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. . . by which I mean ruleset.

My group plays a lot of D&D3.5, which I think is worn as thin as it can be, and I can't seem to nudge them into Fourth (which I love, admittedly only having DMed) or any other system. I myself have some experience with AD&D (ugh), WoD (didn't care for it at all), CoC (couldn't stay sane--or alive--long enough), Burning Wheel (so complicated!), it's little brother Mouse Guard (very interesting but too light on the mechanics for a group like mine), and Dark Heresy (I have an online DH group separate from my IRL group, the members of which don't care for 40k or WHFB). So I turn to Dakka. What systems have you guys loved?

Detailed answers about mechanics (rather than nostalgic paeans) appreciated, especially where such discussion is relative to 3.5 or, to a lesser extent, the other systems mentioned above.

Does video game RPG count?

No, that would put this thread in the wrong section. Table top only.

LunaHound wrote:Does video game RPG count?

No, a video game can never fully capture the feel and playstyle of a true RPG.

Dark Heresy is my favourite because of the fun and deadly combat and the ability to do morally ambiguous things for the good of humanity. I like to think of it as the ultimate 'Humanity, feth yeah!' RPG.

And it's fun letting players know the hard way that they are NOT Space Marines when they try to take a bolt shell to the chest.

I have to agree with Cheese in this case.

Just based on a game system DH is the best IMO. I still play D&D 3.5 and have a fun with with my friends but it is just too over the top now and broken in the extreme.

DH is dark gritty and fun. It also lends itself really well to fast or slow game play.

WoD is taking it's place in second.

What do people think about GURPS or Rifts? How about the Cortex System used in the Serenity and Battlestar RPGs?

I like rifts as long as the players are from the basic classes in the standard book, don't care for the system much though.
GURPS is good for pickup, one story settings.
Haven't used Cortex, but I've heard good things.

I'm a fan of the WoD system (when you include variable target numbers, ie difficulties).
It lends itself to gradations of success and failure well.

I love love love Villians and Vigilantes. An old Hero game from the 80's.

Any more info/personal reflection on the Cortex system would be greatly appreciated.

Dark Heresy! 40k RPG (Because I love Bolters can't be without 'em)

Manchu wrote: I have an online DH group.

How do you play DH online?

We use Ventrilo (a program liek Skype) and OpenRPG. It works more or less like an in-person session with less out of game chatter.

I play with this group.

I don't know how to play and don't have the rule book. Is it possible for me to be able to play still?

I think you'd at least need the rulebook. As for playing with this group, you have to wait for them to have an opening. I had to wait for a while and then competed with a couple of others for the spot. Well, "competed" isn't the best word. They look over your character idea and try to size up your personality to see if you'd fit into their existing group well enough. If you'd like to play DH, I'd suggest grabbing the core book and convincing a few IRL buddies to do so as well. But if you can't do the latter (I could not for reasons stated above) you could try to find an online group or get on a waiting list for the one that I play with (they really are a great group and worth the wait).

But this is a thread about people telling me about RPG systems they've tried!

Dragonquest - A great little system from the 80's, I don't remember the original publisher but TSR bought them out, published it once than it disappeared. Thankfully I still have a copy.

Champions - I loved that system. I didn't think it worked as well for everyday characters (i.e. Hero Games other off-shoots) but for the Super Hero genre? Total customization and control! Making a character could be time consuming.

I liked GURPS, great resource of background books too! I actually still have all of mine from through the years.

I remember V&V, also a good and fast little system for quick games.

I used to like Tunnels & Trolls. It was very similar to D&D but they had a few of solo adventure books which were interesting and fun.

I like dnd 3.5 because I own all but 6-8 books for that rules set. I played a Ravenloft 3.5 game that was great. I liked the insanity mechanics and how dark and scary the game was.

I also like Universalis but that is more of a game for a group of dms. Story driven gameplay and each person has equal say in how the story evolves.

True 20 is also a good system. Very flexible.

I have no idea what system it was, but the RPG I played the most was D20 Modern (with bits taken from the future and arcana rule books). It was pretty good, though sometimes quite over complicated. We played in the Marvel universe (we killed Daredevil and Iron Fist in one game by "mistake" - we rolled fantastically against them and they rolled really badly and managed to fail their fortitude saves against when they were reduced to negative hp)

The game I least liked was a Star Wars RPG my GG played. Though that might have been because I hate Star Wars.

The best system, I think, was D&D 3.5. I did not play it that much before I moved away from my GG, but it was great, nice and simple but in a good way.

I look forward to finding another GG and trying out D&D 4.

For the old AD&D hardcore buffs...

Hackmaster!

Detail madness!!!

www.cthulhutech.com

@slk28850: Could you talk more about Universalis?

@SilverMk2: Did you play Saga Edition Star Wars or West End Games or the Wizards SWRPG before Saga Ed came out? Also, why do you hate Star Wars?

@GoFenris: Can you compare 3.5 and Hackmaster?

@Miss Dee: Cool avatar. I had stumbled over Cthulhutech in its formative stages and heard good things but Call of Cthulhu really turned me off of the franchise. Can you compare them?

Honestly I really like 4th Ed D&D. My favorite adventure took place in 3rd, but that was many a moons ago.

If i ever got to play DH I would probably change my mind, but that is neither here, nor there.

Hero Wars. http://www.glorantha.com/hw/

It's my favorite fantasy world, Glorantha, also used for Runequest. But, the rules are very open-ended, and give a lot of room for non-combat-focused events.

Manchu wrote:@GoFenris: Can you compare 3.5 and Hackmaster?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking so I'll hit it both ways...

