Truth & Justice is still my favorite superhero system. It (T&J) is pitch-perfect at simulating superhero comics from the mid-1960s and after.

And since I mentioned the One-Roll Engine with Wild Talents, I should bring up Reign. ORE is easily the best traditional dice pool system I've had for face-to-face play, since it can encode a ton of fast-to-read information into a single roll. Reign goes above and beyond the standard ORE mechanic by adapting it to abstracted group-level actions (e.g., war, corporate action, chorus line dance-offs), but still allowing the PCs to significantly affect the outcomes of these larger-scale actions.

 

[Aus_Snow]

What game systems have I tried that made me go WOW?! Hm, let's see.

Pendragon. So different from what I'd played until then, and it was an amazing (if far too short ) campaign. In fact, playing it impressed me so much, that I bought a copy some time later, and ended up nicking some of bits of the system and porting them to D&D.

Call of Cthulhu. And how many games has this one influenced, I wonder. . . A timeless classic, and yeah, there are reasons for this. Try it, with a decent GM, and you'll find out why for yourself. . .

Dragon Warriors. A fantasy RPG with *soul*. Has an excellent, evocative setting built in, great names for just about everything, from places to NPCs to spells, and so on. Plus, a neat, fast, intuitive system.

Ooh, colours! Anyway, those games all blew me away when I had the good fortune to try them.

 

[Ebon Shar]

For me it was Feng Shui. I first played the game with one of the game's creators at a convention in SE Washington and I absolutely fell in love. Great fun and so completely flexible.

 

[WalterKovacs]

One game I've recently started playing that has been making me say wow constantly:

A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying. It's currently in print by Green Ronin. It's still a bit rough around the edges (they've had a boatload of errata for the initial book, and we are still waiting on the campaign guide) but it terms of capturing the flavour of the books, it seems to work really well. Our group has started a couple of campaigns, which inspired me to start reading the books and not a chapter goes by that doesn't include something occuring in the book that gives a "and that is where that rule/benefit/flaw/etc comes from" moment or two.

 

[Mercutio01]

Slasher Flick - a rules-lite game from Spectrum Games (who created Cartoon Action Hour) specifically designed to play out a horror movie of the slasher genre. The mechanics are simple and capture the feel perfectly, and the actual gameplay is fun as all get-out.

 

[kitsune9]

For me it was Feng Shui. I first played the game with one of the game's creators at a convention in SE Washington and I absolutely fell in love. Great fun and so completely flexible.

I played Feng Shui at a con by a guy who loved the game and was probably the #1 fanboy. Needless to say, he made the whole modern wuxia Hong Kong action thing work and it was great. Nothing like playing a Chow Yun Fat with two guns going up against a 1,500 year old Chinese sorcerer. Awesome.