I've been thinking about what various games do well in terms of why people love them lately, I'll start but I'd like to hear the thoughts of others on the games they like. What I'd like to avoid is attacks on games or discussions of their weaknesses as those aren't generally the things that people love about them.
I love Rolemaster Standard System. No shocking secret there right. Really, I feel for the 4e guys. RM2 fans are constantly whinging that the addition of skill category ranks, training packages, and talents mean that it's not really Rolemaster. I'm not even kidding here!
For me the addition of those things is what makes it a great game. It's got a real sense of nuance in character creation. There are zillions of ways to customize and tweak your character. I also find that it works well for long term campaigns as it weeds out those who aren't really committed to the game, while those who are keep coming back because they are hugely invested in their characters. You don't see much wanting to change characters either. The capacity to look forward and think ahead about where you want to take your development is also really great.
But I wouldn't run it for a pickup game.
For the Holmes basic D&D or the Moldvay B/X box sets, it was easy and fast to create a new character when one's previous character died.
GURPS is a great game but I almost never run it. GURPS is blisteringly fast in play, makes characters in minutes, and gives an exceptionally easy to narrate form of cinematic realism that I find very appealing. No, really, as long as the players have a reasonable knowledge of the system and can make decisions all that is true. Never mind that in my experience decision making time has an exponential relationship with the number of options and GURPS has infinite options.
GURPS has detailed tactical combat, and fast and loose narrative combat in a single package. It's got the best vehicle design and combat rules in the industry, and it's technical writing, organization, and editing are unmatched. Did I mention the indices? Gurps books have a proper index!
Mutant Chronicles is a favorite of mine. Yes I know, most of the time you're playing a starving exsoldier with post traumatic stress disorder dying in an alley and not the muscular ubermensch on the cover. But that's the beauty of the thing. It's a pulp / noir / science fiction game. The focus is on the creeping cults and corporate intrigue rather than the very zero sum endless trench warfare surrounding the dark legion's citadels. Buck Rogers verses Hell Raiser, really. The core game was fairly solid with life paths and a pretty fun action based combat system with hit locations and piece meal armor. The rules for gigantic shoulder pads didn't come along until second edition though :D
It always chaffes me a bit when people call it a Warhammer 40k knock off. Not that some of the visual elements didn't come from that angle. Mostly in the style of the miniatures and the Paul Boner art work. Warhammer is a game about how useless and weak humans are. Mutant Chronicles is a game about how scary humans can be and how laughable the forces of darkness can seem in comparison to them.
Savage Worlds really is the fastest RPG I have ever ran. We can squeeze in at least two big set piece fight scenes and ample roleplaying in about three-four hours...and I'm not talking PCs versus a few orcs...I'm talking upwards of 25 participants (on some occasions even more) of various shapes, sizes and power levels. In fact, the session that TRULY won me over was a game of Necessary Evil that resulted in a 5 (the PCs and their allies) on 25 (the NPCs, spread over at least four different types of enemies), and it just ran so smooth and fast, we barely missed a beat.
Marvel SAGA does four color, crazy supers better than any system I have ever ran. Guys routinely pushing their limits to new extremes, overcoming insurmountable odds, and basically PCs just getting to be Really Big Damn Heroes, I have yet to play or run a supers RPG that does it better.
Quote from: David Johansen;434784Mutant Chronicles is a favorite of mine. Yes I know, most of the time you're playing a starving exsoldier with post traumatic stress disorder dying in an alley and not the muscular ubermensch on the cover. But that's the beauty of the thing. It's a pulp / noir / science fiction game. The focus is on the creeping cults and corporate intrigue rather than the very zero sum endless trench warfare surrounding the dark legion's citadels. Buck Rogers verses Hell Raiser, really. The core game was fairly solid with life paths and a pretty fun action based combat system with hit locations and piece meal armor. The rules for gigantic shoulder pads didn't come along until second edition though :D
It always chaffes me a bit when people call it a Warhammer 40k knock off. Not that some of the visual elements didn't come from that angle. Mostly in the style of the miniatures and the Paul Boner art work. Warhammer is a game about how useless and weak humans are. Mutant Chronicles is a game about how scary humans can be and how laughable the forces of darkness can seem in comparison to them.
I'd agree. Mutant Chronicles was a really cool world for an RPG. The life path character generation was interesting, though easily abused and unbalancing. We had a lot of fun with it but ultimately the problems with the mechanics just kept cropping up and up again. Still a fun place to visit though.
It shares many of the same strengths and flaws with SLA Industries. Which is another favorite game of mine that's marred by a problematic system.
Traveller is fucking awesome. To see a full-fledged character rise from a bunch of dice-throws, battle-ready like Athena rising from Zeus' split skull, is a thing of beauty. Let alone entire star systems, subsectors and sectors.
No other game that I have ever played drives home the sharp difference between science/technology and "magic." You can find the loopholes in Nature's laws to make her your bitch, but if you slip at a crucial moment you're FUCKED. Mantaining and piloting a trader is not for the uninitiated. Jumping is a complex operation, no wookies thrashing at consoles here (and no giant pristine reactor room with 20 PhD-bearing quantum physicists and/or engineers either).