1.) Hell no! D&D 3.5 is really well refined and pretty fast to pick up and play. The DM determines the tone of the game so it would be fairly easy to run a 'Hackmaster-esque' campaign. I still have all of my 3.5 books (which is almost all of them) and I'll never give them up. I think it is one of the best evolutions of Gygax's old game. Admittedly, I have not read 4.0.

2.) Hackmaster is, for all intents and purposes, a recreation of the old AD&D rules from back in the day but also AD&D++. In other words it is a VERY detail oriented version of the D20 system. I also own all of the books (4th Edition) and LOVE the tone of the game. It is a violent and deadly variation on the D&D game. I love it for what it is but admittedly until I find a group of more advanced players (or a group already playing it) I can't actually see playing it again.

Another example: The Hackmaster Players Handbook has 100 more pages than the 3.5 Players Handbook and has much less artwork. Also it has a great variation of the old AD&D book cover (as all the books do).



I hope this covers what you're asking?

I honestly could not tell you what version of the Star Wars game it was I played as I was really not into it. I think it was a more recent system.

And I hated the game because it was almost impossible to die, and I hate Star Wars mostly because the films are so terrible, and then handful of Star Wars books I have read are terrible.

The background I have read can be mildly interesting at times, but for the most part it just does not grab me in any way.

I'm currently playing DnD 4.0 which is great and also playing the Star Wars D20 RPG which is also great but a setback is that you sorta need to make sure what you do doesn't disrupt what actually happened in Star Wars. At leats for my group we don't.

The best RPG? Hmmm.

What ones do I recommend.

Dragonknights(Quest ?). Fun game, no complexity to the rules though and they only ever brought out 6 books. Character classes got stupidly powerful towards the end. Good for pickup games not for campaigns.

Tunnels & Trolls, go Hellbomb Burst!!!! And buckets of dice. Says it all.

MERP/Rolemaster. Good to start with, GM needs to be (very) good at maths, power creep in the later supplements. If you can get them, the early Middle-Earth adventures were very good, but ICE lost the licence and so they are no longer produced. I don’t even know if this ruleset is still printed.

Paranoia. Fun for GM only, he gets to read all the jokes. Players really don’t get to laugh a lot until afterwards when the jokes can be explained.

RuneQuest/Chaosium Games. Good games, can take a while to complete characters, but logical progression. I prefer the earlier editions of these rules, especially of the Moorcock Elric series. There is a solid background to the Glorantha (default) game world, but this can be hard to find/follow in places.

Cyberpunk/Cyberpunk2020. Do unto others before they do unto you. Very dark, very violent. Anything else just ain’t cyberpunk. Simple straight forward rules.

Dark Conspiracy. Cyberpunk with aliens. Never got into it. D20 ruleset.

MegaTraveller. THE GAME! But I’m just biased.

Champions. Never really got to play this game to any extent. The GMs for it were all arses. My favorite player character was Capt Fishy. Ranged killing attack (Flintlock Pistol) Non ranged killing attack (Cutlass) and ranged stun attack (SMELL!!)

CoC. What other game has no rules for healing. Brilliant system if you like the horror genre, but needs a knack to develop characters, or even alive!

Star Wars, first two editions were good. Later editions were not so.

GURPS. One off games were really good. Campaigns are so hard to keep on track. Especially gaining points for character progression. Over complicated.

What games do you want to play, ie what genre?

Andrew

All spells are formed as ritual magic, there are parapsycics how have powers (think along the lines of X-MEN), also there are drama points that can give you an extra D10 to rolls and take away a d10 from the guy you are shooting at.

The Neg New Earth Govermant are ighting 3 wars, the Migo, terrorists and monsters that are raviging across China.

Hackmaster! It is bloody, brutal and has a critical hit table which takes a d10,000 to calculate where you were hit and what was injured. Keeping track of the scar where my character lost my left kidney was more detail than anyone ever could ask for in an rpg. It isn't fair to say that it is low power DnD 3.5, it is just far more deadly. When even a goblin has a chance of knocking off your character's head the first time he hits you it becomes much more difficult to reach the dizzying heights of level 6.

Hackmaster is between systems right now- the older 4th edition is still available, but a newer 5th edition has been partially released. It takes the form of a dirt cheap $20 book that is a combination player book, gamemaster book, and monster book. Appropriately, it is called Hackmaster Basic. The Advanced version should be out within the year. My players and I cannot wait to get our hands on this.

Other than Hackmaster, I always enjoyed World of Darkness's Hunter series. Regular folks slowly losing it as they battled barely understood monsters is a fantastic setting.

I also always enjoyed Shadowrun, but think that I only played the first and second edition.

Gitzbitah wrote:Hackmaster! It is bloody, brutal and has a critical hit table which takes a d10,000 to calculate where you were hit and what was injured. Keeping track of the scar where my character lost my left kidney was more detail than anyone ever could ask for in an rpg. It isn't fair to say that it is low power DnD 3.5, it is just far more deadly. When even a goblin has a chance of knocking off your character's head the first time he hits you it becomes much more difficult to reach the dizzying heights of level 6.

Hackmaster is between systems right now- the older 4th edition is still available, but a newer 5th edition has been partially released. It takes the form of a dirt cheap $20 book that is a combination player book, gamemaster book, and monster book. Appropriately, it is called Hackmaster Basic. The Advanced version should be out within the year. My players and I cannot wait to get our hands on this.

Other than Hackmaster, I always enjoyed World of Darkness's Hunter series. Regular folks slowly losing it as they battled barely understood monsters is a fantastic setting.

I didn't say it was a lower power D&D, quite the opposite actually! You don't live in Las Vegas by chance? I'd love to find another group!