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

[Primal]

Right there with you. Dread vaulted into first place as my favorite horror system, and hasn't left yet. More details here.

My current darling is Pelgrane Press's game Skulduggery, by Robin Laws. It's in playtest right now and is a more flexible variant of the Dying Earth rules. Basically, it's a game that allows verbal combat as well as physical, and you can use verbal combat to make other people and players do things they otherwise wouldn't. I'm finding it to be ridiculously fun.

Paranoia was a game that made me go Wow! I loved everything about it: the art, the humor, the setting, the speed, the simplicity. If there's a game that plays to my strengths, it's Paranoia.

Ah, Paranoia... I remember one time when we saw trees for the first time and realized that these strange beings had a higher security ranking than we did (brown and green)! Good times, and a great system!

BTW, is the verbal combat system in Skulduggery anything like the social skills in Dying Earth RPG?

 

[Piratecat]

BTW, is the verbal combat system in Skulduggery anything like the social skills in Dying Earth RPG?

It sure is. With the Dying Earth license going away, Skulduggery is that same rule set cleaned up and made more flexible.

 

[Primal]

It sure is. With the Dying Earth license going away, Skulduggery is that same rule set cleaned up and made more flexible.

Oh, that's great to hear! I have read the Dying Earth rules book but haven't tried it; still, I was very impressed at how flexible and easy the system is (e.g. you roll 1D6 and can re-roll once for every point you have in the governing stat) and also how prefectly it modeled Vance's stories. I especially liked that certain specializations hold an advantage over the others.

I might very well buy this when it comes out. Any release date yet?

 

[scourger]

Savage Worlds as a game system had the biggest "wow" factor for me. It really is an elegant system. The different die types are intuitive for me to understand advancement, and I really like the use of chips for bennies & cards for initiative. Once I read it, I couldn't wait to play it. Tour of Darkness and Necropolis have been my favorite settings so far.

ORK! had similar "wow" factors. I like that it is focused in scope & mechanics. Plus, anything is possible with the task resolution system that randomly assigns a number of dice that are rolled for the check number based on how difficult the task may be. I thought that was a really cool feature. OG is similar, but you plan cavemen instead of orks.

Rifts was a lot of "wow" for me, too, in it's day. I know the system is clunky, but it all works together well enough for its awesome setting. I probably give it more of a passs since I was already familiar with Heroes Unlimited. More recently, I picked up Machinations of Doom, and now I want to run Rifts again.

Omega World d20 is another "wow" game for me. It really nicely & concisely brought Gamma World to d20. I liked it so much I bought a second copy for me and another for a friend. I ran a great mini-campaign out of Alternity Gamma Word ("wow" setting & adventure there). My buddy got yet another copy and ran the conclusion of a 10-year game of Legion of Gold with it.

Judge Dredd d20 gets a "wow" honourable mention from me. I just liked the idea of 2 judge classes and 1 citizen class with a bunch oflittle variants. That was a fun game to run, too.

 

[Mercurius]

In no particular order:

ARIA for its audacity and terrific concept, if failed execution (who has actually played this game?).

SAVAGE WORLDS for its design perfection. It must be one of the most highly regarded game systems ever.

TALISLANTA for its unparalleled pure fantastical imagination (the rumor is that its creator, Stephen Michael Sechi, came up with a lot of the ideas during a phase of his life where he was taking a lot of hallucinogens).

ARS MAGICA for its elegant magic system.

EVERWAY for its unique aesthetic and quasi-mysticism.

And last but not least...

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 1ED, for being the first game I ever played and thus inspiring the biggest wow of all.

There are others, but those are what come to mind.

 

[Infiniti2000]

#6 The Morrow Project

This is the one I was going to mention. It's obscure and amazingly still in print! Moreover, they're (still) working on the fourth edition. That's right, 4E!

 

[Ariosto]

This is the one I was going to mention. It's obscure and amazingly still in print! Moreover, they're (still) working on the fourth edition. That's right, 4E!

There's a blast from the past! I still have somewhere the slender 1st ed. (the only one I've ever played) of The Morrow Project. I imagine that folks born since the fall of the Berlin Wall might approach just about all the RPGs of my Cold War youth differently, but this one seems perhaps one of the most telling cases in point. It was just a notch less "gonzo" than Gamma World, but that was a significant notch. Playing it with other military personnel and college students was interesting, as the gaps got filled (as I always presumed was the intent) with a combination of common sense and actual know-how.

One of the designers, Richard Tucholka, went on to be the driving force behind Tri-Trac Games. The detailed Tri-Tac hit location system is "insane", but apart from that the games are pretty "rules medium" (between light and heavy) IMO. There's a homey funkiness about them, and Fringeworthy was a great excuse to put all sorts of "ordinary folks" into extraordinary situations.

Thanks for the memories!

 

[Tony Vargas]

you pick up X the RPG, go home, read it, and go, "WOW! This game is totally awesome!" What game was that and what was it that made you jump up and down?

I've realy only had that reaction to two games. Champions! and Mage: the Ascension - both 1st edition (the current Hero System is still great, but I'm long since used to it; the 2nd and subsequent editions of M:tA were better-done, but not so inspiring - and Mage: the Awakening fell flat for me).

Champions! was amazing for it's day. It prettymuch singlehandedly created effects-based mechanics, allowing all the disparate elements of superhero comics - magic, super-science, psionics, mutants, aliens, robots, etc - to function together in one elegant system. M:tA also presented an interesting take on an effects-based system, and was the only game I'd ever seen blend magic and science together in a setting with perfect consistency (through the simple expidient of making science a form of magic).

 

[Olli]

Gamewise, I go with Blue Planet (settin, not rules) and Kult (both).

Oh, and i know it´s a bit of cheating, but what really blew me away were the original Dark Sun and Planescape Boxes. Those definitly got the WOW factor.

Olli

 

[SSquirrel]

I've realy only had that reaction to two games. Champions! and Mage: the Ascension - both 1st edition (the current Hero System is still great, but I'm long since used to it; the 2nd and subsequent editions of M:tA were better-done, but not so inspiring - and Mage: the Awakening fell flat for me).

Champions! was amazing for it's day. It prettymuch singlehandedly created effects-based mechanics, allowing all the disparate elements of superhero comics - magic, super-science, psionics, mutants, aliens, robots, etc - to function together in one elegant system. M:tA also presented an interesting take on an effects-based system, and was the only game I'd ever seen blend magic and science together in a setting with perfect consistency (through the simple expidient of making science a form of magic).

Yeah first ed Mage was pretty amazing. 2nd Ed was basically clarifying a lot of the rules and a slight scaling back to Forces 5 (too many black holes generated probably heh) mostly. I always felt they didn't provide enough example rotes and then MtA went and made more rotes than there were spells in 3rd Ed D&D. They went from free form to extreme detail and have a much more storyline now. Can't get into it. I just pretend Revised and MtA never happened, only need 7 books to complete my 1st/2nd ed Mage collection

Man how could I forget Rifts?! I was a freshman in high school and a buddy of mine found that. We had both played TMNT and Heroes Unlimited by that point so we knew all about the Palladium system. The original cover art and the full color shots like the Ley Line Walker, the Red Borg, the ley lines ripping across the land...it was all so amazingly evocative. Unfortunately the game bogs down in the system and the never ending arms race of new books.