Same goes for trading, which demands clever players and not just shiny big numbers on your character sheet.
I just love games that make you think, and Traveller's got it in spades.
Mazes & Minotaurs
http://storygame.free.fr/MAZES.htm
I love Mazes & Minotaurs because its a masterwork of "fresh, new, yet familiar" in bringing together everything I love about OD&D and Greek mythos while modernizing the system enough so it moves like lightning.
Chargen is fast, the classes are evocative and 1st levelers can kick ass. You are not going single-handed against Tarsus, but a group of you can down a Cyclops with some luck. Combat is fast and brutal, nobody is built for a long slog and weapons have tactical choices between dagger / sword / spear.
Adventure generation is maybe the easiest of any RPG, and while evocative of D&D, the Greek flavor adds a new dimension to essentially old school hex crawling. In all my years as a gamer, I've discovered three major fantasy loves - D&D, Warhammer and M&M. Pre-M&M, I would have said L5R, but the quality of my M&M game experiences have been some of my best RPG sessions ever.
And its free. Not only M&M core, but there is a good 1000 pages of supplementary goodies that are also free PDFs.
When I picked up the Rifts core rulebook, at the tender age of 13, I thought I'd never, ever buy another RPG.
Humongous mecha? World-hopping hijinks? Lovecraftian horror? Dwarves and elves? Cyborgs? Wizards? Jackbooted post-apocalyptic fascists in death's-head motifs? Big honkin' guns? Motherfucking DRAGONS as PCs? Rifts got you covered.
Sure, character creation is kind of clunky, system looks like an unholy Frankenstein mash-up of AD&D 1e and BRP, and the power creep starting with World Book 6 was a pain in the ass. But I'll be damned if a setting ever grabbed me like Rifts grabbed my 13-year-old self.
Of course, now I'm older, jaded. And I don't have nearly as much patience as I've once had with the Palladium system. But I'd still be very happy to play, and even happier to run, a classic Rifts game.
For the record David, I am with you on RMSS being better than RM2 and just generally an all round great game.
But back on topic, Earthdawn has always managed to be a fast flowing fun game that always managed to inspire the most heroic and fun roleplay for my group (at the time and since). Somehow the mix of players levelling up courtesy of how legendary they are getting plus the mix of powerful magic items having interesting worked wonders for us. It didn't hurt that we also really dug the setting, possibly putting a harsher, darker edge on it than other people.
I have broken out my old ED 2nd ed books and for the last 4 months or so been running my wife through a mini-campaign that is getting better and better.
Quote from: kryyst;434893I'd agree. Mutant Chronicles was a really cool world for an RPG. The life path character generation was interesting, though easily abused and unbalancing. We had a lot of fun with it but ultimately the problems with the mechanics just kept cropping up and up again. Still a fun place to visit though.
It shares many of the same strengths and flaws with SLA Industries. Which is another favorite game of mine that's marred by a problematic system.
It might interest you to know I've been working on a retro-clone / reworking. I'm doing it as a more generic modern / near future game on account of not having the liscence and the fact that Copplestone has some absolutely fabulous Neosoviets that have no place in the Mutant Chronicles universe.
Quote from: David Johansen;434770I've been thinking about what various games do well in terms of why people love them lately, I'll start but I'd like to hear the thoughts of others on the games they like. What I'd like to avoid is attacks on games or discussions of their weaknesses as those aren't generally the things that people love about them.
Here's one for AD&D 2nd Edition:
- No grids or miniatures required; fast/streamlined combat; good for narrative
- Awesome settings; lots of detail; immersive
- Awesome artwork; more of a historical vibe with weapons and armour; skilled oil painters; avoids stylized comic-book style art; shows a story/landscape as opposed to action poses
These are the three published systems that have been the go-to games for me:
Warhammer FRP 1st Edition is a complete RPG in a single book. It's been my standard go-to game to run pick-up games because you can run players who have never played that game before through the random character generation and get runnable characters ready to go in a half-hour or so. At some point, I want to give the 2nd Edition a try.
For Fudge, I really like the word-oriented nature of the system (my group actually plays with the words, not the numbers) and the strong zero-centered die rolls that make characters normally perform at or near their skill level. The wound track is also a simple yet good alternative to hit points.
The Hero System (I'm most familiar with 4th and 5th editions) has flavorful combat and a nice martial arts system and doesn't, in my experience, break down regardless of power level (at least the at the levels I'm likely to ever play at).
Quote from: David Johansen;434953It might interest you to know I've been working on a retro-clone / reworking. I'm doing it as a more generic modern / near future game on account of not having the liscence and the fact that Copplestone has some absolutely fabulous Neosoviets that have no place in the Mutant Chronicles universe.
I'd be curious to see it but the whole retro clone thing just doesn't interest me at all. I moved on. Now put out a game disguised in a similar setting but using more modern concepts, that's interesting.