Quote from: Exploderwizard;761326GURPS 3E had some WWII stuff. We played a short WWII campaign years ago. We chose famous personalities/characters to base our characters on.

My friend played our lieutenant as Oddball from Kelley's Heroes. I played the grizzled old sgt. as G.Gordon Liddy. Hilarity ensued.

Yes, yes it did. Best session I've ever run.


As to the OP:

Elder Scrolls
Guild Wars 2
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Knights of the Old Republic
Mass Effect
XCOM
Banner Saga
Fallout
Legend of Grimrock
Half Life


The problem with a lot of games is that you play "The Chosen One" in some fashion. A lot of games don't work well outside of that conceit. Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars 2, and Banner Saga have such an in depth world that you can easily remove that conceit and make an RPG work really well. Of my list, Guild Wars 2 and The Elder Scrolls are my two most wanted games as ttRPGs

Quote from: YourSwordisMine;761949The problem with a lot of games is that you play "The Chosen One" in some fashion. A lot of games don't work well outside of that conceit.

True. Though I've only played the first Halflife I don't see that making a great RPG... but I think Deus Ex has enough going on in the background to suggest all sorts of potential scenarios... working with/against particular factions... up to and even after the big events at the end. Going from grungy cyberpunk to... some variation of post apocalypse?... depending on the final option you went with.

Quote from: Simlasa;762096True. Though I've only played the first Halflife I don't see that making a great RPG... but I think Deus Ex has enough going on in the background to suggest all sorts of potential scenarios... working with/against particular factions... up to and even after the big events at the end. Going from grungy cyberpunk to... some variation of post apocalypse?... depending on the final option you went with.

I played a Half Life: Opposing Force scenario and it went pretty well.

For the uninitiated, in Half Life (the first game in the series) the player-as-protagonist Gordon Freeman seeks to navigate through a series of laboratories and offices that have, due to circumstances explained in the opening of the game, come under attack by extra-terrestrial (and indeed likely extra-dimensional) beings.  About a third of the way in to the game after some genuine survival horror moments of low/no ammunition for your single weapon, and one melee weapon (the ubiquitous crowbar), you're confronted by the US military in the form of the H.E.C.U. teams - Hostile Environment Combat Unit(s); so you must add them to your list of obstacles to evade or overcome.

In Half Life: Opposing Force, you play one of the soldiers of the H.E.C.U., and it is revealed that the teams of Special Forces were sent in a day or so after the initial incident.  You come peripherally close to Gordon Freeman but never cross paths with him so story continuity is maintained.

In Opposing Force, part of your journey involves working with teams of other soldiers; I think the maximum number I was able to command in any one scenario was five, and they can do things like cut open doors, provide covering fire, heal you, etc.  So I used this background rather than make the characters a group of Gordon Freeman knockoffs as my basic scenario.  They enjoyed it well enough, even periodically (and regrettably) severely interrogating Black Mesa personnel to try and locate Freeman (whom they had convinced themselves was some kind of extra-dimensional terrorist working with this strange guy in the blue suit with a briefcase).  Eventually, once they realized the Black Ops teams had armed a nuclear weapon and that the rest of the H.E.C.U. were either dead, cut off, or evacuated, decided to flee the Black Mesa facility and try to get back to their base - it was a real "to be continued" moment as they drove down the main road (nearly getting in a car accident with Dr. Rosenberg, his colleagues and Barney Calhoun), then as they barreled down a desolate desert highway seeing the now-distant Black Mesa in the rear-view mirror collapse as the G-Man's nuke went off and they continued on into a world rapidly being overwhelmed by portal storms...

Quote from: YourSwordisMine;761949The problem with a lot of games is that you play "The Chosen One" in some fashion.

Yeah, and it doesn't even have to be "mystical" to be a problem. Despite all the requests for it, the way the Mass Effect universe is set up feels like all the best ideas and conflicts come to a head just in time for Shepard to have all the fun, so any protagonist other than her/him would be stuck chewing leftover bones.

A few already mentioned

Half-Life
Elder Scrolls

plus whatever the game is for the show Defiance.

Wasteland - Granted, it uses the Tunnels & Trolls system, and I bought a copy of Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes, but it would have been nice if they'd saved me the work by making the game...

Later!

Harl

Quote from: Opaopajr;761370Star Flight

Hrmmm? Could do this with Traveller

Quote from: baragei;761649Here is an updated version: http://basicroleplaying.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=531

I'm still tinkering with this, but unfortunately I'm only tinkering.
If TES is interesting, take a look at the UESRGP as well.

Awesome, Thanks for the link!