World of Darkness

For traditional tabletop RPGs, there are only two that I ever really liked playing: The Fantasy Trip and GURPS, because I like what they do with semi-realistic mapped tactical combat, and other systems don't compete or even try to do that.

After playing The Fantasy Trip regularly for about five years, we still loved it but we wanted something more unpredictable, detailed, realistic and balanced at higher levels. That is, TFT felt like it was all those things when we started playing it, but as we became really experienced with it, and as we started playing with more and more characters who were high-level, it lost those elements for us and we could predict outcomes and it felt artificial. So we started to try to houerule TFT and then redesign basically a new game that was going in the direction of Phoenix Command, and then GURPS came out and did what we had been trying to do only a much more polished job of it. GURPS with various options & houserules has remained solid for us ever sense.

Top Secret and Top Secret SI. Also the James Bond 007 RPG.

Rolemaster, definitely.
HERO and GURPS. (Admittedly, those are "toolkits" rather than games.)
Traveller (too much "Traveller is HARD SCI-FI !!!!!!!!1111!!11!!!11!" these days)

D&D
3.5+ just isn't that much of a system and earlier versions have been supplanted by better games.

D&D, after 37 years it has just become a chore to get interested in the game anymore in any of its incarnations.

Champions, Pathfinder, D&D 3.X, Mutants and Masterminds: Communities are circling the drain with the remainder mostly comprised of the mechanics autists.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;1039467Champions, Pathfinder, D&D 3.X, Mutants and Masterminds: Communities are circling the drain with the remainder mostly comprised of the mechanics autists.

   I don't know about the others, but I wouldn't count Champions out just yet--it's been pronounced dead several times before. It's a system I've never played, but I've read a lot, own a lot of material for, and generally respect--I just think it's probably too much for me to want to wrestle with these days. I'd jump at the opportunity to give it a try in play, but I don't know that I have the energy to run it even if I get around to running something.

Another vote for rolemaster and MERP.  I got a lot out of those games 25 or so years ago, and my MERP collection is a treasure to me, but the game hasen't aged well.

I tried it again recently (well 2 years ago). It just didn't fly. Part of the problem I think is that I used to play with people who could do 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction instantly, in their heads.  That used to be a common skill. The math doesn't bother me at all, but when I have to do all the math for every roll and consult the charts - forget it.  It cuts into my beer time.

Quote from: jeff37923;1039457D&D, after 37 years it has just become a chore to get interested in the game anymore in any of its incarnations.

hear, hear!

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1039468I don't know about the others, but I wouldn't count Champions out just yet--it's been pronounced dead several times before. It's a system I've never played, but I've read a lot, own a lot of material for, and generally respect--I just think it's probably too much for me to want to wrestle with these days. I'd jump at the opportunity to give it a try in play, but I don't know that I have the energy to run it even if I get around to running something.

In order to come back, Champions needs to start catering to new players again and stop pandering to the writeups crowd. Same thing M&M needs to do.

Off the top of my head

Champions and by extension the Hero System. While a versatile system it is just too crunchy for my and my group taste. Same issue with Gurps.

D&D 2E. I have a love and hate relationship with that version. It was the longest edition that I played and I had fun both running and playing it. Yet I found the DMG to be terrible both as a teaching tool and in general. Between the generally adversarial tone of the advice, a player wants to keep using silver weapons make sure they break at the worst time. A player likes to min-max go for his weakness. Don't even get me started on the sample combat they put in the book. I'm really hoping that never was a actual combat they used as a example because the players as written are dumber than bag full of hammers.

Rifts same as 2E D&D the system while serviceable has not aged well to me at least and I find myself mostly reading the books for inspiration to use with other rpgs. It does not even need a new edition just a simple updating of the current system.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;1039509In order to come back, Champions needs to start catering to new players again and stop pandering to the writeups crowd. Same thing M&M needs to do.

It's never going to happen imo. Between some of the fanbase in denial at the popularity of the system as a whole. With other members thinking that all is required is better production values and sudden a bunch of new players will come out of the woodwork. To some lamenting that the system is not as popular but Hero Games better never, ever change anything with the rules as is.

Compared to some of you guys, I'm obviously a curmudgeon.

Exalted: I loved 1e...mostly, or at least I did until the Player's Guide. Then 2e lost me early on (after the core rulebook) and I never could get back into it. The 2e action resolution flow that had (IIRC) seven steps to figure in when taking an action was just the first example of how overcomplicated this thing became.

Shadowrun: Speaking of overcomplicated, this one kills me. I started in 1989 with a fresh copy of 1e and I loved the hell out of it. I bought pretty much every edition but increasingly felt like the crunch level just kept getting thicker with no increase to my enjoyment. I seem to remember character generation that can take about an hour for everything except equipment...and then three fucking days of figuring out gear (and modifications & software on that gear). The character sheets for the sample characters strain my eyes to read everything that they try to cram into a starting character, and it only gets worse.

Pathfinder: Again, the crunch just lost it's appeal. I can't do everything with 5e D&D that I could with Pathfinder, and that's a good thing in my eyes. I don't want bare-bones games, but I also don't need them morbidly obese with crunchy options.

FFG's Star Wars: Fuck this system and the narrative it rode in on. The game is so filled with bugs that it's proponents try to pass as features that it makes me angry just to think how much time I put into it. This game seriously has detracted from any enjoyment I find in anything Star Wars, so much so that I now avoid the IP...so I guess that's my "narrative arc" in a nutshell. Oh, and throw WFRP 3e into this same category. Just a $100 box of shit...

Rolemaster: The only guy that I knew that ran a Rolemaster game well enough for me to look past the dryness of the system died in 2013 from "the ass cancer" (his words). I miss him.

Pre-5e D&D: I've played them all over the years (since 1984), and 5e hits a sweet spot for crunch and playability. I don't need the ones that came before (and 4e can rot in a landfill).

I agree about Shadowrun. Even if 4E then 5E were the only editions I would run or play Riggers or Deckers. Let allow them at the table.

Star Wars D6 a favored yet also flawed rpg. Too many roles and I never liked how they handled high leve Jedi. Basically screw iver the players because the devs were sure not going to address the problem.

Warhamner 2E I never played 1E. Too much of a whiff factor imo. While combat is deadly and realistic swinging and missing constantly is not fun imo. Positioning can only do so much and being told the ranged guy needs to get closer to the target to increase one chances to hit defeats the purpose to me at least of a ranged weapon.   I'm hoping thst they do something about that in the  upcoming 4E.

I used to love playing Pathfinder, until the characters got to 2nd Level.