I really enjoyed the 4e combat system, though any encounter wore out its welcome after about 35 minutes.

It would kind of be cheating to say "D&D", because I can recognize objectively that there's other combat systems that are more interesting by far in terms of the results they create.  However, D&D is the one I always come back to, as do most other people. So in that sense, without being necessarily the most fun at any specific thing, it clearly has something going for it that helps make it the most fun overall.

I would have to say 5E. It gives you a lot of freedom to improvise virtually any theatre-of-the-mind situation, but gives you that bendy rules-backbone that prevents it from becoming a muddled mess.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1001740...D&D is the one I always come back to, as do most other people. So in that sense, without being necessarily the most fun at any specific thing, it clearly has something going for it..

Familiarity  is all it has going for it, which is enough for many.

D&D wins this argument so often, despite all the objective criticisms of it, because it is a game that forces combat into the small, confined space it should be in if the game is going to work as a game. Whenever you blow up the combat system to become more realistic, dynamic, etc., you just end up spending the whole night resolving fights. Given how blood thirsty table top role playing games are, they don't actually go well if you spend all your time fighting. So, if the metric is, 'I had fun, and there were fights', then D&D is a pretty good answer.

Definitely GURPS, for me. Quick, ridiculously flexible and smooth in play with little-to-no haggling or OOC discussion/interpretation necessary, resolution maps almost 1:1 between the mechanics and the 'fiction' of what's happening in the game world, meaty combat processes with satisfying results, and the most important bit: it feels like combat, with all the sense of urgency, brow-sweating and white-knuckle die rolling one could want. It could be over in two seconds or two minutes, and actions and events feel weighty like each decision and outcome really matters (and generally speaking, they do!).

Also worth noting is that GURPS fairly easily slides from one end of the spectrum to another, so if I want to "fuzzy" things up and go more abstract (zoom out/zoom in) for a fight on a battlefield with a hundred soldiers, that's entirely possible and easy to do in a way that feels consistent and not cheating the players out of choice or chance just to make things flow more smoothly. Similarly, how "narrative" or "simulation-y" you want it to play can also be calibrated to the expectations of the campaign, allowing room for not only your high-verisimilitude 'gritty realism' fights, but also your supers battles where many details and much of the realism gets glossed over in favor of cinematic "rule of cool" stuff that's highly influenced by narrative causation, high-flying wuxia, pulp two-fisted nazi mook punching, etc.

It's hard for me to pick just one but The Riddle of Steel is easily up there for me.

Quote from: Dumarest;1001937Familiarity  is all it has going for it, which is enough for many.

This is just wrong on so many levels.  Anytime you find yourself dismissing anything on grounds of "it only appeals because of" nostalgia or familiarity or whatever "mere" thing you pick, there is a really good chance that all you are doing is projecting your own disinterest in the thing onto other people.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1002071This is just wrong on so many levels.  Anytime you find yourself dismissing anything on grounds of "it only appeals because of" nostalgia or familiarity or whatever "mere" thing you pick, there is a really good chance that all you are doing is projecting your own disinterest in the thing onto other people.

 He said it himself in his post. Go re-read it.

Quote from: Dumarest;1002121He said it himself in his post. Go re-read it.

Who, Pundit?  That's not what I got out of his post.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1002012D&D wins this argument so often, despite all the objective criticisms of it, because it is a game that forces combat into the small, confined space it should be in if the game is going to work as a game. Whenever you blow up the combat system to become more realistic, dynamic, etc., you just end up spending the whole night resolving fights. Given how blood thirsty table top role playing games are, they don't actually go well if you spend all your time fighting. So, if the metric is, 'I had fun, and there were fights', then D&D is a pretty good answer.

The last bit: "Then D&D is a pretty good answer," is reasonable. The rest is nonsense. RuneQuest blew up the combat system. By the third session, with veteran D&D players trying out RQ, combat was going faster than it was in our D&D games. I know that people have had similar experiences with GURPS. D&D wins the argument because people compare it to sessions where people are still trying to learn another system and because people have an emotional investment in it. We played for two hours tonight and had two combats, one of them pretty involved, and we had just under 1.5 hours of non-combat. And that was in an admittedly crunchy system that tries for a realistic feel, although not for realism per se.

Quote from: Dumarest;1001937Familiarity  is all it has going for it, which is enough for many.

No, that's not really so.  At least in its early incarnations, it also has quickness of resolution going for it.  In my NYC game with 4-5 players and a group of 9, they'd explore a considerable dungeon area and have four or five combats all in a three hour session.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1002147No, that's not really so.  At least in its early incarnations, it also has quickness of resolution going for it.  In my NYC game with 4-5 players and a group of 9, they'd explore a considerable dungeon area and have four or five combats all in a three hour session.

Fairly speedy fights is critical I think for good combat/system overall

Which D&D becomes the question.  2e with Combat and Tactics slows down a fair bit.

Still, it's a bit of an unfair question.  Even though the damage range is comparable, a Lord might have 80 - 100 hp while a Rune Lord maxes out at maybe 18 or 19.  Never mind the critical hits in RQ, GURPS or Rolemaster.  So, it's a mixed bag, even Rolemaster can actually be pretty fast if you run it right because the players can work out all their results at the same time.  The GM is actually the drag on the system, though I strongly advise farming out allied npcs to players. D&D is very fast for low level characters but it can be excruciatingly slow for high level ones but that makes D&D better for running big combats with lots of cannon fodder.  D&D's wargame roots really show through (never mind about 4e and 5e where the designers clearly thought they knew better) and it's really the only reason D&D draws my attention these days.

Quote from: Motorskills;1000500For the first, probably MERP. The setting, the players, the mood around the table, the fight against the BBEG......the rules just meshed perfectly for an evening I will always treasure the memory of.

I've had this one on my shelf for years, but never tried it. I afraid of the crit tables. How often did the players end up losing limbs and spleens?