What realistic RPGs do you enjoy?

[Agback]

G'day

In the spirit of the thread "What Fantasy rpg's, other than D&D, do people enjoy?", I'd like to ask what RPGs everyone uses for spy, western, mystery, and pulp adventure camaigns, and for other roleplaying that lacks any overt science fiction or fantasy content.

I have played and enjoyed:

Justice, Inc, Danger International, and other instantiations of the Hero System

James Bond 007

And the indispensible ForeSight.

Regards,


Agback

EDIT: typo, coding

 

[Wombat]

Hmm, interesting take on "realistic" -- always thought James Bond was at least as much fantasy as LotR, but that is just a personal take...

Probably my favourite game along this line is Over The Edge -- I have used it succesfully for the base setting, a great Pulp campaign, and even a pretty good superhero game. Actually as a system it works pretty darn well for any setting where it assumed that the characters do not all have the same general sorts of skills (i.e. it wouldn't work well for a Three Musketeers kind of setting, but does for Pulp).

Don't really play Western games, as it always felt like a limited genre to me, but again that is just personal taste.

 

[bubbalin]

I'm running a non-magic, non-psi D20 modern game, which is as realistic as I can get...

 

[Cbas10]

G'day

In the spirit of the thread "What Fantasy rpg's, other than D&D, do people enjoy?", I'd like to ask what RPGs everyone uses for spy, western, mystery, and pulp adventure camaigns, and for other roleplaying that lacks any overt science fiction or fantasy content.

White Wolf's Adventure! was simply amazing; I wish it could have been a fully-developed game. Also from White Wolf, my favorite RPG out there is Mage: the Ascension (could easily be heavily into the fantasy genre, but I like the game to be more grounded and subtle). Way back in the day, I played in a Boot Hill game (it was pretty fun...but who knows how good the game really was; I was only about 12 at the time).

 

[d4]

GURPS and d20 Modern adequately cover the "modern-day, realistic" genre for me.

for westerns, i'm pinning my hopes on Sidewinder Recoiled, the d20 Modern version.

 

[pogre]

I always enjoyed Millenium's End.

 

[Golem2176]

White Wolf's Adventure! was simply amazing; I wish it could have been a fully-developed game. Also from White Wolf, my favorite RPG out there is Mage: the Ascension (could easily be heavily into the fantasy genre, but I like the game to be more grounded and subtle). Way back in the day, I played in a Boot Hill game (it was pretty fun...but who knows how good the game really was; I was only about 12 at the time).

Adventure! will be seiing a D20 incarnation, and it will be published and distributed in April!

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

GURPS. It is very flexible, and can be very realistic (though it doesn't have to be, no matter what some people say...).

 

[johnsemlak]

As noted above I'm not sure what is meant by 'realistic'. Sometimes people attempt to play D&D 'realistically'.

Do me playing RPGs is all about trying to play in some bit of a make-believe world. I would never want to play a realistic game per-se. THis includes fantasy campaigns that draw extensively from modern-world parallels on morality and so on.

Now, a James Bond game that was a bit fantastic, well, I'd liek to play, though I haven't since the old Top Secret days.

 

[Ron]

If you mean not magical modern days for realistic, then James Bond is one of the best games available. In fact, it is one of the best RPGs of all time, much ahead of its time.

I usually understand as realistic, games that portrait characters within the human limits, somewhat biased to the average, with a gritty combat system. Of these, I like Traveller, which, despite being the Sci-Fi fiction game in the Far Future, can be usually in present time campaigns with little tweaking. GURPS is more flexible, allowing more interesting characters, but the skill system becames broken at the high spectrum of human variation and I can't stand the combat system, which I think is too boring.